Review: Not That Kind of Girl

Recap: Lena Dunham is a woman who has something to say. Like her or not, she uses her platform to proudly proclaim her thoughts and opinions and is willing to use any medium available to do it. Her book of essays is no exception. After years of fictionalizing semi-autobiographical vignettes of women in their twenties on her TV show Girls, she put her pen to the page in this more honestly revealing look at her life to date. She acknowledges that she is young and has so much more to go, and reading her book five years after publication proves as much. In some ways, it’s dated already. Since publication, Dunham and her long-term boyfriend, who is openly written about in several essays, broke up. She also had several major medical emergencies and surgeries and became clean and sober. Her life proves that much of what you think you know in your twenties gets flipped on its head by the time you turn 30.

But as “dated” as the book is in terms of the plot twists of her personal life is how timeless the book is at the same time. She writes openly about losing her virginity, sexual assault, falling in love, falling out of love, breakup with guys, breakups with friends, the power of female friendship, the seemingly always difficult relationship women have with food and their bodies and her experiences with drugs, alcohol, family and the professional working world. Hers is a book and a story and a life that’s relatable for any woman. They’re experiences that, good or bad, that little girls and young women will continue to have for years to come, no matter what generation they fall into.

That may be what makes her book so powerful. This is not some celebrity memoir, dripping with scandal and salacious details of behind-the-scenes hookups and drug problems. Nor is it an opportunity to use her name to announce a political or social do-gooder platform. It’s also not a self-help book, pronouncing herself the knower of all things. It’s simply her story, her life as a person, a woman and nothing else.

Analysis: It’s her honesty that makes the book work, but also her writing. Her simultaneously self-deprecating and ostentatiously prideful humor seeps into every chapter in a way that made me laugh and sometimes shout “Yes! Exactly!” But in darker moments and depictions of assault and disordered eating, my heart hurt. She writes in a matter-of-fact way, not meant to incur sympathy. I respect that.

The book was divided by large sections: Love & Sex, Body, Friendship, Work and Big Picture. Each essay is placed in whatever chapter it fits best thematically. There’s no timeline. Everything’s out of order. Some stories are from college, some as young as when she was two years old. I found myself wondering if she wrote the book all at once or if she pulled from journal entries and essays she wrote in real-time throughout her life. They were just so detailed, it was impressive to me that she would still recall certain nuggets of information and deep emotions from 10, 15, even 20 years earlier.

Some essays were so brief, I was left to wonder what their significance was. But all together, it was a well-structured mess of stories paralleling the well-structured mess she tends to portray on TV, in movies, on red carpets and Instagram: the honest, well-structured mess so many of us are and try to hide, but Lena Dunham does not.

Get Not That Kind of Girl in paperback now for $9.89.

Or on your Kindle for $6.99.

Review: Wherever You Go There You Are

Recap: Being present. Being mindful. Less time aimlessly scrolling on your phone. These are all things you hear more people talking about these days. Aspirations as many realize how harmful, depressing and unproductive we can be around our phones. But saying that we’re going to do all this is different from actually doing it. The art of mindfulness is less an art and more a conscientious practice — a workout for your brain that develops over time through a lot of hard work. Typically mindfulness starts with meditation. 

I started meditating a few years ago during a tough time in my life and loved the little bits of time it gave me each day to simply relax. But after a while, my meditation practice plateaued, so I went on a five-day silent meditation retreat to really get my engines revving. And boy, did it work. I left refreshed and inspired, with a new outlook and shift in perspective on life. I had bought Wherever You Go, There You Are a while ago but never read it, so I finallyread it after my retreat in the hopes it would keep my meditation glow going. It did. Wherever You Go is the perfect book to not only explain what meditation is and why and how it can be so good for you –so cleansing, so nourishing — but it also explains explicitly how to do it. So many fear meditation because it can seem too “hippie-dippie” or “woo-woo.” Or they worry they won’t be able to do it, that it’ll hurt to sit still for so long, that they won’t be good at it and that their minds will race.

Newsflash: that’s kind of the point: to see how much your mind races and learn what that really means about you and your feelings and emotions. It can be powerful, and this book helps you to understand its value so you can put it in motion.

Analysis: Author Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the best and brightest in the world of meditation. He’s science-based, so some of his writing can be a little heady. But his metaphors really work, like the mountain meditation. He explains that we should imagine ourselves as mountains, sitting tall with dignity, but still as various weather patterns and chaos happen around us. Some of the quotes and passages he pulled from other great meditators and literature also helped me better understand the power of meditation. Lines like “It turns out we have plenty of time, if we are willing to hold any moments at all in awareness” were a complete and utter revelation to me. Exactly! Yes! This is meditation’s value. But Kabat-Zinn’s ability to word it in such an understandable, simplistic way was incredibly helpful.

And then there was his honesty. He writes about how much he hates washing dishes or how he runs at rapid fire speed up the stairs only to catch himself and wonder “what’s the rush?” These were just what I needed halfway through the book when I thought “this guy is pretty enlightened and I will never be as ‘good’ a meditator as him” — though rightfully so, there’s no such thing as a “good” meditator anyway. But they showed that he has moments during which he lacks mindfulness too. We all do. We are not all walking Buddhas. And so it’s okay if you’re not mindful. Just catch yourself. Without judgement. And keep going in the moment. Wherever you go, there you are.

Get Wherever You Go There You Are in paperback for $8.40.

Or on your Kindle for $9.99.