Friday, December 30, 2011

The Shakespeare Thefts : In Search Of The First Folios
by Eric Rasmussen

In 1623, the first edition of William Shakespeare's collected works, known as the First Folio, was published. Fellow actors of Shakespeare compiled it. According to author Eric Rasmussen, there are over four hundred copies floating around but only two hundred have been identified. The other ones have been either stolen or lost.
Rasmussen and his team embark on an adventure around the world to try and track down the known copies.
Although the reviews for this book have been congratulatory, I beg to differ. Every chapter is a different anecdote of what Rasmussen found and none of them are connected. After a while, I became bored. The writing is dull and tedious.
Not recommended.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Eva Braun : Life With Hitler
by Heike B. Gortemaker

According to the publisher, Eva Braun was not supposed to be an insignificant figure in Hitler's life but more involved with his rule and his cohorts. Alas, I didn't get far enough to find out the so-called truth about her. The writing is very pedantic and boring and mainly talks about the high-ranking Nazis that were constantly around.
The book was translated but I don't believe that is the problem. Not too many people would be interested in reading it due to its heaviness and plodding text.
Not recommended.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Boy Who Went To War : The Story Of A Reluctant German Soldier In WWII
by Giles Milton

This should have been a promising book but it, unfortunately, fell short of its goal. Giles Milton writes about his family and father-in-law living under Hitler's regime. Since they were Christians, it's interesting to see how they viewed the Fuhrer. The entire family was anti-Nazi and they got away with it for as long as possible.
I couldn't tolerate the writing. It seems quite juvenile and is loaded with grammatical and spelling errors. The author is no slouch in writing books; he has written quite a few and I have read many of them. The Boy Who Went To War is not like his others, which is a shame.
Not recommended.

Fiction Ruined My Family : A Memoir
by Jeanne Darst

"Cursing Ruined This Book" would be more appropriate as a title for the above. In just one paragraph, the author uses f*** three times. Between the excessive use of profanity and the constant whining about the parents, I stopped reading after 70 pages.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Gorilla Man And The Empress Of Steak : A New Orleans Family Memoir
by Randy Fertel

I should feel guilty due to the fact that no library in the county had this book on their shelves and I requested one of them to buy it. The reviews were what made me want to read the book in the first place. The title alone is enough to draw you in. Randy Fertel's mother founded Ruth's Chris Steak House and his father (who never worked a day in his life) ran for mayor of New Orleans and bought a pair of gorillas for the zoo.
Louis Armstrong lived a block away from the Fertels and there's some interesting information written about him. The whole history of jazz is incorporated within the story and you really get the flavor of New Orleans in the early part of the century.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stand the style of writing. It was all over the place and seemed disjointed. Too many characters abounded and started to collide. I only reached page 114 and that was enough for me.
Not recommended.

Monday, November 14, 2011

The Man Who Couldn't Eat : A Memoir
by Jon Reiner

If you enjoy reading about a man's struggle with Crohn's disease who spends, it seems, most of the book in the hospital where he is not allowed to eat anything by mouth for three months, be my guest.
Jon Reiner loves food so much but because of his illness, he has to take a different path.
I actually read the entire book because I wanted to see the end results. It wasn't worth it. I should have stopped earlier. What really ruined his story were the excessive amounts of similes (hundreds of them). His descriptions were vivid enough that you didn't need useless fodder.
Not recommended.

Friday, November 4, 2011

How To Survive The Titanic Or The Sinking Of J. Bruce Ismay
by Frances Wilson

If I had a rating system where five stars would be the best and one star the worst, I would give this book two stars. It's a shame because, for the most part, I really enjoyed most of it. What destroyed the book was constant references to Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, where a sailor abandons his sinking ship leaving behind hundreds of passengers. I can see why the author did this although she is comparing fiction with fact but after a while, it became so tedious that I wanted to throw the book across the room.
I didn't know anything about J. Bruce Ismay, the owner of the Titanic, but what is written here becomes repetitious. Ismay was never a happy camper and after the catastrophe, he became a recluse. Obviously, the author didn't have enough material for all I read about Ismay is his depression, being morose, unhappy, untalkative, his horrible marriage and ignoring his children, etc.
The two inquiries, British and American, on why Ismay jumped into a lifeboat with women and children and his problematic answer along with the survivors that testified, is very interesting but is not enough to sustain an entire book.
The title is not appropriate either. Put this all down as one big mess.
Not recommended.


Sunday, October 30, 2011

My Long Trip Home : A Family Memoir
by Mark Whitaker

Here we go again with an "award-winning" journalist whose writing is sub-par (of course, the publisher wrote these words).
The book is about Mark Whitaker's parents, an interracial couple, and how they coped with life. I gave up reading early on. The writing is plodding. What bothers me the most is the awful editing. There's many misspelled words, wrong tenses, wrong words, duplication of one word in the same sentence. It's obvious that nobody proofread it.
Skip this book.
Not recommended.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Sybil Exposed : The Extraordinary Story Behind The Famous Multiple Personality Case
by Debbie Nathan

I remember being caught up in the "Sybil" craze back in the 1970s. She was the woman who supposedly had sixteen different personalities and because of that a new diagnosis was coined in the psychiatry field. The book was a huge success which then spawned a movie. But was it really true? You don't have to read all of Sybil Exposed (and believe me, I didn't) to find that out. The Introduction reveals the duplicity of three women. I probably should have stopped right then and there but I persisted in continuing until I reached Chapter 4 which was about Dr. Wilbur, the psychiatrist that treated "Sybil."
Psychiatry in the 1930s was absolutely horrendous with its unsuspecting patients. Pentothal ( a barbiturate known as "truth serum"), Metrozol (shock therapy that caused broken limbs), lobotomies, and other horrible "treatments" were all being used by psychiatrists because they thought they could cure their patients better. I found reading all of this to be too disturbing and quite brutal.
The writing style is juvenile and repetitive. Don't believe the positive reviews. Read the negative ones.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

What They Saved : Pieces Of A Jewish Past
by Nancy K. Miller

Several years after her father's death, Nancy K. Miller finds a treasure trove of objects about her family in a drawer. There are photographs of people that she doesn't know about. She is determined to track down any information that she can find on these lost relatives.
This book could have been much more interesting but several times it lost me with her going back and forth amongst the grandparents, great-grandparents, and her parents. Halfway through I decided that I no longer cared enough to continue reading.
Not recommended.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Ricardo Muti : An Autobiography : First The Music, Then The Words
by Ricardo Muti

I lasted three pages. Pretty bad. Ricardo Muti should just stick to conducting music and leave the writing to an established author. It's so boring and plodding.
Nothing more to say.

My Russian Grandmother And Her American Vacuum Cleaner : A Family Memoir
by Meir Shalev

A family story about living in Israel before the country got its independence and afterward. Mostly, the book centers on a very anal woman whose disdain for dirt is over-the-top. After a while, that gets old.
The book is translated and there are problems with the wording. Also, there are way too many similes, which I normally detest, but in this case the book actually needs them to sustain it.
Kosher Chinese : Living, Teaching, And Eating With China's Other Billion
by Michael Levy

In 2005, Michael Levy goes to Guiyang, a rural village in China, for the Peace Corps. He is there to teach English to college-age students.
The book started out okay with some funny passages and his descriptions of his residence, the school, the environment, etc. Halfway through, it became annoying and old. Not too exciting.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Precious Objects : A Story Of Diamonds, Family, And A Way Of Life
by Alicia Oltuski

I only lasted up to page seven. If an author has to use an exorbitant amount of similes to get his/her point across, the book is no longer worth reading. That is the case here. In one paragraph, Alicia Oltuski wrote three sentences, one right after the other, with those awful similes. They're just useless filler.
So, alas, I didn't find out about her life living amongst diamonds which has been the family's livelihood for generations.
Not recommended.
Beijing Welcomes You : Unveiling The Capital City Of The Future
by Tom Scocca

What promised to be an interesting book about Beijing before the Olympics and during it fell flat for me after reading one hundred pages. Tom Scocca flies to China (his wife is there ahead of him for her job) and tries to ameliorate himself to his new environs by adjusting to his different kind of residence, learning how to get around, watching both destruction and construction, attempting to conquer Mandarin so that he can interview and talk to the people, figuring out how to deal with all of the rules and regulations, etc.
As soon as he began to write about all of the sports and the Olympic arena, I became bored. The best stuff is about Beijing, how the citizens live, the food, the culture, all the things that define China.
Scocca's style is very dry and plodding.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Killing Lincoln : The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

Before you even get inside of this book, there is a problem with the cover. Whenever you see the first author's name much larger than the title and the second author's name even smaller, we are in trouble. Bill O'Reilly is banking on his name and reputation and it hits you in the face. Supposedly, O'Reilly used to teach history but he certainly did not check his facts. There are many inaccuracies. The writing style is sensationalistic and there's no new information. It's catalogued as an adult book but the wording seems to be geared more for young people.
If you are an avid Lincoln fan, the better book to read about his assassination is "Manhunt" by James L. Swanson which was absolutely superb. Swanson is a Lincoln scholar and the information and details that he wrote about were riveting.
Don't bother with O'Reilly's book. It's really bad.
Not recommended.
Rin Tin Tin : The Life And The Legend
by Susan Orlean

Do you remember watching Rin Tin Tin on television and in the movies? He was the most famous dog in the world.
Rin Tin Tin was discovered (as a puppy) in France during World War I by Lee Duncan who absolutely loved animals (more than people). Duncan brought the German shepherd back to America.
I wish I could say that I loved this book and that it was so heartwarming but that would be lying. In no time at all, I was bored. The tale is mostly about Duncan (not a very likeable fellow) and not too much about the dog. I found the most interesting parts (filler) to be about neither of them. Very early on, I stopped reading. I really didn't care for the writing style.
Not recommended.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Skyjack : The Hunt For D.B. Cooper
by Geoffrey Gray

It seems that every couple of years a new book comes out on D.B. Cooper. Remember him? He's the guy that hijacked a Northwest Orient plane in 1971, got $200,000 and parachuted off into oblivion. He was never found.
With this latest offering, we are introduced to a whole cast of quirky characters that may or may not have had anything to do with Cooper. It's pure speculation. The text jumps around with different time periods so between that and the multitude of people, it can be confusing.
I stopped reading the book after page one hundred. The writing style was not my cup of tea. It's very abrupt and in-your-face but now I know why. The author used to write about boxing for the New York Times. How other reviewers think that Geoffrey Gray is such a talented writer is beyond me.
Not recommended.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Life Itself : A Memoir
by Roger Ebert

I used to watch Roger Ebert when he was on television critiquing movies and totally enjoyed his comments. I wish I could say the same for his autobiography. His writing leaves me empty. There's no pizazz and I was bored. By the time I got to the third chapter about his father, I had had enough.
The book is in need of an editor and there's numerous spelling errors. Nothing else to say.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Mad Bomber Of New York : The Extraordinary True Story Of The Manhunt That Paralyzed A City
by Michael M. Greenburg

From 1940 to 1956 thirty-three bombs were set off in New York City and it took a massive manhunt to finally find the perpetrator. The book sounded interesting but alas it was not to be. I couldn't stand the writing (it bored me). Six pages was all that I could stomach. The author's previous book Peaches and Daddy was superb (it was about the Roaring Twenties and it's reviewed in my book-a-holics blog. I don't know why the writing style changed for his current tale.
Not recommended.
The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz : A True Story Of World War II
by Denis Avey and Rob Broomby

I couldn't get into this book at all. At page 16, I quit. Part of the problem is the vocabulary used. Denis Avey is British and if you're not familiar with certain words (that are not explained), they just bounce right off. The book was obviously dictated but the writer doesn't exude any excitement (he's British too and worked for the BBC as a broadcast journalist).
The title is misleading because Avey did not break into Auschwitz but swapped places with a Dutch Jewish inmate. He experienced the cruelty and survived.
I think the story would have been better written in much abler hands and maybe then I would have finished the book.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Sleeping With The Enemy : Coco Chanel's Secret War
by Hal Vaughan

Here we go again with a book that is purported to be better than what was written before and yet is much less. I couldn't wait to get it and then, I couldn't wait to finish the damn thing.
Author, Hal Vaughan, writes about Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. His writing is plodding and interminably boring. There's so much dense detail with much of it repeated again and again. Not much of what Chanel exactly did for the SS is actually revealed so you don't really learn anything about her treachery.
There are better works written about Coco Chanel one of which I reviewed in my book-a-holics blog.
Sleeping With the Enemy was a big disappointment.
Not recommended.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Seven Seasons In Siena : My Quixotic Quest For Acceptance Among Tuscany's Proudest People
by Robert Rodi

Ugh, this book is horrendous. After only ten pages, I gave up.
The author goes to Siena, Italy, and tries to gain admittance and acceptance at this horseracing club (the jockeys ride bareback). Doesn't sound that interesting, does it?
Ho hum. Who cares?
The most annoying aspect of his writing is the amount of similes he uses for every paragraph. I guess he didn't have enough information so he needed filler.
Not recommended.
Wendy And The Lost Boys : The Uncommon Life Of Wendy Wasserstein
by Julie Salamon

Wendy Wasserstein is the first woman playwright to have won a Tony Award. She also won the Pulitzer Prize. Though I never read anything that she wrote, I knew of her work. I was hoping that this biography about her would open her up to me. Unfortunately it did not fulfill my expectations. I lasted only seventy-seven pages. The writing is dry and plodding and it seemed as if the author just lifted everything from Wasserstein's writings. I was bored to say the least.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Turn Right At Machu Picchu : Rediscovering The Lost City One Step At A Time
by Mark Adams

I should be congratulated for finishing this book (last night I considered stopping with forty more pages to go). But, no, I slogged through it all.
The premise is that Mark Adams, who has spent his career editing travel and adventure magazines, decides to follow the path of explorer Hiram Bingham III by going to Peru and retracing his path to Machu Picchu.
I didn't find the tale to be compelling, exciting, superb, amazing, entertaining as other reviewers apparently did. For me, there were too many details that were confusing especially with all of the different similiar-sounding names of cities.
Everything became tedious and downright boring.
Adams wrote a book called
Mr. America in 2010 (reviewed in my book-a-holics blog) and that was superb. Too bad that he couldn't sustain that great writing with Machu Picchu.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Memory Of All That : George Gershwin, Kay Swift, And My Family's Legacy Of Infidelities
by Katharine Weber

What started out to be a promising book deteriorated after ninety-five pages and I stopped reading. The author spent an inordinate amount of time writing about her father who was a louse in being both a husband and a parent. It went on and on and became old soon enough. Katharine Weber's grandmother (Kay Swift) was supposed to have had a ten-year affair with George Gershwin while she was married to James Paul Warburg and that might have been interesting if the chapter about Weber's father had been abbreviated. There's also endless name-dropping. Ho hum.
Not recommended.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Paris To The Past : Traveling Through French History By Train
by Ina Caro

If you have trouble falling asleep at night, get a copy of Paris to the Past and in no time at all you will be dreaming.
Ina Caro is an authority on medieval and modern French history and travels to France quite often with her husband. She has an idea of taking one-day train trips from central Paris to see the churches and cathedrals that are en route and they will do it in chronological order, historically. The two of them begin with the twelfth century and end with the nineteenth century.
Sound interesting? I thought so and the first couple of chapters were. It began to bog down when the immense amount of details became too overwhelming and boring. The writing is dry.
If you're a scholar of medieval French history, this is probably the book for you. For the rest of us, there's better travel books with abbreviated histories.
Not recommended.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Sex On The Moon : The Amazing Story Behind The Most Audacious Heist In History
by Ben Mezrich

Before the book even begins, when the author says that settings, descriptions, names, and histories have been changed to protect identities, we are in trouble. (The irony of this statement is that you can google Sex On The Moon and come up with the original names and just about everything else.) He has also re-created dialogue from conversations that took place ten years prior. Not a good sign.
So, here is this college student, Thad Roberts, who decides that he wants to be an astronaut and walk on Mars. He is accepted as a NASA co-op and works in a life sciences lab. It's not enough for him because he wants to be that shining star and starts doing daring things that could bring him to the cusp of trouble. Then he gets the idea of stealing moon rocks from every Apollo landing.
For an incredibly gifted young man, he was a total idiot and definitely had problems. I didn't finish the book reading up to Chapter 17. The writing is so juvenile (much foul language) and there is no depth. Reviewers have gushed that it's the most audacious heist in history but that is false. There were many others (some reviewed in my book-a-holics blog) where the culprits were never caught.
Don't bother with this one.
Not recommended.

Friday, July 15, 2011

An Extravagant Hunger : The Passionate Years Of M. F. K. Fisher
by Anne Zimmerman

I guess I should really start reading books by M. F. K. Fisher instead of reading books about her. So far, none of the biographies have been too good. This one is no exception.
Mary Frances Kennedy loved food and wrote about it. Her opinions influenced a whole hoard of chefs such as Julia Child, James Beard and Alice Waters.
An Extravagant Hunger attempts to capture Fisher's world but doesn't even come close. The author did her thesis on the life of M.F.K. and it shows because this is what I feel like I'm reading. It's dull, pedantic and unexciting.
Not recommended.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Someone Else's Twin : The True Story Of Babies Switched At Birth
by Nancy L. Segal

Due to human error at a hospital in the Canary Islands, identical twins Begona and Delia were switched with another infant. Neither of the two families knew that anything was wrong until twenty-eight years later when the twins finally met each other. DNA testing was done for the final proof and both sets of families were shocked and traumatized. The case was aired on television with lawsuits against the hospital.
Dr. Segal, herself a twin, talks about genetics, identity, the psychology of twins, and how a mistake at birth can devastate the lives of everybody involved.
With one hundred pages left to read, I stopped. The book is supposed to focus on this one set of twins but it ends up going in all kinds of directions. Dr. Segal is a professor of psychology and is supposed to be this expert on twin research. She's no writer, that's for sure. There is so much repetition and filler that the book could have been a magazine article instead.
I got bored and impatient. Dr. Segal has written other books on twins but I won't be bothering with them, either.
Not recommended.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The House In France : A Memoir
by Gully Wells

I'm so glad that I didn't have to pay for this book and took it out of the library. What a bunch of drivel.
The author writes about her mother, Dee Wells, who was an American journalist and her stepfather, A. J. Ayer, an Oxford philosopher and their glamorous life. They lived in France, London, and New York. As I did not get too far (only fifty pages), what I read was enough to totally turn me off. There's way too much name-dropping, the writing is rambling and nothing is of any substance.
Not recommended.

Monday, July 4, 2011

The Statues That Walked : Unraveling The Mystery Of Easter Island
by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo

The only people who gave this book great reviews are, in some way, involved in Archaeology, Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Conservation. It would make sense for them to read it but not for the rest of us.
Easter Island has these statues that have been there for hundreds of years. How did they get there in the first place (950 of them)? They're quite massive and they don't exist anywhere else in the Pacific. How were they moved to the coastline with their backs facing the ocean? In order to make the statues, the island was destroyed.
Authors Hunt and Lipo carried out archaeological studies in 2001 on the island and supposedly solved the mystery of what really happened. Since I didn't finish the book (only lasted thirty pages), I don't know for sure. I do know that it's unreadable unless you're a scholar of the above subjects. Academics would be interested but not the general public.
Not recommended.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Killer Stuff And Tons Of Money : Seeking History And Hidden Gems In Flea-Market America
by Maureen Stanton

Flea markets attract millions of people from all walks of life. Anybody who wants to find a good bargain (or so they think) goes to as many of these as he/she can.
In Killer Stuff and Tons of Money
Maureen Stanton follows a guy around named Curt Avery (a fictitious name; he wanted to remain anonymous) as he travels the circuit in search of good deals. Avery is well-known and knows how to spot either the right stuff or trash.
I thought the book would be interesting as I have collected many things over the years and that I would learn more about what to look for and what to stay away from. Alas, I lasted fifty pages because I became bored and disgusted. There are two problems. First off, I couldn't stand the language of Avery. In just about every sentence, he is using the "f' word. Is that really necessary? Second of all and the main problem is that Stanton is the driest writer. For someone who teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Missouri, she certainly doesn't use any creativity in writing this book.
Not recommended.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

When The World Spoke French
by Marc Fumaroli

I did not read this book and only looked at a couple of pages. As usual, the reviews made it seem that it was a must have. Not at all. If you're a French scholar (like the author) then this book is for you.
The premise is that during the eighteenth century, French culture was the standard for all of Europe. Everyone conversed in the language.
Sound interesting? The first review I read (months ago) gushed, excitedly, about how wonderful the writing was. From what I glimpsed, it's dry and pedantic.
I can't imagine many copies being sold let alone read.
Not recommended.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Cello Suites : J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, And The Search For A Baroque Masterpiece
by Eric Siblin

I really must stop reading books where Simon Winchester raves about them. The best book that he ever wrote was The Professor And The Madman. He should just stick to writing and not reviewing because I haven't agreed with any of them.
The Cello Suites is about Bach, Pablo Casals and the author's sleuthwork. You get a short biography of Bach and Casals, how Bach came to write the music, what happened to the original manuscript; Casals' discovery of the music when he was just thirteen years old; descriptions by the author of the different movements and his interviews with cellists.
The book sounded like a good idea but it jumps around too much and is kind of pedantic. Just when you get your head around Bach's life and career, the book changes course with Casals and what he did. These two narratives are actually interesting but then there's a third one with the author and it all becomes muddled.
I like reading quirky books but this one doesn't work.
Not recommended.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind : A Bestseller's Odyssey From Atlanta To Hollywood
by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr.

Unless you're a true, avid fan of Gone With the Wind, you probably wouldn't want to read this book. The second author, John Wiley, Jr., owns one of the largest private collections of GWTW memorabilia in the world which includes every American edition of the novel. He and Ellen F. Brown attempt to write an account of how the novel came to be, in the first place, getting it published, then the movie rights and dealing with her tremendous success. After 60 pages, I had had enough. It's very detailed with excessive amounts of minutiae. I'm glad that I only had to pay 25 cents to request the book and no more than that. It's not worth the paper that it's printed on.
Not recommended.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Day Of Honey : A Memoir of Food, Love, And War
by Annia Ciezadlo


Can you imagine spending your honeymoon in Baghdad? That is exactly what Annia Ciezadlo did in 2003. Both she and her husband, Mohamad, were reporters and they spent the next six years living in Beirut and Baghdad. Even though Annia wrote political articles, her forte was to use food as a panorama for the Middle East. She writes of these delicious meals (there's a whole chapter in the back of the book of recipes). I never did get to try them out. The book started to drag for me halfway through and became rather tedious. Way too many metaphors.
I was looking forward to reading this book and it was a disappointment.
Not recommended.


Friday, May 6, 2011

Reading My Father : A Memoir
by Alexandra Styron

I should have taken this book back to the library the day it was due. Now I have to pay a fine and it's certainly not worth the price. I struggled to finish the last forty pages.
Alexandra Styron attempts to write about her father when she barely knew the man. She was the youngest of the family (always called "the Baby") and didn't know about her father's early successes with his first bouts of writing. She was twelve when Sophie's Choice was published and that's only a brief memory. Alexandra leans heavily on William Styron: A Life by James L. W. III for most of her material. The rest that she can glean is from manuscripts from Duke University and what she can remember of their lives together.
You would think from the title that Alexandra read all of his books. Nah, that didn't happen. She really only read one much, much later.
William Styron was not much of a father. He spent most of his time closed up in a room writing feverishly and barely spent time with his family. The four siblings knew never to disturb him (he would fly off in a rage if the stupidest things happened) so they stayed away from him. His pleasures were to drink himself into a stupor and all of their parties consisted of an exorbitant amount of alcohol which lasted well into the early morning.
The biggest problem that I had with this book was that the author seemed to write mostly about herself and a small part about her father (of course, he was so miserable that the more you read about him and his behavior, the more disgusted you became). Also, there was an inordinate amount of name-dropping. When William became a celebrity, he hobnobbed with quite a few: Mike Nichols, Lillian Hellmann, George Plimpton, Leonard Bernstein, Art Buchwald, Arthur Miller, the list goes on forever.
I liked her style of writing, at first, but then it became a giant irritant. Too many flowery phrases with metaphors thrown in.
Unless you're a true William Styron fan, you might want to plow through this book. For the rest of us, skip it.
Not recommended.


Sunday, April 24, 2011

Wild Bill Donovan : The Spymaster Who Created The OSS And Modern American Espionage
by Douglas Waller

I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. Over the years, I have read numerous stories about the men and women who served as spies during World War II behind enemy lines. They all worked for Bill Donovan who was the director for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA. Their exploits were phenomenal which is more than I can say for the book. There's obviously quite a bit of information that was brought in and literally TONS of names that you cannot get your head around. The writing is dull and if Donovan was a wild and exciting man, it's certainly not here.
Not recommended.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Final Jeopardy : Man Vs. Machine And the Quest To Know Everything
by Stephen Baker

A couple of months ago, the quiz show Jeopardy had two of the game's all-time winners compete against a computer named Watson. After having watched the show on the three nights it aired, I discovered that a book was written about the whole process of building a super machine by IBM engineers.
It was much more fun watching the show than reading the book. The beginning chapters were interesting and funny and then downright blah. The writing is very dry. My interest left very quickly.
Not recommended.
A Covert Affair : Julia Child And Paul Child In The OSS
by Jennet Conant

The title of this book is very misleading. The Childs barely scratch the surface. Jane Foster is the main character who was accused of being a Soviet spy. They all used to pal around together when the three of them worked for the OSS during World War II.
Jennet Conant has written three previous books and I attempted to read each one but gave up in disgust. I don't know what it is about her writing. She seems to have trouble melding everything together to make the subject palatable.
A Covert Affair is no better and you don't learn much about the Childs.
Not recommended.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Fannie's Last Supper : Re-creating One Amazing Meal From Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook
by Christopher Kimball

If the author's name sounds familiar, he is the host of America's Test Kitchen and the founder of Cook's Magazine now called Cook's Illustrated. He should probably just concentrate on these areas and forget about writing a book that could have been terrific and ended up being pretty dismal.
Christopher Kimball bought an 1859 Victorian town house in Boston back in the 1990s which he and his wife restored. He became interested in the neighborhood wondering what society was like in the nineteenth century and what sorts of foods were cooked. Kimball was especially intrigued with Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book that was published in 1896. He decides to re-create one of her menus and sets about testing, preparing and tasting a twelve-course Christmas dinner.
The subtitle of the book should be: "How I Completely Changed Fannie Farmer's Recipes To What I Like." Kimball is supposed to be venerating Fannie Farmer and instead he constantly bashes her and rewrites her recipes. Sometimes, he uses another chef's version. His ego also gets in the way. Another annoying thing is that in every chapter he writes some kind of historical tidbit which has nothing to do with anything. It's just filler. There are so many negatives with this book but I think I will just stop now.
Not recommended.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

No Regrets : The Life Of Edith Piaf
by Carolyn Burke

Having lived in France back in the late 1970s and listened to Edith Piaf sing and saw how much she was revered, I was thrilled to see that a new biography was written about her. It was short-lived.
The author tried to cram as much information on Piaf as she could in the first chapter in such a way that it completely turned me off. Too many names became one confusing mess. I attempted to read the second chapter but by this time I had become disgusted and stopped altogether.
Of course, much of what has been written about Piaf is a myth either related by Piaf or by others smitten with her. There's also missing information, therefore speculation arises.
I have no regrets in not finishing this book.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Blood, Bones & Butter : The Inadvertent Education Of A Reluctant Chef
by Gabrielle Hamilton

No, this is NOT the best memoir by a chef, ever, as Anthony Bourdain writes on both the front and back covers of the book. It's actually one of the worst. I could barely get to the fifth chapter.
The first chapter was wonderful with Gabrielle Hamilton talking about growing up as one of five children (the youngest) in her bohemian family with a French mother and a father who was a set designer all living in Lambertville, Pennsylvania eating fresh, homemade food and not having a care in the world. When her parents split and then divorced, everything fell apart and Hamilton was pretty much left on her own. The book deteriorated from this point on. She became a drug addict and worked, underage, at a club in New York. Cooking was not even in the picture and wouldn't surface for a while.
It's very hard to read about someone who is so self-absorbed, sort of like Bourdain. (No wonder he LOVED this book). The two of them have similiar personalities.
Hamilton writes with endless run-on sentences and way too many metaphors. She has an MFA in fiction writing and that is what she should continue doing or just forget about writing and concentrate on her restaurant instead.
Not recommended.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Dangerous Otto Katz : The Many Lives Of A Soviet Spy
by Jonathan Miles

Uh oh, another spy book ending up on this blog. That wasn't planned originally. The book started out being terrific and was exciting. It came to a screeching stop after one hundred pages. Too many peripheral people were mentioned and what had been interesting just turned flat.
Otto Katz was an anti-Fascist and trained by the Soviets and was able to alert the world, early in the 1930s, on what the Nazis were doing. He was a lover of Marlene Dietrich and was very involved in Hollywood. Katz did a whole lot more but I never arrived at that point.
Enough of this genre for a while unless something worthwhile comes along.
Not recommended.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Stalin's Romeo Spy : The Remarkable Rise And Fall Of The KGB's Most Daring Operative
by Emil Draitser

Dmitri Bystrolyotov spied for Stalin during the 1920s and 1930s. He was England's equivalent to Sydney Reilly, their ace of spies. Fluent in scores of languages, dashing, handsome, Dmitri's way of gathering information was in the seduction of women.
For all he did for the Soviet Union, their thanks to him was having Bystrolyotov arrested and tortured and sent to the Gulag for twenty years.
I love reading great spy books. This book was not one of them. The author is Russian and although he has lived in the United States since 1974, everything he has written is Russian-based (he teaches the language at a New York college). Consequently, the writing is quite dry and pedantic. He does have command of the English language but perhaps if somebody else wrote about this subject, it would fare better.
Not recommended.
Late For Tea At The Deer Palace : The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family
by Tamara Chalabi

What could have been a really interesting book about Iraq was destroyed by the author's horrendous writing. Chalabi's family was prominent for four generations in Baghdad and in telling about their story, she relates the history of how the country came to be. Unfortunately, I felt as if I was reading a book geared for children not adults. I kept on with it until almost the end when I finally gave up (I had eighty-eight more pages to go). I thought the text would get better but the writing was just so bad that I could no longer stand it.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Life Of Irene Nemirovsky, 1909-1942
by Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt

In 2004, Suite Francaise was published posthumously and brought Irene Nemirovsky to the attention of millions of people. Up until this point, nobody had ever heard of her.
Nemirovsky's life before she became a famous novelist was dramatic to say the least.
She was born in Kiev which was known as the "mother of Russian cities" in 1903 and given the names Irma Irina. Her father, Leonid, was a banker and her mother, Anna (there was a mutual hostility between them) were quite wealthy. The family had to leave Russia in 1919 due to the revolution and lived for a while in Finland, then Sweden and eventually settled in Paris. She was writing all this time (all of her fiction is based on her family and friends).
Nemirovsky would marry Michel Epstein and have two children. Her life would be very short. She died one month after being deported to Auschwitz at the age of thirty-nine.
I wish that I could say this is a great book but I cannot. Two French men wrote it and then it was translated. It is very wordy and dense with material. Most of the book comes across as literary criticism not as a biography. The real problem is the editing. Titles of her works are either in italics or not in italics, words are misspelled and are written as two words instead of one.
My suggestion is that if you want to read about her life, read her fiction.
Not recommended.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Swallow : Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, And The Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them
by Mary Cappello

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is one of the oldest medical societies. Within its walls lies the Mutter Museum, a cornucopeia of unusual curiosities that were used in the nineteenth-century to teach future doctors. (Thomas Dent Mutter was a surgeon who donated his specimens.) The most popular exhibit is the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection: drawers overflowing with tons of items that have either been swallowed or inhaled and then removed nonsurgically.
Coins, pins and needles, buttons, toys, nails, and wire were just some of the objects. Does this sound intriguing or horrifying? I was interested in knowing who these people were, how they came to swallow this stuff in the first place, what instruments Jackson used to extract them and information on Jackson himself.
I didn't get too far. Author Mary Cappello's style of writing became more and more irritating to the point where the book just became boring. She lost me very early on. Too bad. I like to read about quirky subjects that are not well-known. The employees who currently work at the museum would probably be the only ones interested.
Not recommended.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

A Voice From Old New York : A Memoir Of My Youth
by Louis Auchincloss

This is the last book written by Auchinloss (he died in January 2010) and it will be my only attempt to read anything by him. He never really wanted to write about himself and it shows. The subject matter is extremely boring and totally uninteresting.
Not recommended.

Monday, January 31, 2011

India Calling : An Intimate Portrait Of A Nation's Remaking
by Anand Giridharadas

It didn't take long (only three pages) for the book to be troublesome. I was irritated by the author's blanket statements about what children in America say to their parents. "We don't call our parents by their first names and don't curse them in their presence. We get paid for having our teeth fall out but not for doing chores."
Anand Giridharadas is an American of Indian ethnicity and has lived a privileged childhood. Because he grew up in upper middle-class neighborhoods, he just assumes that all children have no manners and are disrespectful to adults. If he had been surrounded by working-class people, he would have found that the offspring would never have dared to talk and act in this manner.
Despite this annoying text, I continued reading hoping for something better.
The premise is that in 2005, Anand goes to India to live and work. He wants to see if India has changed since the time when his parents and grandparents were living there. He writes about the caste system which is disappearing. People that were servants are now masters of their domain.
As I only reached page 90, I don't know what happened or how the book ended. It got boring and his writing style was uninteresting. Anand is a journalist and it shows.
I don't think too many people would want to read about India unless they are planning to vacation there. The subject matter has limited appeal.
Not recommended.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sarah : The Life Of Sarah Bernhardt
by Robert Gottlieb

I couldn't get into this book at all. The problem started with the first page. Sarah Bernhardt was born in 1844, or 1843, or 1841? How about where she lived? That's conjecture, also. Bernhardt was not interested in being accurate and was known to be an incredible liar. Perhaps the book would have been interesting if I stuck with it further but I think the writing just turned me off.
Mother Country : Memoir Of An Adopted Boy
by Jeremy Harding

Good thing this book was slim (189 pages) because it saved me from having to read it all. The reviewers are out of their minds. "Beautifully written, captivating, the most brilliant British memoir published in years." I guess if you're from England, then maybe it is.
Harding learned that he was adopted at the age of five. As an adult, he decides to investigate and try to find out who his natural mother was. It's easier to seek this information out in Britain as opposed to the United States. (Adoption records are sealed in America, but not so in England.)
I didn't get too far. The book plods along and is not very exciting. I was irritated at the tight binding of the paperback. You had to pull the page all the way back to read the text on the left-hand side. After a while, I could no longer stand doing that and closed up the book.
The Hare With Amber Eyes : A Family's Century Of Art And Loss
by Edmund de Waal

I waited months to receive this book so when it arrived, I hungrily jumped in. Alas, it was not to be. It all boiled down to the author's style of writing. He's described as a potter who "writes." That's laughable. I stopped reading the book after thirty pages. It felt stilted and lacked warmth. De Waal comes off as an insufferable elitist.
The subject is netsuke which are tiny Japanese carvings that can fit in the palm of your hand. Apparently he is the fifth generation of his family to inherit these exquisite figures so he endeavors to seek out how they came to be and who in the family first started collecting them.
I would have liked to have seen these carvings but the photographs are few and grainy.
What a disappointment!
Not recommended.

Friday, January 21, 2011

The Boy : A Holocaust Story
by Dan Porat

On the cover of the book is the most recognized photograph of the Holocaust. A child has his arms raised. His face portrays acute fear. A soldier is pointing a gun at him.
The author presents three Nazi men who may or may not have been associated with this particular pictured child and two Jewish people who encountered these Nazis in Warsaw.
The writing style is dry and pedantic. What's worse, though, are the imagined thoughts and conversations that Porat ascribed. For somebody that teaches courses on the Holocaust (in Israel), you wonder why he would have chosen to go this route.
His editors weren't too happy and many arguements ensued.
It's a shame because there's information about the Warsaw Ghetto and who was involved that I have never read about before.
Not recommended.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Learning To Die In Miami : Confessions Of A Refugee Boy
by Carlos Eire

Why did I bother to slog through 300 pages and skip the last four of a totally disappointing book? Perhaps I thought it would, marginally, get better? I should have stopped halfway through the mess.
A few years ago, Carlos Eire wrote Waiting for Snow in Havana which was so beautifully written and had such gorgeous imagery. In that book, he wrote about growing up in Cuba before Castro's revolution and then being airlifted out of the country.
Learning to Die in Miami is supposed to be a continuation of what happens to Carlos when he lands in America and learns to adjust.
The book certainly started out ok but then started to deteriorate. As soon as I saw his first metaphor (they're excessive), I should have stopped reading. He jumps around from past to future incessantly and after a while that becomes quite irritating.
Eire's style of writing changed from his first book and it's pretty dismal.
Not recommended.


Friday, January 7, 2011

Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So : A Memoir
by Mark Vonnegut

Gee, why does the last name sound so familiar? Of course, Mark is the son of Kurt Vonnegut and we get snippets of what it was like growing up in a family with a famous author. (Before he became a celebrity, he was a car salesman.) We also mainly find out that schizophrenia ran rampant through scores of relatives.
Vonnegut is a pediatrician and in the Introduction, he writes about the fate of medicine and how it has become idiot-proof due to the checklists on templates that doctors fill in so that insurance companies can pay them correctly. That was the most interesting part of the book. Sixty-eight pages later, I stopped reading. He tends to ramble and nothing is cohesive. Each chapter is made up of small vignettes of things that have happened to him or what he is thinking of.
The book is not interesting and kind of ho-hum.
Not recommended.