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I love reading memoirs. That's my escapist reading. (Reading middle grade and YA novels is fun, too, but that's also part of my JOB, you know?) I have been known, on occasion, when a writing student can't decide between writing a rhyming picture book or a nonfiction book about ants or a memoir, to gently steer him or her toward the memoir (especially if he is older than sixty and has a colorful history). Then I can work and play AT THE SAME TIME!

I haven't read as much in the last eight months as I would like. I used to seriously wonder about people who said they didn't have time to read. (Or, gasp!, said they didn't like to read!) I mean, what else are you going to do with your time? How much Duck Dynasty can a person watch, really? Then we welcomed a six year old boy into our quiet lives and I realized that it is difficult to read with a little person bouncing, bouncing, bouncing and touching and chattering and "Mom, Mom!, MOM!" thirty-two times in one minute. So I haven't read as much as I would like. But last Friday we had a snow day and God smiled on me because the five-year-old neighbor boy was also home and so the two boys careened from house to house and I only really had to stop reading when they had the bright idea to ice skate on our small, small pond only to realize that the ice wasn't at all thick. And so they went wading, instead. Oops. Life lesson.

So this weekend I consumed two books on my "books I want to read before Paul goes to college" booklist. The first, A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. Not truly a memoir, this is more of a "year in the life" piece as Evans undertakes the challenge of following Biblical laws, focusing on different commandments specific to women each month. This was recommended to me, as I wasn't especially interested, initially. It felt a bit gimmicky, to be honest, and also a bit too much like Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically. And while, yes, I did find parts of it a bit gimmicky, a bit too picky-and-choosy, the book was also both funny and thought-provoking, acknowledging and wrestling with some of the more disturbing parts of the Bible as it relates to women, but also showing God's great love and compassion for women, seeking justice for our sisters around the world, and honoring women of valor. The Orthodox Jewish interpretation of the Proverbs 31 woman was my biggest takeaway, redefining this Scripture as a blessing on women and all that they do in this world, rather than as a list of expectations. Eschet chayii!

The second, also not truly a memoir but a blend of personal experience and acerbic satire, How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston.  I have a Nook, so I could read this incognito while also supervising the boys' swim time at the Y. Because I'm not sure how to explain to curious onlookers WHY I wanted to read this book, other than the fact that Thurston use to work for the ONION, and deep in my dreams I aspire to that level of sharp sarcasm. (Not that I could ever go there because, not noted in the above review, I'm much too entrenched in my own box of Biblical womanhood to reach that level of searing humor.) And perhaps also I wanted to read it because when Sam saw the title on the Nook shelf she said, "Seriously, Mom? But you're like the whitest white woman I know." So clearly I need some guidance as an apparently VERY white woman raising a black son. An easy read and humorous, but as with all great humor it contains deep truths, truths about race and relationships and identity. So this book is not REALLY about being black, or white, or pink, or purple (OK, this is what people SAY when talking about being "color-blind", but does anyone really know anyone, outside of the muppets, who is pink or purple? Really? And wouldn't that be something you WOULD notice? And be curious about?) Really this book is about being whoever you are and understanding/appreciating everyone who you are not.