manhood for amateurs

My mother, another bookworm, brought me two books and a DVD: "A Child Called It" about child abuse, "Alicia" about the Holocaust and a National Geographic movie about the human footprint. Everything you need for a severe depression!

I read "A Child Called It" very quickly - sort of a sadistic exercise in gobbling up the most awful abuse imaginable. There was no counterpoint or higher message except that it's sad when a woman starves, beats and poisons her little boy. Yuck.

I reread "Gastronomy of Marriage" b/c it's so delicious. I hug that book!

Currently I am listening to an audiobook of "Manhood for Amateurs" by Michael Chabon and loving it. He has such great insights, observations and explorations of modern fatherhood. His rambling essays on topics ranging from OCD running in his family to carrying a diaper bag as purse. He does have a kind of nerdy appeal in that he talks about comic books, baseball, marijuana, and other geeky teenage boy topics. I could feel his affection for his family and that was the most interesting part to me.

On the shelf I have Nancy Mitford and the Alicia book about the Holocaust.

I gave my mother "The Absolutely True Story of a Part-time Indian" by Sherman Alexie and she loved it, read it in one evening. I love that book because it shows how Junior can grow up in dire poverty with alcoholic parents and yet transcend his reasons for bitterness to embrace life.