Memoirs and Histories

Yearbook | Seth Rogan

Summary: This memoir is not a ‘tell-all’, but perhaps a tell-much. Seth Rogan began professional joke writing as a kid and his stand-up experience is exactly the way we remember him sounding and speaking from film. His relaxed and casual style isn’t too far from the truth. He does make one effort to apologize to his mom for all the drug references and bad language within this work. It’s adorable.

Recommendation: I have not seen everything Rogen is involved with – I can appreciate his humor, but he trends toward a harder edge than I can digest. His conversational sharing of his past, however, was completely palatable and, had it been longer, I’d have continued for certain. Listening to his voice reading his words over an audiobook version was extremely cool, especially when he’d show a little emotion once in a while.

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Kirk and Anne | Kirk and Anne Douglas

Summary: Kirk is famous, Anne is brilliant. That’s what we know before they even meet. Once together, this couple is destined for greatness and they share the stories of their challenges, troubles, and triumphs with us, their devoted fans. 

Recommendation: There’s quite an array of incidents that I’d love to comment upon, none so much as that surrounding Kirk’s return to the Oscars after his debilitating stroke. The very short speech he made was a doozy and I couldn’t have been more proud of his accomplishments (in film, in life, in besting the physical limitations set by his aging body) than if I’d been a daughter of his. I’m all verklempt! Mentions of Robert Downey Jr., Frank Sinatra, and other recognizable names throughout their lives are valued and appreciated. The human connection that seals these friends and family together is strong indeed.

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The Caped Crusade | Glen Weldon

Summary: In The Caped Crusade, with humor and insight, Glen Weldon, book critic for NPR and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, lays out Batman’s seventy-eight-year cultural history and shows how he has helped make us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong. With bibliographic details and index.

Recommendation: Being a Bat-fan of many decades, I have read a great number of reviews and essays about Batman and his history. I had no idea what to expect of this nonfiction account of his evolution through the social aspects of time that keep him in the forefront of our awareness. Batman remains a symbol of our youth, a hero, a vigilante, that edge between superpowers and true mortality. He makes us feel safer in the dark, he makes us laugh and commiserate with the ever-patient Alfred, he makes us wonder just how ‘playboy’-ish a rich person can be outside reality. We are reminded that the loss of innocence accompanying the loss of his parents is what drove young master Bruce to hone his instincts for revenge into the more productive search for justice.

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