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52nd out of 332 books
—
526 voters
Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around: A Memoir of Floods, Fires, Parades, and Plywood
by
Cheryl Wagner (Goodreads Author)
Print and public-radio journalist Wagner describes rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina...Despite Kafkaesque experiences with the infamous bureaucratic mess that threatened to undo New Orleans once and for all, the couple held on to their optimism for the city and their little piece of it. Wagner captures the nostalgia, the heartbreak and the friendships spawned in Katrina's
...morePaperback, 240 pages
Published
May 1st 2009
by Citadel Press
(first published 2009)
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I wanted a book to give me an idea of what Katrina was like, and also what Nola felt like to a native. Wagner's story more than delivers on that, and with a writing style that makes the book feel like a different place. I was amazed at how long their personal cleanup took, and a little bit miffed by the total damage. Especially when I thought about buying this in the garden district last weekend & finding the city to be in good shape. (for those who don't know, as I didn't pre-visit, the gar...more
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Pretty good. Some cunning language. This is the story of a sort of young white? couple of freelancers who live in New Orleans and dutifully and painfully and triumphantly and slowly rebuild the house they own in Mid-City after Hurricane Katrina. There are some lovely dog anecdotes, some real live disaster inspired bickering, death of future planning and stuff based economies lost to the flood, death of humans and friends and violence, family dynamics, pests, garbage and unknown toxic waste. The...more
Post-Katrina New Orleans from the point of view of someone who returned to repair and live in her flooded Mid-City home. Cheryl Wagner writes conversationally (she's a radio commentator) and very personally about the what it was like to return with her boyfriend to their almost-deserted neighborhood and to do the exhausting work--physical and emotional--of restoring their home. Reading this book made me realize the incredible amount of energy and commitment it would have taken to return to New O...more
got an advanced reading copy of this through the bookstore. LOVED it. & by that i mean -- this book is difficult & true & heartbreaking & hilarious. wagner makes me simultaneously feel pretty much like a jerk for leaving the south & also a little grateful that at least some folk with a sense of humor & a deep, abiding love for the city & stamina for bullshit are still there, piecing their homes & lives back together.
this book is filled with gorgeous moments: at on...more
this book is filled with gorgeous moments: at on...more
Though there are some writing eccentricities here--a couple of places where perhaps the narrative jumps through time more than the reader is given cues for--this memoir completely captivated me. I learned a great deal about the New Orleans flood and its aftermath, and Wagner's tone really invited me in. Her focus is tight on her own neighborhood and experience, and yet her story reveals much about the whole disaster, without explicitly doing so. I am impressed by all she got this memoir of flood...more
I admit, I have a particular soft spot for this book because of how often it references Helen Hill - the New Orleans filmmaker I so admired who was murdered after Katrina. And it felt like the Katrina story told by someone I could relate to - thirty-ish, gainfully employed but not in the usual way, no extra resources to help her out of the "my house just got flooded" jam. I especially liked the prologue about her knowing the kind of people who come up with crazy schemes and say "what a good idea...more
Every year, Saint Mary's College chooses a text for Freshmen to read, a narrative that unites the incoming class with a common frame of reference, joining students in a shared discovery of learning. This year's pick was Cheryl Wagner's memoir Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around. At the time Wagner wrote her book, our students were thirteen years old. They were familiar with the footage, and they knew Katrina was bad, but Wagner's story turns, what many of us might have experienced as an abstract nat...more
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As you might imagine, this memoir is pretty depressing. It's a Katrina memoir, written by a woman who's in the vicinity of my age group, and tells the story of her and her partner's endless, miserable work to clean and restore their flooded home. The question she keeps asking herself (besides "should we run like hell") is, can New Orleans ever be the community it was, or did it drown and rot away with the stinking flood waters?
I really enjoyed the author's voice; it's not a funny story but she m...more
I really enjoyed the author's voice; it's not a funny story but she m...more
Wagner, a contributor on NPR's This American Life, writes about the long process of recovery personally, as well as sharing the changes within her community, after Hurricane Katrina.
The tone of her memoir is conversational and provides an excellent account of living through an enormous natural disaster, and literally and figuratively rebuilding her life despite unending obstacles and bureaucracy. Her story is engaging and honest and includes a great deal of humor.
The tone of her memoir is conversational and provides an excellent account of living through an enormous natural disaster, and literally and figuratively rebuilding her life despite unending obstacles and bureaucracy. Her story is engaging and honest and includes a great deal of humor.
I know its contrite to say that a book is "honest." But, that is really the only word I can come up with to describe this one. Wagner is funny, blunt, and completely aware of her relative luck. It shifts this from being another raw look at this tragedy into something deeper and longer-lasting. Pretty amazing.
This book made me really angry at times (mainly because it revealed so starkly the gross failure of our government to protect and serve its citizens during a crisis, but also because it showed just how screwed you are if you are poor or mentally ill in America). Parts were also quite funny or touching or both at the same time. Wagner has a clear, honest voice and offers an important portrait of what rebuilding after Katrina has really meant for New Orleans.
Funny at times, heartbreaking at others, this is a memoir about a couple in the throes of post-Katrina damage control. If you love NOLA (like me) and would like a glimpse of what it was like after the flood with a side of humor and a dose of awesome dog characters, you could pick this one.
Sad and funny at the same time. Good memoire of a couple who lived through the aftermath of Katrina and their trials and tribulations trying to restore their home after the flood. Brought New Orleans' tragedy home
Certainly not "high literature", but a very personal and well-written account on the author's experiences with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans. I found it deeply moving and insightful.
This was a difficult book. It's a very gritty memoir about one couple's experiences in the wake of Katrina. I thought that Wagner's use of email snippets to paint a picture of what she and her friends were thinking and feeling in the first days was especially powerful. Some parts are funny, but mostly it's about how Wagner and her boyfriend trudged through the recovery process. I only had to experience the hurricane more peripherally because of how it affected immediate family members; I suspect...more
To be fair, the author is one of my best friends from high school, but I think this memoir does a really good job of capturing life in New Orleans post-Katrina. Funny at times, but more often disturbing.
Almost finished with this book. Its a quick, easy read. Its one couple's experience through Hurricane Katrina and rebuilding after. Its pretty interesting and hey, their lives are way crappier than mine.
Interesting account of post-Katrina living in New Orleans. EP had it out from the library and when she finished it, I read it too. I read it in about 24 hours, it's very quick.
A story of a couple from NOLA and their difficulties in renovating their house in Midcity after Katrina. They decide to rebuild and persevere despite many setbacks and obstacles.
A first hand account of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. She tells a great story and turns a depressing slice of life into a very entertaining read!
Got this one with a Valentine's day GC, and unfortunately, I have to say it's been pretty much a rip so far. The author's style is not as terse as I tend to go for, and so far the story's pretty boring. It's also kinda funny how people reacted differently to the people who were stuck in NO after Katrina. Wagner and her partner complain non-stop about their friends who didn't leave (by choice) and now need help, but so far they stay right where they are in Gainesville, FL.
We'll see...the jury's s...more
We'll see...the jury's s...more
Really good; loved the author's "voice". Interesting perspective, especially between the folks in New Orleans who DID flood and those who did NOT. Best Katrina book I've read other than Chris Rose's heart wrenching collection of Times-Picayune articles, One Dead in the Attic.
Great account of post-Katrina New Orleans. Sad and humorous at times. Really easy to read, it's like the author is in front of you telling her story.
Brilliant. Bird's eye view of life in Mid-City post-Katrina. Complete with cameo from my friend Chris.
Loved this. Engaging, witty, funny, heart wrenching.
A good, but tough book to read. It's the kind of book you struggle through not because it's poorly written, but because the author does such a good job of making you feel her anxiety, frustration and zillion other emotions. It still blows my mind how colossally the government (federal, state and local) screwed up on Katrina and the rippling effects, even years later, that has had on the people of New Orleans and the other hard-hit Gulf-coast regions effected by this massive storm. Nothing like t...more
May 29, 2009
Virginia
is currently reading it
Love it so far...
I wanted to like this book more than I did. I never warmed to Cheryl and eventually lost interest in her perspective on the re-building process.
I really enjoyed this memoir of one woman's experiences during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. Wagner is a person I can imagine being friends with, and this really visceral account of how she and her boyfriend and community re-built after Katrina is very engagingly written and really personalized the story of that disaster for me. Recommended.
A memoir about surviving after hurricane katrina. Cheryl and her boyfriend (and two basset hounds) live in mid-city in New Orleans and their house is devestated in the flood. They are amazing people. There is no way I could have done what they did. Amazing story about human spirit.
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Cheryl Wagner is the author of Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around.
CHERYL WAGNER is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Mississippi Review, Five Dials, and has been featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Current and Definitely Not the Opera. Her cover stories on Hurricane Katrina...more
More about Cheryl Wagner...
CHERYL WAGNER is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Mississippi Review, Five Dials, and has been featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Current and Definitely Not the Opera. Her cover stories on Hurricane Katrina...more
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