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memoir

The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an L.A. Dungeon by Jenny Nordbak

December 31, 2018      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

9 hrs. 11 min. | St. Martin’s Press | Macmillian |  Release Date: 4/4/2017

 Jenny Nordbak’s podcast, The Wicked Wallflowers Club, has been one of my favorite podcasts this year. Their author interviews are always a fun mix of craft talk, raunch, and bookish squee. After hearing Nordbak share a few snippets of her time as a dominatrix on the podcast I decided to check out her book to get the full story.

This memoir follows the two years in Nordbak’s early twenties where she secretly trained and worked as a dominatrix at a BDSM dungeon in Los Angeles. Nordbak weaves together the events of her “vanilla” life with anecdotes about her sessions with clients as she becomes Mistress Scarlett. I found the peek into the BDSM scene fascinating and enjoyed getting to know the irreverent found family Nordbak creates for herself.

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I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé

October 17, 2018      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

 6 hrs and 9 min | Simon & Schuster | Memoir/Essay Collection | 07/24/2018

This memoir caught my eye because well . . . how can you bypass a book with a subtitle like that? I wasn’t familiar with Arceneaux before, but he is a prolific pop culture writer who often writes about the intersection of being Black and gay.

 I’ve been kind of meh on memoirs by millennials lately*, particularly the ones around identity, because they feel like they are written specifically for the gaze of White liberal progressives. But Arceneaux’s stories are messier and have a personal authenticity that I enjoyed.

My favorite essays were the ones he wrote about his relationship to Catholicism and the importance of R&B music in his life. At first, it seemed like Beyoncé’s name was put in the title just to get clicks but once you get to his essay about Beyoncé it fell into place. 

Arceneaux reads the audiobook, and it didn’t 100% work for me. While it was great to hear his particular southern accent, his affect was flat and stilted at times.

I also just admire Arceneaux’s hustle to become the media personality he’s become. While he doesn’t address it directly,  there is an ongoing thread in the background of his essays about the years of hard work he put into building his career.

Arceneaux offers something new to the gay/pop culture essayist genre and I’m sure there will be many more books from him in the future.

 

*This review of Morgan Jenkins’ This Will Be My Undoinghits on a few  the issues I have with some of these millennial memoirs about identity

 

Audiobook Review: Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

June 29, 2018      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Penguin Audio | 7 hours and 4 minutes | Memoir | 10/27/2015

I find Carrie Brownstein really interesting. She’s one of those people who has managed to have two very distinct yet very successful careers in the public eye. Depending who you are you may know her from the rock band Sleater-Kinney or, if you’re like me, from the award-winning show Portlandia.

This memoir is focused exclusively on her relationship to music and Sleater-Kinney. I picked up this book because it was like a window to the eclectic and chaotic world of 90’s punk rock band life during the riot grrrl movement–a world I knew nothing about.

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Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cummings

June 15, 2018      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

HarperAudio | Memoir | 10/07/2014 

Alan Cumming examines the violent and abusive childhood that nearly sent his adult life off course while on a journey to uncover a family secret on the reality TV show  Who Do You Think You Are? Just when Cumming thinks he has a handle on all his family secrets, his estranged father calls and drops a big one.

This silver fox actor is known for playing eccentric characters. I  know Cumming best from his role as Eli Gold on The Good Wife (He was also in X2).  At the time I had no idea he was Scottish but by the time I finished this audiobook the thought of him with an American accent seemed strange.

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