BTT: Serious Reading

What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently?

This is kind of a tough one for me because all the "serious" books that I read, while they have serious themes and stories, actually have a lot of humor in them. The two books that come to mind are Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical RENT by Anthony Rapp and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Without You focuses on Anthony's life and how he deals with his mother's cancer, diagnosis to death. Persepolis is about Marjane's life in wartown Iran where people were dying or disappearing was just an everyday occurance.

But, while both these memoirs are about very serious things, they both have enough sarcasm, wit, and humor to make them just a bit funny too. That helps because when you get done reading them, you can think "wow what a moving book!" rather than "wow, I could use some Prozac now..." I guess that I just need my serious with a good dose of humor!

Review: Memoir of Anthony Rapp

Without You: A memoir of love, loss, and the musical RENT

by Anthony Rapp

306 pages

I love the musical Rent. LOVE it. Seriously, it's so great and moving and beautiful and the music just sticks with you. I've seen it a few times live, one of which was at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, MI where Jonathon Larson (the writer of Rent) spent a couple summers earning his equity card prior to moving to NYC and writing Rent. That performance was probably the most moving one that I've seen since a lot of the people there had know Jonathon. Wow. I was left speechless.

If you haven't heard the story of Jonathon Larson and how Rent came to be, then you should read this or rent the DVD of the movie version (which features most of the original Broadway cast including Anthony Rapp) and watch the documentary on the second disk. Look out for the picture of my beloved Barn Theatre (that I've been going to with my parents since I was young).

But, this book really isn't about Jonathan Larson or the making of Rent. It's about Anthony Rapp's experiences with playing the character Mark Cohen for years (from the workshop production to Broadway), living as a homosexual, relationships, and dealing with the loss of him mother to cancer, along with other things that came around. Rent just happened to his backbone through years of strife and heartache in his life. The lyrics to the songs and the core of his character Mark just resonated throughout his real life to make this a very moving memoir. But I think that my favorite thing about reading this was I could distinctly hear Anthony Rapp's voice (as Mark Cohen) while I was reading it. It had a little bit of everything I look for in a memoir: realness, challenges, some hilarity, some heartache, and a good dose of hope at the end.

9 out of 10. Such a good book.

BTT: Celebrity memoirs

Suggested by Callista83:
Do you read celebrity memoirs? Which ones have you read or do you want to read? Which nonexistent celebrity memoirs would you like to see?

I'm not a huge reader of celebrity memoirs. Right now, the only one that I can think of that I've read is Tito Ortiz's...and that's only because my husband has it (and many other memoirs of UFC fighters) and I was looking for something light and easy to read. It definitely fit the bill! Other than that, I have Annie Duke's memoir sitting on the bookshelf (picked the hardcover up at a garage sale for 50 cents) and I'm kind of looking forward to reading Forrest Griffin's new (ish) book since I think that he's hilarious and adorable (in an I-punch-people-in-the-face kind of way I suppose). Also, if I find Chelsea Handler's books somewhere on the cheap, then I'd probably pick up those...but other than that, I'm just not too motivated to read a celebrity memoir. I just like novels too much!

As for a non-existent celebrity memoir that I'd like to see? Hmm...well...I don't know! I get all my celebrity juice cravings satisfied by Perez!