Moranthology (edition 2012)

After her tremendously successful book How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran is back with a collection of columns she's written for The Times Magazine in her appropriately named anthology Moranthology.
Wading through a mishmash of different topics, mostly in the realms of popular culture, she also broaches more serious topics, such as living on benefits, or, my personal favorites, allows up-close-and-personal insights into her life, including how she got her trademark grey hair strand. Topics may vary, some columns being more poignant than others, ranging from grave to funny, and always with a tendency of bordering on the vulgar, Moran's witty and eloquent writing style is definitely the red thread in this book.
Little did I know this is a collection of older work and the only new additions are the short introductions to each column. Of course this presented the perfect opportunity to simply get to know her work better. Unfortunately though this book shares the fate of many anthologies - the likelihood that you will end up loving a handful of articles while the rest is just average padding between the covers, a padding that, in my case, consisted of an abundance of pieces about British TV series.
Seeing how my expectations were high after her previous book, this collection was admittedly a bit of a let-down for me. However, this is simply a matter of personal preferences and should not discourage anyone giving this book a try.
In short: A mildly entertaining anthology in typical Moran-style! ( )

The Good Stuff

Call me Caitlin we would sooo get along - even better I say we do a Girls Night Out with Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, Jenny Lawson, you and me. It would be - to quotes m 4 yr old - EPIC!
Laugh out loud funny yet touching and honest
Vicki told me I would love it and she was right -- thanks for the chat about this author that night at Lemony Snickett
The night time conversations between Caitlin and her hubby are hilarious
The MTV Hoes piece is right on - nicely written Caitlin
The girl is real people - she says it like it is
The women has mad love for Libraries - that is all you need to know - anyone who loves libraries this much has to be truly awesome
That's it I have to watch Doctor Who and Sherlock
Self deprecating - you know I love that in a person

The Not So Good Stuff

Do you know how hard it was to choose only 3 quotes
It ended
Dammit I have enough books to read, now I have to buy "How to be a Woman"

Favorite Quotes/Passages

"However many terrible, rankling, peeve-inducing things may occur, there are always libraries."

"But one of the things I most love about this country is that we do not, will not, stare at each other. The British will not spend all day gawking at each other in the drizzle, however odd we may look. The entire cast of Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert could roll into Starbucks, with candy-colored cockatiels flying out of their hair, and -after a brief glance upwards- everyone would studiously go back to reading their papers, as if the door had merely been blown open by the wind. In a cramped, crowded nation, we know the essence of politeness is ignoring pretty much everyone around us."

"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a consumer with a credit card and an inchoate "need" for "stuff""

Who Should/Shouldn't Read

If you don't like this I don't think we could be friends
It's on my staff picks people - you know you have to read it

4.5 Dewey's

I received from HarperCollins Canada in exchange for an honest review - thanks Shannon!!! ( )

Let’s let my new BFF Caitlin Moran describe what this book is about for you:

In HOW TO BE A WOMAN, I was limited to a single topic: women. Their hair, their shoes and their crushes on Aslan from The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (which I KNOW to be universal). However! In my new book MORANTHOLOGY – as the title suggests – I am set free to tackle THE REST OF THE WORLD: Ghostbusters, Twitter, caffeine, panic attacks, Michael Jackson’s memorial service, being a middle-class marijuana addict, Doctor Who, binge-drinking, Downton Abbey, pandas, my own tragically early death, and my repeated failure to get anyone to adopt the nickname I have chosen for myself: ‘Puffin’. I go to a sex-club with Lady Gaga, cry on Paul McCartney’s guitar, get drunk with Kylie, appear on Richard & Judy as a gnome, climb into the TARDIS, sniff Sherlock Holmes’s pillows at 221b Baker Street, write Amy Winehouse’s obituary, turn up late to Downing Street for Gordon Brown, and am rudely snubbed at a garden party by David Cameron –although that’s probably because I called him ‘A C3PO made of ham’. Fair enough. And, in my spare time – between hangovers – I rant about the welfare state, library closures and poverty; like a shit Dickens or Orwell, but with tits.

I think that is enough to let you decide if this book is for you. It was for me. My only complaint is that she must be limited in how much she can write in her columns because I wanted MORE MORE MORE! ( )

Pop culture has never been a strong suit for me so perhaps it isn't surprising that I hadn't heard of British columnist Caitlin Moran aside from as the author of the successful How to Be a Woman. I haven't read her first, much-lauded collection but was still interested in reading this second collection of her previously published columns covering a wide variety of topics from pop culture to current events to politics. Tying each of the columns together, Moran has added brief introductory blurbs before each of them ranging from personal tidbits about herself and her relationship with her husband to reactions to the pieces to why she's chosen and arranged the pieces the way she has.

Moran is opinionated, funny, and snarky and her views are on full display in these pieces. There are interviews with famous musicians, her take on current television shows, her obsession with certain stars and her disinterest in others, columns on her own childhood growing up poor and on her own children, social ills, and so much more. While even I, under my pop culture free rock, recognize some of what she writes about, there are at least an equal number of topics with which I am unfamiliar and that certainly made the reading about Moran's take on those topics less interesting than I imagine it is when you are au fait with the topics. The writing itself is generally good even though the essays themselves are a tad patchy in terms of depth, humor, and interest. UK pop culture fans will probably delight in the entire collection and others can appreciate the occasional earned laughs. ( )

Caitlin Moran had a bestselling book, How To Be A Woman, a book that humorously and honestly celebrates being a woman and a feminist. That book's success led to another book, Moranthology, a compilation of Moran's columns from the Times of London.

I have not yet read How To Be A Woman, but it is on my TBR list. As someone who used to write a weekly column on food and family, (and a feminist), I was really looking forward to this new book.

Moran writes mostly about entertainment, and anyone who is a big fan of the British TV shows Dr. Who and Sherlock will surely enjoy her many columns on these iconic shows. She even gets a backstage visit to Dr. Who, and her analysis of this show has made me put the show in my NetFlix queue.

She is not such a fan of Downton Abbey, which has become an American sensation. She has however become friendly with Dan Stevens, who plays handsome heir Matthew Crawley on Downton, and tells a very funny story about being with him at a bar in New York City. (Stevens is appearing on Broadway in The Heiress, and he is wonderful in it; if you get a chance to see that show, I recommend it.)

My favorite entertainment story is her interview with Sir Paul McCartney. She missed her flight to his concert in Milan, but managed to salvage the interview. She thought she had asked him a brilliant question- "If you had a terrible accident and your face got all smashed up-heaven forbid, obviously- would you rebuild it to look like yourself, or would you change it, so you could finally be anonymous again?"

She thought it was good question, touching "on fame, beauty, identity, ego and the idea of living two lives in one lifetime." He thought it was a terrible question.

Moran shares some stories about her life, and the way she tortures her poor husband by waking him in the middle of the night to ask such questions as "what is the first thing you think of when you think of me?" is hilariously egotistical. One time he finally explodes at her, telling her that she is a slob (he is neat) and sharing a list of things that she has done to prove his point. (Some of them are kinda gross, I'll give him that.)

If you liked How To Be A Woman, you will enjoy reading more of Moran's writings in this book. She is a very good writer, and like any good columnist (she won Columnist of the Year from the British Press) she is is economic with her words, cutting to the chase whilst getting to the (often funny) point.

A quote from Marie Claire on the cover of the book compares her to "Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham, all rolled into one", and I think that aptly describes Caitlin Moran. Humorous Anglophile feminists, this book is for you. ( )