“Alex & Me is the remarkable true story of an extraordinary relationship between psychologist Irene M. Pepperberg and Alex, an African Grey parrot who proved scientists and accepted wisdom wrong by demonstrating an astonishing ability to communicate and understand complex ideas. A New York Times bestseller and selected as one of the paper’s Top Ten Books of…
Tag: Non-fiction
Left for Dead by Beck Weathers
“In 1996 Beck Weathers and a climbing team pushed toward the summit of Mount Everest. Then a storm exploded on the mountain, ripping the team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl for their lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying, and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred….
The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman
England’s Tudor monarchs—Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I—are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry’s quest…
Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar
In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident—unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and…
Grunt by Mary Roach
“Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier’s most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio…
Sex in the Museum by Susan Forbes
This book popped onto my radar due to a review in Publishers Weekly magazine. Prior to that, I had no idea that there was a museum dedicated to sex (although having visited museums dedicated to things like hand fans, you’d think that I’d expect the unexpected). Giving in to curiosity, and glad that I was reading this as an e-book so that no one could see the cover, I purchased it. As memoirs go, this one is quite good. This isn’t just a dry recitation of what exhibits the museum has hosted, nor is it merely Forbes’s life story with a few titillating details from her job. The author weaves her professional and personal stories together with great skill while also emphasizing how much she worked to keep those two different sides of herself from colliding. Since she got her degree in gender studies, the joined “plotlines” paint a fascinating portrait of how men and women are perceived in today’s society and over the course of time. Don’t get me wrong, though… there are plenty of eyebrow-raising facts and stories peppered throughout the book. Readers meet porn collectors, burlesque performers, and people who make dresses out of expired condoms. Kinks are talked about, fetishes are examined, and odd chastity devices are featured. My favorite bit was a word that I’d never heard before: teledildonics, “loosely defined as the integration of computer-controlled technology with the goal of helping achieve sexual stimulation and orgasm”. I was not aware that this word (or this concept) existed, and I’m not sure what to do with this knowledge, but I’m glad to know it. I do have two minor complaints about this book. First, I would have loved a recommended reading list at the end. The author mentions several books that sounded kind of interesting, and it would have been nice to have a list compiled instead of having to hunt through the text for them. Second, I feel like the last part of the book was a little rushed. Forbes does a lot to parallel her dating life to her life at her job, but after she gets married and starts a family, there is little to see comparing her pregnancies to her work. Given how well she integrated her life with the museum in earlier chapters, I think it was a missed opportunity not to explore what, essentially, happens after sex. Maybe the museum has never done an exhibition on fertility and sex? Otherwise, I found this book to be immensely enjoyable. Other than the bit of rushed pacing at the end, the narrative flowed well and balanced the “OMG SEX” factor with real information on how a museum works and the behind-the-scenes looks at the people who make it happen. Don’t let the subject matter put you off, because this is a great memoir! This book was a personal purchase. (Description nicked from Goodreads.com.)
Girl in the Woods by Aspen Matis
“Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis’s exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the…
The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson
“In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious…
Elena Vanishing by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle
“Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia. Told entirely from Elena’s perspective over a five-year period and…
Because I Said So! by Ken Jennings
“’Ken Jennings reveals the truth behind all those things you tell your children’ (Parade) in this entertaining and useful New York Times bestseller ‘armed with case histories, scientific finds, and experiments on himself and his own children’ (Los Angeles Times). Is any of it true? If so, how true? Ken Jennings wants to find out…