The deeply personal story of a journalist and young mother who is given a long-term prescription for drugs (benzodiazepines) that are meant for short time use only. Her descriptions of life as an addict are deeply personal and harrowing.
Blood Orange Night by Melissa Bond, (List Price: $27.99, Gallery Books, 9781982188276, June 2022)
Reviewed by Anne Peck, Righton Books in Memphis, Tennessee
Calhoun had a complicated relationship with her famous art critic father Peter Schjeldahl. This book started as an attempt to write a biography of poet Frank O’Hara that her father never finished. Having inherited his obsession with the poet, the author wrestles with creating a narrative with answers when obstacles (time, fire, other people) keep them hidden. I felt the frustration of her and her subjects as it infected me with its incessant whispers of almosts and near misses. Ultimately, the author gifts us with wise lessons of kindness and acceptance. An extraordinary, raw read!
Also a Poet by June Gervais, (List Price: $27, Grove Press Books, 9780802159786, June 2022)
Reviewed by Kelly Justice, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
A searing meditation on identity and place, Boys and Oil captured my heart and opened my eyes. My husband is from North Dakota, and I thought I understood what it meant to have grown up in that state, but Taylor Brorby’s memoir showed me a different perspective. His writing on place is some of the most evocative I’ve read since Terry Tempest Williams; his love for his home state is evident despite the pain of growing up gay in a community that didn’t understand or welcome him. An important book and a must-read!
Boys and Oil by Taylor Brorby, (List Price: $27.95, Liveright, 9781324090861, June 2022)
Reviewed by Kate Storhoff, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
“It’s no longer the time for women to be selfless. Whether you’re a woman who has children, or has aging parents to care for, whatever your situation is, we need to put ourselves first. It’s more than self care….We deserve to let people know, and show them what it looks like when we are cracking. To me, it was like an act of sisterhood, this memoir. The best thing I could possibly hope for is that this encourages people—women, men, people of all genders—to start admitting to people around them, “I’m not okay. Actually, I could use some help. I could use some support.” ” —Courtney Maum, interview, Electric Lit
What booksellers are saying about The Year of the Horses
About Courtney Maum
Courtney Maum is the author of the novels Costalegre; Touch; and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You; and a guide for writers, Before and After the Book Deal. Her writing and essays have been widely published in such outlets as The New York Times; O, the Oprah Magazine; Interview Magazine; and Modern Loss. She lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she founded the learning collaborative The Cabins.
In her lovely memoir, Judy Goldman reflects on what it was like to be a young Jewish girl raised by a Black nanny in the 1940s and 50s south. Mattie Culp became a part of the Kurtz family: sleeping in young Judy’s bedroom, using the family bathroom, celebrating holidays with them—things unheard of in the Jim Crow south. Now in her 80s, Goldman reflects on what Mattie had to give up—including her own child—in order to make the Kurtz family’s life so much easier.
Child by Judy Goldman, (List Price: $28, University of South Carolina Press, 9781643362830, May 2022)
Reviewed by Linda Hodges of Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina
They say truth is better than fiction and with Magic Season I completely agree. Wade and his rigid engineer father had a contentious relationship for quite awhile. When Ted learns he is dying Wade returns home for one final season of the one thing the men share a passion for-The St Louis Cardinals. This is inspiring and heartwarming and told with Wade’s poignant sense of humor. It gives hope to any one suffering from a desire to have a close relationship with a parent. There is always a chance for your team in baseball and a relationship with your parent.
Magic Season by Wade Rouse, (List Price: $27.99, Hanover Square Press, 9781335475176, May 2022)
Reviewed by Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina
Wired For Love is part neuroscience and part memoir… but it is ultimately a love story between the world’s foremost authority on the brain’s response to love/loss and the world’s foremost authority on loneliness. Cacioppo includes a lot of scientific information and hard data pulled from years of her research, but she also guides the reader through her own personal story of falling in love and eventually her grief surrounding her husband’s death. She has a way of getting the reader to thoughtfully reevaluate the “common beliefs” surrounding incredibly complex (but purely human) emotions. This book is fantastic.
Wired for Love by Stephanie Cacioppo, (List Price: $28.99, Flatiron Bookss, 9781250790606, April 2022)
Reviewed by Stuart McCommon from Novel in Memphis, Tennessee
An April Read This Next! Book
It’s more tempting than ever to want to build a bomb shelter and retreat from the upheavals of life. But with this memoir, Mary Laura Philpott convinces us that, like Frank the turtle, we have to poke our heads out from time to time, confront the challenges, and keep going. Thank you, MLP, for making all of us worriers feel seen, and for helping us put into words the emotions (so very many emotions) that go along with being not just a parent but a person.
Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott, (List Price: $27, Atria Books, 9781982160784, April 2022)
Reviewed by Lady Smith, Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama
When Amy Bloom’s husband of 15 years is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he decides to end his life on his own terms – “to die on his feet, not live on his knees”. In Love is an account of how the couple made that happen, as well as a celebration of their love. It’s by turns honest, raw, unsentimental, funny, captivating, powerful and utterly devastating. I devoured it in less than a day – an experience that left me emotionally wrung out, but also very glad to have done so.
In Love by Amy Bloom, (List Price: $27.00, Random House, 9780593243947, March 2022)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
Bird Brother is the fascinating journey of Rodney Stotts from growing up in the projects of Southeast DC to becoming a conservationist. inner-city youth mentor, and one of the few Black master falconers in the U.S. The book is written in a conversational style, and though reading his history can be emotional/difficult at times, it’s easy to see that his love for nature is the reason that he’s alive today. He’s also very honest about his mistakes, his perseverance in avian education/rehabilitation, and the obstacles that he overcame with the help of his friends & family. Most importantly, he champions the responsibility that we humans have as caretakers of the nature/wildlife around us… and in his own words, to serve something bigger than ourselves.
Bird Brother by Rodney Stotts, (List Price: $26.00, Island Press, 9781642831740, February 2022)
Reviewed by Stuart McCommon, Novel. in Memphis, Tennessee
While reading Unraveling, not only did I find out about sheering sheep and spinning and dyeing wool, I learned much more about climate sustainability and fire dangers and go bags in California. I also lived some of the pandemic through Peggy Orenstein’s eyes and felt her sadness over the loss of her parents and her daughter Daisy going off to school and all of our eventual aging. This book covered much of the history of women and women’s rights and making clothing from fairy tales to knitting today’s pussy hats. I also learned that we discard 80 pounds of clothes a year per person with most of it ending up in landfills. This book has made me determined to buy less and think about my purchases and our climate emergencies. Rarely have I read a book that has affected me so deeply as I also felt I had made a new friend by reading the author’s story. I look forward to reading this over with friends and my book club.
Unraveling by Peggy Orenstein, (List Price: $27.99, Harper, 9780063081727, January 2023)
Reviewed by Nancy Pierce, Bookmiser in Marietta, Georgia
The Love You Save is powerful, heartbreaking memoir that will capture your heart from the first chapter. Journalist and activist Goldie Taylor shares painful childhood memories of trauma and family strife against the backdrop of strength and hope she found as a highly gifted student reading books by authors like James Baldwin. Readers who enjoy heavy-hitting memoirs like Educated and Memorial Drive will appreciate Taylor’s honest and poetic prose in this must-read memoir–but have the tissues ready!
The Love You Save by Goldie Taylor, (List Price: $28.99, Hanover Square Press, 9781335449375, January 2023)
Reviewed by Beth Seufer Buss, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
To many people – myself included – Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize win for Girl, Woman, Other appeared to come out of the blue. But, as Manifesto reveals, her apparent overnight success was actually 40 years in the making. Recounting her life and career with the characteristic humor and insight that made Girl, Woman, Other such a success, Manifesto is a passionate paean to the power of persistence.
Manifesto by Bernardine Evaristo, (List Price: $27.00, 9780802158901, January 2022)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
An exquisite view into the inextricable relationship among love, grief, and hope, Kathryn Schulz’s Lost & Found is a masterpiece. It’s been a while since I’ve underlined so many sentences and created marginalia—from page one, it felt as if I myself was part of Schulz’s story. Her metaphors are spot-on and stunning; her fondness for research and etymology manage to deepen our relationship to the work instead of distancing us. Five stars. I’ve already created a mile-long list of loved ones who will, like me, treasure this memoir.
Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz, (List Price: 27, Random House, 9780525512462, January 2022)
Reviewed by Janet Geddis, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
Reading The Last Nomad is like sitting with the author at a table with a cup a tea as she tells the story of her remarkable upbringing in Somalia. In candid, compelling prose, she shares her life as a nomad with her clan in the Somali desert, as a town dweller with her polygamous family and as a refugee from the civil war which tore her country apart. The lives of Somali women are the centerpieces of this engaging memoir, inviting us to understand their resilience and strength as they navigate their traditional and shifting roles in Africa and North America.
The Last Nomad by Shugri Said Salh, (List Price: $26.95, Algonquin Books, 9781643750675, August 2021)
Reviewed by Lia Lent, Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, Arkansas
