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Book Reviews: What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution, by John Birdsall, AND Dining Out, by Erik Piepenburg
Narration provided by Wondervox
“What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution” by John Birdsall
c.2025, W.W. Norton $29.99 304 pages
“Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants” by Erik Piepenburg
c.2025, Grand Central $30.00 352 pagesYou thought a long time about who sits where.
Compatibility is key for a good dinner party, so place cards were the first consideration; you have at least one left-hander on your guest list, and you figured his comfort into your seating chart. You want the conversation to flow, which is music to your ears. And you did a good job but, as you’ll see with these two great books on dining LGBTQIA-style, it’s sometimes not who sits where, but whose recipes were used…
When you first pick up “What is Queer Food?” by John Birdsall, you might miss the subtitle: “How We Served
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Book Review: The Brain at Rest: How the Art and Science of Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Life, by Joseph Jebelli, PhD
Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“The Brain at Rest: How the Art and Science of Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Life” by Joseph Jebelli, PhD
c.2025, Dutton $32.00 288 pagesThe wall in front of you hasn’t moved in at least fifteen minutes.
You know because you’ve been staring at it this whole time, your mind lost in thought but not on the task at hand. In other words, you were daydreaming and you just wasted a quarter of an hour – or did you? As you’ll see in “The Brain at Rest” by Joseph Jebelli, PhD, you may’ve been doing exactly the right thing.
Joseph Jebelli remembers that his father was a man driven.
The elder Jebelli worked long hours, up early, desk-bound all day and apparently hating it, until one evening he came home, spent. Jebelli’s his mother took her husband to a doctor, where he received a diagnosis of severe depression.
Jebelli was ten years old. His father never worked again.
Despite all that, Jebelli was likewise driven to overachieve but as time passed, his life became a shambles and he knew he needed to step back. He started by retreating slowly and gently away from too much work, which took awhile. Eventually, things began to change and he reports now that his well-being has improved considerably.
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Book Review: How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir, by Molly Jong-Fast
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir” by Molly Jong-Fas
c.2025, Viking $28.00 256 pagesWhen you were still a child, everyone wanted a piece of your mother.
Requests for donations, organizing skills, and fundraising abilities arrived frequently at your house and she always stepped up to help. Her church, your school, her parents, your family, everybody wanted a piece of your Mom but, as in the new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother” by Molly Jong-Fast, what happens when there are no pieces left?
In the past, strangers often approached Molly Jong-Fast to talk about her mother. They’d say how much Erica Jong’s books meant to them, or they wanted to discuss things Jong wrote or said or thought. It used to happen all the time, Jong-Fast says, but not anymore: Jong hasn’t written a book in awhile because she has dementia.
Jong, says her daughter, was always was a little quirky; her fame inherently made her unlike other mothers but it went deeper than that, with serial relationships, a constant desire for attention, and generational alcoholism. Still, Jong-Fast says, Jong loved her daughter but not more than her writing or the string of men in her life. Not enough to let Jong-Fast feel loved, fully and truly – and with that, a lingering sense of something missing seemed to be a fact of Jong-Fast’s life.
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Book Review: Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder, by Rachel McCarthy James
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder” by Rachel McCarthy James
c.2025, St. Martin’s Press $28.00 259 pagesCall it a difference of opinion.
You say one thing, your opponent says another. You thrust and parry, they rant and argue, you both agree amiably, then disagree vehemently. Is there a place you can come together, a consensus on which you can settle? You’ll find it, if you’re patient but, as in the new book “Whack Job” by Rachel McCarthy James, be careful how you split hairs.
Over the years, and especially after having co-written a book about a nineteenth-century axe murderer, Rachel McCarthy James has thought a lot about axes as weapons. Doing someone in with a heavy, sharp instrument, she says, has “become a permanent punchline,” found in movies, television, and bad mystery stories. Axe-as-weapon is so “unserious” that we barely even think of it as a mode of murder – but it most definitely is.
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Book Review: Books On Current Events (Various Authors)
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm SexBooks on Current Events by various authors
c.2025, various publishers $28 – $30 various page countsThe world seems to be moving at lightning speed.
You can hardly keep up with work and family, so current events sometimes goes on the back burner – which is why you need these great books on things that are relevant to your life now, today…
So you say that you simply cannot understand the politics of those on the other side of the debate. In “What We Value” The Neuroscience of Choice & Change” by Emily Falk (W.W. Norton, $29.99), you’ll see what goes into our thinking.
How can we know what choice is right? And if we pick wrong, why is it so darn hard to change? Read this fascinating book and see how your brain and your experiences affect who you are and how you make decisions, which will also offer insight on others’ thought processes. This is a gentle book with a path to compassion.
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Book Review: Poetry Picks for Poetry Month
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm SezPoetry Books by various authors
c.2025, Penguin $18.99 – $20 various page countsA, B, B, A.
That’s not only how you spell the name of a popular music group. That’s also how a poem might be structured, if it rhymes, or it might be created in other ways. That’s the thing about poetry: it’s all how you perceive it when creating it and reading it. So why not think about putting these great poetry books on your shelf this month…?
When you spend time with poetry, you expect a certain kind of relationship between author and reader. That’s only part of what you get in “The Space Between Men” by Mia S. Willis (Penguin Poets, $20). It might also change the way you feel.
Here, Willis – a poet, historian, and educator – explores culture, Black history, and what it’s like to be Black, Southern, and queer. When those various experiences come together in poetry here, it invites readers to consider the width and depth of the spaces, and their mere existence.
If short but image-fueled poetry appeals to you, this book is worth a good look.
Poetry can take your thoughts in many directions, including thoughts about yourself. If you’re hungry for soul-searching, then try “Is This My Final Form?” by Amy Gerstler (Penguin Poets, $20).
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Book Review: In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space, by Irvin Weathersby Jr
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space” by Irvin Weathersby Jr
c.2025, Viking $30.00 256 pagesThe issue appears to be permanent.
It’s been happening for a long time. It doesn’t look like it’ll stop any time soon, either, and though you’ve been able to work around it, you shouldn’t have to. Some say it might be better some day but you’re not holding your breath. As in the new book, “In Open Contempt” by Irvin Weathersby Jr., some things are too set in stone.
Cemeteries are filled with them.
So are parks, campuses, galleries, museums, and courtyards where, for centuries, humans have left their carved and constructed monuments and artwork celebrating and commemorating our heroes. Those works may be so familiar, in fact, that you might barely notice them, although many of the monuments have lauded white supremacists.
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Book Review: Radical Endurance: Growing Old in an Age of Longevity, by Andrea Gilats
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookword Sez“Radical Endurance: Growing Old in an Age of Longevity” by Andrea Gilats
c.2024, University of Minnesota Press
$19.95 232 pagesThe mirror doesn’t lie.
You look into it and the person peering back at you sure seems familiar, but older. More fine lines around the mouth.. Grayer hair. Dimmer eyes. Dryer skin. All this happened when you weren’t watching and in the new book, “Radical Endurance” by Andrea Gilats, you’ll learn to embrace it and enjoy it longer.
A decade after she was widowed, eight years after she’d retired, Andrea Gilats “woke up one ordinary morning” and immediately felt “an obsessive need to come to terms with my seventy-fifth birthday….” Specifically, she suddenly felt as though she’d officially entered “old age,” and she was nowhere near prepared.
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Book Review: Cher: The Memoir Part One, by Cher
Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“Cher: The Memoir Part One” by Cher
c.2024, Dey St.
$36.00 413 pagesMother knows best.
At least that’s what she’d like you to think because she said it a hundred times while you were growing up, until you actually believed. One day, though, if you were lucky, you learned that Mother didn’t always know best, but she did her best – like in the new book “Cher: The Memoir Part One” by Cher, when Mom helped make a star.
Though she doesn’t remember it, little Cheryl Sarkisian spent a few weeks in a Catholic Charities orphanage when she was tiny, because her father had disappeared and her mother couldn’t afford to take care of her. “Cheryl,” by the way, was the name on her birth certificate, although her mother meant to name her “Cherilyn.”
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Book Review: The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures, by Sarah Clegg
Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures” by Sarah Clegg
c.2024, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
$22.00 208 pagesBreaking and entering.
It happens every Christmas in your neighborhood somewhere. An old guy with a long white beard busts into a few random houses, steals milk and cookies, and escapes before he can be apprehended. He’s not the only holiday mischief maker around, though. As in the new book, “The Dead of Winter” by Sarah Clegg, when it comes to Christmastime characters, you’d better watch out.
On a chilly Christmas Eve morning not long ago, Sarah Clegg left the warmth of her parents’ home and crept along the English countryside in search of witches.
Legend says that the morning before Christmas was the time when witches portended who in the village would die in the following year, but Clegg didn’t see that and she didn’t spot her prey.
No problem. She says, throughout history, “Christmas teems with monsters.”
Witches aside, she begins her search in February at Carnival in Venice, which she admits is an odd time to think about Christmas but Carnival’s masks and decadence hark back to what Christmas was in ancient times.
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Book Review: Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops, by Tim Robey
By Terri Sclichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops” by Tim Robey
c.2024, Hanover Square Press #32.99 336 pagesIt was a little hard to swallow.
In fact, the premise of the entire flick stunk up the room and stuck in your craw until you could barely stand watching anymore. Ugh, no matter how much popcorn you stuffed in your mouth, no matter how many refills of soda you drank, as in the new book “Box Office Poison” by Tim Robey, some films just leave a bad taste in your mouth.
You know it when you see it: a movie that you regretted spending money on, and when you learn about the budgets for those stinkeroos, you’re astounded. Obviously, says film critic Robey, money (or lack thereof) indicates nothing. Think Titanic, which was expected “to be a fiasco” despite its budget; or The Blair Witch Project, which was “made for peanuts” and was also a box-office success.
And then there are the films that should just, straight-up “be fed to the wolves headfirst…”
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Featured Book: The ABCs of Storytelling: Reflections of a Story Coach, by Dr. Michael Williams
Narration provided by Wondervox.
I had the great pleasure of taking a Guided Autobiography certification course with Dr. Michael Williams as a fellow student. He has subsequently published a truly wonderful, slim volume on the craft of being a professional storyteller. I loved this book! As a workshop instructor myself now and an author of fiction, I highly recommend it. However we choose to tell stories, this book will enhance our understanding of the craft, and enlighten us in the ways of communication through words and actions. I’ve added it to my must-read list for longtime, beginner, and aspiring writers, as well as those magical beings we call storytellers.
About The ABCs of Storytelling
The ABCs of Storytelling contains 26 reflections on the art of oral storytelling from Story Coach Michael Williams. Dr. Williams learned the traditional art of oral storytelling during his 30 years of living in Scotland where he was a member of the Scottish Storytelling Directory and a popular performer and workshop facilitator. In 2005, he exchanged his teaching career for a life as an itinerant storyteller and story coach, working with adults and young people. His reflections have been gathered from his experiences as both a performer and coach working with individuals, community groups, and corporate clients. His book offers the beginner and experienced storyteller a range of tips, techniques, and reflections on this traditional art. Dr. Williams’ reflections capture the spirit of telling stories “eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart.”