Book cover of The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir

Book description

A contentious, deeply moving ode to friendship, love, and urban life in the spirit of Fierce Attachments

A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Odd Woman and the City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

As much about ideas and the nature of friendship as it is about the city, this slim volume captures, better than any other I know, the visceral feel of living in New York. Fiercely independent, Gornick wanders the city’s streets in the “habit of loneliness,” ever watching, listening, and thinking. A child of working-class Jewish immigrants, she grew up in the Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s, and writes in a funny, smart, rueful, and tell-it-like-it-is voice that is unmistakably New York. 

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Book cover of The Pianist's Only Daughter: A Memoir

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The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir is an authentic, poignant, and sometimes humorous exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.

Only daughter and geriatric social worker Kathryn Betts Adams brings to life her colorful, emotionally volatile parents, an English teacher/poet and a music professor/concert pianist, from their early…

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