Synopses & Reviews
The emotional highs and lows, the romantic escapades and the financial setbacks, the moments of comedy, anxiety, and personal tragedytheyre all brought vividly to life in Things to Bring, S#!t to Do, the first memoir told entirely in lists. Annotated with Karens insightful recollections, the book presents a compelling portraitsometimes touching, sometimes hilariousof a woman, her family, and her friends from 1970s America to the present day.
Like many women (and some men, too), Karen Rizzo is a compulsive list-maker. She scribbles grocery lists on Post-It notes, pencils lists of resolutions on the backs of greeting cards, regularly jots down all the things she needs to bring, to do, to remember . .
Unlike the rest of us, however, Karen has saved her listsdating from the list of favorite things she wrote as a kid (Favorite animal: horse; Color: purple; Food: olives from Dads martini). Together, these scraps of paper form an intimate chronicle of her lifes journey, from her early struggles with work and love to the years spent watching her mother battle breast cancer to the times shes had to juggle the demands of marriage and motherhood with those of her career.
About the Author
KAREN RIZZOs essays and stories have been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Salon, Living Fit, Fit Pregnancy, and two anthologies of womens humor published by Random House. Her plays and performance pieces have been seen at New Yorks Ensemble Studio Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and Samuel Beckett Theater, and ARCADE in Los Angeles.