What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

Some thoughts on reading

My friend

Mr. Troy Ford

started up a series on his Substack not long ago called “The Books We ❤️ Club” (TBW❤️C for short), and I was so taken with the first story in the series, by

Dr. Kathleen Waller

, that I asked Troy if I could give it a shot. He said yes.

Picking up a book you remember loving long ago is a weird experience … and it prompted me to read far more deeply than I have in a while, and to come to terms with my own complicated relationship to depicting emotion in my own writing. If you’re so inclined, check out the full story over on Troy’s ‘Stack:

Why I ❤️ Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"

Another fellow ‘Stacker,

Joe Mahoney

, author of

Assorted Nonsense

, gave me the chance to do an advance read on his memoir, Adventures in the Radio Trade. Here’s a short review I posted to Amazon and Goodreads:

It’s rare to read a book and to find yourself so keenly aware of the audience that will cherish that book … but that’s where I found myself as I read Joe Mahoney’s engaging memoir Adventures in the Radio Trade, an account of his long career working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a technician, a producer, a sound-effects wizard, and a manager. Those who listened to the CBC from the late 1980s through the 2000s will undoubtedly enjoy the “behind the scenes” look at the making of many of their favorite programs, and Mahoney is a terrific guide, for he possesses an amazing memory for detail as well as an affable style. You can’t help but like the way the curious, humble narrator describes speaking French with Margaret Atwood, making his first sound effects in Studio 212, or going on strike with his colleagues.

Mahoney’s recall of detail will endear him to another natural audience for this collection of tales: people who have worked in radio, or who have an intense interest in the technical details of radio production. Mahoney’s obvious love of learning new technology allows him to create interesting accounts of all the tools he learned to use over the years.

What lifts this book out of the realm of radio industry nostalgia, however, is the charming character of Mahoney himself. Talkative, informal, and continually curious, Mahoney shows that a curious and reasonably intelligent person can make it anywhere, as long as they’re willing to work hard and try new things.

After I posted this review, I found myself reflecting on why it was Joe’s memoir was so different that most of what I read, and I realized it was this: Joe Mahoney is not all caught up in his feelings. He doesn’t write about his trauma or his anxiety or his depression, and not once did he talk about his journey to wellness. He is entirely without self-pity, and that is a joy to encounter.

Can you tell I’ve read a few too many personal essays? The funny thing is, before joining Substack nearly three years ago, I didn’t read memoirs. Literary fiction, non-fiction, history, sure, but I can’t recall reading a single memoir.

All that changed when I joined Substack. Since then I’ve been fairly drowning in the junior version of the memoir, the “personal essay,” both as reader and as writer. And sometimes they’re a little much.

Sometimes it seems like a lot of the personal essays out there are responding to this actual call for submissions: “The topic is unimportant as long as you are honest to the point of being cringeworthy.” Judging by many of the personal essays I read, they should be getting a lot of submissions! Cringeworthy indeed.

Is there room for personal essays that don’t wallow in emotion—or at least explore emotions with the same skepticism that Ray Carver applied to the depiction of emotion in his stories? I’d like to think so.