Book Review: Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre: Graphic Novel, Memoir, Humor
Literary Awards: National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (2014), Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Nominee for Best Reality-Based Work (2015), National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction (2014),Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction (2014)
ISBN 1608198065
228 pages
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Reading memoirs tend to feel like traveling through thick fog on a sunny day; the journey through makes one a bit lost, as if navigating through past time not of one’s own, and when the fog clears, it’s not sure whether the sunny skies above were the same as those before journeying through it.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a memoir not of Chast’s own, but those of her aging parents, woven with her mixed feelings towards caring for them, as well as bits and pieces of Chast’s teenage years, which explains the way she feels the way she feels for her parents, especially her mother. It brings the reader along through the excruciating caring process of two elderly parents who can’t seem to live without one another, the constant emotional struggles the author faces between caring for her parents as would a good daughter, and leaving them alone because she has to have her own space and also because of long-held emotional knots which has not yet been untied.

Book Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Series: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, #1
Publisher: Pan Books
Genre: Humor, Science-fiction
ISBN 0345391802
216 pages
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I’m so late to the hitchhiker’s bandwagon, but I’m so glad I’m finally onboard. At least everyone and the Earth’s still here, right? Wait, what do you mean this is the second Earth?

Arthur is having a bad day. His house, the Earth, and everything else he has ever known has been demolished. Except him, thanks to his alien-in-disguise best friend, Ford Perfect, who has swished him off onto a spaceship in the nick of time. But not just any spaceship. It’s the spaceship that just demolished Earth. Lucky! Well, unlucky in Arthur’s case, since he’s stuck with the universe’s third worst poem reciter, death threats (which subsequently happen), highly improbable escape from said death threat, and a robot who suffers from manic depression. The worse is that he hasn’t had tea since lying in the mud that morning! Damn!