The combative broadcaster’s memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career with some score-settling and a robust defence of his interviewing styleJohn Humphrys is the first to admit he doesn’t deal well with authority. He inherited it from his father, who refused to use the service entrance at the grand houses where he worked as a French polisher and, as a child, once watched his aunt get a humiliating dressing-down from the vicar for missing church. Humphrys had his own brush with condescending authority figures when he was in hospital with a cyst on his spine at 13, and an “arrogant posh bastard consultant” told his retinue of trainees it was because he didn’t wash regularly. “I don’t like being defined or told what to do, whoever is in charge,” he notes, a stance that has proved useful for grilling politicians (he has interviewed eight prime ministers), though it has also landed him in hot water.His memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career and analysis of the evolution of broadcasting with diatribes and petty score-settling. The early chapters tell of his passage from teen lackey on the Penarth Times in Wales, where his main task was standing outside the local church taking the names of those attending weddings and funerals, to being the first journalist on the scene at the Aberfan disaster, near Merthyr Tydfil, in which 116 children and 28 adults died after a colliery tip collapsed. Later he became a BBC foreign correspondent, reporting on the 1971 war... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-10-10 06:30:10 UTC ]
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard spent years in prison for helping to kill her mother. Now she's about to become a parent herself — and is out with a memoir about her childhood Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-12-10 11:00:49 UTC ]
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Here are this week's bestsellers from the five biggest lists, including part one of Cher's memoir and THE SERVICEBERRY by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-12-05 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, seems to inch closer and closer to running for mayor.He clearly hoped Mayor Eric Adams, indicted on corruption charges in September, would resign, triggering a special election. Cuomo, for now, seems less enthusiastic about taking on Adams directly.... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-12-03 18:43:26 UTC ]
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December's new mysteries and thrillers include a Japanese murder mystery, a true crime memoir of a woman raised by a serial killer, and more. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-12-02 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Cher discovered that mom Georgia Holt had inadvertently put 'Cheryl' on the birth certificate. Luckily, her memoir gets much juicier. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-11-26 01:23:22 UTC ]
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One thing is clear from the get-go: Werner Herzog, the enigmatic German icon of all things Art, likes for things to be precise. He makes sure I know this within the first minutes of our meeting. He is in Paris for48 hours for the release of the French translation of his memoir Every Man for […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-25 09:57:37 UTC ]
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Cher’s memoir is a valuable document of a young girl thrust into the adult world. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2024-11-22 17:45:00 UTC ]
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Her own is called “Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me,” which follows anthologies that grew out of founding the Well-Read Black Girl book club. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-11-21 10:00:06 UTC ]
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Out of an impressive shortlist, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 has won 2024’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Flanagan’s wide-ranging memoir and history weaves together H.G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, pre-war nuclear physics, his father’s imprisonment near Hiroshima when the American... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-19 22:15:16 UTC ]
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"This is the kind of book that's hard to imagine until you're reading it: it doesn't seem possible, and then it is." Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-11-19 13:00:00 UTC ]
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In the first volume of her memoir (which she hasn’t read), she explores her difficult childhood, her fraught marriage to Sonny Bono and how she found her voice. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-11-17 10:00:52 UTC ]
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Gabrielle Bellot on the radical and harrowing nature of being trans in Trump’s America. | Lit Hub Memoir Lili Anolik explores the tumultuous, iconic, and unmistakably literary friendship between Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. | Lit Hub Biography “I am glad not to be a Greenland shark; I don’t have... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-16 11:30:58 UTC ]
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Gabrielle Bellot on the radical and harrowing nature of being trans in Trump’s America. | Lit Hub Memoir “Goodness is neither wisdom nor wealth; ironically, like evil, in its purest form good is not instrumental, utilitarian, or even pragmatic.” Ed Simon on the Seven Deadly Sins and how good... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-15 11:30:28 UTC ]
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Red Tower takes prolific romance writer Devney Perry’s spicy new romantasy, S&S lands a memoir by major Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-11-15 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Born in Tehran: A Conversation with Porochista Khakpour, by Shohreh Laici Interviews [email protected] Tue, 11/12/2024 - 09:04 In June 2024 Pantheon published Tehrangeles, Porochista Khakpour’s latest novel (see WLT, Sept. 2024, 73). The novel... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-11-12 15:04:04 UTC ]
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If you’ve read only one book about the Spanish Civil War, chances are it’s either Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls or George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia. And if you’ve read only two, as to what they might be, I’d confidently push all my chips into the center of the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-11-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The latest thriller from Paula Hawkins, a new novel by Niki May, and an Indigenous environmental activist's memoir are among this month's selections from the nation's biggest book clubs. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-11-11 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Actor Keke Palmer, of 'Akeelah and the Bee' and 'Nope' fame, used to let other people control her story. No longer, as she explains in her new memoir 'Master of Me.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-11-10 11:00:47 UTC ]
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The editor and author on completing the memoir by her late friend, Swedish writer Johanna Ekström, where she stands on the assisted dying bill and what she’s readingSigrid Rausing, 62, is a publisher and former editor of Granta magazine. When her best friend, the acclaimed Swedish writer Johanna... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-11-09 18:00:01 UTC ]
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Jaydra Johnson on the intersections of literature, classism, and what it means to be called white trash. | Lit Hub Memoir “It flattens all queer art into the nebulous category of ‘pornography.’” Project 2025 is going to have devastating effects on our freedom to read the books we want to read. |... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-09 11:30:14 UTC ]
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