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Cool, Calm & Contentious (2011)

by Merrill Markoe(Favorite Author)

3.22 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0345518918 (ISBN13: 9780345518910)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Villard

review 1: This book gave me the willies. Not because it was scary by any stretch of the imagination, but because every time I read a chapter I had the weirdest feeling of déjà vu. I had to keep checking to see if I had read this book already even though I've never read any Merril Markoe before. It was a strange and unexplained phenomena.No déjà vu reading the dog essays though. I skipped over those. I get the appeal of dogs as pets, but dog people speaking in their dogs voice, well, that also gives me the willies.
review 2: I had never heard of Merrill Markoe or read any of her books before, so this was a totally new experience for me.I just finished a set of essays by Chelsea Handler and their styles are completely (!!!) different- Markoe's are far better written an... mored with less swearing, but Handler's make me laugh out loud while Markoe's have me smiling every once in awhile.I wasn't enjoying them much until Markoe laid the trauma hammer right into my unsuspecting brain with her essay about sleeping with her college professor (when she didn't want to) and being raped by an intruder the next night. Up until that point, I thought that this was just a harmless collection of childhood angst and dog humor. After that very personal and devastating essay, I was hooked because I realized that there was more to her story than endless complaining about forming a meaningful relationship with a man after the age of 30.Her writing is very dark but intensely honest- almost as if Markoe is a gigantic magnifying mirror and real life is a bunch of blackheads on your nose. Read this if you can handle taking an unfiltered and unapologetic look at life. I didn't find the essays funny but they were real. less

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