Caught in the Act: A Memoir
Shane Jenek aka Courtney Act
“Boy, girl, artist, advocate. Courtney is more than the sum of her parts. Behind this rise to national and global fame is a story of searching for and finding oneself. Meet Shane Jenek. Raised in the Brisbane suburbs by loving parents, Shane realises from a young age that he’s not like all the other boys. At a performing arts agency he discovers his passion for song, dance and performance, and makes a promise to himself: to find a bigger stage. … Told with Courtney’s trademark candour and wit, Caught in the Act is about our journey towards understanding gender, sexuality and identity. It’s an often hilarious and at times heartbreaking memoir from a beloved drag and entertainment icon. Most of all, it’s a bloody good time.”
This book will be an eye-opening and brilliant ride for anyone who is part of the queer family, or would like to know more about the lives of the queer. That being said, it’s important to remember that this is the experience of only a single person. Shane/Courtney is one of the newer queers on the scene – which is to say that unlike other books I have read (nonfiction – My Epidemic; fiction – The Things We Promise), the specter of HIV/AIDs isn’t the main ‘threat’ to Courtney. Instead it comes in the form of front-page homophobia (you’ll never have a job with kids if you’re gay) and TV-show nastiness/misperceptions.
There’s a lot of navel gazing in this memoir which can largely be enjoyed, actually. The only points for me where this got a bit cloying was at the end and I actually would have been happy enough to end it perhaps a chapter earlier.
Who knew that casual sex could be so interesting? Or so nuanced? Shane/Courtney illuminates the way that sex can be viewed as a pleasant distraction but also a way of learning about yourself. Even if you have previously read about male-male sex and been perhaps disgusted, it’s worth reading this book to get a different perspective.
I have a friend in mind who I am going to give this book to for Christmas. I know he’s going to love it, because he’s a huge fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I personally don’t understand the allure of the show, but this book totally made me rethink the other reality TV shows I’ve watched and their portrayal of people as Characters (Lego Masters I’m looking at you).
If I gave non-fiction stars, this would be getting a 4.5/5. This was a very enjoyable read, and one I’d recommend to a range of audiences, even those people you might think would be interested.
Pantera Press | 2nd November 2021 | AU$32.99 | paperback
This was the book I was trying to get, when I ended up getting The Paradox of Choice as this one wasn’t there. I put this one on reserve and hence read it next. Unfortunately, it’s still not that great. It was better than The Paradox of Choice, but not great. It’s also a lot smaller then The Paradox of Choice which is good as at least it got to the point a lot quicker. But it still didn’t have much in it or much of a point.
Despite being first published in 1959, it’s not bad! Most of the book’s ideas are still relevant today. Obviously with older books such as this, you can tell that is is older from the style of writing and examples being used. However the principles and overall message is still the same. I think it would have been really good for it’s time. It has aged a little but not as much as you would think.
This book was pretty much as I expected. It’s thick, large, and long, which is good for stopping and starting and sinking into. I liked some parts of it, I think more of the good parts were at the start than the end – this is different from most of the business books I read.
I liked the ideas behind this book, but I don’t think I liked how it’s structured or how it’s written. I completely agree that a lot of people “hustle” and work for work’s sake when it really should be looking at your output and what’s working best for you. I also liked that it’s new and relevant to life in the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was a medical type non-fiction that was interesting but not riveting. I somehow didn’t realise that anesthesiologists are medical doctors first! I’m not sure how I didn’t know that. Imagine using all of your training to gas people under each day! No, that is a complete disservice. As this book sets out to accomplish, I came out the other end knowing that an anesthetist’s job is actually quite complicated and essential for smooth surgery.
I felt quite conflicted about this book. While I enjoyed some of the history of forensics in Australia, I wasn’t actually that satisfied. I kept pressing through in the hopes that I would get something really interesting from the book (a bit like I did with 
This book talks you through two different ways of simplifying your business in terms of your businesses market share and target customers. The two ways are either price or proposition simplifying. I liked the authors’ methods and reasoning, as well as how they explained the two simplifying techniques. They gave in depth examples of 12 businesses which they continued to refer to throughout the book. At some points I wanted to hear an example of another business not the same 12, but at other times it was good to have consistency.
I cannot wrap my mind around the thought that some people try to deny that the Holocaust occurred. There are thousands of people who were affected – not just those that died but those like Phillip who lived through traumatic times and yet came out the other end still as a human. Phillip speaks of this in the book, and the reader is struck by his compassion even to those who are in my own words, ‘idiots’.