Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe

Reckless Daughter is a soulless look at an iconic musician who bared her soul with her songs.

I made it to a little more than 30 percent before I punched out. Normally, I would just add this to my DNF file and skip a review. But I couldn't shake the lost opportunity of what this book could have been.

The author skims the surface with various comments by Mitchell from interviews he conducted and others he used as sources. They paint her as fairly harsh and conceited. Maybe she is, or maybe she was a woman in a business where she had to believe in herself and stand up for herself to get anywhere. And maybe there was more to her than the side we see here. 

Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this book was going to be cool and quirky. I was half right.

Strange Weather in Tokyo falls into the category of something I saw highly recommended somewhere, grabbed the book when it was on sale cheap, and didn't really know or remember much about its description. I do that a lot.

In this case, it fell just a little flat with me. I'd describe it as a good book, written with a unique style and vibe all its own. I liked it well enough. But it never full-on clicked for me until the very end, at which point, well, it was over! 

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful hybrid of advice and memoir had me from the start.

Written by Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir Wild became a bestseller and a movie, it shouldn't be surprising that her advice is steeped in stories of her own life. It's as much memoir as advice, and maybe quite a bit more on the memoir side.

There were a couple of places where I wasn't as interested, that she lost me for a moment. I simply skipped to the next chapter and sailed on. 

What to Watch April 2022

April will rain down with new shows to watch, and I haven't even caught up on what premiered in March! I'm excited to watch The Outlaws, a BBC show created and directed by Stephen Merchant, who's also in the cast. We're also getting new seasons of Russian Doll, Selling Sunset, The Flight Attendant, Barry, Better Call Saul and many more. Then there's new series like The Offer (about the making of The Godfather), Billy the Kid, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and much more where that came from!

As always, I've compiled my top picks and I'm sharing them here, along with links to everything new, so you can make your own picks for must-watch viewing. Most of what I've collected is on streaming, but a few shows can be found on good old-fashioned network TV. And away we go!