The forced “stay-at-home” situation has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for book bloggers like us. I recently read three non-fiction books – two self-help and one memoir. Here are my thoughts on them:
Continue ReadingTag: memoir
Playing Dead by Monique Faison Ross – Review
Rating – 4/5
Monique, the daughter of San Diego Charger’s football great Earl Faison, never imagined marrying her high school boyfriend would turn out to be the most horrible mistake of her life. She also hadn’t imagined she would survive this mistake to narrate her tale.
Playing Dead: A Memoir of Terror and Survival by Monique Faison Ross recounts the author’s experience of a nightmarish marriage that culminated in a brutally violent incident. Her relationship with Chris was unstable from the beginning, but it gradually turned abusive and denigrating.
Continue ReadingThe Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls – Review
Rating: 4 out of 5
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a gripping, poignant memoir detailing her quirky childhood filled with incredible hardships on account of growing up in a dysfunctional family.
Walls grew up with an alcoholic father and an irresponsible and delusional mother. Rex and Rose Walls’ nonconformist ideas about the world initially inspired their four children. The Walls family led a peripatetic life, relocating every few months. They never imposed any rules on their children and encouraged them to handle their problems on their own. Rex was a charismatic man who taught them a variety of subjects and often played with them, while Rose painted and wrote and mouthed off philosophical thoughts.
However, as the children started growing up, their rose-tinted glasses were replaced by the harsh reality of life. Little by little, the Walls children’s dreams of the Glass Castle—the grandiose promises of a spectacular home to be constructed by their father—started crumbling when they realized their parents were self-absorbed people, averse to responsibilities, and they would have to take care of themselves. This realization instilled a fierce determination in them to get away from their parents and carve out a successful life for themselves.
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