You’re Doing What? by Peter Shianna

Comprised of ninety-six short chapters, You’re Doing What? opens with Shianna’s less-than-stellar entrepreneurial ventures in tiny Red Oak, Illinois (pop. 100). With luck trying to ride shotgun, he follows the crowd to college, embarks on a sputtering career, and tries to find his footing in a confused and confusing world. Much like the novels of Tolstoy, Dickens, and Dostoevsky, numerous offbeat characters along the way reveal good and bad elements of the human condition. In retrospect, the good times become better, and even the pain frustration, and fear take on amusing auras. Conveyed in accessible prose rich with lyricism, attention to detail, and humor, this mosaic of a memoir echoes Hemingway’s belief that “Every man’s [person’s] life, told truly, is a novel.”