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Posts Tagged ‘memoir’
Sick of being a buzzkill and a culinary wallflower, while constantly surrounded by some of the biggest names in the restaurant industry, Alyssa Shelasky decided to give cooking a shot. Apron Anxiety documents her journey from nearly burning down the house to creating dazzling dinner parties for old friends, new friends, boyfriends, exes, and everything in between.
Marco Pasanella decided, in his early forties, to change his life by opening a wineshop—an act that many dream about but few actually carry out. Uncorked offers a peek behind the curtain of the ever-fascinating wine world.
Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett drew an unwavering fascination among fans and the press alike for more than three decades. Ryan’s intimate memoir of this passionate love story, BOTH OF US: My Life with Farrah (Crown Archetype, on sale May 1, 2012), tells the true story behind the headlines. Ryan conveys beautifully everything their relationship was— at once exuberant, sad, and timeless, confessing the deepest parts of his heart.
“On a raw night in February,” writes author Alyssa Shelasky, author of Apron Anxiety, “I ordered a peppermint tea in a bright Greenwich Village diner and unwrapped a bound galley of my book. It was the first time I saw how everything came together – from the cover selection, to the blurbs on the back, to my 80,000–something words. Oh, those words! The words that were my core being for an entire year straight! Just touching the pages was surreal. I started to cry. And then I laughed. Because as I read the story, as a girl sitting in a diner, not an author wrestling with ‘her art,’ this cool-looking paperback was actually funny and touching!”
“Rocky Flats was the big secret of my childhood,” says Kristen Iversen, author of Full Body Burden. “No one knew what they did at the plant; the rumor in the neighborhood was that they made household cleaning products. We knew nothing about radioactive and toxic contamination. My childhood was also shadowed by the secrecy surrounding my father’s alcoholism. My family was very close and loving but also troubled. I wrote the book to learn what really happened at Rocky Flats, to learn everything I could about plutonium pits and nuclear weapons and the crucial role the plant played during and after the Cold War.”
RIFers in book groups! Signs of Life is a terrific book group book, which is why it’s a selection of the Ladies Home Journal Book Club. Don’t miss the bonus material for Signs of Life that will help make your book group discussion lively and rewarding: a letter from author Natalie Taylor and discussion questions for Signs of Life. Were you a lucky winner of our Read It First Signs of Life giveaway? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment with your RIFer Reader Review. If we feature your review here on RIF.com, we’ll send you another fabulous book!
“When it comes to understanding themselves, the paths they choose, how they are driven, where they are going and why, men don’t know what they don’t know about any of it,” says Joe Kissack, author of The Fourth Fisherman. “Even though he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, you can. If you have the desire, you can choose the option to help him figure some of this out now, instead of the mandatory sentence of helping him figure it out in the wake of destruction of two little words: I do. You do this by utilizing what I like to call Operation Red Flag (ORF) and it is a simple two-stage plan.”
“Try this,” recommends Patricia Ellis Herr, author of Up, “next time you and your child have a warm day to spend together, go for a walk, and let her decide on the destination, but have a ‘no carrying’ rule; this is a particularly empowering approach. Right away, your child knows that she has the power to decide where the two of you are going, and that she will be responsible for getting there on her own two feet. If her desired destination seems unrealistic, don’t worry, and don’t naysay. Without judgment or negative assumptions, let her try.”
“In 2008, I traveled nine thousand miles to northern India near the border of Pakistan, to have a child,” writes author Adrienne Arieff. “I went to India under the direction of a fertility specialist to whom I only spoken over the phone, to undergo IVF treatment, with the help of an Indian surrogate I had never met. The Sacred Thread offers my perspective and a look at the landscape and culture of India through the lens of an American couple searching for family, an Indian family searching for a future, and a doctor offering a chance for both to find what they seek.”
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