The Miles Between Me by Toni Nealie

Exploring nostalgia, loneliness, heritage, and race; Toni Nealie will make your heart ache with this collection of essays. She beautifully examines distances, both literal and metaphorical, between people and cultures. There is a big distance from her homeland of New Zealand, when she moves to the states with her family due to her husband receiving a career opportunity. This meant Nealie had to leave her job, which held a good part of her identity. Her identity was also linked to New Zealand through friendships and self purpose. Once she is living in a near Chicago suburb, she is isolated and feels “suburban neurosis” after being separated from her support network; yet she ends up learning to be resilient without her familiar structure.

 Her thoughts on identity also continue in the essay titled “Meditations on Brownness”. She is called names by strangers, assumed to be a nanny to her own children, or even a criminal. It can be summed up in this line by Nealie: “whiteness could see, often did see, brown as less than”. Her feelings on identity also change once in America because of unspoken social code. She wants to stand up to the person making a racist joke in conversation, but they’ll say she can’t take a joke. Not a win-win situation. She admits her New Zealand accent helps, which is another unspoken part of the code. She describes different shades of brown in the most beautiful and heavy hearted poetic way. Going over a vast array of her life experiences, Nealie’s collection of essays are all beautiful and thought provoking

 TL:DR- This collection of essays will move you and open your perspective on loss and longing. Pick this book up when you want some deep and beautifully written thoughts on distance that cannot be measured in miles

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Additional info on the book: 
Curbside Splendor
Toni Nealie

Publication Date: May 3, 2016                                     Page Count: 200

ISBN: 194043078X                                                           Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing

Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School) By Sara Benincasa

Ok, let’s get straight to the point here: if you’re a creative of any type and need a laugh so you can stop wallowing in pity about how your own life is going, go read this book ASAP. Sometimes we need a reminder that we’re not the only ones barely treading water. “Real Artists Have Day Jobs” is invigorating and Sara Benincasa speaks from the heart, the gut, the brain, and tells it like it is. She is upfront about being a comedian and author and not in counseling or psychology. This is a book of essays inspired by her personal ups and downs. Amongst other things, she hopes it makes us less lonely. The life of an artist can be lonely.

Early on in the book she gives up this gem: “There is more nobility in hard work than in pure luck (though every artist can use a bit of that). You’ll make better art after a day at the office than you will after a lifetime in an ivory tower.” She gets it. You need to experience life to make art. She understands that you make art because you have to, it needs to get out of you. We get the sense of that through her writing, she NEEDED to write this book.

If you’re making your art on the side in hopes to be a “real” artist one day, she stresses that you already are an artist. If you’re struggling and not fresh out of art school, this book is for you. If you’re fresh out of art school this book is for you too, and pay attention! This shit will come up later in life, but possibly sooner than you realize.

There are 52 essays in this book in which Sara is brutally honest with her embarrassing moments in order to make a point (that we’re all human). She talks about everything from the importance of  getting enough sleep to sex. The power of being a dork to recognizing your personal prejudice and “educate it into nonexistence”. Every essay is important and nicely sums up how we can take care of ourselves and live life (whatever that looks like for you). This book is aimed at creatives, but really anyone can enjoy it because she gives a well rounded look at all aspects of life. Sara Benincasa is funny, raw, and refreshing.

TLDR: If you’re not perfect it’s literally not the end of the world. Be authentic and have a few laughs along the way. Oh, and make some damn art

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Publication Date: April 26, 2016                             Page Count: 272

ISBN: 0062369814                                                      Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Just Kids by Patti Smith

I always liked Patti Smith.  I remember when I first heard “Pissing in the River” off of the “Times Square” movie soundtrack, and I thought, whoa this woman is edgy and deep.  After having read “Just Kids”, this feeling of like has turned to love and admiration and I now want to be her friend.

Patti Smith is like us.  What I mean by that is that her voice will easily slip inside your head like it’s been there all along.  She’s so open and casual about it that you don’t even have time to think, wow, this person that I know as a music artist is also a damned good writer! because she’s just there, doing her thing, talking to you through the page.  She’s not trying to impress anyone or name drop. She’s just telling you how it was and painting a picture of New York in the 70’s that makes you feel like you are RIGHT THERE.

Speaking of painting, did you know that Patti Smith started out as a fine artist?  Because I didn’t. That is her driving passion, and the music came later.  I would say that “Just Kids” is a book about two artists, Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe.   It’s about best friends who also happened to be lovers.  It’s about being young and living for your art and trying to survive along the way.  Lower Manhattan and the Chelsea Hotel are the backdrops for their work and their lives, as gritty as you can imagine and so full of everything, including a cast of characters that could have only existed in that time period.

These are the cool kids, but they weren’t always cool, not on purpose.  Well maybe Robert was, but Patti just comes off as a slightly awkward small-town girl who has landed in the big city.  Not in a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm way, in a way that is quite naked, like Mapplethorpe’s photographs.  Naked and raw, but not frightening. She always seems surprised when good things happened to her, which is an endearing trait.  

I was sad when the book ended.  Not just because of what happened but because I was no longer going to have Patti Smith’s words in my head.  I went and looked up interviews with her on YouTube, flipped through pictures, found a documentary on HBO that would give me more of this story (Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, if you are interested in watching, but I recommend reading the book first).  

TL:DR-I highly recommend this book, even if you don’t think you are a Patti Smith fan.  It’s great writing and a rich and colorful story told with honesty and humor and full of detail, in a voice that could be gravelly from too many cigarettes and long conversations deep into the night.   It is New York in all of its gritty glory and the cast of characters from the village to the Chelsea Hotel in one grand, eclectic parade of those living for and by their art.  And it speaks to a deep and undefinable love between two people as they are “growing up” in their young adult years. 

Reviewed by Liz Smith, a social media manager who currently lives in Portland Oregon.  When she's not working, baking, and taking care of her husband and 7 rescue pets, she'd love to be traveling the world.

Publication Date: January 19, 2010                                   Page Count: 304

ISBN: 006621131X                                                                  Publisher: Ecco

Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero by Emily V. Gordon

Dear Emily V Gordon, I’d like to grab coffee with you and pick your brain and become BFFs.

After reading Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero, it felt like I received the biggest and warmest hug. I felt like I could tackle anything, and even if I couldn’t, that’s ok. I have read a handful of books to help me “deal”, but this one was truly unique and gave me the right tools to handle a multitude of situations. I found the book relatable because of her personal stories and experiences peppered in. Gordon’s honesty made me trust her beyond just her past experience as a therapist. She helps us to figure out who we are, and become a “Super You”, which is the best version of yourself not weighed down by “stuff”. She makes a helpful comparison that it’s how you would present yourself on a dating show to get picked over the other contestants; you are putting your best self forward, not focusing on the negative and letting it overtake you.

This book stands out with the superhero comparisons (emotional Hulk is great), the fun pop culture and comic facts placed throughout, and the writing prompts and exercises to really dive deep into finding your Super You. There are prompts to help you find your core values, and an important one was about what changes you would like to make in your life. These were done by answering some questions twice, once as yourself now and then again as Super You. It was a simple but powerful exercise that really stuck with me. Another concept that stuck with me was the “reality show”, which is about taking yourself out of a situation and viewing things as an outside  party. Like in a reality show, the cameras are getting all angles of a situation, including the confessional booth where everyone’s thoughts and feelings come out. This was a helpful strategy to remove myself from a situation, take some time really looking at it, and assessing how to proceed.

TL:DR- I could go on and on about this book, but I encourage you to pick it up for yourself and explore it! Emily V. Gordon gives us the tools to become the best and truest version of ourselves, not what we think we should be. Embrace your weird and nerdiness and become a Super You.

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Publication Date: September 29, 2015                                    Page Count: 320

ISBN: 1580055753                                                                          Publisher: Seal Press