Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Nora Ephron: A Biography

By Kristin Marguerite Doidge.

This book feels too short to cover the life of Nora Ephron, and yet I cannot argue that the book did not. It feels short but comprehensive, you know? Anyway, it's exactly what it says on the tin: life growing up with somewhat famous but fighting/alcoholic/cheating parents, living in locations that were not NYC, enjoying the heck out of her journalism career, and then writing her way out of it after husband #2 cheated, which segues into a movie career. The book goes into short-but-feels-like-it-covers-things details about all of Nora's movies, eventually juxtaposing them with Nora hiding her own illness even as she carries on with her work. I enjoyed it very much and whipped through that like I did her sister's book yesterday. 

As per me, I did bookmark a few details to mention in the review:

• The wagon wheel coffee table actually existed at someone's house. "What could I do? Once she put it in the movie, I couldn't throw it out," the lady (Amanda "Binky" Urban) said.
• The couple that met as camp counselors in When Harry Met Sally were based on her parents.
• I blogged about My Blue Heaven/Goodfellas over here recently, but it comes up again in this book too. Nora's snark on the topic: "The idea, of course, that you could set these people down in, say, Wichita, and expect them to be model citizens, is ludicrous." Damn right, that's why I like the movie. The way Steve Martin sneers "Todd Wilkinson," ''nuff said. 
•  Nora on Sleepless in Seattle: she wanted to make a movie "about how movies screw up your brain about love," and "if we did a good job, we would become one of the movies that would screw up people's brains about love forever." True dat. 
• A quote about "Michael:" "And he likes to get into fights like any good archangel would." 
• There's a story about a dinner party in which someone asks, "Who's the biggest prick that anyone has ever worked with?" Nora is immediately "Oh, I love this game!" and is deeply disappointed in Nicole Kidman and her husband Nick for not being able to answer it. "Didn't you sue your manager?" she says to Nicole, who is all "Well, yes, but he was a nice bloke, not a prick." To her husband she is all, "You work with murderers!" and he says, "Yeah, but they're not pricks!" Nora's final response: "I cannot believe you all. I've had a list of nine, I've been trying to whittle it down." 

Four stars. 

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

By Delia Ephron.

Delia's been through it in the last few years and that was before pandemic. First, her beloved husband of decades, Jerry, died of cancer. Then she wrote an NYT article about trying to cancel his phone service and how excruciating that was. That led to a guy she briefly dated when she was young (and didn't remember) writing to her, and they quickly fall in love. And then Delia comes down with the same cancer that killed her sister Nora, years later. Peter and Delia quickly get married, he moves in, and she goes through all kinds of medical treatments to get rid of it, including having a stem cell treatment that makes her wish she was dead. But she survived, got back to writing again, and she's still happily married. The book ends right before the pandemic starts--I did wonder if she was immediately forced to go back indoors and avoid everyone and everything for the rest of her life again, but that's not covered.

The medical stuff is hard going. Even though Delia's not the type to want gory medical details, there's enough recounted by others to make you shudder. (And I could have used a wee bit more romance? Yeah, yeah, I know, there's no time....) So if that's a trigger for you right now, maybe skip this for awhile. But I'm very glad she found love again and just in the nick of time. 

Three and a half stars. 

Channel of Peace: Stranded in Gander on 9/11

By Kevin Tuerff.

This is written by the original "Kevin T," a character in the amazing musical Come From Away. This was sold at the show and I bought it and it was short, not quite what I expected, but good to read anyway. It's his version of the time he spent in Gander when he was stranded there on 9/11. The actual coverage of his time in Gander is pretty short, all things considered, and covers more of his time afterwards than the actual experience. More along the lines of "what it meant to me afterwards." He mostly talks about his career and how he changed things after his experiences, and what it's like to have a musical made that includes you as a character. 

I was surprised that his SO at the time was named Evan in the book, not (also) Kevin--in the musical the joke is, "It was cute, for awhile." I'm not sure why he uses a different name in the book since I found the guy's name online in Kevin's own Medium blog entry  and yes, they were two Kevins. Kevin doesn't get into details as to why not or if 9/11 was the death knell of their relationship like it was in the musical, but I got the impression that the timing of it was more fictional. He also said that they didn't go to the Legion and get "screeched in" (kiss a fish, become a Newfoundlander) at the time, but he did that later upon returning. He and Evan eventually made up enough to talk again years later, so that's nice.

What's eerie is that Kevin was totally shocked to hear his character sing "Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace," the song that was stuck in his head after 9/11, and he didn't remember ever mentioning that to the show creators. He recounts some synchronicity stories in here regarding his career, this song, and after he started the "Pay It Forward" movement that's mentioned in the show, had someone literally do it to him. 

Anyway, this was pretty short/brief, but sweet for what you get. Three and a half stars. 

With and Without You

By Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka.

This is a very thoughtful and interesting book. 

Siena and Patrick have been together for three years of high school. They are pretty much an ideal, perfect, happy couple...except for how Siena is having the teenage equivalent of the quarterlife crisis. Am I too involved with Patrick? Do I have my own identity or do I just do Model UN because Patrick does Model UN? Maybe I should break up with him and see what it's like to be Single Siena again, she thinks. So she plans to break up with him. However, this gets thrown awry when Patrick tells her that surprise, his family's moving a few states away for his senior year!

You'd think this would make Siena be all "Sweet, here's a good excuse to break up!" but instead, she finds herself in a bit of a panic and committing to an LDR. Which....actually kind of works for her on some level in the relationship? Absence is making the heart grow fonder (and hornier), and theoretically this gives her some breathing space to quit Model UN and find her own thing...whatever that may be. (I loved her thing, btw.) Patrick obviously misses home and Siena, but is managing to find new things and people where he lives too.

I rather liked that these two didn't break up....well, I have to vaguely spoiler this one but you might have guessed it given the title: for most of the book, they stick it out despite whatever weird feelings one or both of them may be having. These two are thoughtful and caring towards each other, even if finding where they are different and not just PatrickandSiena has some weirdness to them. They seem pretty well adult for 17-18-year-olds and even if there's some pre-quarterlife-crisis-angst going on, they find their way through, and I really appreciated that. I don't think we see too many romances where the couple have been together enough to feel "stale" and then realize they still do want each other, but the authors make it work.

Four stars. 

Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life

By Sutton Foster.

Sutton is an actress in Broadway and on television. She means this title literally, as she tells the story of her life and how crafts helped her deal with it. Her mother had a lot of mental health issues that were difficult to deal with--she was agoraphobic, she got into feuds with family members, etc.--and Sutton found that crafting was a great distraction and help in coping with the stress of her family life, and/or just dealing with difficult castmates who were shutting her out as a teenager.

At age 19 while on the national tour of Grease and dealing with castmates who shunned her, she took up cross stitching ("my mom's hobby") as a way to remind herself of happier times in her childhood. "It was a form of self-protection: I don't need to socialize! I have a project to work on!" It gave her a purpose beyond performing, not to mention something to do while the rest of the cast went out without her. "I didn't know then what a profound impact this would have on me throughout my career." It gave her something to focus on besides worrying about how other people didn't like her, and the less she cared about them not liking her. Later on, after her first marriage breaks up, she copes with it by making a bunch of crocheted squares. "That became a visual reminder that I was making progress. Each time I placed a finished square on one of the piles, it reminded me that I was healing."

Sutton draws portraits of her characters and representations of deities when she wants help in having a baby. And after she finally adopts one, she decides to make ten original baby blankets she designed herself.

Sutton loves the word badass--she has it on display in her house and included the pattern for a baby blanket with that word on it in the book later on. I also love how she and Patti LuPone have a mutual admiration society and Patti even agrees to be interviewed for the book. "She made you feel the meaning behind the music." Patti says that she's not a badass in her life, "but I won't let anyone (bleep) around with me onstage."

I did like the moment where she wants to be an understudy in Thoroughly Modern Millie, then gets offered Eponine in Les Miserables on Broadway--a part she's played before, a sure thing, as opposed to "an understudy in an unknown play in La Jolla." One of the show writers tells her, "I have no idea what we'll have you do in the show, but all I can say is, trust your gut." Sure enough, the star leaves, and Sutton gets the part for real, and that show made it to Broadway.

Sutton also talks about the process of working with an editor to put the book together, and clearly they did an excellent job of that. I also like how she talked about craftiing with her castmates on "Younger," getting several of them to crochet with her, and her guy costar even learned how to crochet behind her back so he could make her a gift of a giant Thank You banner. That's adorable.

"I think a lot about what it means to "sew in the ends" and how this book helped me do that. There is meaning in everything if you look for it."

I have been blabbing on about this book to crafters, and this week I wanted to blab on about it to you. Four stars. Highly recommended for crafters, theater nerds, and for those of us who are both and craft to save our sanity (especially while backstage).

Harry S Truman: The Coming of the Cold War

By Nicole L. Anslover.

This is a pretty short book (the back of it is just compiled speeches so the actual book is 150 pages) but mostly kept it pretty lively. Some aspects of Truman's career I just find dull to read about no matter what, but the rest of it kept me interested.

Notable bits:

• Even though Truman grew up around southerners, "his actions while in office did not reflect his family's prejudices." He used words I won't repeat in personal letters and didn't exactly hang out with African-Americans, BUT he was a believer in equality for all. A quote from Alonzo Hamby: "He remained a racist only in the narrowest sense of the word and was considerably less so than the vast majority of white Americans in the years after World War II." He was also the first president to address the NAACP.  Since the "Dixiecrats" had already left, he didn't have to worry about pleasing them. 
• He was the last American president to not go to college, but he was really into reading and history.
• Truman met his future wife Bess at Sunday school, and it sounds like he fell instantly in love, but it took her years to get interested ack. It didn't help that her family was wealthy and his wasn't. 
• After they got married, they lived in her childhood home with her mother for their entire married life.. Bess really didn't like Washington and stayed in Independence most of the time, which is why we have so many (love) letters from him to her.
• "A life-long reader of history, Truman knew that a battle between Congress and the president could severely hinder a war effort--and he was certain there would eventually be a war for the US. He feared that Roosevelt would have to haggle with Congress in the same sort of back-and-forth way that Lincoln endured during the Civil War. This, Truman knew, could cost lives. Truman was very open about the fact that history was the main inspiration for his ideas." SOUNDS LIKE NOW. 
• Truman is one of the few men to serve as president who truly never wanted the job. 
• Stalin "seems to like it when I hit him with a hammer." Truman got obviously more aggressive in his dealings with Stalin once he found out they had the bomb. "Churchill said "he told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting."
• Truman kinda liked Stalin and debated whether or not to TELL HIM ABOUT THE BOMB. He decided to say that they had developed a weapon of "unusual destructive force," and Stalin took it pretty casually in a "good news!" sort of way. 
• Truman publicly called the bomb "the greatest thing in history" but privately felt bad about all the deaths. Unfortunately,, bombing one city didn't stop the Japanese government. American planes dropped leaflets on Japanese cities warning people about bombing and telling them to evacuate the cities...that didn't work either. It had to take two cities to get results. 
• Truman compared the Congress he was dealing with to Andrew Johnson's, saying they weren't so bad and they'd impeached the guy...
• Truman was the only one who thought he'd win his election. How? Probably based on his own character and being likeable. 
• MacArthur: really wanted to go to war with the Chinese, was very open about that. 
• Truman USED to like Eisenhower until Eisenhower went Republican and started dissing him. This ended the presumed (on Truman's side, anyway) friendship and Eisenhower ignored everything he said. Eisenhower wouldn't even meet with the Trumans before the ceremony and stayed in the car. 
• Even though Truman left with abysmal job approval ratings, "the public now typically ranks him at seventh or eighth in polls of the greatest presidents." 

Three and a half stars. 

Harry S Truman

By Robert Dallek.

It's another American Presidents book! Notable facts:

• Truman on himself: "Because of my efforts to get along with my associates, I was usually able to get what I wanted." Later he rephrases it as "all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends all his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." 
• "His investments in two failed bank enterprises convinced him that however uncertain running for political office might be, it was a more reliable career for a middle-aged man with no record of consistent success at anything, except for his two-year army service." 
• Truman on his term as presiding judge of Jackson County: "I wonder if I did the right thing to put a lot of no account sons of bitches on the payroll and pay other sons of bitches more money for supplies than they were worth in order to satisfy the political powers and save $3,500,000." (written in private.)
• "Truman's nomination for the vice presidency in 1944 is one of those political events shrouded in mystery that will never be entirely unraveled." -the author.
• James MacGregor Burns, biographer of FDR: "The President never...pursued a more Byzantine course than in his handling of this question."
• Truman had ONE LUNCH MEETING with Roosevelt during the campaign AND THAT'S IT. He only saw the guy twice during the fourth term., and Roosevelt didn't say SHIT about oh, the bomb, or him dying, or ANYTHING.
• Why use the bomb? They didn't think Tokyo would surrender otherwise, there were likely to be massive casualties for the Americans if they invaded the islands. "The US military chiefs anticipated between 250,000 and 500,000 American deaths in an invasion, which would be roughly equal to all US troop losses to that point in the war." 
• Truman constantly went around saying he never wanted to be president, "practically every time that I see him and I wish he wouldn't." -Harold Ickes. Truman again: "A man in his right mind would never want to be president if he knew what it entails." However, since he had the job, he'd do the best that he could. And "I think the proper thing to do ... is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell." Whatever was ultimately good for the country as a whole would be best to his political advantage. 
• Truman on the Middle East/Israel/Palestine dilemma: "Jesus Christ couldn't please them when he was on earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?" 
• Despite ALL OF HIS GRUMBLING about the job, he ran for it again and won anyway. Dewey was a stuffed shirt who thought it'd be a slam dunk so he didn't work so hard, LOL.
• Truman vs. MacArthur reminds me somewhat of Lincoln vs. McClellan and Washington vs. Charles Lee, except with a lot less insults out of MacArthur. "I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was...I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President," and also surrounded himself with ass-kissers and "wasn't right in the head." 
• Truman's approval rating fell to 23%. Oy. 

Hm, about three stars? I think I'm feeling brain dead on insight today, read this review instead.

This Is Not The Jess Show

By Anna Carey.

Jess Flynn lives in Swickley in the year 1998. She's got a crush on her best guy friend, Ty, even though everyone she knows keeps pushing her to date Patrick, the town hero (who she finds boring). Her sister Sara is dying of  Guignard's Disease. And a bunch of people are apparently sick with some kind of virus in town lately. 

Then things start to get weird: one of her friends drops a strange apple-logod device....and one day when she comes home, her dog isn't her dog any more, doesn't recognize her and bites her, and nobody knows what to say when Jess points that out. Remember that music teacher who started going on to her about the nature of reality and then disappeared....?

The rest of this review is a total spoiler and has to go below the spoiler cut. I'll say it's four stars, though. 

The Personal Librarian

By Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

I'm visiting my mother this weekend and she insisted I read this book (and then bring it back ASAP). It's historical fiction based off the real life of Belle da Costa Greene, the personal librarian/art dealer (pretty much) of J.P. Morgan. Belle sounds like a smart, charming, flirtatious, strategic lady who was extremely good at her job and procuring artwork, and she also (fictionally, at least?) did very well at dealing with a mercurial boss.

Oh yeah, and she was a colored woman who was passing as white the entire time. Her father was a famous Harvard graduate/law dean/political advocate guy who was dedicated to fighting for equality. However, her mother's heart was broken with the overturning of the Civil Rights Act, and she concluded after that that the only way to be safe was to pass as white. Her parents broke up over this and he moved to Russia and knocked up a Japanese lady. (He...went to Russia to find a Japanese lady?!) The rest of the family all passed as white and Belle changed her middle and first names to claim a Portuguese grandmother to explain why she wasn't quite as pale as most of the rest of the family. 

Obviously neither me nor the authors know the full extent of her relationships for real, but they do a sizzling job imagining that Belle and her boss had a very close relationship, but it never went very far romantically because Morgan wanted to keep her around instead of having yet another mistress breakup. And while Belle has the occasional fling here and there, she has an off-and-on relationship with Bernard Berenson, an art expert who also hides his own background and is in a happily open relationship. Bernard is...complicated and hard to root for after awhile, but Belle resolves things on her own regarding that one. She also juggles the urge to not have to disown her colored relatives/be open to someone about her secret periodically, while living in fear every time Morgan gets ticky about something that he's figured it out. She also has a frosty relationship with Morgan's daughter Anne, a closeted lesbian who figures out that Belle is colored and always seems cranky about her. Belle points out when Anne or her girlfriends(!) (score, girl, you had two girlfriends!) get nosey at her that she isn't getting nosey about them, and it sounds like they kinda respect her for that. 

Anyway: people in this book are very memorable and filled in very well, and it feels historically accurate while giving us the feels of what it was like to be there. I highly recommend it. Four and a half stars. 

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

By Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar.

You've probably heard of performer/TV writer/TV talk show host Amber Ruffin, who I am a big fan of. I presume you haven't heard of her sister Lacey (who as far as I can tell works at old folks' homes(?)/health care industry in Omaha, Nebraska) unless you watch The Amber Ruffin Show, which you really should. Their family is from Omaha. Amber left to go pursue a performing career and these days has less crazy ass awful racist encounters at say, her job, which is lovely. Lacey, on the other hand, keeps running into crazy racist shit all the time in Nebraska, particularly at her jobs, which it sounds like she frequently leaves or gets fired from even though she tries to put up with the BS so she can get money. These kinds of stories get told on the show, but here's a longer list. The two sisters write the book together in different typefaces depending on who wrote what, but mostly this is Amber recounting what Lacey told her and Lacey interjecting periodically. There's also some good explanatory photos at times, such as ridiculous things people have said about Lacey's hair and the time she got a makeover with totally wrong foundation. 

I will sadly not be able to recount which ones specifically stand out since my Kindle bookmarking went kind of wonky while reading this (sigh), but it's exactly what it says on the tin. Stuff where you're like "Geeez, REALLY?!" Especially the work stories. Especially the guy at JC Penney's who keeps insisting that Lacey is stealing even when she's just waiting for her boyfriend outside of the bathroom. Especially stuff involving cops (a big one on the show), People are ridiculous bad and I feel so bad that Lacey and Amber keep having to put up with this shit. I rather like their mom, she sounds badass, but even the parents got harassed out of running a successful daycare because of racism. Just...god, people, could you stop acting like that?

Much like on the show, Amber has a knack of talking about angry depressing shit in an entertaining way, so that sort of style continues in this book. There's also discussion as to how to handle each individual situation--when do you keep your mouth shut vs. when do you speak up and what happens when you do. 

I feel like I'm writing this pretty inadequately, somehow, so here's some other reviews that are doing it better than I am today. I will quote from this one in particular:

I’m making this funny, anecdotal book sound like an exhausting rant, and it is not at all a rant – even though the anecdotes I’ve listed above are far from the most mortifying recounted in the book. Constructed somewhat as a dialogue – different fonts for each sister – the tales are delivered almost entirely in a sardonic, world-weary, sisterly eye-rolling style followed by shrugs: Who’s gonna believe that white people can be so crazy?

Black people will, undoubtedly, although they hardly need this book to be persuaded. And the white people most in need of it – from Omaha to Orlando – are never going to pick it up, let alone read it. But if you are somewhere in that middle ground — wondering, could it really be that bad? – you need to read this book.

Indeed, in our current cultural climate, it’s a fairly mild rather than lacerating book on this subject. Ruffin notes that in these particular personal stories, “No one gets hurt. No one dies. Not in this book. This book is not about those things. This book is about the stories you’re expected to swallow and forget. … [And] Lacey is a magnet for this behavior because she’s small and nice and cute. …

“When you hear these stories and think, None of these stories are okay, you are right. And when you hear these stories and think, Dang, that’s hilarious, you are right. They’re both.” It’s a comedian’s book full of crazy stories that are not okay.

Four stars from me.