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SO CLOSE TO BEING THE SH*T, Y'ALL DON'T EVEN KNOW

A humorous memoir that will please the author’s many fans and followers.

A playful romp through the psyche of a funny woman.

During the slump for stand-up comedians following 9/11, Retta found herself facing stiff competition for acting roles. “It was hard to stand out in the crowd,” she writes. “It felt like I was being lumped in with one group—funny black female—and the powers that be were making no effort to discern the difference between us. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘They all look alike?’ Well, apparently we all WERE alike.” She has since distinguished herself through her breakthrough role on Parks and Recreation and as queen of an exponentially expanding social media following, and this memoir offers plenty of other details to separate her from the run of the comedic mill. Her family is first-generation immigrants from Liberia. She attended Duke University on a pre-med track, planning to be a neurosurgeon, and left as a pharmaceutical rep who moonlighted at comedy clubs. The predominantly Caucasian Duke campus was where she first felt most black; she bonded with minority students, and when she started with comedy, she felt that she didn’t fit the stereotype for black stand-up. She has an addictive personality, and she considers coffee, TV, purses, and social media among her obsessions. She was once invited to live tweet an LA Kings hockey game by someone with the team who loved her on TV and knew she had a strong following, and she quickly embraced the sport and the team she had previously known nothing about. “If you follow me on social media, you may know that I am a…Kings fan,” she writes. “I’m not kuh-ray-zee, but I am definitely enthusiastic. I love me some Kaaannnngggsss. I know that meeting a black woman with a love for hockey is a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn in the woods.” Much of the book is written in a similar voice, and some of the chapters are mainly setups for a series of tweets, but the author’s life path is unquestionably interesting.

A humorous memoir that will please the author’s many fans and followers.

Pub Date: June 1, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-250-10934-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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INTO THE WILD

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

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)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

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