CBR 13 # 7 Beautiful Things by Hunter Biden

 I was not going to read this book, but then I heard Hunter Biden on WTF being interviewed by Marc Maron and I was.. intrigued.  They talked about his book of course, but some details were unclear to me and I felt that the timeline would be better understood (by me) when read.  But what really caught my attention was Maron saying that he was concerned or worried about Hunter still.  You could just feel Maron liking, relating to, and being very worried about him.  So, read the book, I did. 

The first part of the book relates, from Hunter's viewpoint, the well known tragedies of the Biden family.  The accident that took his mother and sister's life, which he barely remembers.  And Beau's death, which he can never forget.  This part, no matter if you've heard the story before, will make you cry.  Well, it made me cry.  

Then Hunter gives some background into his early life and marriage.  It is filled with the warning signs of addiction.  In early days, it was alcohol.  He was in and out of rehab.  Then the perilous descent when he got addicted to crack.  This story is grimy and harrowing.  And if you have ever loved someone with an addiction, very triggering.  His years long bender finally ends when he meets and falls in love with his present wife.

The writing is serviceable, the timeline was cleared up for me.  Hunter offers in this book a confession, or explanations.  To how he became a board member of Burisima, how he got together with Hallie, and other questionable things.  He is defensive about his qualificationsm at times angry.  I am left unsure of how to feel about him as person.  I am unsure about the sustainability of his sobriety.  But of this, I am sure.  His love for his brother was true.  And Joe Biden is a loving father.

CBR V # 3 - Between a Rock and A Hard Place by Aron Ralston

I first heard about this guy from the movie 127 hours. I wanted to watch the movie, but again, I always want to read the book before the movie.  Ralston first learned to love the outdoors when his family moved to Colorado when he was just a kid.  He was an outdoor sports hobbyist until he quit his cushy engineer job to work at a ski shop in order to be nearer to the mountains he loved and have more time to climb them.

Aron went to a weekend trip to Utah for some trekking and maybe partying after.  Since the destination was spur of the moment (his original plans fell through), Aron told no one his itinerary.  It was an ordinary hike with a difficulty level well within his capabilities as an outdorsman.  However, as fate would have it, he met a loose boulder which managed to pin his arm to a wall of the canyon.  After spending five days pinned to the wall, he did the only thing left to do to save his life. He cut off his arm.

When I first heard about the book, I thought why the heck would it take a whole book to talk about how you got trapped and cut off his arm.  I mean, its not like he had to hunt animals to survive or anything like.  I thought it would be a fairly monotonous (albeit harrowing) 5 days.  The book doesn't just dwell on the actual event itself.  You learn about Aron and his life and how he thinks it is that he ends up where he was.  These memories are interspersed between the time spent trapped, which was actually pretty interesting too since he didn't just spend it lying down (or standing up, as it is) but actually tried to devise some ways to try to free himself like digging and making a pulley to try to pull the boulder off him.

It was so weird because when he talked about his love for the mountains, it actually brought tears to my eyes.  Maybe I was hormonal, but I think I got what he was talking about.  I used to climb here. admittedly, our mountains here much less grander in scale and way more tropical.  But when he waxes poetic about that feeling of achievement, and beautiful isolation about how it feels like to be on top of the world, I get it, and it touched me.

Aron (the Aron in the book) was far from perfect.  He was arrogant and reckless and seemed to have a deathwish or felt invincible.    Well, we all at one time in our lives, felt invincible.  I know I felt that before I had my kids.  However, there was so much more good and inspiring in his attitude.  It was so cool how his logical mind just jumped to try to find solutions and his steely resolve made him able to execute it.

The experience was harrowing.  His journey to how he got there was interesting and instructive.  His escape was inspiring.  It's pretty good writing and it's a pretty compelling story.

CBR IV # 10 - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

I have to admit that all I know about cooking (which is admittedly not much), I learned from Top Chef. I also have to admit that Top Chef is where I first saw Anthony Bourdain when he guest judged that one season. I got to know him a little better when I watched the Philippines edition of No Reservations, where he came to our tiny island in the middle of the archipelago and ate "THE BEST PIG EVER!" I'm not sure what my point is, but I think its that I didn't really know that much about him except for a few episodes on TV. I knew he was a chef and that's about it.

Kitchen Confidential is about Bourdain's love affair with the restaurant kitchen. Sure, its a dysfuntional, co-dependent love affair, but he loves it. He tells of how he first experienced food and how he fell into cooking. He is very open with the horrible stuff that they do at restaurants, as well as the horrible stuff that he did. His addictions and his rise and fall and rise again in the restaurant industry.

You learn a lot in the book. There are a lot of tips about eating out and cooking in and it gives you a view of how it might work at the back of the kitchen. It really grossed me out a little bit, to be honest. All that talk of sweat and drugs and skin diseases. Ugh. It presents the kitchen staff as a group of misfits and outcasts. Of course, it would be a bit of a mistake, I think to believe that all kitchens are like Bourdain's. Even he acknowledges at the end that he is presenting the kitchen as he knows it. There might be other kinds of experiences in other restaurants. But one thing is for sure. Cooking is NOT for the weak.

But aside from the actual content of the book, it was a good read. Bourdain's voice is funny and acerbic. Sarcastic and self-depreciating. He knows his good and bad sides and isn't afraid to present all of it. He is quite a personality. Now please come back to Cebu so we can eat delicious pig and drink some San Miguel Beer.

CBR IV # 9 A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

I was reading another book when I saw a review on this book by another Cannonballer. I immediately felt the urge to read this book. Morbid curiosity, I guess. It's just so amazing to me that someone lived through that and it's so far from my life (thank Dog!) that I want to know what that's about. I've read Room, of course, but that's from the view point of the kids. And it's fiction.

Anyway, I'm sure most Americans are familiar with this case. Jaycee Dugard disappeared when she was just 11 years old. She was found 18 years later and it was discovered that she was abducted and kept all that time in a backyard complex of a sick, sick man.

There are harrowing details, of course, which have been reported by the media. The constant sexual abuse, the inadequate living conditions, the two girls born in the backyard and so much more. And it's all really bad, but when I read it, like Jaycee, who goes off into her own world when she is being abused, I also seem to go off and make like its fiction. Otherwise, I would be bawling the whole time. But it's not all about the horrible stuff. One is really amazed by the strength, the stubborn survival streak Jaycee has in her. Really, I can't imagine going through something like that and it not breaking me. Jaycee isn't broken, she is looking towards the future with no hate in her heart.

There is a lot of shit on the internet about how she should have ran away, or shouted, or tried to have contact with her mother through the internet. I used to think that a little bit too. When I read the book, I realized, she was just a little girl when she was taken. It wasn't until after years and years of brainwashing, manipulation and abuse that she was given access to the computer or was taken out of the compound at all. I can totally believe how she would believe that there was nothing outside for her.

The book has interludes or reflections she has in the present day as well as journal entries of her time there. It is really interesting how although she was suppressed (she wasn't allowed to say her name), she was still the same deep inside.

# 51 Jubilee City by Joe Andoe

actual review date: January 5, 2011

Joe Andoe is an artist. I learned that only after reading his memoir. Joe Andoe grew up in Tulsa Oklahoma and his early years were full of sex drugs and rock and roll. I gathered from the book that this was fairly normal in their area. So yeah. In his early years, he was aimless, with nary an art book or ambition is sight. It is not until after he has worked a few manual jobs that he decided to study art in college. He moves to New York, gets married, has kids, becomes a successful artist, and divorces. All with a lot of drinking, drugs and fighting.

His life is not told in a linear manner like most memoirs but in short vignettes that gives more of a feel than actual facts. From what I read, I mostly liked him despite his recklessness and irresponsibility. He is sort of an anomaly I guess in that he is not the typical art student, artsy type. He was just a regular joe who found out that he could do good art and the he kinda liked it. Twas ok.

# 50 Cherry by Mary Karr

actual review date: January 5, 2o11

I have not read the Liar's Club, nor was I even aware that there was a prequel to this book. The said prequel, I gathered, tells the story of Karr's girlhood. In this book, the author talks about her early girlhood and teens. Her sexual blossoming and foray into drugs and aimlessness.

The first part of the story is told in standard memoir forma, in past tense and in the first person. As Karr grows older and gets more into drugs, the narrative shifts, and Karr becomes an observer of her former self. But it also gets hazier and more fragmented. I mean, that's how I felt when I was reading it, as if I was also doing the whole drugs thing.

Though her story has some tragedies and her life was a bit complicated, it wasn't really scandalous and all that. I thought it was a good portrait of a not so typical girl growing up in the 70's. The storytelling was hazy and surreal. Perhaps, because of this, I cannot really remember the details that well, but I do remember the feeling.

#41 Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

This is a short and quite straightforward recounting of a climb that very nearly turned disastrous. Well, it was actually disastrous, but the author, with a little luck and a lot of determination was able to survive. It is, essentially a survival story and a story about the triumph of the human spirit.

Joe Simpson and his friend Simon Yates made an attempt to climb a previously unclimed West face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They were able to reach the summit and things were going relatively well until Simpson fell and broke his tibia. Yates then had to tie him to a rope and lower him down the mountain. However, Yates, unable to see far ahead, lowered Simpson into a cliff. Faced with no other choice but to cut off the rope or be carried down himself, Yates cut the rope connecting to Simpson and sent him to his presumably certain death. However, Simpson dragged and hopped his way back to their base camp, through grinding pain, fatigue, thirst and hunger. He arrived just hours before Yates, thinking that he was a goner for sure, was set to pack up their camp.

The story is fast moving, and even though you know Simpson survives (duh), very thrilling. It is excruciating to read. It feels very painful. And you are left with admiration for Simpson's will to live. And more, the experience did not stop him from climbing again.

I used to do some mountain climbing, but my country being tropical, it is all fairly chill. It is very fun and challenging and just awesome to be on top of the world. Having said that, I would never ever climb in high altitude. It just seems so dangerous and I'm not sure I've got it in me. But yeah, the book. It's good. Exciting and inspiring.

#31 - The Only Girl in the Car by Kathy Dobie

Kathy Dobie was a major slut, or so they say. Oh don't get me wrong, she totally had all the hallmarks of slutty behaviour. Provocative clothing, random and frequent sex, no serious relationships. However, I hardly think a 14 year old can ever be truly called a slut. Or any girl or woman for that matter.

Kathy was born the eldest girl in a family of six kids. The family is pretty normal, in fact, just a little bit better than normal. All of the kids have their own chores to do, they go on family picnics and have lively dinner conversations. They are, as happy as a family can be. And Kathy is a good girl. Until she turns 14, and realizes the power her nubile body has over dirty old men (and teenagers).

After a few trysts with older men (and losing her virginity to a 30 something loser), Kathy finds what she thought she needed by hanging out at the local youth center, where a lot of the rougher boys (and girls) hung out. However, she was never a part of the crowd of girls. It was always about her and "her" boys. She thinks she is happy, and thinks she has the genuine affection of the boys that she does stuff with, but an incident with boyS, in a car, opens her eyes and also turns her into an outcast and labelled a slut.

I live in a very Catholic and conservative country. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, my country is the only state outside the Vatican that does not allow divorce. Anyway, point is, I was never a good girl. In fact, I might have been relatively "slutty" in my teens, but I cannot imagine engaging in the level of promiscuous behavior and risk taking that Kathy did. It pains me and worries me that kids are being so unsafe. The author looks into a few things which might have led to her behaviour, but doesn't really dwell on it. She just tells us what she did, how she felt, and how it affected her.

After the incident in the car, she turns her life around in the totally opposite direction, being a sexless, humorless, Ayn Rand fanatic. She never really recovers and becomes herself until she goes off to college and leaves her life behind.

I really liked this coming of age memoir. Her early childhood memories are very warm, especially the part about loving her baby brother so much, and finally having somebody that she could hug and kiss and touch and love so completely. The later parts were heartbreaking, reading about a young girl being sexualized far before she is ready. And how badly some people treated her because she was seen as loose.

What I also could not believe was that, really? Old guys go out of their way to bed a kid who is so obviously a kid? Man, there are a lot of sorta-pedophiles over there.

# 25 Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

I have two beautiful boys. They are 8 and 3 years old. The eight year old is serious and intellectual, while the 3 year old is full of mischief and sunny smiles. My greatest fear (aside from them being future serial killers/mass murderers) is that they might fall into drugs when they get older, and not just experiment, but be an addict.

I've had a lot of experience with drug addicts, as when I was a teen, I couldn't seem to find myself a boyfriends who didn't do drugs. I myself never did drugs, smoked or even liked to drink all that much. It scares me, this drug thing.

This book was sort of peeking into my biggest nightmare. Having an addict boyfriend/husband is ok, you can always leave when you can't take it anymore (at least that's what I did), but what if it's your baby? You can never let go.

David Sheff narrates his son's heartbreaking transformation from a smart, polite, warmhearted beautiful into a underweight, lying, thieving addict. He so vividly describes what it feels like to always be waiting. Waiting for your loved one to come home. That scary scary feeling of not knowing where he is, or even just if he's safe.

I found found David Sheff's reactions to be very believable, if a bit self centered. But, I guess that's the point, because this book is not actually Nic's (his son) story, but his own. Of how he dealt with and lived with having an addict son.

After reading online about the book, I learned that Nic Sheff wrote a memoir about his side of the addiction coin. And I was surprised to see that it was a book I have seen a million times at my favourite local bookstore, and have always thought of buying. I actually thought it was fiction. And as usual, once I have decided that I am going to buy the book, I haven't seen any copies since. Sigh.

# 3 - A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel

I passed by this book many times in the second hand bookstore that I frequent. I never picked it up because, well, the cover didn't look that interesting and summary at the back had none of the unusual and fucked up stuff that we usually look for in memoirs. One day, a random Pajiban (I don't remember who) mentioned that the book was LOL (sorry Dustin). So, taking Pajiban word as gospel, I picked the book up the next time I saw it, still at around 1$.

The book is really simple, a series of scenes from the childhood of smart and mischievous girl in small town Middle America. Indiana is middle america, right, Americans? True to what the back of the book said, there is none of the usual sad, tragic memoir stuff. It may have been poignant at times, but it was mostly a happy and energetic read. Which is not to say that her life was perfect. In fact, were Kimmel inclined to moroseness and woe-is-me-ness, she could have spun a depressed, overeducated mother, gambler father, poorness (although Americans never seem poor to us third worlders. Even Your poorest have TVs! And huge ass sofas!) and sibling sometimes-violence into an entirely different memoir. But Kimmel was such a zippy child that she seemed to take all the bad shit in a real good way. It just was, and she was still happy.

Oh Zippy was a funny, boisterous, unusual, imaginative and smart little cookie. The scrapes she got into were funny, though not, in my opinion, laugh out loud. But then again, my husband says that I'm humorless, so maybe it's just me. The characters and her family dynamics were very interesting. Her story and her family life, is, I guess, fairly typical, but also unusual in the way that everyone is unique. What makes the book work, is Kimmel's voice and her energy. Her zippyness, as it is.

*Some may have noticed that I have not posted review #2. That's because it's not done yet.

*currently reading Never Let Me Go

*I don't usually read this much non-fiction