Amy Schumer’s cheeky memoir and other insights from notables
Writing lives takes many different forms: biography, self-confession, combining pictures and poems, writing about experiences that, ultimately, reveal something about you. Here are a few lives worth reading about this summer.
The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer This one burst onto the publishing scene by garnering a whopping $9million advance — and that’s in American dollars. So it’s certainly a highly anticipated book when it comes out in mid-August. We all know Schumer for her raunchy humour; here she’s got personal anecdotes from her childhood, observations and stories that range “from the raunchy to the romantic,” according to her publisher. Read this and you’ll be part of the most up-to-date pop-culture conversation. In-Between Days by Teva Harrison This is a very special book — Toronto poet and artist Teva Harrison wrote and drew it as a way of dealing with her diagnosis at age 37 of metastatic breast cancer. Part graphic, part diary, it’s a moving book that approaches this devastating topic with joy, hope and heartbreak. She shares so openly how she feels about mortality that her great gift becomes showing us all how to live.
Porcelain by Moby He has had many careers in the pop-culture industry and has been a fascinating contra- diction in terms: an amazing musician, a devout Christian, a DJ and a photographer. This memoir chronicles his journey from a kid from the Midwest to making it in New York City — and all the grittiness, grunginess and strange moments he encountered along the way.
McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman Many a Beatles fan will want to pick up this 825page monster. This is a detailed look at the guy who’s often been called the cutest Beatle but it also offers insight into the entire band. It starts from the terraced house in Liverpool where he grew up and goes right through to his current marriage to Nancy Shevell. And chronicles every detail in between.
Startle & Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing Well-loved Canadian writer Shields is back in our psyche again with essays, observations and thoughts about the act of writing in this volume edited by her daughter Anne Giardini and grandson Nicholas Giardini. Whether you’re a reader or an aspiring writer — perhaps you want to write your own life? — this book has a lot to say about how to write and read. It also, along the lines of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, has something bigger to say about how to live.