Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Spoiler Alert

By Olivia Dade.

Marcus Caster-Rupp is on a Game of Thrones expy-show, Gods of the Gates. The showrunners are awful, they ran out of material years ago, and the showrunners are ruining the entire show. Even though the show's ending, the entire (pissed off, frustrated) cast is forbidden to say anything negative about the show, spoilers, anything at all. To the public, Marcus appears to be dome, pretty man-meat who only talks about his workouts or hair products in interviews. This is a strategy he developed after years of growing up dyslexic with intellectual parents who kind of despise him--play dumb and nobody asks you show questions. But secretly he's writing fanfiction for Gods of the Gates and venting his show rage into fix-it fics as "Book!AeneasWouldNever." (or "BAWN"). On the secret server, he's friends with "UnapologeticLaviniaStan," but declines meeting IRL for uh, obvious reasons.

April Whittier, i.e. "UnapologeticLaviniaStan," and "Ulsie," is a geologist of size who, after finally getting a job where she can come out of the closet as a nerd, posts her Lavinia costume online....which leads to people insulting the shit out of her....which leads to Marcus Caster-Rupp asking her out. Yeah, that's weird and April's not sure what to make of the whole thing, but she dates him a few times. It's kind of weird because he kind of goes between his hair products persona and asking if she wants to work out with him at the gym (something April takes in exactly the wrong way, something Marcus didn't think of going in that direction) and being more of a real person. At the same time, "BAWN" (i.e. Marcus online) makes up some crap about how he won't have any Internet access any more once he finds out April's dating Marcus, which upsets April. You get why he did it, but still, awkward.

Anyway, Marcus and April eventually work out the whole dating thing and it goes great, but Marcus doesn't feel like he can confess his secret fanfic identity (seriously, it's like modern You've Got Mail in some respects) both for legal reasons and just outing himself reasons, inevitable blowup occurs, and then there's a fan convention where all kinds of interesting things happen! 

I did appreciate that both April and Marcus had horrendous parent issues going on. April's father ignores her because of her weight, and her mother's been so scarred by her husband's treatment of her after gaining some weight in the past that she's constantly on April to lose some. Marcus's parents basically think he's an idiot even though he's dyslexic. Both of them eventually get up the nerve to tell their parents "either stop it with this shit, or I'm cutting you off," which is great. That ends kinda ambiguously, but so goes life. 

I did enjoy the unabashed geekiness of April's new coworkers--we don't see much of them, but their band amuses me. I also was amused by the Gates of the Gods group chats. One cast member is obsessed with tuna for some reason, so making fun of that guy is fun.

I would also like to mention the parallel story being mentioned off and on in this one of Marcus's castmate/bestie Alex, a hot-tempered fellow with ADHD who's been assigned a minder for his bad behavior. We hear him grumbling about this off and on, and then suddenly Shit Blows Up But Good (which we somewhat hear about) around the time of the convention, causing a very snitty Alex to waaaaaaay set off a drama bomb in public. What happens after that isn't answered, as there's going to be a companion book/sequel (sounds like it takes place at the same time as this one) for Alex and his minder. I admit I think this is an excellent way to seed interest in a sequel and it does make me rather interested in the upcoming follow up to see what goes on.

What I wasn't so into in this book: 

The book switches between April and Marcus's POV's and then has interstitial chapters that are fanfics, or conversations between "BAWN" and "Ulsie," or scripts from Marcus's worst movies. Those didn't always add to the book in some respects. (Though that shark movie, in which Marcus is in a lab coat and a Speedo as he watches the president get eaten by a shark? Damn.) 

I admit I'm not a fanficcer. I don't read a whole lot on AO3. I'm sure the author has and she's being accurate when she has online characters that all just refuse the names Aeneas and Lavinia and/or both as their screen names OVER AND OVER AND OVER. To say I can't keep track of it all is an understatement. I'm not sure if I was meant to keep track of them all, really, but everyone being referred to by very long screen names that just repeat Aeneas and Lavinia's names over and over and over kind of got to me. And sometimes I just got kind of eye-rolling over the whole "fix it fic" concept, or allllllllll the pegging references (looking at you, Alex) after awhile. Maybe that's more of a specialized audience thing to appeal to a certain crowd.

Anyway, I'm giving it three and a half stars. I'm not madly in love with sexy fanfic and all the names and that's probably my one issue over the book, but also that's just my own personal preferences. I found it kind of hard to wade through that stuff at times. But overall the relationship works, it's sexy and sweet, you get why the characters do what they do, and it all works out. So, pretty good book! 

The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig.

Nora Seed is 35 and feeling fed up with life. She never made anything of herself, she never got married, she lost her job, her cat died, blah de blah. However, upon presumably attempting to do herself in, she ends up in "The Midnight Library," a space in the world between worlds or something like that, run by the memory(?) of an old librarian, who tells her that she can try out all the different lives she didn't live and see if there's one of them she'd like to move into instead.

Sounds fun, right?

"Want is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live." -Mrs. Elm. 

Nora tries out the lives you'd wonder about: 

• What if she'd married Dan and settled down to pub life with him? Dan's still not happy and cheating on her. (Dan never pans out, really.)
• What about her cat? Well, he was going to die either way.
• What if she'd become an Olympian? Some things are better, some things are worse.
• What if she'd become a rock star? Some things are better, some things are worse.
• What if she meets another "slider" doing the same thing?
• What if she just keeps trying out lives for eternity, realizing that you'll never find the ideal life?

Sometimes people's lives change--they may stay alive longer or die anyway--depending on what Nora did or where she was. Some relationships improve and some devolve. She goes through The Book of Regrets and the more lives she checks out, the less regrets she ends up having any more. She also realizes that she was trying out lives for other people--what if she'd done X or Y like someone else wanted--and then starts to vary it up.

But once you try a life and reject it, you can't ever go back to it, and when Nora finds a pretty good life with a nice husband and child--will she stay? Can she stay? 

In the end, I think you kind of know how things are going to resolve, even if Nora doesn't necessarily know that. I'll discuss the ending below the spoiler cut. Overall I liked this one, in a chill, quiet, interesting sort of way. In the end, she realizes it's the regret that gets to you more than anything else, but "most of what we'd feel in any life is still available." It was very profound. 

Four stars. 

Herbert Hoover

By William E. Leuchtenburg.

See, now THIS is how you write a short presidential biography of a not-so-good president! Take note, authors of Benjamin Harrison and especially William McKinley! This is choice! This is good stuff! This is exactly what I want out of a presidential biography! What's good about this one? You definitely get a sense of what the guy was like and what he did and why he did what he did. This guy is generally kind of a dour turd, but also has his good points, and you sort of wonder in a sense why his good side didn't exactly help with regards to having to deal with the Great Depression.

Opening quote of the book: "Writing about Herbert Hoover is like trying to describe the interior of a citadel where every drawbridge is up and every porticullis down." -George Creel.

This made me concerned at how dull this was likely to be, but darned if the author didn't make it work! 

Hoover facts and moments:

• He was raised Quaker and orphaned as a child, basically having no fun whatsoever and growing up hungry. The author chalks this up to developing the good and bad points of his personality (workhorse, not showing, self-reliant, trusting the community to help the needy, good works, peaceful), but he rebelled later on and "smoked, drank, swore, danced, patronized the theater, and profaned the Sabbath. Of Quakerism, he remarked, "I never worked very hard at it."
• Hoover eventually made it to Stanford in California, and California was basically heaven for him. (As a native, I agree.) Unfortunately, even for a Stanford grad he was a horrible speller and writer, with his writing described as "like balls of glue dropped from a rooftop." "After repeatedly failing to satisfy an English requirement, he disposed of it only because a science professor mopped up his punctuation and grammar." 
• "He never ceased to believe his country was the greatest nation on earth; that Westerners, especially Californians, were the most gifted of Americans; and that finest of all were Stanford men." "On that campus he found acceptance, he found his metier, he found his future wife, he almost found himself."  Hoover went into geology. 
• Personalitywise, he was dour, unsmiling, untalking, not into eye contact, super blunt, and awkward. (Guess what we'd probably assume he's got these days.) However, he became somewhat of a BMOC for hating fraternities, and insisting on not being paid while being class treasurer. "He was without humor and, so far as anyone could tell, without emotion." He "felt like a wet crow" at parties and grunted a lot.
• However, he would celebrate holidays, hide eggs, dress up as Santa, etc. He sent home a lot of money to needy friends and relatives, by stealth. He was a generous guy, privately.
• Brand Whitlock said he "has a genius for organization and for getting things done, and beneath it all, with his great intelligence...has a wonderful human heart." Of course, later the same guy calls him "What a bully! He would even bully a poor exiled King!" 
• He became a trustee of Stanford and got a lot of things done, "almost every reform we have dreamed of has slipped through as if oiled." He also got salary raises for assistant professors, as well as a lot of new buildings. 
• Hoover worked overseas for a lot of years, which he didn't like. He did great careerwise and moneywise (became a multimillionaire), was a hard boss, and uh, liked "correcting the perversities and incompetence of men."  He would disappear from his family for long periods, "having learned nothing from his own painful childhood." He blamed others when things went wrong, didn't like any criticism, was compared to a volcano, insisted on having his own way and threw shit fits if he didn't get it. "He can express himself so accurately and so indignantly that his victim will go off nursing a grudge for the rest of his natural life." 

How did this super pleasant guy manage to get married when I can't? Just asking, universe.

• Hoover wrote a lot of books, with terrible writing and spelling. 
• "It has got to be recognized by everybody...that I am the boss, and that any attempts to minimize the importance of my leadership would do...infinite harm," said he. "Many who had dealings with Hoover found him chilling." 
• He was freaking great during WW1, working with all kinds of countries. He was extremely good at keeping people fed. 
• "Though Hoover was seeking office as nominee of a major political party, he did not want to be mistaken for a politician. He dreaded hitting the campaign trail." "Hoover had only one liability: he seemed to be a cold fish." "Not even Coolidge, a legendary sourpuss, could abide Hoover's ill nature." One writer asked, "Is Hoover Human?" Good question.
• However, "for many he was, despite his lack of magnetism, heroic." Hence his winning the presidency.
• Even Hoover himself said "If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation...I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much."
• His wife: "If you want to get the gloomiest view of any subject on earth, ask Bert about it."
• "The president had no sense of how to reach out to a desperate nation." 
• Hoover opposed any sort of dole and claimed that nobody actually starved. He was more concerned with the government running a deficit and wanted tax increases and cuts in government spending. He only got into the idea of mobilizing the national government because he had lost faith in bankers and had run out of other options for sources of credit. 
• In 1932, war veterans were attacked in the streets by the government. FDR on this topic: "Well, this elects me."
• Another quote: "If the election were held tomorrow, any Democratic candidate who had not been convicted of anything more than rape or murder would defeat Mr. Hoover."
• While on the campaign trail, people tried to pull spikes out of the railroad ties and/or blow him up with dynamite. Someone sent him a telegram saying "Vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous."
• In 1928 some parents named their kid "Herbert Hoover Jones," and five years later petitioned the court to change it to "Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones" so as to relieve him from chagrin and mortification. 
• Hoover thought Roosevelt had "comparatively little vision." You know nothing, Herbert Hoover.
• During the lame duck period, Hoover wrote "Roosvelt" (he can't spell) a ten page letter lecturing him and telling him what to say. Roosevelt ignored it. Later while at tea, Hoover kept it up to the point where FDR said that he was sure his son Jimmy wanted to punch him in the eye. 
• Hoover basically sucked and was hated until the Truman administration, when Truman recruited him to help with the worldwide food crisis, saying that nobody else in the country could do that job. 

The wit and wisdom of Herbert Hoover, who finally developed a sense of humor in his old age:

• "I'm the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him."
• "When his niece revealed that she did not know how to cope with speakers who ran on and on, Hoover told her: "You just pass them up a little note and you just write on it "your fly is open" and he'll sit down right away."
• "Asked how he managed to endure the many years when leaders of both parties treated him as a pariah, he replied, "I outlived the bastards."
• "He labored on a history of FDR and the New Deal so unbalanced that--to protect Hoover's reputation--it has been hidden away. On one occasion, asked what he was doing in the middle of the night, he retorted, "I'm making my Roosevelt book more pungent." 
• "He was so hard of hearing that his secretaries had to shout. That was all right, Hoover told a visitor. "I'm used to being hollered at." 

Four stars. Excellent job on this particular topic! I waited with great delight for more pungent comments and quotes every other page and was not disappointed. 

Under the Never Sky

By Veronica Rossi.

I picked this up out of a Little Free Library. Then the next day, I went out to go meet up with a friend I haven't seen much since pandemic started. At the last minute I remembered "oh yeah, she runs hella late, better grab a book," which I did, and it was this one. Then friend proceeded to be an hour late, so I started reading this book. And I was utterly confused at the start of the book and wished I'd grabbed another one, and thought, "if I'd bothered to thumb through this at the Little Free Library, I would have put it back." But since I had nothing else to do, I kept going. And it got better, though I think I'm probably still lost on some points.

My approximation of understanding of the background of this: it's an apocalypse world, and some folks are living underground(?) in pods(?) with a lot of virtual reality and genetic engineering and whatnot going on. And some other folks are still living on the apocalypse-y surface, in tribes in the wilderness, where some folks have evolved super-senses--super hearing, super sight, smelling people's emotions (temper), etc. I admit this is what I found confusing and I could have used some Basil Exposition to explain what was going on to me. It's one of those books where Things are Named and Mentioned in Capital Letters a lot like you know what they're referring to.

The book jointly features Aria, one of the pod dwelling/virtual reality dwellers, whose scientist mom Lumina has gone to another pod(?). While her mother's gone, Aria gets into some kind of weird trouble in which some of her friends end up dead and a powerful guy ends up kicking her out of the pod into the real world. While out there, she meets Peregrine, an Outsider from a tribe whose nephew, Talon, has been abducted by the pod people. Perry is a taciturn guy with super sight and super smell (a rare combo). I'll note that Aria's mom seems to have genetically engineered her to be a singer, as well. And her mother left her a message she never got to read before getting kicked out. So the two team up together to try to find her mother/his nephew, more or less, meet some enemies and friends, and meet some former pod people who are helping out the locals in a lovely place.

Look, the plot kinda confused me, all right? But I rather liked Aria, and even Perry after awhile once he starts to get less stoic. (Of course, it's a romance.) Some of the concepts are interesting, if confusing, to me. Lumina turns out to have been studying Outsiders because they haven't had the mental degeneration of poddwellers, and the revelations related to that are intriguing. But also....like I said, coulda used more exposition, please. 

So, it has good potential, but I was somewhat lost reading it. Maybe others don't have that problem though? I'm giving it three stars. 

Love, Jacaranda

By Alex Flinn.

This is a modern-day retelling of "Daddy Long Legs," which I really enjoyed. It covers about a year and the characters are teenagers, but there's some definite callbacks/quotes from the original that I enjoyed.

Jacaranda Abbott is from Florida and she's in foster care--she never had her dad around and her mother was the sort who had a bunch of bad boyfriends and ended up killing hers to save her and Jacaranda's lives. Now her mom's in jail for a long, long time and Jacaranda's working in Publix. When she gets asked to sing by a customer, someone films it, it goes viral, and an anonymous benefactor, on the strength of that impertinent video, offers her a full ride scholarship to a music/theater/performing school in Michigan.*

* Michigan?! Not that I know anything about the Midwest, but that's a major theater hub to get young stars?

She never sees/meets her benefactor, but she is given an email address for him at dll.com and is told to write periodically as to how she's doing. She also works with his lovely uh, assistant, I guess, Vanessa, who she clearly really likes and Vanessa takes care of her very well. I really enjoyed reading about theater school and wished I could have gone to one myself. That place sounds really great, and clearly Jacaranda has promise in a future career :) 

Anyway, Jacaranda goes, changes her name to "Jackie" so she's not "that girl from the Internet" and makes friends with the easygoing Daisy and the prickly, nervous Phoebe. Phoebe is harder to befriend, but they make it work and it's very sweet as time goes on. She also meets Phoebe's hot, rich, super nice cousin Jarvis and they fall in instalove. (Description of Jarvis: "This guy has millions of dollars, and he eats cheap meat loaf and asks about the waitress's kid's braces.") But Jacaranda's keeping her less-than-posh upbringing a secret from everyone there since it's a rich crowd, and she has definite insecurities about being a foster kid with her mom in jail compared to the Pendleton family.*

• I don't believe Jacaranda's ethnicity is ever specified here, but I assumed she was a person of color. She's not described in the book, though there is one point where she and Phoebe claim to be related to Jarvis, not sure if that implies otherwise? But if that's true, it works.

She also ends up with a rival, Brooke, who gets pissed as heck that the new girl gets better parts. To which Jacaranda says "And after all those extra classes and lessons, you aren't better than someone who just walked in off the street." BURN! Having a jealous rival eventually leads to people finding out things, and Jacaranda finding out what's really going on with certain people. 

Overall I really enjoyed this. For the Daddy Long Legs fans, I'll discuss more about how this compares to the book below the spoiler cut. But both on that level and in its own right, this is a super sweet story and adorable and gives you the warm fuzzies. Four stars! 

Woodrow Wilson

By Louis Auchincloss.

Okay, this is an improvement from the last book. What was my impression of Wilson? Sexist, wants female attention, really obsessed with the League of Nations, getting into a feud with his bestie, having a stroke. There you go.

Notable moments in the book:

• His wife Edith was hiding as best she could how badly her husband was doing, claiming that he'd said yes or no to whatever and nobody would know the difference. But I about threw up when I read this sentence: "Her excuse that she had no interest in the president of the United States but only in her husband was less that of a free American woman than of a Hindu wife who has no obligation to society beyond that of her duty to her lord and master, ending with that of throwing herself on his funeral pyre." THE FUCK?!?!
• Post-big stroke, Wilson was doing super terribly both physically and mentally. He'd had two before "and though in each case his recovery had seemed complete, there is evidence that these strokes took some toll on his temperament. We shall see that there were always two Woodrow Wilsons, and that the tragedy of his bad health understandably contributed to the lesser and not the greater of the two." 
• He was racist, or "he never quite shook off the condescending southern attitude towards blacks." The author passes it off as "nine out of ten men raised as he was would have thought the same." Oy.
• He was reserved and shy and picky in who he liked, so gee, somehow he didn't have a lot of friends.
• That said, he was actually a very popular professor (as in, voted most so! frequently!) and would do comic impersonations at parties. 
• He had a flirtation with a married lady, Mary Peck, while also married. Maybe went all the way? 
• "He could appear to be two different men, the one scarcely aware of what the other was thinking."
• "If we find it hard at times to understand the two sides of Wilson's nature, it may be helpful to remember that he had the same difficulty."
• Wilson was brokenhearted when his first wife died, then fell in love again within a year, something that other people found distasteful. 
• More talk about Edith that made me want to vomit: "She worshiped him as the great man of his era and saw her role as one of constant and unquestioning support, a kind of priestess at the alar of a deity."
• This was published in 2000 and the author takes some time to make some cracks about impeachment.
• Wilson was going to make 30 major speeches...and then had the big stroke. Oy. 
• Wilson also pretty much went mental after the stroke, insisting that the Secret Service chase after drivers who passed him, firing the secretary of state for holding meetings, etc. 
• The author would like to blame Edith and the doctor for what went on with the league, apparently?
• Edith claimed that the doctor warned her that every time she took a problem to her husband, "you are turning a knife in an open wound" and she should solve things without her husband. "It seems to me most unlikely that a doctor would have taken it on himself to give such drastic advice where the governance of the nation was at stake; at any rate he was conveniently dead when Edith saw fit to make public his alleged recommendation." 

I dunno, this is kind of a dicey book and skeevy towards Edith (did she deserve it? I dunno, but I felt icky), but at least it had some more personality? Two and a half stars. 

William McKinley

By Kevin Phillips.

This was literally the worst presidential biography I have ever read. Seriously, I thought Benjamin Harrison was pretty dull, but that was a roller coaster ride of excitement compared to THIS.

From the book:

"Who really was he? What did he achieve? Why didn't I have a fuller picture--and what forces had led him to being so widely and unfairly dismissed?"

We'll cover that one below.

"McKinley was no Washington or Lincoln. This portrait will describe an upright and effective president of the solid second rank. His insistence on making friends, orchestrating consensus, and avoiding acrimony probably bars him from the first rank."

Um....none of that sounds....bad? Or preventing one from being first rank? I mean, really, if we're ranking presidents, usually the top ones are the ones who had to deal with the worst crises and dealt with them pretty successfully. It doesn't sound like McKinley had massive drama going on during his term to really test his mettle. 

It sounds like the problem with writing about McKinley is that he didn't leave a whole lot of personality/paperwork behind him (same issue with say, Martin Van Buren) and was a stoic personality. There's not much you can say about him personally at all to get a sense of the dude, which is definitely a problem in writing a biography of the guy. So the book almost entirely focuses on the issues of the day, which were frankly uninteresting to read about and not super controversial to me reading about them now. The crack I made about tariffs in Benjamin Harrison? Very much true here. I was super super bored. 

The most interesting fact about McKinley from this book is that his wife became handicapped and when she started having convulsions at the dinner table he'd throw a napkin over her face. I...do not know what to make of this at all. It is mentioned later that he would carry her out at times as well, which sounds more reasonable than just pitching fabric over her face in public. 

He also received honorary doctorates from two women's colleges, which is nice, and he told people that "I am glad that we are demonstrating in the United States today that the boy should have no more advantage than the girl." This is compared to Cleveland, who said that "the relative positions of men and women were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence." I do not look forward to eventually reading about Cleveland. This book also goes on for a few pages about the "mugwumps" (WHY THE HELL DID ANYONE DECIDE TO CALL THEMSELVES THIS, it's worse than "Whigs," even) and what they were for and how they were sexist. Whee. 

I will also note that THIS IS A PRESIDENT WHO GOT ASSASSINATED. Why did he get assassinated? By whom, and when? What was the story? I HAVE NO IDEA FROM READING THIS BOOK BECAUSE THE AUTHOR BARELY MENTIONS THAT THE GUY DIED AT ALL. His murderer and/or the motives or how it happened or ANYTHING are completely skipped in favor of musing over Theodore Roosevelt and figuring out McKinley's legacy and trying to compare him to the greats and figuring out how he's second tier. Seriously?! I was so bored reading this, but at least I had a murder to look forward to to jazz it up a bit* and we don't even get THAT because...why? That was news. That was important. Why the heck did you skip this as much as you possibly could in a biography? 

* I'm being snarky on "jazz it up a bit," but seriously, I was curious about the assassination after reading all the crazy details of Garfield's, and I don't even remember what this book review said about McKinley's at this point. I need to reread it. On a related note, I read up on Garfield and Arthur back in the day and I canNOT find the written reviews here, the hell? 

This is a snooze to read and not recommended. One star. 

In other news, I recently got a copy of Assassination Vacation (previously read as a library book) and started rereading it and that was FAR better and more interesting regarding McKinley. 

Benjamin Harrison

By Charles W. Calhoun.

Now that the Turd Administration is over with, I decided to go back to reading presidential biographies, a project I originally started back in 2016 and mostly quit after Arthur for ... obvious election reasons depressing me. Anyway, while I couldn't find a Cleveland biography at the nearest library to me these days (I don't feel arsed to hit the nearby college library like I used to for these things), I did pick up several "American Presidents" books again for the presidents one doesn't want to spend too much time reading about. Hence, Benjamin Harrison.

Lordy, this is a fairly boring book. It has moments here and there, but man, both Benjamin and the period of time his presidency was in were bo-ring. I started making lists of "you know a presidential biography is boring when they talk about tariffs a LOT" and "you know a presidential biography is boring when they start talking about how hard it is to build a cabinet and lists everyone in it" (Team of Rivals being the one book that's interesting in that regard....though Andrew Jackson's feuding first Cabinet comes next) and "you know a presidential biography is boring when they just list names of everyone living in the house." Benjamin was also a born-again Christian, so he's boring in that regard too. Even Benjamin thought other people thought he was a bore (page 22). 

The ongoing mystery in this book is "why did he lose after 4 years when Henry Adams thought he was an excellent president?" "He succeeded too well," the author concludes on page 4. ???? Also, Benjamin wasn't too into patronages, and that pissed people right off during the Gilded Age. Also, his wife died right before the election, which is sad.

Anyway: Christian, got married young, did some military time, is William Henry Harrison's grandson, won the election. Unlike his grandfather, he smartly wore a "chamois undersuit" to his rainy inauguration. He also had hordes of his relatives move in--I note that his son-in-law avoided the house and his brother-in-law, it felt like the author was trying to stir up a bit of drama.

Harrison was the kind of guy to do other people's work, wrote his own speeches and prepared his own papers, and filled in for his absent cabinet members. He was also sensible enough to not just accept whoever wanted a patronage for what without investigating it first. He was formal and cold to most people unless he knew them well. He took in his ill secretary, and personally gave CPR (or whatever they called it then) to the navy secretary when his house burned down and let him move in too. 

And then he had to deal with James Blaine. It's been like five years since I read about this time period, but I thought, "Wasn't Blaine a pain in the ass?" Why yes, yes, he was to everyone. The family was kind of snooty and fake, and Blaine called out sick a lot. Blaine was both the sort who was genuinely frequently ill AND was also likely to "call out sick" and who knows which one he'd be doing. At one point Blaine was expected to give a speech, then he didn't show up, and Benjamin "did not learn the subject of his banquet toast until he sat down at the table and read it in the program." Good thing he improvised well! 

Benjamin on Native Americans: still thought that "civilizing" them was the way and anyone with complaints should register them "peacefully" with the government. Ooookay then. On the other hand, he supported African-American rights enough that Frederick Douglass--who as I recall was buds with Lincoln--declared that "to my mind, we never had a greater President."

Benjamin didn't enjoy the job, and god knows he didn't miss it after he was out of it, but felt chagrined at being voted out, a bit. 

I'll note that Benjamin's wife Carrie/Caroline had a young widowed niece, Mame Dimmick, who comes up in this book a LOT a lot a lot, moves in and "looks after" Benjamin. Foreshadowing, she becomes wife #2! Nothing at all creepy about that, amirite? Uh, Benjamin's daughter sure thought it was, and she and her family made a break from this drama. Can't say I blame her.

Anyway, I'm going to give this two stars. Not sure if it's dull due to the guy, the times, or the author, but for a short read that took me a few hours, it was a dullish few hours. 

 

 

Franklin and Eleanor

By Hazel Rowley.

Well, this is certainly interesting and is fairly blatant about what went on in that relationship!

This is a duel biography of the Roosevelts, focusing on relationships rather than the politics. It especially focuses on how roughly halfway(?) through the marriage, Franklin cheated on Eleanor with Lucy Mercer. Even though there doesn't seem to be any formal announcements of "that's it, we're living separate romantic lives" mentioned, that's clearly what happened. 

Now, I've always rather liked the Roosevelts. Other than the internment camps* FDR has always sounded like a top good president, and Eleanor as the best first lady, and Roosevelts in general tend to be fascinating people. But in addition to FDR being "first obviously handicapped president, managed to get elected a bunch of times and fight a world war while dealing with that," and Eleanor being "first bisexual first lady, that we know of anyway," I feel like they may be the most famous old-timey polyamorous couple before polyamory became A Thing. 

• He's probably done some other things that aren't great too, just can't think of any and I haven't read any super involved books on his presidency yet.

I like to make this joke about the Roosevelts: "he had a girlfriend, she had a girlfriend...." In reality, he seems to have had tons of girlfriends--I think I've lost track of 'em all-- and Eleanor had both girlfriends and boyfriends! Now, while we don't know how many of those actually involved sex--I think we can be pretty sure that Lucy Mercer and Lorena Hickok definitely got laid (and I just got some library books on both of those ladies to check!), but anyone else I think is a giant question mark-- the word "romantic friendship" comes up a lot, a lot a lot a lot. I'm not sure if FDR was literally up for boning after getting polio, but he certainly had a lot of lady friends hanging around/working for him/shacking up with/* kind of a harem? going on? Which Eleanor knew about and was pretty much friends with everybody.** Likewise, it seems pretty open secret that Eleanor hung out with lesbians*** and FDR was absolutely cool with it and befriended her girlfriends. Eleanor also seems to have had several "passionate friendships" with dudes as well. Very intriguing! Even Lewis Howe, FDR's best politics guy, seems to have been on close, platonic terms with both of them. I'm not sure what to call that particular dynamic, but it sounds very nice. 

• Seriously, he shacked up with Missy for years and kept making promises to do so with other ladies.
• * Except for Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who everyone was totally threatened by when she came back into FDR's life.
• ** Eleanor also definitely shacked up with some of her people. Repeatedly.

In general, Team Roosevelt sounds like it was very nice people to work for! My impression is that their employees loved them and they sound charismatic (especially FDR) as heck.

In addition to dealing with politics, illness, kids, and revolving doors of inamoratas and inamoratos, there's also Sara Delano Roosevelt, a My Beloved Smother if ever there was one. FDR has always struck me as being a very stereotypical Aquarius guy: loves his friends, doesn't love having emotions, likes having a lot of people around, wants to be detached. This probably helped him a great deal with regards to being the only child of a smothering mom with a lot of money and not much else to do in life but focus on him, in that he doesn't sound super upset about dealing with her shit. But poor Eleanor: grows up an orphan, suddenly has a smother-mother, starts out being friendly and appeasing, and then the older she gets, the less and less fucks she gives. That's gratifying to hear about.

Okay, so list of memorable things:

• Eleanor's bisexuality sounds like it was going on early, as a lot of girls at her girls' school had crushes on her and were giving her flowers. That's nice.
• Franklin and his urge to get married early: "Marriage was his only chance for sexual fulfillment. It would also mean freedom from his mother."
• Franklin had some kind of secret code in case his mother snooped through his papers. "Cryptologists have cracked the code, but not the meaning," whatever THAT last bit means. For the record: it substituted numbers for vowels and deleted the tops or bottoms of consonants.
• Previous to Eleanor, Franklin dated Alice Sohier, who reported that he was ah, very fresh. "Franklin had to be slapped--hard." Alice refused his proposal, as he wanted six children and "I did not wish to be a cow."
• Franklin knew how to manipulate his mom to want to go to Europe. "I really want you to tell me what you would want me to do," he wrote, claiming it'd be good for him, but he didn't want to be away from her and he wouldn't want to go unless she could decide not to care, and it would be so selfish of him.... He got to go. 
• Of course his mother wasn't happy to hear he'd proposed to anyone, and asked him to keep the engagement secret for a year. However, his mother had all the money. Eventually Franklin stands up to mummy and she backs down. 
• "Franklin was used to his mother, and had long ago chosen his way of dealing with her--lies, evasion, and feigned docility." 
• Franklin didn't exactly bother to hide his affection for Lucy Mercer, even around his relatives. Alice Roosevelt kept asking Franklin and Lucy to dinner together (she haaaaaaaaaaated Eleanor) and tried to hint to Eleanor's face what was going on. Eleanor ignored this. 
• Wow, did Roosevelt's doctor ever straight up lie to the press, claiming "you can say definitely that he will not be crippled." Louis Howe talked him into saying that, and then at the same time sent some letter "allegedly" from Franklin to the publisher of the NYT claiming he had doubts about that. 
• Louis Howe's wife Grace apparently told him that she hated him and that she loathed his touch. OUUUUUCH. She accused him of having an affair with Eleanor and he pointed out those facts to her. He then claims they're just friends and "Do you want me to give that up too? So many things you don't want--what is there that you do?" Geez, lady. You don't want him but you won't let anyone else have him either? 
• Even when recently paralyzed, Franklin's vibing with his nurse, Enda Rockey. And his secretary, Missy LeHand. 
• For years, Franklin is shacking up with Missy, taking her on a houseboat, to cottages, White Springs, the White House.... "If the adoring Missy could help him feel like a man again, Eleanor was not going to complain." While on the boat, "all wander round in pyjamas, nighties, and bathing suits!" Also, "Missy was willing to put up with cold nights, seasickness, sunburn, mosquitos, and hours of vain rod-holding in order to be with Franklin." "Vain rod-holding?!" snicker
• "If he was going to get back into political life he would have to be able to walk." Louis Howe was quite the engineer: figuring that being handicapped would cancel out Franklin's being an aristocrat. But he should never be photographed in the wheelchair or ever be seen being carried. "The public knew that Franklin Roosevelt had polio, but it was generally believed that he had recovered his ability to walk." He had to be seen upright, on crutches.
• Eleanor's first lesbians were a couple, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, who joined the Roosevelt inner circle/"gang." Everyone mutually adored each other, but the extended family was horrified. Franklin offered to build the ladies (all three of 'em) their own house on his land to live in together. 
• Twenty years in/halfway through the marriage and "By now it was clear to all their friends that Franklin and Eleanor were no longer a traditional couple. They had independent lives, which involved other close companions." 
• "One of the things that gave Franklin the most satisfaction was to provide the opportunity for people to do what they did best... While everyone in the group relied on everyone else, they also opened up each other's horizons. Franklin approved of this kind of bold social arrangement."
• Eleanor by now has crawled out of her shell, doesn't want to go back in, and "Eleanor had finished with trying to please Mama."
• Mama hates everything that's going on--Louis, Missy, Eleanor no longer being meek, Franklin being handicapped and trying to get back into politics--so she lords it over the grandchildren instead. Franklin just tells all the kids to figure it out with Granny. Eleanor gripes about Mama's "side slaps" and "we'd like to chew her up." 
• Franklin straight up calls Val-Kill, the house built for Eleanor/Nancy/Marion, a "love nest." "Franklin was taking a subversive delight in Eleanor's new life." Eleanor embroiders all their initials on the towels and linens. Mama hates it. "Mama did not dare to drop in without an invitation."
• Marion was the crankier one and at one point gets the idea that Franklin's not going to pay for the swimming hole. He basically writes back along the lines of, where did this come from, I adore y'all, and "If I had you here I would spank you both and then kiss you." eyebrow raised
• "Franklin had Warm Springs; Eleanor had Val-Kill. Franklin had Missy; Eleanor had Nancy and Marion. Both had Louis Howe." POLYAMORY!!!!
• "Franklin was away from home for 116 weeks between 1925 and 1928. His mother was with him for two of these; Eleanor for four; Missy for 110. There is never a hint of complaint in Eleanor's letters to Franklin." She accepted that one person could not fulfill every need. 
• Franklin's speechwriter, Sam Rosenman: "Roosevelt loved people, and they learned quickly to return that affection... He was not concerned with distinctions of wealth or special position or religious beliefs. This was a new kind of man in politics for me: one who did not seem to care--or even know--whether you were a Catholic, Protestant or Jew."
• Poor Missy: once Franklin becomes governor, she can't obviously be alone with him. Move into the mansion, he says! 
• "FDR often referred to himself as "Father." He liked to think of the community around him as a big, happy family." POLYAMORY!
• "Even when he was president of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the world, FDR would still have to go to his mother with his cap in hand."
• Another one of Eleanor's romantic friendships: Earl Miller, family bodyguard. Franklin liked him. Louis/Marion/Nancy sound jealous. Even James Roosevelt suspected his mother of having an affair with Earl. The author assumes it didn't get sexual since Earl preferred younger women. We'll never know, since most of their letters were burned. But at one point, Earl and Missy dated!...until he decided to marry a teenager instead. Earl claimed he dated Missy to fend off gossip and that's why he married someone he didn't love, too. 
• Louis Howe could be very blunt when he didn't like what Franklin wanted to do. Overheard one day: "You're going for a swim? Well, go ahead, dammit, and I hope to God you drown!" 
• Sam Rosenman and his wife move into the governor's mansion at FDR's request. "Dorothy and I knew the gossip about Missy and FDR and tried to figure out what that relationship was." "The Rosenmans remained as mystified as everyone else." A friend of Eleanor's claimed there was no affair. "He loves Missy. She's quite essential to him....But as to an affair--no."
• "By accepting Missy into the household as if it went without saying, Eleanor provided a cover. Her friends, just like Franklin's, knew not to add fuel to the endless gossip. Meanwhile, Eleanor's relationship with her bodyguard was also causing tongues to wag."
• Meet Lorena Hickok, obvious lesbian and "nation's foremost female political journalist." Imagine the awkwardness of her dating the first lady with regards to her job.... she could report on all this dirt, but.... Louis Howe on the topic: "A reporter should never get too close to the news source." She had to give up her job and get a new one. When she was at the White House, they "snipped" her out of photos. I
• Eleanor didn't give a crap about the gossip. 
• Hick, however, wasn't too happy in the relationship after awhile, specifically after Eleanor became first lady and was obviously very busy with that. 
• "There were to be no pictures depicting the president's handicap. It was not permitted to photograph FDR in his wheelchair. If his braces could be seen at the bottom of his trousers, the photos were to be retouched." They could do that then?!? "There was no television in those days, of course, and all newsreel coverage of FDR was carefully orchestrated. FDR was shown standing, he was shown sitting; Early did not permit cameras to show FDR "walking." From today's perspective, it is astounding that the press stuck to the rules. Even journalists who disliked Roosevelt respected the dignity of a handicapped man.... The limitations on press coverage of FDR were so effective that for twelve long years, most Americans had no idea that their president could not walk." 
• FDR had no qualms about inviting people into his bathroom while he shaved or got dressed. "Take a seat on the can," he would tell them cheerfully." 
• The White House food during the Roosevelts' time there was notoriously bad. (She reminds me of Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, in which we find out that the notoriously terrible school cook, Miss Mush, is actually really good at it if she only has to cook for a few people. The more she has to cook for, the worse she gets.) 
• How FDR stayed calm: "Once you've spent two years trying to wiggle one toe, everything is in proportion." 
• Elliott Roosevelt said that for all his mother's writings, "she managed to conceal her personality completely....We read her articles and marveled how she created the image of a total stranger, not the detached, harried, fault-finding wife and parent we knew." 
• In one of her books, Eleanor used the word "darky," having no idea it was derogatory and the ah...presumably white people who read the book before publication didn't notice. When an African-American lady wrote to share her offense, Eleanor apologized and asked what she preferred instead. Nice. 
• More girlfriends of Franklin: Daisy Suckley, who kept a journal of all of this stuff for posterity, and Dorothy Schiff.  The latter doesn't sound like she was all that into him and didn't sleep with him, though she said she probably would have had he asked. And then there's Crown Princess Marthe, who FDR offer to put up at his house. She sounds like an admiring teenage giggler, somehow, even though she had 3 kids.
• Eleanor ends up having a nasty breakup with Marion and Nancy after Nancy says everything they all did together was to build up Eleanor. Eleanor cut them off after that, saying she'd be cordial since they lived next door, but that was it. Nancy regretted it and she and Marion went to Franklin for aid, but it doesn't sound like he wanted to assist at that point, and we're told that "he, like all of Eleanor's friends, took the view that Marion and Nancy had abused Eleanor's goodwill over the years." 
• I'm not sure if this counts as "romantic friendship" or not, but Eleanor was close to her secretary, Malvina "Tommy" Thompson. When Tommy needed nursing, Eleanor did it, including giving her shots in the rear! 
• The Roosevelts wanted to offer the king and queen of England hot dogs. People were outraged. Especially Mama. Eleanor cared not and got cheerfully snarky about this topic in her column, pointing out that other food would be around. 
• I feel sorry for Missy: she had a huge stroke, got paralyzed, lost her ability to talk, and died young. 
• Another "romantic friendship" for Eleanor is the younger Joe Lash, who already has a married girlfriend that Eleanor befriends too. "I'll be at the house soon after six and waiting to both kiss and spank you," Eleanor wrote him. She wrote him a series of letters when he went into the military. 
• An FBI informant watched when Eleanor went to visit Joe in a hotel room. They didn't leave except for lunch one day. 
• "The FBI file on Eleanor Roosevelt was to be more than three thousand pages long,  one of the thickest files in the entire FBI collection." 
• FDR ran for a third term because WW2 was beginning. He ran for a fourth term even though he knew he was dying because he felt like he needed to see it through. "FDR could not tell anyone about his health. Not Eleanor. Not Anna. Not his sons. No one. This was a pact between him and his doctors. Posterity must never know that FDR had run for a fourth term when he knew he was dying." He claimed that he did not believe the doctors were telling him everything.
• "There was something obsessive about the love FDR inspired in others. The members of his inner circle almost vied with each other to prove how much they loved him." All his girlfriends had their little jealousies and kept an eye out for who got preferential treatment. "The women liked to tell themselves that the president needed them, that they were making up for Eleanor's lacks." 
• When Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd came back into FDR's life after her husband died, she apparently thought he'd been terribly lonely for years. WITH THAT HAREM?!?! 
• Lucy was the one person nobody was open about, and Lucy would sneak off to Warm Springs to visit, which she did on the day he died. Lucy ran for it, but the remaining harem hanging around the house were forced to tell Eleanor that she'd been there. AWKWARD. 
• Eleanor's final "romantic friendship" was Dr. David Gurewitsch, who she had as her doctor and she ended up shacking up with him and his wife. Uh.....? She called him "the most precious person in the world." 

I'll note in the acknowledgements at the back of the book, the author said "I learned quickly that all sources, both primary and secondary, were unreliable. There was so much that could not be said, even in private letters." The author did read Hick and Eleanor's letters (more on that later), Joe Lash's letters and journals and other writings, and Daisy Suckley's "thousands of diaries" kept under her bed. "Without that suitcase, this would have been a different book." She also claims that Blanche Wiesen Cook is who suggested that it got physical with Hick and Earl. 

Anyway, this is juicy as all heck and compelling reading. Four and a half stars.