I didn't actually know much about Anna Faris going in, including that her name is pronounced "onna," and doesn't rhyme with "banana." Now I'm much more curious about her divorce from Chris Pratt than I might have been.

As I just observed in my review of [b:Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember|63004237|Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember|Lauren Graham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1665903341l/63004237._SX50_.jpg|94789947], actor and comedian-essays/memoirs can be annoying self-conscious and pretty obviously grabs for money or attention. There is a lot of padding in Unqualifed, but it's a fine listen while you're doing household chores.

Tansy pretended to have a girlfriend to avoid family bs, especially events that involved her one-time lover Tucker, who is connected to her family I forget how. He's a bad dude, but he belongs to a prestigious (wealthy) clan, the van Dalens, and Tansy's stepmother is a climber. The fake girlfriend is a romance book cover model who shows up to Tucker's wedding and upon learning of Tansy's fake relationship with her makes it real and ups the deal by inventing their engagement.

The rest of the novel is a girl gets girl, girl loses girl, and girl gets girl back (spoiler! but it's a romance novel so sorry/not sorry). It's a cute romp with likable characters and a surprise villain.

One of Hijab Butch Blues's strengths is its subtlety. Lamya's story is doesn't have a big arc. Her deepening understanding of her identities and with whom she's willing to share them is the central plot point. Her unfolding of self is told alongside Quran parables. For me, it dragged a bit. Maybe I expected too much from such a good title. Your mileage may vary!

Mestayanek Young was born into The Children of God, what she comes to understand as a religious sex cult. The first half of her memoir documents her time with The Children--up until age 15 when she demands emancipation. Before that time she is repeatedly abused and sexually assaulted by members of her family and extended family, especially the "uncles" given charge of punishing (beating and molesting) the children. Their mothers have to stand back because women are subservient and required to participate in "free love" themselves. Daniella is born to her fourteen-year-old mother, father unknown and eventually had six siblings--before their mother was forty. Eventually the Family (as it is currently known) declared sex with children under 16 illegal--not in time to save Daniella's virginity--but perhaps in enough time to spare her becoming a teen mother, not by choice.

The story of her time with the family and then her high school and college years outside the cult take up the first and second parts of the book, followed by a section about her time in the military. The whole book is consuming and a satisfying read, but I wish it had been two books instead of one.

Daniella's time in the military is nearly as harrowing as her life in the cult, and infuriating for different betrayals.

On the Children of God's founding

Berg [their prophet] saw these young people [counterculture folks, hippies] as sheep, in need of a shepherd, and began to corral them into his flock. But the think nobody ever tells you about the shepherd analogy is the shepherds always eat their sheep in the end.

An army captain and Daniella's boyfriend for a while, a married man who pursued her relentlessly,

I used to think that women who said they were scared were just being dramatic. But the more I get used to what it's like over here, the more I think that you probably will get raped on this deployment.

The environment had been toxic for women all right--that was true army wide--but in this case, nobody had wanted to look deep enough to find the real, systemic causes.

(duh, but still, tough revelation)

Belle da Costa Greene was a fascinating person, as documented in this fictional account of her life. As a librarian, I have to say she sounds more like a curator, but maybe the authors just didn't provide info about how she organized JP Morgan's library when she began her work there. Alas! That would have been fascinating, at least to cataloging and classification nerds such as myself. Still, the story of her rise from a rare books librarian at Princeton at the turn of the 20th century, when women weren't allowed to attend, to one of the world's preeminent collectors and art and literature historians isn't a bad tale.

Her early friend and mentor, Junius, JP's nephew met at Princeton.

While Junius admires Odysseus, I identify always with Aeneas, the Trojan refugee who desperately tries to fulfill his destiny in a world that holds no place for him. Aeneas was driven by duty, sacrificing for the good of others.

I found this sentiment illuminating as to Belle's dual struggle as a woman and a white-passing Black person. The book doesn't say how or when Belle's racial identity was discovered. The internet tells me her birth certificate was found, with a C on it, for "colored."

Mahalia, who lives with her mom and whose dad has a new family, really wanted a sweet sixteen, but couldn't have one due to lack of funds. After her best friend Naomi's party, Mahalia is more determined than ever, and with her birthday having past, decides she'll have a coming out party instead. She wonders why coming out has to be a thing anyway, since straight people don't have to do it. She still doesn't have much money, so she plans the party for a few months out and tracks her finances. To her surprise, her mom agrees to match what Mahalia saves, not that her mother knows the new reason for the party, being a member of a conservative Christian church.

Each chapter starts with Mahalia's bank account balance and what she's spent--usually on things like gas and groceries, but occasionally party supplies or something to woo her crush, Siobhan. Siobhan is a new kid, arrived from Ireland and somehow immediately found a boyfriend, Danny, a dude with the annoying habit of carrying drum sticks everywhere and banging them on everything all the time.

The story includes tropes of is-she-or-isn't-she-gay, will-they-or-won't-they, being self-involved and risking an important friendship, and an estranged dad who isn't going to change.

Davis's life story is a harrowing one. She grew up, a dark skinned Black person, in utter poverty, surrounded by violence and addiction. Through talent and hard work she uplifted herself one August Wilson play or film adaptation at a time until she really hit it with How to Get Away with Murder. One of my favorite parts of her HTGAWM success is that it was Davis who agreed to the role, only if Annalise took off her wig in season one. She wanted to ensure that the writers would know how to make the character complex. It was also she who wrote in Annalise's backstory that she was born Anna Mae.

I listed to the audiobook, read by Davis. tbh I think her acting and her narration are a bit overwrought, but still highly worth reading or listening to.

At 17, Nora, not her real name, has five other names and identities that inform her now-precarious ego, six if you count the one she was born with, but that girl might as well be dead. When we meet Nora, her girlfriend Iris, and Nora's ex-boyfriend Wes, they're in a bank to deposit money from a fundraiser and find themselves hostages to a pair of bank robbers.

A switch flips in Nora, from her heavily therapized, and trying to live a normal, under the radar life self, to all the grifters she was under her grifter mother's ungentle tutelage. This book is absorbing and satisfying and left me wanting a sequel.

There are 30 or more authors photographed with one or more of their cats, accompanied by an essay about the writer's relationship to cats. The authors covered aren't just the usual suspects. It's a diverse list, as in not just well-known white dude cat-lovers Ernest Hemingway. There are writers I hadn't heard of, including people from outside the US. Perfect bathroom book.

Good writing, like the Yelp! review at the beginning, which ends. "And the sex was dry" lolsob, but I couldn't, in good conscience, finish or recommend at book that felt trans exclusionary. Men experience perimenopause, too; womanhood isn't exclusive to producing estrogen, etc.

She also has that arrogant doctor thing going, being sure to point out that she started medical school at 20, and how perimenopause was easier for her because she understood what was going on with her body, and she's kind of being a missionary to us ignorant savages explaining our bodies to us. Even if it's true I don't understand what's going on with my body, I don't need to be patronized.