Book Addiction

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival  by Anderson Cooper

From the book jacket -

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news.  In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they had on his life.

After growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth.  If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother.  As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him.

But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family’s troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world.  From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale.  Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before - ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarajevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda - but he had never seen human misery quite like this.  Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.

My thoughts -

I have always been a fan of Anderson Cooper, and I’d been excited about reading his memoir ever since it came out sometime last year.  I definitely enjoyed reading it, even though 90% of the book is some really heartbreaking, depressing stuff.  Cooper alternates between talking about his childhood/early adulthood experiences with his family (including his dad’s early death and brother’s suicide), his early experiences as a journalist in places like Sarajevo and Somalia, and his more recent experiences as a journalist in places like Nigeria, Iraq, and New Orleans.  In my opinion, this style worked really well for his memoir because he was able to tie his childhood in with different experience he had as an adult, and also tie in how some places he went to and disasters he experienced were similiar to and/or different from others he saw later in his career (for example, he compared the famine in Somalia to the famine in Nigeria, and the war in Sarajevo to the war in Iraq).  He also spent a good amount of the book tying in his personal life to his work; basically he was going through a process of self-discovery where he was learning why he feels such an incredible desire to be at the scene of every single disaster, and why he feels the need to keep moving and hates staying in one place for too long.  It is obvious that writing this memoir was very theraputic for Cooper, and he comes to some conclusions toward the end about why he is the way he is, and he begins to come to terms with his personality and the way he feels compelled to live his life.  I really appreciated reading Cooper’s memoir, and even though this is a really sad book, it is a worthwile read.

9 stars.

The Middle Placeby Kelly Corrigan

From the book jacket -

For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything.  At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column.  But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan’s daughter.  A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan.  He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, “Hello, world!”  It was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to.

Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place - “that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap” - comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents’ care.  But she’s abruptly shoved into coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast - and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear.  And so Kelly’s journey to full-blown adulthood begins.  When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly’s turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her - and to show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.

My thoughts -

I picked this up on a whim at the library, I was browsing the “new books” section and it just stuck out to me as something that looked really interesting.  I also tremendously enjoy memoirs, so I thought what the heck.  I’m glad I grabbed it, because this book was pretty wonderful.  Even though I’m not a parent myself, I could really relate to a lot of Kelly’s feelings.  I, too, am a grown woman most days, handling my marriage, job, finances, and everything else just fine, but when something awful happens the first thing I do is call my mom, because I know she can make anything better.  I can’t help it, it’s just instinct, and I can only imagine that when children come into the picture, my urge to go to my mom with every problem will only intensify.  Besides that, I quickly fell into Corrigan’s comfortable, easy writing style.  I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend while reading her memoir.  The chapters alternate between present day (2005 is the time period the book is mostly about) and random points throughout her childhood.  This structure makes you really involved in the current situation, as well as really curious about her childhood and what made her family the way it is today.  Overall I’d highly recommend this memoir and I’m very happy I decided to read it.

8.5 stars.

‘Tis by Frank McCourt

From the book jacket -

Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat.  He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this “classless country” and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports.  It is Frank’s incomparable voice - his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue - that renders these experiences spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should “stick to their own kind” once they arrive.  Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University.  There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blond, and tries to live his dream.  But it is not until he starts to teach - and to write - that Frank finds his place in the world.  The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela’s Ashes comes of age.

My thoughts -

As many of you probably know, ‘Tis is the sequel to Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s first memoir about growing up poor in Ireland.  While I liked this continuation of McCourt’s life, it didn’t come anywhere close to living up to his first memoir.  AA was just amazing, I fell completely in love with that book and reading about McCourt’s family and his life completely captivated me.  With ‘Tis… well not so much with the captivation this time.  I mean, I was definitely interested to find out what happened to him after he left Ireland, so it was especially enjoyable to read about all the good that happened in his life.  And McCourt definitely has a way of writing his life that makes it read like a novel; he can obviously understand and relate to all types of people, which is why he can write the characters in his own life so well.  So this is not a bad memoir, by any means, it’s just difficult to live up to something as magnificent as AA and do as great a job.  Just didn’t quite get there, in my opinion.

6.5 stars.

**To continue with Weekly Geeks, if anyone has read and reviewed this book (or any others that I’ve reviewed, including Speak!) please send me your links and I will post them on this page.**

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

From Publishers Weekly -

Twenty-six-year-old Wurtzel, a former critic of popular music for New York and the New Yorker, recounts in this luridly intimate memoir the 10 years of chronic, debilitating depression that preceded her treatment with Prozac in 1990. After her parents’ acrimonious divorce, Wurtzel was raised by her mother on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The onset of puberty, she recalls, also marked the onset of recurrent bouts of acute depression, sending her spiraling into episodes of catatonic despair, masochism and hysterical crying. Here she unsparingly details her therapists, hospitalizations, binges of sex and drug use and the paralyzing spells of depression which afflicted her in high school and as a Harvard undergraduate and culminated in a suicide attempt and ultimate diagnosis of atypical depression, a severe, episodic psychological disorder. The title is misleading, for Wurtzel skimps on sociological analysis and remains too self-involved to justify her contention that depression is endemic to her generation. By turns emotionally powerful and tiresomely solipsistic, her book straddles the line between an absorbing self-portrait and a coy bid for public attention.

My thoughts -

Overall I thought this was a pretty decent memoir, and from everything I know about depression, a pretty accurate portrayal of the disease.  I was a psychology major in college so these types of books are always very interesting to me, and I was no doubt interested in Wurtzel’s story just as I anticipated I would be.  Having worked as a suicide hotline volunteer for two years, I recognized most of her symptoms and experiences as legitimate, true feelings of depressives and suicidal individuals.  At the same time, the book felt redundant to me at times, and I sort of feel like she could have told the same story in half the pages, and it would have still been as worthwile and important.  I do think hers is an important story to tell, and I’m glad she did.  I’m sure when the book was published it made a lot of people feel better and more at ease about their own depression, perhaps making people feel that they were not completely alone and that other people had gone through the same thing and come out alive and happy in the end.  The title “Prozac Nation” is somewhat misleading, in my opinion; Wurtzel only talks about prozac at the very end, when she discusses not only its merits but also the fact that six million Americans are currently (or were, when she published the book) medicated with the drug.  Generally, however, I did enjoy this memoir and I think it is a worthwile read, especially for people who know someone suffering from depression, as it gives quite an insight as to what goes on in the depressive mind.

Left To Tell:  Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin

From book jacket:

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished.  But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide.  Her family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.  Miraculously, Immaculee survived the slaughter.  For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s home while hundreds of machete-waving killers hunted for them.  It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God.  She emerged from the bathroom hideout having truly discovered the meaning of unconditional love - a love so strong that she was able to seek out and forgive her family’s killers. 

My thoughts:

My grandma loaned me this book on Saturday evening and I finished it last night… clearly, I couldn’t put it down.  Immaculee’s story is absolutely heartbreaking but ultimately one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever read.  The things this girl has been through, words simply cannot describe (although Immaculee did a pretty good job describing them in her book, in full disgustingly bloody detail).  Reading this book made me feel very, very lucky to be alive and to know that this type of terror is not something that I’ll probably ever have to experience.  Left to Tell is very religion-focused because, like the summary says, that is how she got through those terrifying 3 months in a cramped bathroom, unable to move, speak, shower, or really even eat.  If you are turned off by the God centricity of this book, don’t be.  You can still feel just as inspired by this story if you don’t belive in her God, it’s truly a worthwile read no matter what your religious beliefs.  The book goes into a little detail about why the genocide in Rwanda occured; it’s pretty rudimentary but it will suffice if you are not informed of the causes already (of course, I encourage anyone to read up on the genocide who is not familiar with what happened anyway).  The main thing that struck me as so unbelievable (in a good way) was Immaculee’s incredible power to forgive.  She lamented many times throughout the book how she could not believe that powerful countries such as the United States, and organizations such as the UN, were not stepping in to stop the genocide until it had gone on for over three months and more than a million people had been killed; anyone in that situation would feel just as angry and resentful toward these large and powerful governments that did nothing to help Rwandans.  But as soon as the genocide was over, she went to work for the UN, and eventually moved to the United States with her American-born husband… if that’s not forgiveness, I don’t know what is.  The biggest thing that she forgave, however, was the killing of her family.  She said she relied on God to help her with this, and he put love and grace in her heart so that when she (many years down the road) came face to face with the man who killed her parents, she was able to tell him that she forgave him and move on with her life.  And move on she did - she is now a successful professional at the UN, she has created a foundation to help survivors of the genocide, and she has a wonderful husband, two kids, and a happy life.  This book will really touch your heart and inspire you; I encourage everyone to pick it up.

Rating of the book: 95 out of 100.

Celebrity Detox (The Fame Game) by Rosie O’Donnell

Summary: Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always brutally honest, this is Rosie O’Donnell’s surprising account of the pain, regret, and euphoria involved in withdrawing from celebrity life–and the terrifying dangers of relapsing into the spotlight. Celebrity Detox is Rosie’s story of the years after she walked away from her top-rated TV show in 2002, and her reasons for going back on the air in 2006. In it, she takes you inside the world of talk-show TV, speaking candidly about the conflicts and challenges she faced as cohost on ABC’s The View. Along the way Rosie shows us how fame becomes addiction and explores whether or not it’s possible for an addict to safely, and sanely, return to the spotlight. Chronicling the ups and downs of “the fame game,” Rosie O’Donnell illuminates not only what it’s like to be a celebrity, but also what it’s like to be a mother, a daughter, a leader, a friend, a sister, a wife…in short, a human being.

My thoughts:

Well, first of all, the thing is that I absolutely, positively, no question about it, LOVE Rosie. I admire the way she voices her opinions, however controversial and questionable those opinions may be. I admire how she speaks the truth, her truth, in anything and everything she says. It’s just one of those things; I couldn’t care less what anyone else says about her, I see something so real and powerful in her that I am completely drawn to, and I really do love her and what she stands for.

So anyways, when her book came out, and the media had such a field day with it, twisting everything in the book around and around until it sounded completely deranged and whacked-out, I just knew there had to be more to the story than what was being portrayed. And of course, I was right. This book is, in my opinion, a very powerful statement about how celebrity-ness is sort of like a drug - it messes with even the most innocent of people and makes them want more, and apparently can truly alter and change who a person is. Rosie spoke about how fame has interfered with her life but also changed her life in wonderful ways that she obviously appreciates. She also wrote about her childhood - and how when a person with such an iffy childhood as she had gets put into the spotlight for people to either adore or detest you, it can really mess with your mind and the way you deal with things.

She also talked about Barbara Walters - now this is the stuff that really got attacked by the media. But the thing is, nothing she said about BW was actually negative. It was simply Rosie’s observations as she interacted with her throughout the year they worked together. And in Rosie’s opinion, the two women are actually friends - Rosie says she loves BW and BW loves her as well. The problem with what she wrote in the book is that she wrote some things people don’t really want to hear, such as Barbara is getting older (she is like 73 I think) and there comes a point at which people need to relax and basically, retire, and that BW has no intention of doing so and Rosie just thinks she is worn out and should be thinking about quitting. I mean, in my opinion, this is not a controversial statement - it’s completely accurate. How many 73 year olds work full time jobs? Not many.

Anyways, the point is that I really loved this book - Celebrity Detox did not disappoint. I’d highly recommend reading it, especially for anyone remotely interested in Rosie or the whole fame thing itself.