“I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy

I remember being aware that this book was coming out, I had loved iCarly when I was young and I was glad to see a child actor growing up. I picked it up finally because I was between books from the library and it was available as an ebook. I ended up absolutely loving it, McCurdy’s voice comes through so strongly and is so funny, plus it’s fascinating to see what was going on behind the scenes in her life the entire time I was seeing her on screen.

McCurdy starts with a segment of her mom is the hospital in a coma, and her trying to wake her up by saying she finally hit 89 pounds (essentially through anorexia). Flashback to her as a kid, growing up in a hoarder household where she lived to please her mother and make her happy. When her mother suggests that she act, she can’t say no. As she grows up, her mother encourages her to stop eating in order to make her small. She grows to hate acting and after iCarly, hates fame. Her friendship with Miranda Cosgrove, her co-star, is very real though. Her mom does have a cancer relapse and eventually died. And eventually, McCurdy gets help and starts to take a closer look at her relationship and mythology around her mom.

What I really love about this book is that it has all of the messy stuff about recovery. I haven’t read a ton of recovery memoirs to be fair, but there are plenty of anecdotes where I can remember how it looked on the outside, but she supplies the harsh reality of what she felt on the inside. So it may specifically resonate with folks that saw her on tv as a kid. It doesn’t gloss over the details and I so appreciate McCurdy for that.

Additionally, it is really harrowing to hear about what child actors go through. I mean I’ve heard all of the stories and whatever, but reading about it happening to her is something else. I am always so amazed by what they were able to get away with over at Nickelodeon (and Disney as well I assume). In the book she is offered 300 thousand dollars to never talk about her experiences, and she turns it down. She also turns down the reboot of the show. And good for her, or we might not have had this book.

This was such an entertaining, enjoyable read. I was rooting for McCurdy the whole time and really enjoying hearing her voice. And I’m just glad she’s in a better place now.

This Is Beautiful: Coding for Teaching

 This week I've been working on a course that I'm designing and I'm making sure that I can do all of the analysis myself before incorporating it into a class. It's honestly so much easier when the mindset is "what do students need" rather than "what is possible?" I like it so much more, it limits things and the idea is just hey, can we do this? Just another confirmation that I am where I am happy, which is teaching!

“Haroun and the Sea of Stories” by Salman Rushdie

This was a really quick read! The book is fun for both kids and adults, so the story is full of quirky characters and the plot really clips along. It makes for a fun time; I finished this in a weekend.

Haroun lives with his mother and father, his father Rashid is known for his storytelling. His mother gets unhappy though and Rashid doesn’t notice, and one day she runs off with a horrible boring guy who hates stories. Rashid is depressed, Haroun feels that he is to blame since he asked his dad “what good are made up stories?” in the aftermath. Eventually Rashid gets on stage and can only say “ack” meaning that their livelihood is in danger. Haroun goes with Rashid to tell stories to support some politician, and the night before his performance in a fit of anger Rashid says that he is done with stories. Haroun then surprises a Water Genie who is there to turn his storytelling magic off, and Haroun steals his tool and persuades him to take him to the great Walrus at the head of Processes Too Complicated Too Explain and reverse this for this father.

They fly to the City of Gab (which is on another moon) on a bird and learn that the waters of the Sea of Stories are being poisoned and the princess has been captured. From there it is war with the inhabitants of the city that is always in darkness for the ocean and the princess. They are not in agreement for what the priority is though, the inhabitants want the ocean clean and the prince wants the princess back. So they split up, Haroun and some new friends head off to spy on what is being done to the ocean. They are immediately captured, but they figure out the plan is to plug the spring of stories and manage to dismantle that. The key is that these inhabitants have managed to detach their shadows, Haroun uses a wish and Wishwater to turn the moon so that they are in the sun and the shadows all melt. Meanwhile the others fought for the princess and won since the inhabitants of the dark city hate their leader. Haroun decides as thanks for his efforts he wants a happy ending, and when they get back Rashid tells the story of “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” and they find his mother has returned.

The summary really doesn’t do this book justice, there are so many quirky things and silly wordplay that would just take too long to explain here but make for good reading. It also feels a little like Alice in Wonderland, there are multiple characters from Haroun’s life that reappear in Gab. Additionally, there are clear influences from India here, Rushdie provides some explanation to the character names at the end that highlight this the most clearly.

All in all, a good fun read that makes you think a little, not too much, about stories and how useful they are. They aren’t real, but why should that make them unimportant?

This Is Beautiful: The World Ends With You

 Ugh I have beat this topic to death but I recently restarted "The World Ends With You: The Animation." And I'm in the middle of getting through NEO: The World Ends With You on the Switch again. And it just makes it so clear to me that the original game was miles above the sequel. I still like the sequel, but compared to the original? No question. (Specifically the original on the DS, I never got used to the Switch port.) 

It just used the DS technology in so many ways and incorporated really fun side characters and really milked every aspect of the story. I love it so much. Revisiting the anime was just a catalyst for remembering that.

“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Ed Tarkington

Funnily enough I meant to read a different book called Only Love Can Break Your Heart, but I ended up with this one and I read through it anyways. It wasn’t a bad read, but it didn’t really stick out to me either. A solid, middle-of-the-road work, which we always need some of those.

Our narrator is Richard, or Rocky for short. It starts with him as a child with his mother, father that he only calls “the Old Man”, and a troublemaker brother Paul. In particular there is one instance where Paul and Rocky go to investigate an abandoned house across the street and Rocky sees someone creep in and shoot Paul. That turns out to be the wealthy new owner of the place. Paul recovers, and Rocky tells how he starts dating Leigh in high school and they all hang out and listen to records together. Eventually, Paul’s mom (from Old Man’s first marriage) dies and he goes to the funeral alone. After that Paul disappears, taking Leigh with him. Leigh eventually reappears, but no sign of Paul. Leigh gets engaged to the son of the family across the street, and meanwhile Rocky starts a friendship with Patricia, the daughter of the new owners across the street. Their relationship turns sexual. It comes crashing down then when Leigh confides to Rocky that she had a hippie wedding to Paul in a cult commune in New Mexico where the leader was also sleeping with everyone, including molesting kids. Leigh came back and had an abortion immediately. Rocky tells Patricia, word gets out, and the wedding ends in disaster with Leigh having a mental crisis in the middle of it. To top it off, Old Man has a stroke at the reception.

Leigh returns and starts reading to the elderly in town, including Old Man. Her ex-fiancee leaves town for a while, along with Patricia. Paul amazingly returns out of nowhere, and starts to help around the house now that money is tight. Rocky manages to get kicked out of his rich school in an attempt to help as well. Suddenly there’s a double murder across the street of the couple in there. Everyone suspects Paul and Leigh. Meanwhile Rocky gets back into acting and is cast as the lead in “Equus”, a play about a lovesick stable boy and his horse god. Patricia accidentally incriminates herself to Leigh and skips town to avoid being arrested, but those two are off the hook. Patricia writes Rocky a letter saying her father was taking advantage of her, and that’s why that happened. Rocky grows up, Old Man eventually dies, and the book ends with Paul marrying Leigh and dying as well.

The genre of this is hard to pin down, some sort of Southern gothic for sure, but there’s a small murder mystery as well. Definitely coming-of-age too. It is a cool mix that really keeps you reading for sure. Patricia frustrated me to no end, but having Paul and Leigh as constants really helps. And gives you something to root for. I found it to be an easy read overall.

The best part of the book is the play. When Rocky describes opening night, the actors all get swept up in the energy of it and Rocky really becomes this character. But even in the embodiment, he acknowledges that this is really Paul he is playing. The outcast, maligned son fits him even better. I loved the use of the play and the overlap of it with the characters and how the play falls right at the climax where Paul is actually in jail and Patricia is just being suspected. It is a great use of the story.

Overall, fun and easy read. I didn’t mean to pick it up but I sure don’t regret it.

This Is Beautiful: Growing Mushrooms

 I finally FINALLY have had more success with growing my own mushrooms! I bought a kit from The Mushroom Conservatory a while ago and my first attempt was a dud. The first step is to get your mycelium to colonize a bag of rice, then you cut it open to start fruiting and getting lil mushroom guys. The mycelium I grew just didn't go much of anywhere, so when I cut it open I ended up growing mold. Cute. Anyways I read through the instructions again and turns out that you have to let the rice cool before adding the mushroom soup, and now I have some gorgeous mycelium growing! It is fluffy, white, and beautiful! I'm so excited to finally have some success here!

“The Bone Cave” by Dougie Strang

This book I bought in Dunkeld at a combination coffee shop and bookstore. It only felt appropriate to buy a book about wandering around the Highlands while we did the same thing. I talked more about our experiences in Dunkeld in this post.

The book narrates Strang’s experiences with a huge hiking trip through the Highlands, making stops at places with myths about them. He ends up making a kind of figure 8 through the area, there is a map at the beginning and he refers to things like towns and highways as he goes. I only recognized Inverness and Loch Lochy/Loch Ness.

The narration is equal parts describing the hike, talking about the folk tales, and telling the tale of Strang’s life. I thought the last bit was the most interesting, for a few reasons, among them being that I’m not as familiar with the scenery or stories. But my main apprehension with the book was that I knew it’d be different if a woman was doing this in terms of approaching the stories and how travel risks are thought about. But Strang is more aware than I thought, he talks about having daughters and how they likely would assess things like hitchhiking very differently. Strang also discusses how he grew up and was in an apprenticeship but felt it to be soul sucking. He applied to a job on a whim and ended up heading out to the woods to live there. Through that, he decides to get a degree in Scottish tales, leading directly to this journey through several myths.

The book certainly isn’t a thorough discussion of Scottish history or folklore, but it gives a very interesting intersection of them. The whole thing is driven by place and as he travels Strang can recount both the history of the location and how it has stuck around as well as myths mentioning it. It is interesting how history can stick around in the imagination of contemporary individuals, to this day folks have feelings about the massacre at Glencoe and discriminating against those descended from the general leading that effort. It’s honestly kind of amusing.

So I really liked reading this book as it paralleled my travels. I certainly didn’t go on any trips as noteworthy, but I like to learn about where I’m traveling. And this was a great way to get a little knowledge of Scotland and it’s culture as I’m no expert.