I got back into reading this year and my first book was Jeanette McCurdy’s memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died”. Since then, I’ve also read Stanley Tucci’s “Taste: My Life Through Food”, and Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential”. I have a number of other memoirs on my TBR, such as Chanel Miller’s “Know My Name”, Kal Penn’s “You Can’t Be Serious”, and Tara Westover’s “Educated”. Would love more recommendations!
by BamaTransplant0311
1 Comment
Not fully memoir genre but I am 75 % through Braiding Sweetgrass and it is remarkable. They are the authors anecdotes and stories from their life that they found meaning in, and it revolves around indigenous knowledge, personal experiences, and how they play together scientifically. You get some spirituality, many good botany/biology lessons, and some life insights. I have bawled my eyes out hard once so far and had a few other good cries laughs and smiles. I am thinking everyone should read this book because of the way it marries our responsibility to the land with what is also realistic for us.
Book: Braiding Sweetgrass
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Main ideas: that nature is itself divine and we are all connected, and that we are all part of a grander cycle of gift giving/reciprocity. The fact that indigenous knowledge was rooted in real science, that they knew instinctively, and gives specific examples and explains the real life symbiosis in the teachings.
There are themes about womanhood, which made me cry particularly hard as someone who is teetering on what I should do as a woman who can have kids but also do a hell of a lot else, and stories about being a good parent/human/community.
I really love this book and I’m treating it like a spiritual book. I love and value nature but also was raised to believe in God. In my mind, I have always married science and religion in certain ways. I don’t believe in a man in the clouds but I believe in forces we have yet to identify and that even science is spiritual and holy to me.