It’s a New Year! But for us, we didn’t celebrate a lot. Shrew #1 was physically and emotionally exhausted from the previous week, Shrew #3 was out of state visiting family, and I, Shrew #2, had just gotten back from celebrating Christmas with my family. My boyfriend and I laid around and watched episodes of Spongebob on Amazon Prime and ate soup. We watched the ball drop at midnight, but we didn’t really kiss because I have not one, but two colds sores on my bottom lip.
But the New Year does signify some good things. Our book club starting up again. Shrew #3 finishing up her bachelor’s degree. Shrew #1 learning about herself and really pushing out her comfort zone. Me, I’m still just reading feminist books and stewing on my bitterness. (I’m kidding. I’m really looking forward to some of my goals this year.) The New Year also is also the beginning of a series of blog posts from me, the Lone Shrew. Because I’m me, a touch on the obsessive and over-eager side, I read A TON and I like writing about what I read. It’s fulfilling
To start the year off, I just finished reading Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein.
First of all, I’d never heard of Carrie Brownstein, which is probably shocking to some people. I love music, but I’m not a music person, so I don’t know a lot of bands, songs, or artists that most normal people probably do know. I also don’t normally read books about musicians, but that was one of the categories on my challenge this year. And after researching, I decided to give this one a go.
Part of what drew me to Carrie Brownstein’s memoir is that she comes from the Riot Grrl days. I had never heard of Riot Grrl until last year when I read a YA book that mentioned it. I was intrigued and obsessively started reading online about it. I read the book Girls to the Front which is an excellent documentation of Riot Grrl, and I even ended up doing a final project for one of my classes that paid homage to the movement. If I was a teen or young adult during the Riot Grrl days, I can’t say that I would have been a part of it or been interested in it as much. There’s something about history that makes movements or organizations more exciting to us than they might’ve if we’d actually been there, and that’s how I feel about Riot Grrl. I love it, but I don’t know if I would’ve loved it as much if I was there.
Carrie’s writing is something that’s completely raw. She is very, very honest about her anxieties and insecurities as a musician and as a person. She admits to her flaws as a bandmate and a friend, but I was always rooting for her anyway. Though it is a music book and the majority chunk of the text deals with Sleater-Kinney, I wish there had been more from the other aspects of her life. There are personal details I would have been more interested in than just what touring was like, and I wanted to know Carrie, not just Carrie, member of Sleater-Kinney. The beginning parts of the book, where she describes her relationships with her family and vignettes from her childhood that led her to her band, were the best parts of the memoir. I needed more of that.
Carrie’s memoir is something that you’d enjoy more if you were already a fan of her music. I wasn’t, but I still enjoyed it just the same. It was a hard read. Normally, I can read a memoir in three days, but it took nearly ten days for me to read hers. It drags in parts, and then in other parts, the book’s a rush. I felt like I’d been taken along for a train ride that would hit the brakes too hard sometimes. But I guess that’s what punk is.
My Goodreads rating was 3/5.
xoxo The Lone Shrew
The Salty Shrews 