bookshelf

I'LL NEVER WRITE MY MEMOIRS

Name: I'LL NEVER WRITE MY MEMOIRS
Author: Grace Jones
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6507-5

by Grace Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2015

Jones’ recollections are a passionate reminder of the fabulous, decadent, and manic coupling of life and art.

bookshelf

Iconoclastic model, singer, and actress Jones reflects on a highflying life of celebrity exuberance.

Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, Jones (b. 1948) entered a world that was drastically different than the image of glitterati elegance with which she would later become synonymous. Raised in a strict Pentecostal home, Jones remarks, “there was an Islamic level of intolerance, an Amish severity.” It was the constriction of her upbringing that created a sense of rebellion in the author that would define her personality and professional life. For Jones, rebelling was less an act of asserting independence than an exertion of “one of the few pleasures I could find for myself.” It wasn’t until Jones joined her parents in America that she began to define her rebellious nature and reinvent herself as Grace (previously, she went by her middle name, Beverly). Striking out on her own, Jones settled in Philadelphia, where she struggled as an aspiring actress, before moving to New York to pursue modeling full-time. In New York and Paris, the author began to cultivate her signature image of androgynous austerity. She also began frequenting New York’s pre-disco club scene that she helped forge and later solidify as a Studio 54 regular. Having struggled to break out as a traditional singer, Jones’ turn to pop was less about vocal talent than about her “personality bringing presence to the record.” Her club hit, “La Vie En Rose,” helped establish her as a disco icon before she transformed her style into the more stylized avant-pop artist that she is known for. In her candid reflections, Jones writes about her lovers, including her unforgettable first orgasm, her constant quest for new experiences and willingness to try new things, and the free-flowing social circles of fashionistas, artists, and musicians from a time which, even for the author, is often a hazy, half-remembered sensation.

Jones’ recollections are a passionate reminder of the fabulous, decadent, and manic coupling of life and art.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4767-6507-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: July 24, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)