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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Kim Kingston — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 04:16:21 +0000

Paul Kalanithi was thirty six years old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. How ridiculously unfair that someone who had worked so hard to become a neurosurgeon and could have helped so many people was destined to die so young. But he doesn’t whine about it: instead he writes this beautiful, sparse book which is all the more powerful for not being full of uplifting quotes. The loss of such a humane and intelligent man is brutal and unfathomable; the book he left behind underscores that but it is also, profoundly, about life. Just read it. Please.

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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Kim Kingston — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 03:59:42 +0000

How much of Anne’s diary resonates with you will probably depend on how old you were when you first read it. I was 13, the same age Anne is when she begins to write in her diary. It was the first time I had heard anything substantial about the Holocaust, and it cut deep. I’ve not re-read it since and maybe it wouldn’t have the same power if I did, but it’s in my top five because it demonstrates the possibility of books – they can reveal a whole new world to a reader. And despite the horrors of what happened to Anne and her family and millions of others, this book ultimately reminds us of our common humanity.

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Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Kim Kingston — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 03:43:01 +0000

Strayed’s memoir about a long hike undertaken after completely messing up her life following the death of her mother resonates with many of us, especially perhaps those of us who have lost mothers. It is partly about carrying a huge stinking bucket of grief around with you wherever you go, and not knowing quite how to to set it down. It is also about the vulnerability of women, as there are few places a lone woman is more vulnerable that in a tent in the dead of night in the middle of the wilderness. She has to assess every male she meets, decide whether they are an ally or a predator. But as she says,”Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.”

Strayed has the kind of gutsiness that comes from knowing you don’t have everything under control but giving it a go anyway. She posts herself boxes that she opens at scheduled intervals along the trail; she has put cash in these boxes so she can get a hotel room and have a shower occasionally, or treat herself to a bought meal, but it’s never quite enough and the lack of money stings. But she comes from a long line of people who’ve never let a lack of money get in the way of the choices that matter to them. Her mother had a beautiful horse she couldn’t quite afford and she is her inspiration. So Strayed just gets on with it, and in doing so she tells a story worth listening to. Beautiful.

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A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold

Kim Kingston — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 03:09:15 +0000

We sometimes speak about the murder of a child as ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’, but how much worse would it be if your child was the murderer, and then killed himself? Sue Klebold knows. Her son Dylan was one of the perpetrators of the original high school shooting, Columbine, in 1999, and in this blazingly honest autobiography she details the shame and horror and guilt he left behind. By all accounts she was a good parent, and she never saw it coming. How to go on after such a tragedy? How to ever walk in the world again? Klebold’s account is such a worthwhile read and a reminder that evil acts can stem from seemingly ordinary boys, and families.

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Reckoning by Magda Szubanski

Kim Kingston — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 04:23:57 +0000

Reckoning actually deserves all the awards it has been given, but don’t go expecting many laughs. Magda explores her father’s past as a second world war assassin in Poland, and the way his drive and perfectionism affected her as a child. She writes rivetingly about her fatness and how she holds it around her like a security blanket: she lost weight then gained it again, deliberately, because the weight loss left her feeling too visible. She’s the remarkable daughter of interesting parents and she shares her story so well. Respect.

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