Jen Miller
Friday Folio: February 17, 2023
Hello from Jekyll Island, Ga. (photo from my pre-dawn run)! I’m getting ready to pack things up and head back North, but the news never stops. The podcast Maintenance Phase (which I LOVE) did an episode on Elizabeth Taylor’s diet book. That book is…not great. She was a complicated lady, which is why if you want to know more about her (good and bad, including how relentless people were about her weight), I suggest checking out Book 3 of 2023, Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Anderson Brower. I cited some stats about diversity on thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail in reviewing Book 7 of 2023, The Unlikely Thru-Hiker by Derick Lugo (it’s bad). So I want to say congrats to Crystal Gail Welcome, who became the first known Black woman to thru-hike the 1,500-mile Florida Trail. The HarperCollins strike is over. Vox has an explainer….
Book 8 of 52: No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs by Lezlie Lowe
Last January, I visited Dry Tortugas National Park, an island 70 miles off of Key West. It was glorious — and warm and salty. Before the ferry took us back to the Keys, I stopped to use a changing room. The women’s had a line. The men’s was empty. So I did what I usually do in such situations: stepped into the men’s. While my bathing suit top was stuck over my head, a man wanted to use the room, and he was angry he had to wait an extra 20 seconds while I finished up. “Women get everything!” he said. I stepped out of the room, looked him in the eyes, and said “like what?” “You can use the men’s room but I can’t use the women’s,” he said. “Women’s always has a line. What else?” “Uh, ladies night,” he replied. “Okay so we sometimes, maybe get discounts on…
Friday Folio: February 10, 2023
Let’s start with the good news today, via NPR: there’s a tentative contract agreement at HarperCollins! The New York Times took a trip to Hobart, an eight-bookstore town in the Catskills. I stopped here in June 2020, on a hiking trip I took to just…get out (once strict lock down was over, of course). I was drawn by the hiking but this was still neat! In one store, where I was the only patron, the owner stepped outside to eat his lunch so I could browse without a mask on. Weird times. I really need to get back to cross stitching. Then I could do this book shelf pattern as I read through the year, as recently featured on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Bookshop.org is taking over sales for IndieBound.org, per Publisher’s Weekly. What are your book pet peeves? The Washington Post rounds up common irritations. I agree with the…
Book 7 of 52: The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey by Derick Lugo
Around the holidays, with COVID exacerbating already elevated levels of stress, I started reading about hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2,198-mile foot path from Georgia to Maine. About 750 people hike the entire length every year, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, out of around 3,000 who attempt it. I’d read two books about it already: the classic A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (twice), and Called Again by Jennifer Pharr-Davis, about an attempt to set a record in how long (or short) it takes a person to complete the whole thing. I didn’t want to revisit those books. Instead, I fell into a Reddit group about it, and found a discussion of books about regular folks who became thru-hikers. First up: The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey by Derick Lugo. By “regular” I mean people who aren’t top flight athletes like Pharr-Davis, or already well known…
Book 6 of 52: Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death by David G. Marwell
I’ve had a copy of Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death by David G. Marwell in one form or another since before the book was published in 2020. The publisher sent me a galley (a preview copy), then the final book. They both stayed on my shelf for a while — 2020 was not exactly a time when I was looking for deep history tomes. I then added it as an audiobook to my Libro.fm cue. After I finished Operation Paperclip, which was Book 64 of 2002, I figured it was now or never. Which might have been a terrible idea. Josef Mengele was an SS officer and physician who performed grotesque experiments in concentration camp prisoners. His nickname, if you can even call it that, was “Angel of Death.” Operation Paperclip was a tough read because it went deep into a lot of the worst things Nazis did (before…
Book 5 of 52: The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty
I said in my review of Carl Hiassen’s Lucky You, Book 4 of 2023, that I’d be writing about another author whose work I enjoy but only pick up when I find it in Little Free Libraries. I know you were sitting on the edge of your seat to know who, so now I can reveal: it’s Liane Moriarty! Ta da! (yes I’m being silly) And the book? The Hypnotist’s Love Story. It’s about two women who love the same man: Ellen, a hypnotherapist who falls for Patrick, a man she meets through online dating. The biggest hiccup isn’t just that a widower, or that he has a child. It’s that he has a stalker: Saskia, his ex-girlfriend, who is the second lead character in the book (the narrative flips between Saskia and Ellen). As the relationship between Ellen and Patrick develops, Saskia’s story unfolds as well. It’s not a…
Friday Folio: February 3, 2023
To start! Bookshop.org is celebrating Black History Month by offering a 20% discount off select titles. Use code BLACKHISTORY at checkout. If you’re looking for a Black-owned bookstore to support through your shopping at Bookshop.org, how about Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, N.J.? This is wild: the New York Times got an interview with the romance writer who faked her own death. Maybe writing “let the fun begin” to announced you’re back (???) was not the best route to take. Here are the finalists for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Awards. Salman Rushdie has a new book coming out, but he said he won’t be doing public appearances to support it. I can’t blame Rushdie. He lost sight in one eye and still can’t use one of his hands after being brutally attacked while giving a talk last summer. I am as horrified as most of you probably are about…
Book 4 of 52: Lucky You by Carl Hiassen
About this time last year, I was reading a novel by Carl Hiaasen, the ultimate writer of Florida men, while lounging in the Florida sun. This week, I read a novel by Carl Hiassen while lying under multiple blankets on my couch in New Jersey, a state that feels like it has been stuck on permanent gray for the last six weeks. This photo, which I took in my bathroom, matches the general vibe (though after telling myself I wasn’t making my annual trek south this year, I cracked. Expect a Florida-themed photo on this site next month). This time around, the Hiaasen book of choice is Lucky You, a 1997 novel about two people who win the lottery. One is JoLayne Lucks, an animal lover who plans to use a portion of her winnings to buy and preserve a plot of undeveloped land so it won’t be paved over….
Friday Folio: January 27, 2023
I’m trying out a new feature on the blog, where I wrap up some book world news on Fridays. We’ll see if this works! So here’s some news. Spare by Prince Harry has become the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I imagine I’ll read it at some point, probably listen to the audiobook version as I did with other royal-related books, including Book 26 of 2022, The Palace Papers by Tina Brown. I’ve read bits of gossip just like most of us have, but I want to see it all in context. What’s going to happen to book twitter if/when Twitter implodes? Sophie Vershbow, writing for Esquire, is on the case. HarperCollins and its striking workers are entering mediation, thank goodness. The New York Times wrote about Hilderbabes, fans of author Elin Hilderbrand, by covering a retreat for/with the author…
Book 3 of 52: Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower
How about some glamour, darlings? Then let’s dive into Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower. This new book is the third biography I’ve read of Taylor. Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger is a biography of Taylor and husband number five (and maybe six, depending on how you count, as they divorced and remarried then divorced again) with a focus on that relationship; and How to be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor by William J. Mann is a supremely dishy read. I enjoyed them both, but Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon is by far the most comprehensive of the three. Brower had access to unpublished letters, but she also talked to everyone — and I mean everyone. A short list: Carol Burnett, George Hamilton (yes they dated!),…