Let's Bust a Recap : OTH memoirs

Okay, today's post is a 3-for-the-price-of-1 special and we're talking celebrity memoirs, baby. The funny thing about this genre is that I wouldn't say it's typically my jam, but maybe I'm kidding myself. I was first in line for the Britney Spears memoir last year, and when Bethany Joy Lenz announced Dinner for Vampires, I knew right away that I would definitely be reading it as soon as it came out. 

I feel like I have a lot of groundwork to lay before I can just start talking about these books so let's get into it. 

First of all, I admitted to you on this very blog back in 2017 that I had been sucked into One Tree Hill Land. But to give you even more context: the first friend I made at the tiny little Christian college I went to back in 2006 was a One Tree Hill superfan. Like, literally plastered our suite with posters from the show. So when I finally decided to watch an episode—ten years later—it was all due to her influence. Since watching through all nine seasons back in 2017, I have definitely watched the first few seasons again at various times, always falling off the rewatch before making it to their post-high school lives. I wouldn't call myself a fan, but I appreciate the absolute hit of nostalgia I get just from the music on that show. I feel that giving you my history with One Tree Hill is a bit misleading given that none of these memoirs are technically *about* One Tree Hill, but they're all by girls who were stars of the show and it is because they were stars of the show that I have any awareness of their existence and, by extension, the existence of their memoirs. When Bethany Joy Lenz announced her memoir and started doing all the press for it about her time in a real cult, I immediately added it to my personal TBR and when it finally came out in October, I went to the library and got both of Hilarie Burton's memoirs along with it and read them all back-to-back-to-back. 

So now that you know more than you ever wanted to about how these books came on my radar, let's go through them one-by-one. 

The Rural Diaries by Hilarie Burton Morgan was the first of these memoirs to be published back in May of 2020. During my ill-fated year on the instagram, she was promoting this book hardcore, and consequently, I added it to my amazon wishlist where it has hung out ever since. Now that I am a proud, card-carrying library patron and have figured out the novel concept that I don't actually have to buy every single book I want to read, I took myself down to my local library and checked out both of Burton's books when I went to pick up Lenz's brand-new release. Hilarie describes The Rural Diaries as a love letter to a town, a farm, and a man, and that's really what it is. In it, she tells her story of leaving Hollywood to establish a life in the Hudson Valley on a working farm with her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan and their son Gus. Hilarie has a real talent for making the people and things in her life that are important to her, feel important and cherished, and that's a real gift. I found myself wanting to visit her candy shop in Rhinebeck and even feeling a little envious of the community she seemingly has built there. I really like how she incorporated pages throughout this memoir with little gardening tips, recipes, and the like, and this is a book I might actually pick up again in future to refer back to some of those things. 

Her second book, Grimoire Girl, was published last year in October of 2023. This one was less of a memoir (in my opinion), and more a collection of essays that heavily emphasize the how-to of living a fulfilling life and being able to leave a meaningful legacy. Burton likes to call herself a witch and she really leans into that in this second book. In Grimoire Girl, Burton writes about topics ranging from the harmless—like the art of letter-writing and keeping a scrapbook—to the more pernicious—like astrology and pagan worship. This book is half benign, half the worst universalist trash I've ever read. If Burton takes an interest or sees beauty in something, she incorporates it into her life in a haphazard and even offensive way, combining Christian and pagan practices willy-nilly with no thought to how these things literally condemn each other. Pretty wild. I would never pick this book up again, and I cannot recommend it.

Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz (who played my favorite character on One Tree Hill) just came out in October, and as the subtitle makes clear, it's all about her life on a cult TV show while also in an actual cult. Kudos to the marketing genius who came up with that. Lenz was part of a high-control group for ten years, and her stated goal in publishing Dinner for Vampires is to show how it doesn't take a stupid or particularly gullible person to fall prey to a situation like this. It was utterly fascinating to read about her experience and the downward spiral she found herself in. I wasn't expecting Dinner for Vampires to be a beautiful portrait of Lenz's journey to cling to her faith and come out the other side of her nightmarish experience with her trust in God still in tact, but that's exactly what it was. It was hard to read at times but ultimately quite moving for me as a person of faith myself. 

A post like this, covering three highly personal memoirs, just scratches the surface of so many potential topics to discuss. Obviously the intersection of faith and celebrity culture; cults in general; the amount of made-for-TV Christmas movies I have watched starring Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz since finishing their memoirs (five, as of today); the potential Burton/Lenz feud that has the internet buzzing (is it real or is this some kind of trumped up marketing tactic to boost book sales?); how social media and being able to have pseudo-personal access to celebrities' lives affects the culture and the release of memoirs like this—I could go on and on. And my brother will attest to the fact that we have spent hours on the phone dissecting crap like that. But those are blog posts for another day...or possibly another blog altogether because I generally stick to the books I'm reading around here. But if you want to get into it, I'm so here for those conversations. 

To wrap things up, I might recommend The Rural Diaries and Dinner for Vampires with a strong content warning for bad language. Do not come crying to me if you pick either of these up on my recommendation and realize you are in for a lot of F-words. Like I alluded to at the beginning of this post, celebrity memoir seems like kindof a niche genre and I would think you'd need to be really interested in the subject matter to pick one up. 

How about you? Do you like celebrity memoirs? Or have you ever read one based solely on the fact that the celebrity in question was part of a project you liked? 

Let's Bust a Recap : The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever has been on my radar for years. I missed out on it as a kid, and I've had my eye out for it for quite some time. But when the trailer for a feature film adaptation dropped earlier this year, I went ahead and ordered myself a copy from AbeBooks. I read it the day before my husband took me to see the movie in our cute, one-screen, downtown theater.

And I loved it.

And I went back and watched the movie a second time with my mom, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law. 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever—book and movie—will, without a doubt, become a part of all my future Christmas traditions. 

This beloved children's novel was written by Barbara Robinson and published in 1972. It features the six awful Herdman siblings who, after showing up to Sunday school for the free snacks, decide to star in the annual Christmas pageant by volunteering for the six main roles: Mary, Joseph, the angel, and the three wise men. None of the other kids dare stand up to them, and the whole hilarious tale is narrated in the first person by Beth Bradley whose mom is directing the pageant for the first time after Mrs. Armstrong—the usual director—falls and breaks her leg. As word spreads that the Herdmans have hijacked the pageant, the whole town expects disaster, but, in a beautiful twist, the Herdmans end up teaching the town the true meaning of Christmas. 

I know I already said I loved it, but you guys: I. Loved. It. This little novel delighted me from beginning to end, and weighing in at a slim 80 pages—including full page illustrations—you can easily read it in one sitting. I genuinely laughed out loud the whole way through until getting to the pageant itself at which point tears were streaming down my face. What an absolute treasure of a book.

And the movie! So much care was taken with this 2024 adaptation. The majority of the screenplay was lifted straight from the book. In my year of reading/watching book-to-movie adaptations: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was another smashing success. I think the book comes off a little funnier and the movie a bit more sentimental but both are absolutely wonderful, and, as I said above, I'll be reading and watching in all my Christmases to come. What a joy! I cannot possibly recommend this little gem enthusiastically enough. Get your hands on a copy and read it immediately. 

Do you have any books or movies you like to watch every year at Christmastime? What are your favorite Christmas traditions?

Let's Bust a Recap : Closer Than a Sister

Well, this post is being brought to you today by sheer willpower and self-discipline. I just have not been in the blogging mood lately what with a hurricane landing a tree on my house, wrangling workers into putting our new roof on, having our nieces here for a few weeks, some back and forth with them to and from Alabama, and now the holidays are upon us. Oh my! All I really want to do is sit by my cozy Christmas tree with a hot cup of tea and watch Christmas movies 24/7. 

But that's just not the way real life works and actually, using all the determination I have to write this blog post is fitting because today's subject was a book I read for a women's book club that my church hosted this summer. Your girl is a hardcore introvert so it took a lot of personal resolve to make myself go to the Tuesday night meetings. I muscled through and, if memory serves, I only missed three out of the eight meetings so I'll call that a win. I recruited my BFF Christina to read this one too and she totally cheered me on from Florida as I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to attend the book club up here in North Carolina—usually spending time on the phone with me as I drove to the church and even reading a chapter aloud to me one week when I got behind but still made myself go to the meeting. Because that's what a sister will do.

Closer Than a Sister by Christina Fox was published in 2017. It is an exploration of Biblical friendship and an exhortation to cultivate and care for those relationships. The book is structured in three parts: A Community of Faith, Living with Sisters in Community, and Challenges in Sisterhood. Part I lays out the foundation for the book, explaining from a Biblical viewpoint how we were created for community and how it is Christ that unites us and actually deepens our relationships into more than friendship. This felt very much like a review for me, but I liked Fox's personal—though still intelligent—style of writing. Part II is the practical side of living in community and it makes up the largest chunk of the book. Fox covers topics on helping each other; mourning, rejoicing, and growing together; exhorting one another; and learning from one another. I found this section of the book to be the most helpful and the most challenging. Part III dives into the difficulties and obstacles one encounters when trying to cultivate and foster community. As someone who is still navigating an out-of-state move after living in the same town my whole life, this section was the most encouraging for me. My closest friends no longer live close enough to come over on a whim, kick their shoes off, hug my neck, and settle on my couch for a chat or help me with a project or run errands with me just because. It's been a tough transition and we're over three and a half years into it. I honestly don't know what kind of a state I'd be in if my mom and sister-in-law didn't live right up the street. I probably would have already convinced Cody to take me back to Florida. 

All that to say, I think this book is a great resource, particularly if you are having to cultivate a new community from scratch. I may end up reading it again next year. I am truly thankful for the built-in community that fellow believers experience together. It is such a gift. But all relationships take work and intentionality, and reading Closer Than a Sister was a deeply needed reminder for this girl who has been doing life with the same friends she's had since she was seven years old. That closeness just takes time, there's no two ways about it. 

Have you built a solid community to do life with? And if you did that as an adult, please share all your advice with me! 

Let's Bust a Recap : Lonesome Dove

Hi! Believe it or not, I'm still here, and how are we all doing? Can we believe it's only 15 days till Christmas? You hanging in there? With Thanksgiving being so late this year it feels even crazier than usual. Or is that just me? The day after Thanksgiving, I sat down with my laptop and put together drafts for all the books sitting in my book cart waiting to be recapped. I scheduled them for every Monday/Wednesday/Friday in December. 

And then I completely missed the first week of December. And yesterday for that matter. 

But we keep trying and today we're going back to the book that's been sitting in that cart the longest: Lonesome Dove. 

Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel published in 1985 is widely considered to be the greatest cowboy book of all time. And I think it's the first western I've ever actually read, at least as an adult. I grew up on John Wayne movies—shoot-em-ups, as my dad fondly calls them—playing cowboys and Indians with my brothers, and having Lonesome Dove as my introduction to the genre seems like a disservice to any other western that might come after. It is epic and I get why everyone thinks it's the best. 

But where do I begin? First off, I have a little bone to pick with McMurtry. In this newer edition of the book, there's a 2010 preface in which Larry Jeff McMurtry spoils his own book. And I will never forgive him for that. What kind of an author are we dealing with here? Unbelievable. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but I don't think I could have hung with Larry. He was one of those uppity types that basically got upset when his book got popular because people obviously must not have understood it. Give me a break, sir.

Now that I've got that off my chest: on to the actual book. In the small Texas border town of Lonesome Dove in the late 1870s, we're introduced to two famous retired Texas Rangers: Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae. They're running the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium with a colorful outfit of men and young Newt Dobbs whose late mother was a sweet prostitute named Maggie. When Jake Spoon, one of Gus and Call's old Ranger buddies, drops into Lonesome Dove on the run from the law, waxing poetic about the beauty of the Montana Territory, Call gets it in his head to drive a herd of cattle up and settle the last great frontier. Through a series of events, Jake Spoon and Lorena Wood, Lonesome Dove's lone beautiful prostitute, end up on the cattle drive too and we're off to the races. 

Meanwhile, over in Fort Smith, Arkansas, July Johnson is the sheriff tasked with bringing Jake Spoon to justice, so while the Hat Creek outfit is heading north, July is busy tracking Jake Spoon west across the plains. But July's jaded wife Elmira sees an opportunity in July's departure to make her own getaway from their marriage and hops on a riverboat with a bunch of rough and tumble buffalo hunters, so July's deputy sheriff Roscoe Brown heads out after July to make him aware of his wife's betrayal.

As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts and threads to follow in this 858-page doorstop of a western. Through dangerous river crossings, dust-ups with hostiles, a terrifying abduction, young love, old love, and lots of death, we hang with these characters through the most harrowing experiences imaginable. Lonesome Dove truly is an epic and I echo USA Today's sentiment when I say, "If you read only one western novel in your life, read Lonesome Dove."

My husband and I read this aloud together from March to July and we've been meaning to watch the critically acclaimed 1989 miniseries ever since, which is part of the reason I waited so long to recap this. (Don't get your hopes up: we still haven't gotten around to watching it.) The day we sat down to start this novel, we ended up reading the first 14 chapters which is over 160 pages. Cody and I both loved the characters McMurtry brought to life on the page. But as my husband succinctly put it: Lonesome Dove started strong but didn't end strong. As is the case with a lot of epic works of literature (I'm lookin' at you Anna Karenina, Count of Monte Cristo), after you've spent so much time in the lives of these characters, the ending comes abruptly. And this isn't a spoiler but I will just warn you: no matter what character you set your love on in Lonesome Dove, don't expect a happy ending. The final chapters are bleak. 

For all that, we loved Lonesome Dove and I think it's a novel worth reading. We're still looking forward to settling in with the miniseries sometime this winter to watch Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones bring Gus and Call to life on the screen. Ideally, we'd like to watch it with the rest of my family. We all decided to read it together this year. My brother Reagan flew through it and my sister Sarah is almost done. I'm not sure about everyone else, but come Christmas Day you may catch us all sprawled out on couches with Mom's apple pie watching young Newt try to figure out life in the Old West. 

Let's Bust a Recap : Hillbilly Elegy

All right, y'all, over here in the States it's what we call "Super Tuesday" and if you haven't cast your vote already, I hope you have plans to do so at some point today. I can't think of a better recap to post today than the memoir of one of the vice presidential candidates. I had no intentions of reading this book this year (or possibly ever, I got it for free out of a stack of books someone was getting rid of), but when Trump announced back in July that J.D. Vance would be his running mate, I remembered I already had this wildly popular memoir sitting on my shelf, figured now was as good a time as any to read it, and determined to pick it up before the election. 

And I did, back in September, but ugh. Where to start? I have a lot of thoughts about this, and they're not particularly positive. On the one hand, it was easy to read and you have to admire someone who claws his way out of poverty and makes something of himself, but on the other hand, the only reason he called this book "Hillbilly Elegy" is because "White Trash Elegy" doesn't have the same ring and probably wouldn't sell.

And that's not me being ugly. Vance says as much himself in the introduction to his book when he writes, "Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family." Now, I won't get into the nitty-gritty of it with y'all, but down here in the South, "hillbilly", "redneck", and "white trash" have different connotations for most of us and I would hardly lump them all together as being the same class of people. But that's really neither here nor there. I would venture to say that his beloved Mamaw and Papaw, who he dedicates Hillbilly Elegy to, would roll in their graves if they knew he aired their private business all over the country (and world?) the way he did and even turned the circus into a huge movie.

Vance opens his introduction admitting that publishing a "memoir" at the ripe age of thirty-one is absurd and I agree with him there. He wrote this book before he even went into politics or had any children. He says himself that he hasn't done anything great or anything worth paying money to read about. 

And then he proceeds to write a whole book about how white trash his family is and how he got out of the cycle of poverty in the Rust Belt through the Marines, Ohio State University, and eventually Yale Law School. 

And I mean, good for him. Truly. If half of what he writes is true, then the fact that he worked his way up and out is commendable. 

But honestly, he's just not a likable guy and reading his memoir turned me from being indifferent about just another U.S. senator I didn't know much about, to rolling my eyes at another clichéd politician. Literally in 2016, his memoir dragged politicians and their ilk through the mud, and he outspokenly opposed a Trump presidency in the press. But just a few years later, he's running for the Senate, and now he's Trump's vice presidential running-mate? Can you say whiplash? 

And let me be clear: this post is not intended as some kind of smear campaign against Vance and an endorsement for Tim Walz. Kamala's running-mate is an even bigger joke than J.D. Vance. My point is: it's hard to be an American and not get cynical about our political landscape. While I'm thankful for the privilege to vote and having a say in the composition of my country's government, I can't say I'm particularly excited about anyone I'm voting for as I head to the polls today. It is what it is.

Hillbilly Elegy is *ahem* colorful, and an entertaining read, but I ultimately walked away from it scratching my head as to why Trump chose Vance to be his running-mate. Then again, I'm still out here astounded that I live in a world where Donald Trump was the president of the United States of America...and is running again. Politics, am I right?

I guess I'll wrap this up by reiterating my encouragement to get out and vote. Be informed. Read books. Keep your head down. Make good choices. And God help us all. 

Pumpkin Carving 2024

Happy Halloween! 

We're taking a break from book recaps today for our annual pumpkin carving post! This year's pumpkin carving was extra-fun and extra-chaotic because four of our favorite girls are staying with us for a couple weeks. They (and their parents) are in the middle of flipping a house—in another state!—to move in to and so we naturally demanded that they come stay with us while their parents are in the midst of closings and packing and moving and unpacking and all that goes along with it. The last time we got to carve pumpkins with these fabulous nieces of ours was back in 2020 so it was about time we did this again.

This year, we decided to throw paint into the mix and what we ended up with was one pumpkin just carved, no paint. Two pumpkins just painted, no carving. And three pumpkins carved and painted. It was a mess, but it was a fun mess and I hope these girlies always remember Halloween 2024 with Uncle Cody and Auntie Hannah. 

Uncle Cody came in clutch with a silly dad joke. We all had gotten busy taking the tops off our pumpkins and cleaning them out, with Uncle Cody on hand to assist, but his own pumpkin was nowhere in sight. The girls and I kept pestering him sweetly asking him when he was going to start his pumpkin and what he was going to do, but he said he was waiting for the inspiration to hit. When it finally did, he ended up painting his pumpkin and finishing before all of us. Typical. I decided to commemorate this special year by carving 2024 and four hearts to always remember carving pumpkins with our four sweethearts.

Our creative girls ended up with an upside down melty ice cream cone, Agnes and Lucy from the Despicable Me franchise, and Bluey. 

I absolutely adore how these silly, colorful pumpkins turned out, and I wouldn't trade one second of the mess or the chaos or the resulting cleanup and exhaustion. These pumpkins may end up on our Christmas card. The brainstorming and giggles and paint-covered hands (and faces!) are memories I'll treasure forever.

Have fun trick-or-treating tonight or just stuffing yourself with candy or whatever it is you do in your neck of the woods!

October 30,

Let's Bust a Recap : Dandelion Wine

Is Ray Bradbury my favorite author now? That is the question I found myself asking as Dandelion Wine immediately became one of my All-Time Favorite Books while reading it this summer. A few years ago, I read my first Bradbury—Something Wicked This Way Comes—and while I wouldn't necessarily say it's an All-Time Favorite Book, it did contain one of my All-Time Favorite Literary Scenes. When Dandelion Wine fell out of the TBR Jar right at the beginning of summer, I once again found myself immersed in the perfect book at the perfect time, and I savored Ray Bradbury's 1957 novel slowly over July and August. 

I say "novel" but Dandelion Wine could also be accurately described as a series of short stories loosely connected by their summer setting and the Spaulding family. The book centers around Douglas Spaulding, age 12, in the summer of 1928 in his small hometown of Green Town, Illinois, and his exploration of and attempt to capture his own coming of age in his journal with the help of his younger brother Tom. Just as Douglas' grandfather's homemade dandelion wine in the book serves as a metaphor for all the distilled joys of summer, so Dandelion Wine the novel itself is nostalgia distilled. I fell in love with it from the very first words, and sipped it slowly all summer long. When I finished reading it, I immediately ordered The Martian Chronicles.

I don't have much else to say. After reading Something Wicked This Way Comes and now Dandelion Wine, I feel confident in saying that Bradbury is a master of evoking a sense of place and memory in his writing, and he somehow manages to spill the human heart onto the page. Even though I've never been a twelve year old boy, or lived any summers before 1987, or seen a small Illinois town; Dandelion Wine somehow took me straight back to my own childhood summers, running wild over my small Central Florida town with my brothers and all my best friends, and living as hard as I could before school started again in the fall. Dandelion Wine should be read outside—preferably on a front porch—and stretched to last as long as possible, just like we wanted to stretch those childhood summers out forever. 

Despite Dandelion Wine winning a spot on my All-Time Favorites list, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. That often is the case with my favorite books. I feel more protective of them, and don't want someone who won't appreciate it reading it. So if you pick this one up, don't come to me to do anything other than praise its beauty because you will not find a willing audience in me. Dandelion Wine is a treasure. 

What are some of your All-Time Favorite Books?

Also, I just have to include this fun fact: our main character in Dandelion Wine was Ray Bradbury's childhood version of himself and he named him after himself and his father, "Douglas" being Bradbury's middle name, and "Spaulding" being his dad's middle name. Just another reason to love this little gem of a novel.