Two Memoirs: A Reading

Adam Rippon is an Olympic athlete and medal-winning figure skater. He won the 2010 Four Continents Championships and the 2016 U.S. National Championships and was selected to represent the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. He came out as gay in October 2015 and became the first openly gay U.S. male athlete to win a medal in a Winter Olympics. Beautiful on the Outside (Hachette Book Group) tells Rippon’s journey from a homeschooled kid in Scranton, PA, to self-professed American sweetheart on the world stage and all the disasters and self-delusions it took to get him there. From traveling to practices on the Greyhound bus next to ex-convicts to being so poor he could only afford to eat the free apples at his gym, Rippon got through the toughest times with a smile on his face, a glint in his eye, and quip ready for anyone listening. Your mom probably told you it's what on the inside that counts — but then, she probably was never a competitive figure skater.

Gary Janetti is a writer and producer of such shows as Family Guy, Will & Grace, and Vicious. He is author of Do You Mind If I Cancel?: (Things That Still Annoy Me) (Flatiron Books). Kevin Kwan writes, "Gary Janetti's book is so rolling-on-the-floor funny, so brilliantly observant, and so full of heart.” Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills to the page in a hilarious, and poignant book chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life. Gary spends his twenties in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him. He chronicles the torture of finding a job before the internet when you had to talk on the phone all the time, and fantasizes, as we all do, about who to tell off when he finally wins an Oscar. As Gary himself says, “These are essays from my childhood and young adulthood about things that still annoy me.” Original, brazen, and laugh out loud funny, Do You Mind if I Cancel? is something not to be missed.