'Born Standing Up – A Comic’s Life' by Steve Martin

ISBN: 1416553649
Format: Hardcover, 224pp
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Pub. Date: November 2007
Price: $25.00


A friend of mine passed along her copy of Born Standing Up – A Comic’s Life with glowing praise and I sat down to read it with high expectations.

It’s hard not to be familiar with Steve Martin in some way, shape, or form. From his stand up, which made him famous and opened doors for him, to the books and movies he’s written and starred in, Steve Martin has a face that is instantly recognizable.

Born Standing Up isn’t about Steve Martin’s successful years as a stand up comedian. It’s about the years it took to get to that point, the time invested and material tested before he became the best. The final chapter almost comes as a shock, you go from reading about setbacks and small triumphs, until suddenly it all explodes and there stands Steve Martin, at the top.

In a voice that is precise yet fluid, Martin lays his past before the readers. His is an unemotional voice; these are the facts, beautifully written but not embellished. His life growing up, scenes with his father, his detachment from his family and reconnection in later years; all these things are gone through, but quickly and with no bitterness or regret.

Martin goes over his early years growing up, summers spent working in Disneyland in joke and magic shops. His fleeting crushes on pretty faces and the hopes that a smooth card trick might do the trick. It was wonderful to read and see how his passion and dedication grew as he aged, his desire to perform started so early and just intensified as the years passed.

Through his young adult years, awkward and filled with passing loves, into his adult years the passion for getting up in front of crowd never wavered. From dark and seedy bars, a stint at Knott’s Berry Farm, Playboy clubs, and eventually the big times Steve talks about his routine; how he worked on it, tightened it, and eventually turned it into what would make a crowd laugh hysterically for hours.

Born Standing Up – A Comic’s Life is a wonderful look into the life of a stand up comedian, but not just any comedian. Steve Martin has done it all, suffered through the worst of the worst and come out the other side as one of the most famous names in the business. It’s sharp and insightful, early on there are a few pages that tug at the heart, but mostly it’s just an engrossing look at what life is like when you’re born standing up.

'My Life in France' by Julia Child with Alex Prud'Homme

ISBN: 0316067253
Format: Paperback, 304pp
Publisher: Little Brown Bks Young Readers
Pub. Date: October 2007
Price:14.95

I can remember watching Julia Child on TV with my mom when I was little. I never sat and watched long; the distraction of playing house or a new Barbie always pulled me away, and running off I didn’t think twice about the woman on the screen with the funny accent. Then during my adolescence we took one of many trips to Washington D.C. to see the capital and visit the Smithsonian. There they have Julia Child’s complete kitchen, which she had donated to the National Museum of American History in 2001. I didn’t remember who Julia Child was and when I asked my mom she said simply, “She’s famous for cooking.”

I’ve never been much of a cook, I try and I am successful in some things, but the passion to cook doesn’t burn deep in my heart. I enjoy cookbooks though; I enjoy the idea that I too could create something so lovely and delicious. I buy them and try recipes only to be kicked out of the kitchen by my husband, the real cook in the family. But the wonderful thing about My Life in France is that you don’t have to be a cook to enjoy this delightful memoir about food, love, and life.

In the introduction Julia states “This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in life; my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of cooking and eating. It is also something new for me. Rather than a collection of recipes, I’ve put together a series of linked autobiographical stories, mostly focused on the years 1948 through 1954, when we lived in Paris and Marseille, and also a few of our later adventures in Provence. Those early years in France were among the best of my life.”

It all started in 1948 when Julia Child followed her husband, Paul Child, across the Atlantic aboard the SS America. Newly married and never having been to Europe before, though she did serve during World War II in Asia, she wasn’t sure what to expect. But to her delight France, particularly Paris, was absolutely wonderful.

Paris was where she learned to cook, taking lessons in the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school. Though Julia earned a diploma from this prestigious school she was mostly self-taught. Spending hours, days even, perfecting a simple recipe for mayonnaise or cooking the same dish from three or four different cookbooks, she poured her entire being into learning the correct way to do even the simplest task. Out of this passion her first cookbook with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was born.

Mixed into the stories are wonderful photographs taken by Paul Child as well as a handful of family photos. Glimpses of Paris in the late 1940s, Julia leaning out of their apartment window, and pictures of Julia teaching others to cook or learning herself; these black and white photos added so much to the rest of the book.

Julia Child passed away in 2004 but her passion for life and food still lives on through her many cookbooks and this memoir My Life in France. Passionate and fascinating I could not put it down as I read about Paris in the early 1950s. Julia’s first forays into the kitchen, her first real cooking lessons and the fire that burned within her to learn more; it makes for some of the best reading I’ve come across in nonfiction in a long time. My Life in France is a wonderful tale of self-discovery through cooking and food, stories that you will enjoy and that only leave you wishing for more.

'Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter' by Shoko Tendo

ISBN: 4770030428
Format: Hardcover, 192pp
Publisher: Kodansha International
Price:$22.95

Yakuza Moon is brutal, honest, and scary. Shoko Tendo takes you through her turbulent childhood and the life built around her yakuza father. She recounts the many times he came home drunk in the middle of the night and tore the house apart and later beat Shoko. Soon she has fallen in with a tough crowd and has become a yanki, what basically amounts to a juvenile delinquent.

When she gets older she moves on from sniffing paint thinner and ditching school to shooting up and dating married men. She quickly becomes a kept woman who is shuffled about, never really being her own person, and all of this before she is even 23 years old.

Yakuza Moon is hard to read at times. The almost constant abuse that Shoko went through is heartbreaking and painful to read about. It is written in such a direct manner. The hard core drug use, the different boyfriends beating her, attempted suicide, and rape is presented to the reader as simple fact, with a sort of detachment through which you can only feel horror or pity for this young woman.

A lot of things happen off stage, as it were, and you are only treated to the highlights of a very painful past. There are incidents mentioned in passing that are never fully explained. But for the most part it does not distract from the flow of the story. The overall impression is of a young woman who went through hell but came out the other side a stronger person. This is a woman who has earned respect finally, and is not afraid to demand it.

After everything she is strong. The world is full of people struggling to survive and overcome - striving to be the person that they always dreamed that they could be, that they hoped deep down was still inside and had not been killed off by their mistakes. Sometimes the hardest thing to overcome is yourself, the person in the mirror can be your own worst enemy and learning to put the past behind you the hardest lesson to learn in life. Yakuza Moon is a triumph simply because Shoko Tendo overcame the atrocity that her life had become.

“I think a lot about the moon," she says. "How it constantly waxes and wanes, just like my life with its highs and lows. I like to think of myself as having been born under a new moon. Then, in those uncertain days when I was searching for love, I guess the moon would have become a crescent. It was probably about a half-moon when I got married."

But, as the author goes one, "Now that I’m alone, do I warrant a full moon? Have I finally overcome my weaknesses and grown up? I’m heading along a new path in life, but if it turns out to be a dead end, I guess I can start over with the next full moon.”

'Diary of Indignities' by Patrick Hughes

ISBN: 1595821031
Format: Paperback, 256pp
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Price:$14.95

While I read Diary of Indignities I marked passages I thought were funny and wanted to share. When I finished reading I realized that I couldn’t share it all because I would have to copy more than half the book down. Okay, the whole book. I laughed, I was shocked and often disgusted, but overall highly entertained.

Diary of Indignities started out as a blog by the name of Bad News Hughes written with brutal honesty by none other than Patrick Hughes. He used the blog to chronicle the daily indignities of his life and now he sits “naked on a throne of human skulls, drinking warm blood while surveying my blog empire of pain” with a book to show for all his trouble. I think he puts it rather well.

So what kind of indignities will you come across? Every single horrible, unimaginable thing your brain could dream up to torment you at three in the morning; those things you do while drunk and claim to not remember or are lucky enough not to. There are a lot of those stories in here. The crazy relatives, and trust me he has yours beat, stories that we all share with friends… and yes, with the stranger sitting next to you on the bus. Patrick Hughes bares his dirty soul to the world and I for one am glad to know I’m not alone in some of the stupid things I’ve done.

I am a huge fan of my local Friends of the Library book sale so I was thrilled to learn that Mr. Hughes was as well. In "Francis Ford Coppola is a Dick," a chapter that has very little to do with Francis Ford Coppola, he touches on the madness that is one of these book sales. The pushing, shoving, and being caught by your mom and her elderly friends with a copy of Penthouse Forum in the adult section of the sale. Good times.

There are also several chapters in which Mr. Hughes doles out advice for the kids. In many cases the advice is something you are sure the author learned the hard way. There are such classics as, “Don’t use one of those little Handi-Vac things to empty an ashtray. Because the inrush of air could potentially reignite the fading embers. And, uh, a big jet flame might shoot out of the thing, surprising you and making you scream like a ten-year-old girl. And you might knock over your beer.”

Or “For that matter, be aware that bowling-alley employees may have a limited tolerance for other non-pajama-related behaviors, such as getting all loaded and pretending to be Godzilla and stomping on the windmill over there in the indoor miniature golf course.”

There is a reason it says "Adult" on the back of the book, and of course it also designates "Humor" and "Memoir" as well. Swear words, references to sex toys, Jell-o shots, use of said sex toys, more swear words, and drug use make this a book you might not want to leave around your kids or your elderly parents. But if you dare to crack its spine, Diary of Indignities will have you laughing out loud and maybe cringing a little.

'Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress - Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless' by Susan Jane Gilman

In a book about 'growing up ambitious and engaging in some spectacularly imbecilic behavior,' Susan Jane Gilman’s Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, a follow-up to Kiss My Tiara, takes you from the very start of a wacky life to adulthood. I’ve got my fingers crossed for another book because it has been a long time since I laughed so hard while reading.

As Gilman further attests in the 'Author’s Soapbox' of a preface, this collection of names-have-been-changed true stories -- 'or at least, I’ve recounted them as honestly as I can remember them' — serves more than a single purpose:

I’ve written this book, in part, because it seems that all of us could use a good laugh these days. Yet I’ve also written it because so many stories women are currently telling are all about getting a man. Or getting over a man. Or about getting laid. Or about not getting laid. Or about not getting laid and not getting a man, but deciding we’re ok with it. While a few stories do involve a boy, a bra, and a booty call, mostly their focus is elsewhere - on other passions and delusions that we all experience in one form or another.

The stories that you find within this book are everything the author promises and more. Each one is something that any girl, or guy for that matter, can relate to.

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is separated into three sections. Part One, entitled 'Grape Juice and Humiliation' contains, among others, ‘Nudie Hippie Kiddie Star’ and ‘A Girl's Guide to Bragging and Lying.' Part Two, ‘Not Just Horny, But Obnoxious, Too’ contains my favorite, ‘Mick Jagger Wants Me.’ And Part Three -- ‘Reality Says, “Hello”’ -- contains, among others, ‘I was a Professional Lesbian,’ ‘My Father the Park Ranger, My Mother the Nun’ and the title essay.

In ‘Mick Jagger Wants Me’ Gilman talks about how she fantasized as a teenager about Mick Jagger not only being her boyfriend but pulling up in front of her school in a black stretch limo. But he didn’t stop there; he would walk inside, come into her classroom and get down on one knee to tell her how much he has missed her for the last three hours that they have been apart. Of course the whole classroom would be staring opened-mouthed and some of the girls would have fainted between the desks.

I have to admit to having spent criminal amounts of time myself dreaming of my crush sweeping me out of school like in the movie Officer and a Gentleman. I also fantasized that I was taller with perfect skin and in a tight sparkly ball gown. If I’m dreaming I might as well dream big, right? Well Susan Jane Gilman thinks so and that is exactly how her life reads.

Not only will you laugh but you will cry as well. Susan Gilman takes everything that life has to offer and brings out the hilarious, sad, beautiful, and slightly odd things that all of us have experienced. Hypocrite is now one of my favorite books and whenever I have a chance this will be the book I tell my friends to read