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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
mjrynott has commented on (2) products
How to Build a Girl
by
Caitlin Moran
mjrynott
, November 24, 2014
Being a teenage girl is horrible. My friend and I were talking about it the other day, and we both decided no amount of money could make us willingly repeat our teenage years. It’s a miserable few years full of awkward self exploration and pressure. Caitlin Moran’s first novel, How to Build a Girl captures this feeling with painful accuracy and a heaping helping of humor. The year is 1990. Johanna Morrigan is a regular 16-year-old girl, daughter of wanna-be rockstar father and a mother suffering from postpartum depression. When her family’s benefits might be in jeopardy, Johanna decides she will be the one to save the family by becoming a professional writer. After winning a writing contest, she is chosen to appear on a local TV show where she humiliates herself with some ill-timed jokes and bad impressions. This humiliation prompts Johanna to reinvent herself, to kill her old self and build herself back up as the girl she thinks she ought to be. Thus Dolly Wilde is born: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, tough-as-nails music critic and “lady sex adventurer.” The desire to create a more perfect version of yourself is one that every teenage girl (or person for that matter) is very familiar with. In fact, simply being a teenager is to be constantly constructing oneself from new experiences and information. Teenagers are simply an assimilation of ideas and beliefs waiting to find out which ones stick and gel and eventually form up into a complete human being. The hilarity and heartbreak comes from that process of assimilation. Everyone will be able to identify with Johanna’s attempts at find her place in the world, even if they’ve never been in a mosh pit or slept in a rock star’s bath tub. This universal life experience is wrapped up in Caitlin Moran’s signature sense of humor. Mostly self-deprecating, Moran has a keen eye for humor in all its many forms: dark, light, observation, and high concept. When she’s not breaking your heart/making you feel like she read your teenage diary, she’s making you nearly piss yourself with laughter. How to Build a Girl is a wonderful roller coaster of novel.
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Prude: Lessons I Learned When My Fianc� Filmed Porn
by
Emily Southwood
mjrynott
, November 24, 2014
As a woman, I feel pretty confident saying that most women have issues with porn--note that I said most not all--especially those of us who fancy ourselves even the teensiest bit feminist. But have any of us really sat and thought long and hard (no pun intended) about it? What exactly makes us uncomfortable? What is or isn’t feminist about porn? There are many arguments on this topic, any Google search will throw hundreds of books, articles, journals, and studies about the various facets of porn and its effects. Emily Southwood was confronted with all of this and more when her then fiance (now husband) took a job as cinematographer for a reality show about porn. Her memoir, Prude: Lessons I Learned When My Fiance Filmed Porn, is not only a personal tale of coming face to face (sometimes face to other body parts) with the porn industry but also a backward glancing cultural critique of porn itself. Through her fresh and vivacious point of view, Emily gives readers a blow-by-blow (ok, now I’m being gratuitous with the puns. I’ll stop) of every aspect of her experience, from stories of actual events to all of her thoughts and feelings during the nearly year-long ordeal. I love this book for many reasons, but the first and foremost of those reasons is it made me feel a little less crazy myself. I know that if I had been in Emily’s situation, I would have reacted the exact same way. I may not have a fiance filming extreme sexual acts on the daily, but I certainly have my issues that I obsess about. My thought patterns match hers to a tee, and it was lovely to know that I’m not alone in my neurotic thought patterns. Second, this book made me start to think about porn and my thoughts and feelings on the matter. Who knows, I might even have go at opening up a dialogue with my guy about it. And third, I love this book because it accomplished what I think is the most important task of a memoir--making me feel like I really got to know, and could even be friends with, the author. Through her unflinchingly honest retelling of this unique time in her life, Emily Southwood made me think about and often laugh at a topic that too often gets filed under “Too Awkward to Talk About.” Prude is a bold step toward starting a dialogue with women about porn, as well as a hilarious and touching memoir of that oh so special time in a girl’s life. You know, when the man of her dreams finally pops the question and then sweeps her away to Hollywood to film gang bangs. *Sigh* It’s magical!
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