King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France

author: Karen Wheeler

genre: memoir

published: August 2011

pages: 311

source: ARC from Sourcebooks



first line: Oh Dear God, what have I done?

rated: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

In her mid-thirties, fashion editor Karen has it all: a handsome boyfriend, a fab flat in west London, and an array of gorgeous shoes. But when her boyfriend, Eric, leaves she makes an unexpected decision: to hang up her Manolos and wave good-bye to her glamorous city lifestyle to go it alone in a run-down house in rural Poitou-Charentes, central western France.


Tout Sweet is the perfect read for anyone who dreams of chucking away their BlackBerry in favor of real blackberrying and downshifting to a romantic, alluring locale where new friendships–and new loves–are just some of the treasures to be found amongst life's simple pleasures.

About the book:

Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France is a fun, light, and interesting memoir where Karen Wheeler shares her experiences after she leaves her hectic London life behind and moves to rural France.



After a bad breakup, the thirty five year old successful fashion editor decides she needs to leave it all behind her. Karen lived a glamorous lifestyle, complete with her nice London flat, invites to fancy cocktail parties, jet setting off to fashion shoots and a closet full of designer handbags and shoes.
When Karen takes time out to open her eyes and look around, she doesn't like what she sees.

She packs up and moves to France to start a new life for herself.






My thoughts:

This memoir reads smoothly, it's the type of book you don't want to put down. It's also one of those memoirs that reads almost like fiction, this one could be chick-lit if it wasn't a true story.

I enjoyed the descriptions of France and felt like I was there as she described the sights and sounds.

I looked out of the open window at a vivid yellow and blue landscape, at the fields bursting with sunflowers and blond haystacks against the vibrant turquoise evening sky. As I felt the warm evening breeze on my arm, resting on an open window, and watched the long-armed irrigators send arcs of water soaring over the fields, I felt a surge of excitement for the first time in ages.

p.21 Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France

Karen takes us through her moving and renovating her new French home which she names 'Maison Coquelicot', which means 'house of the wild poppy'. She also describes her breakup with her boyfriend Eric, whom she thought was 'the one'. Even though she moves to France to start anew, Karen finds herself missing him often.



Her close friends and neighbors are also mentioned throughout and I found their antics entertaining. Karen had me laughing at times and cheering for her as I read. One scene in particular as Karen is giving a certain someone a ride home, and he professes his undying love to her, while at the same time offering her an 'open relationship', had me in stitches.


I liked Karen's voice and the way she told her story openly and honestly. I was hoping she would find her Mr. Right. What she does find in France is happiness and contentment.

I think it takes incredible bravery to pack up and start a new life in a foreign country no less. Go Karen!




I enjoy reading memoirs that aren't depressing and found Tout Sweet to be a fun summer read.





About the author:





Karen Wheeler is a former fashion editor for the Mail on Sunday and currently writes for the Financial Times How to Spend It magazine and London’s Daily Mail. Her work has appeared in the Evening Standard and You magazines, Sunday Times Style, and numerous international publications. A three-time winner of the prestigious Jasmine Literary Award for writing about perfume, she specializes in fashion, beauty and luxury goods trends. Karen also has a great blog at www.toutsweet.net and Twitters @mimipompom1.

title: Lost on Treasure Island A Memoir of Longing, Love, and Lousy Choices in New York City

author: Steve Friedman

published: 2011

genre: memoir/humor

source: sent for review by Skyhorse Publishing

pages: 304

first line: Everything here is true.

rated: 3 out of 5 stars

What do you get when you plop a moody Midwesterner in Manhattan, the land of the quick and the mean, then grant him a dream job and visions of true love? One disaster after another…



In Lost on Treasure Island: A Memoir of Longing, Love, and Lousy Choices in New York City, Steve Friedman recounts with utter honesty and mordant clarity those fateful years, starting with his first job at GQ, including his awkward efforts to impress his terrifying boss and find his future wife. Friedman’s misadventures include real and imagined love affairs, catastrophic encounters at work and play, and desperate attempts to find authenticity – nearly all of which, in the end, fail miserably.

About:
Lost on Treasure Island A Memoir of Longing, Love, and Lousy Choices in New York City is Steve Friedman's candid and sometimes humorous memoir where he shares his experiences working in New York City as a literary editor for GQ.



Originally from St. Louis, Steve takes the plunge and moves to NYC. While working for GQ he makes friends out of work colleagues, has affairs with different women, has his heart broken and meets actress Mary-Louise Parker among a few other celebs.



Steve makes some bad choices in fashion (he wears a lime-green business suit to a job interview), makes bad decisions in love and pitches some interesting story ideas to his boss.


In his mid-forties, Steve realizes he wants to settle down and find Mrs.Friedman. He embarks on what he calls 'The Plan' in order to find a wife.


Steve takes the reader along his personal journey of ten years while living in New York, which includes several bad dates, betrayal by loved ones, his joining a self-help group and his difficulties at work.





My thoughts:

I enjoyed reading Lost on Treasure Island and found it to be an open and honest memoir by Steve Friedman.


As I read, I felt like an old friend was sitting next to me telling me his life story. Some of it was funny, some of it was endearing, some of it was awkward, all of it was interesting and well written.
Steve tells his story and you can either like him or not. He writes about his several affairs, and even cheating on his girlfriend.

Although Steve had a drinking problem in the past and suffered from chronic stomach aches and sleeplessness, he manages to add humor to his story and keep his memoir light and even inspirational at times.

I found it to be refreshing reading a memoir that wasn't depressing.



Steve always tried to keep his head up, and when things got tough his mantras were It is a pleasant day. I am my own worst enemy. Things aren't so bad. This too shall pass.



Steve had me laughing out loud as I read with his witty remarks and his reactions to different people and situations.


I recommend Lost on Treasure Island to anyone in the mood for a memoir that's open, honest and funny.






About the Author:


Steve Friedman, writer-at-large for Runner’s World, Bicycling, and Backpacker magazines, is the author of four previous books, including The Agony of Victory and Driving Lessons: A Father, a Son, and the Healing Power of Golf. His work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Outside, and the New York Times, and in a number of anthologies, among them The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Sports Writing. He lives in New York City. For more information, please visit www.stevefriedman.com

title: Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

author: Linda Gray Sexton



genre: memoir

published: 2011

pages: 320

source: TLC Book Tours


first line: Sometimes, even my bones resonate with the melodies of my childhood.

rated: 4 out of 5






Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide is Linda Gray Sexton's heartfelt and emotional memoir.


Her mother was famous poet Anne Sexton. Linda is a successful writer herself and the prose in her memoir is achingly beautiful.



Linda's mother Anne suffered from severe depression and as a child she was witness to her mother's mental illness.
Linda was twenty one years old in 1974 when her mother committed suicide, after several attempts.

She loved her mother greatly, but Linda swore that she would not take on her mother's legacy of suicide and depression. She went on to marry and have children and become a writer. Throughout her life, Linda battled severe depression. As much as she fought it, her depression would return again and again.



Linda's memoir is intensely personal and emotional, and when I was done reading, I almost felt like I wanted to give her a hug. She shares her battle with depression and certain things she talks about are heart wrenching.
Her pain comes right off the pages.

I was curious to read Linda's memoir because I wanted to hear her take on suicide and depression. She shares her story here in a brave and insightful way.



Linda describes her suicide attempts as almost being beyond her control. Her depression was something she could not control or will away as much as she tried to.

A metaphor occurred to me that illustrated how I really felt: I was a soldier in a war zone, and I had to stay awake at my post. The enemy however, was no person. Instead it was depression, and, like a seductress, it sole up on me-just as sleep inevitably would, quietly pulling down the gray shades of my eyelids and making them as heavy as if they were weighted with the wet dirt of the grave. Increasingly, my world went into slow-motion and I spun out of myself, out of my head and heart, my face averted so no one would know the shame of what was happening to me and how I was giving in.


p.91

When Linda describes her first suicide attempt and how she was thinking about how she promised her children she would never do such a thing to herself as her mother had done, she brought tears to my eyes.

As if I could take back my terrible act, as if I could tighten the slack lips that could not kiss, mend the broken arms that could not hold, repair the promises cracked as old mirrors-all from this mother who, as her own mother before, had lost her grip on love.

p.9

After battling years of lingering depression and taking endless medications and going to therapy, Linda comes out a stronger person and gets some closure with her friends and family.




Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide is a moving and beautifully written memoir that is not to be missed.







Special thanks to Lisa over @ TLC Book Tours.
Click here to see other blogs on tour.




About the author:

Linda Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1953. As the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Anne Sexton, she grew up in a home filled with books and words and an attention to language, and at an early age she, too, began to write. Afternoons were sometimes spent together with her mother, reading aloud from Anne’s favorite poems.

quoted from the authors website.

title: Perfection

author: Julie Metz


pages: 344

first line: It happened like this: Henry's footsteps on the old wooden floorboards.

published: 2009

rated: 4 out of 5







Julie thought she had the perfect life. She was married to the love of her life, Henry and had a beautiful 6 year old daughter, Liza. She had a nice job as a freelance graphic designer and was able to work from home.



Henry was spontaneous and extravagant. He enjoyed cooking gourmet meals, parties, and was a social butterfly. He traveled alot, at times being away from home for weeks at a time. He was in the process of writing a book on cuisine and would travel around the world for research.



Henry hadn't been feeling well for months, but chalked it up to too much workload. One day however, while Julie was working at her computer, she heard Henry enter the house, then soon after she heard a loud thump. She found Henry dying on their kitchen floor. He died soon after of cardiac arrest.



Seven months after Henry's death Julie finds out that Henry was having multiple affairs, five to be exact. Julie's friends found out about his infidelities right after Henry died and chose not to tell her until later. A mutual friend hands over Henry's emails and journal to Julie and reveals what he knows.



Julie reads Henry's explicit journal and email correspondence with his lovers. Most of it describes his sex life, with one of Julie's close friends in particular.

Reading that hurt me in ways I could never have imagined, every word a spike in my chest. I had lost him long before he died. I had lost a love that had once been central to my life.

Eventually Julie confronts all of Henry's mistresses. They all admit to having a relationship with Henry. Surprisingly all the women were petite brunettes, like Julie, and she even found herself liking a couple of them after ongoing conversations with them. Julie even finds out details about her husband through these women that she herself never knew.




As Julie tells her story, you get to see that there were many red flags in her marriage. Henry wouldn't wear a wedding ring and he was often at her one girlfriend's home. One day Julie even saw that the bedsheets on the twin bed in his office were crumpled and stained. Henry had a quick temper and tended to be very grandiose with every thing he did. He liked throwing expensive dinner parties, he flirted alot, and he indulged in whatever he wanted. Julie couldn't stop him from his expensive purchases. In the end he left Julie over $40 thousand dollars in credit card debt.


I think the biggest sign of all was that when Julie met Henry he already had a girlfriend, yet was chasing Julie anyway. He also cheated on her before they were married. If that's not a red flag, I don't know what is.

Though truly, the more I thought about it, the clues had been everywhere and I had chose to ignore them.

I first heard of Julie Metz's story on the Oprah show. I remember being both shocked and intrigued by her story.
Reading her memoir, I was definitely stunned. Especially when reading Henry's emails and journals. I didn't agree with some of the choices Julie made, like taking a lover so soon after Henry's death. However I do admire her candidness in telling her story. I can't even fathom what she went through finding out her husband was unfaithful after becoming a widow and single mother. And one of his mistresses was supposed to be a good friend of hers.




Julie's memoir is brave, emotional, disturbing and intriguing all at once. I was hooked from page one and hoped Julie would find some kind of closure and happiness in the end. I think she is brave to share her story. Despite devastating betrayal she was able to persevere and move on with her life.

I had been afraid to look at the truth, because there was so much at stake. I had been afraid of being alone. Now I was alone. I had accepted intolerable behavior because of the fear that I couldn't live without him. But here I was, living without him.

About Julie Metz


Julie Metz is a graphic designer, artist and freelance writer whose essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Hemispheres, Glamour, and more. Julie received a MacDowell Fellowship in 2008 where she completed work on Perfection and began work on a novel. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.


visit her website here: http://www.perfectionbook.com/

special thanks to BookSparks

title: Broken Birds, The Story of My Momila


author: Jeannette Katzir


genre: memoir


pages: 374


published: 2009


first line: I hurried down the hallway but stopped when I saw her.


rated: 4 out of 5






Broken Birds, The Story of My Momila is inspired by author Jeannette Katzir's own experiences. Her parents are Holocaust survivors.




The book starts off with Jaclyn and her siblings showing up at the reading of their mothers will. Right off you can see there is some conflict between them for some reason or other. The story then takes a turn as her parents stories are told. Her mother Channa, and her father Nathan, survived the Holocaust as young adults. Channa was able to get away and live with her brother on the run in order to survive. Nathan was eventually sent to a concentration camp, but somehow managed to survive as well. They both lost family members and barely made it out alive.

As the sun was coming up one morning, the sounds of gunshots and shattering windows woke Rachel and her daughters. They ran over and looked out the window. Rachel knew instantly what was happening: a pogrom, an organized killing. They ran out the back door and sought entry to a hiding place beneath the house that they had prepared for such a moment. They crawled on their hands and knees and then on their bellies until they were deep inside. The earth was cold and wet, and the floorboards above them left little space for movement.

Once the war is over, Channa and Nathan move to the United States to try and start new lives. That is where the two meet and fall in love. Once married, the couple has five children. They live your average everyday lives, Channa mostly stays home while Nathan works and eventually starts up his own business. All the while you can see that Channa has deep rooted fears about her husband leaving her for 'someone better'. The war affected Channa so much that she deals with issues for the rest of her life. She is always afraid her husband will suddenly leave her and she is weary of and does not trust strangers. She eventually becomes a hoarder, as the direct effect of having to struggle to find food and nearly starving during the war.

It was moments such as these that I especially loved that momila of mine. Not because she gave me the lovely gift of furniture, but because she rose above her anger at being disobeyed and remembered that I was her daughter.

As the story goes on you get to see how these parents interact with their family. Jaclyn marries first and has a daughter. She is very close to her mother who is very old fashioned and a bit controlling. Jaclyn's sister Shirley is next to have a son. The two sisters are very close, but as time passes, they begin to have problems. They fight mostly over money and business issues since both their husbands end up owning their own businesses. There is alot of competition between the sisters, mostly due to Shirley's jealousy and resentment. All the while Channa insists that her children be loyal to one another, because family is what matters most.



She deals with medical issues for some time and when Channa has a stroke, all her children are at her side. And after she passes away, they gather to read her will, which is not what they expected it to be. Sadly what ensues is a drawn out legal battle between siblings over their mother's estate.

I tried very hard to accept the fact that Mom and Dad were broken birds, with horrific pasts that would always continue to haunt them. Mom's torturous past made her suspicious of the future. The present was simply a state of anticipation Mom endured as she waited for everything to go to pieces around her, just as it had in Baranavichy.

When I first started reading Broken Birds, The Story of My Momila I didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect to find myself totally immersed in the story and unable to put the book down. It was interesting reading about the effects the Holocaust had on these survivors and how this trickled down to their own children, who weren't even born during the war. This is a great book club read, it's one of those books that makes for a great discussion. It's a book about the Holocaust, it's survivors and families.

Within the walls of that meditation suite were the consequences of Adolf Hitler's handiwork. Although he had been dead for years, he had been instrumental in shaping my parents and destroying this family. Mom and Dad lost their parents in those pivotal formative years. Their only proxy, The War, never taught them how to balance money, family, loyalty, love, and hate. Lacking those basic ideals, they raised us to view these same issues through distrusting eyes.

title: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers

author: Jennifer Mascia


published: 2010

pages: 383

genre: memoir

rated: 3 1/2 out of 5








Never Tell Our Business to Strangers is journalists Jennifer Mascia's memoir about growing up an only child who ends up finding out her parents were living a double life. Jennifer's father John Mascia, whom she thought was a carpet cleaner, was selling drugs, was associated with the mafia and at one time served prison time for murder. The first time the FBI came for her dad, Jennifer was just five years old. To calm her down, Jennifer was told that her dad was acting in a movie.



Her mom went from shopping sprees and wearing designer clothes, to maxing out credit cards then filing for bankruptcy. Jennifer and her parents were always on the move. While her father was in prison, she and her mom would stay with family and friends, moving from New York, to Florida to California.
Her dad kept his cash hidden in a hole below the carpet at home and soon Jennifer found out that both her parents used false names and social security numbers. She also found out that she and her parents were living as fugitives on the run for five years. When Jennifer finally found out about her family's secrets, she was stunned and hurt.

I had a family, however imperfect, and not that long ago. I had a life, albeit one that doesn't remotely resemble the one I'm living now. Where there was once a house full of laughter and argument and cooking smells there is now nothing, just a furnished reverie that exists only in my memory. Sometimes I wonder if my time with them was real.

I enjoyed reading Never Tell Our Business to Strangers. I found this to be an interesting memoir. You can tell by reading it that Jennifer loves her parent and misses them. You can also see that her parents wanted to keep her sheltered from the awful truth. I did feel that the book could have been a bit shorter, there's parts where she ventures off into details of events and dialogue that I didn't think were necessary.



About the author:

Jennifer Mascia graduated from Hunter College in 2001, and in 2007 she received an M.S. from Columbia University ’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has spent the past three years as the nightside news assistant on the Metro desk of The New York Times.






Special thanks to Tony Viardo @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.

title: Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

author: Chelsea Handler

genre: memoir/humor

published: 2008

pages: 264

first line: I was nine years old and walking myself to school one morning when I heard the unfamiliar sound of a prepubescent boy calling my name.





rated: 3 1/2 out of 5








Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea is written by Chelsea Handler, who is an American stand-up comedian and host of her own show, Chelsea Lately. In her hilarious memoir Chelsea talks about her childhood, her family, her friends, drinking and men. She discusses a few funny predicaments she's gotten herself into, like when she was in the third grade and told her classmates that she was working on a film with Goldie Hawn to impress them. Or how when she was fish-sitting her boyfriends goldfish and it died while he was away, she replaced the fish with a bigger one and told him it grew due to the vitamin supplements she was feeding it. She talks about her DWI arrest and the time she served in jail, which is definitely not funny, but her observations when she was in jail had me laughing out loud. There was also a part where she discusses the male anatomy that had me in hysterics, I cried from laughing so hard.





This book started off really funny, it had me in stitches, but then it fizzled toward the middle and kind of died out for me. Chelsea has a sarcastic humor that is great, but sadly, the book slowed down and the big laughs were mostly in the first half.

I was twelve years old when I got boobs. I was over the moon, knowing they were the last piece of the puzzle I needed to start my own business.

All in all, this was a funny book and i'm glad I read it. I just wish she had kept the momentum going and gave me one final laugh.





Here is a clip of Chelsea Lately where she's talking about the Grammys.

title: Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band

authors: Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Neil Strauss

published: 2001

pages: 431

genre: memoir

first line: Her name was Bullwinkle.

rated: 4 out of 5

Whiskey and porn stars, hot reds and car crashes, black leather and high heels, overdoses and death. This is the life of Mötley Crüe, the heaviest drinking, hardest fighting, most oversexed and arrogant band in the world. Their unbelievable exploits are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend.

Now, before you ask me 'What the heck made you read this book?', let me say that The Dirt had me hooked from page one and no other book has made me say 'Oh my God' so many times out loud while reading. I was also shaking my head as I read, which made a few of my co-workers very curious as to what I was reading. A good friend of mine read this book and kept telling me about it, so she passed it on to me when she finished. Then when I was done, of course, we had to discuss it. We both agreed it was a crazy, disturbing, unbelieveable and really interesting read. I laughed sometimes, I was shocked, I was saddened by some parts of it and pitied these guys, and sometimes I was just plain disgusted.



Reading this book was like watching a car wreck, you know it's awful to look at, yet you can't look away, somehow you are fascinated by it.





Motley Crue is an American hard rock band that formed in 1982. In Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, each of the four band members tells his story beginning from thier childhood through thier time with the band. It was about sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, but you also get to see another side to these guys. When Nikki Sixx, formerly known as Franklin Feranna, tried to call his father and re-connect, his dad hung up the phone on him, screaming 'I do not have a son. I don't know who you are'. Mick Mars suffers from an illness called ankylosing spondylitis, which is a form of arthritis that had him in intense pain most of his adult life. "I'm a prisoner in my own body." He became addicted to pain killers and alcohol. Vince Neil lost his young daughter to cancer. "I was her father, and I was supposed to protect her. I had done everything in my power for Skylar-everything-and the truth was that I was powerless."




Each of the band members talk about thier addiction to drugs and alcohol, thier childhoods and how they found each other and became Motley Crue. They also mention thier wives and girlfriends as they are telling thier crazy, messed up stories. Since they formed in the early eighties, they were wearing spiked heels, tight clothes, makeup and had high, teased hair. It was all about looking punk rock and being bad ass hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard.



They refer to other rock star legends they came across, like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne (be forewarned, when they tell a particular tale about something Ozzy did, it made me gag). I'm surprised these people are still living, considering the amount of drugs and alcohol they have consumed.


Tommy Lee talks about his courtship with Pamela Anderson. He also talks about his time in jail when she had him arrested for assault. His letters to Pamela during his six month incarceration are included. The band members talk about thier spiral down into addiction, and the demons they struggled with for a very long time. They discuss overdosing, jail time, marriages, divorces, groupies, touring and much more.



I enjoyed reading Mick and Tommy's tales the most. They both made me laugh out loud. And I think Mick has the most insight out of all the band members, maybe because he is the oldest. "I question a lot of things and form my own opinions. They're just as valid as a rocket scientist's or anyone else's. Who says you have to believe something because you read it in a book or saw pictures?"











This was a great memoir, not for the faint of heart, almost like a wild ride.
With chapter titles like 'Shout at the Devil', 'Save Our Souls' and 'Some of Our Best Friends are Drug Dealers', how could you not be curious to read it?


If you don't mind the vulgar language and crazy stories, you may just enjoy this one. The Dirt is being made into a film, click here to see Nikki Sixx discussing it.





Here's a few quotes:

'I'm a hopeless fu**ing romantic. That's a part of me that a lot of people don't know about. They know everything there is to know about another part of me, but not a thing about my heart.'-

Tommy Lee

Women and money didn't like me. In fact, the former always seem to walk out of my life with all the latter.

-Mick Mars

I was fourteen years old when I had my mother arrested.

-Nikki Sixx

I've learned in life that if you chase something for long enough, pretty soon it will start chasing you.

-Tommy Lee

I had been onstage performing for tens of thousands of people; now I was alone. I had sunk into subhuman condition, spending weeks at a time in my close with a needle, a guitar, and a loaded gun.

-Nikki Sixx

Visit the bands website: http://www.motley.com/splash/



Of course I had to close my review with a Motley Crue video.

You Know I'm A Dreamer

But My Heart's Of Gold

I Had To Run Away High

So I Wouldn't Come Home Low...