Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space

By Lynn Sherr.

"Sally was very good at keeping secrets."

The author is a journalist and was a friend of Sally Ride's, but not close enough to her to have learned of her big secrets of (a) dying of cancer, and (b) surprise, she's bi and has been with a lady for 27 years at the time of her death. After Sally's death, Lynn was asked to write her biography, which is a light, breezy story that goes into as much depth on Sally as one can do when Sally tended to be a closed-off person who tended to compartmentalize a lot. Sally grew up with a nice family, a sister dubbed "Bear" who turned out to be a minister and a lesbian, was really into tennis and physics, and obviously became an astronaut and was the first lady in space. The book covers Sally's ride to fame and how she handled it, and how she was involved in two space disaster investigations and the toll that took on her, and her transitioning to other work.

As for Sally's sexuality, it seems fairly clear she traveled the bi-way, having a college girlfriend for awhile while also dating guys, mostly in the space program, and sometimes it sounds like she had more or less enthusiasm for the dudes. She got married, she got over the idea of being married, and settled down with a longtime girlfriend, Tam. Sally pretty much kept her bi-ness to herself and both doesn't seem to have considered it to be A Big Deal, and at the same time it's pointed out that had she ever come out about her past or future relationship, it would have been very bad for her career. To date, she's the only "out" person who worked for NASA and that happened in her obituary. It sounds like not that many people were even aware of it, or of her cancer when she got diagnosed with it either. Sally being a naturally closed-ish personality seems to have worked out for her, but probably made it a bit hard to write about Sally's inner life when that was hard for others to know and she left pretty short journal entries. 

Notable facts:

• When six women and some men of color were added to the AsCan  program in 1978, the 25 white men also admitted into their class were pretty much ignored. "I could have mooned the press corps and I would not have been noticed," grumbled Mike Mullane. Another classmate, Kathy Sullivan, referred to their class as producing "ten interesting people and twenty-five standard white guys." 
• NASA people say "interesting" when something goes rocky or is indescribable. 
• Rhea Seddon: "We had to answer some dumb engineering questions. Like, "What if all the mucous that women put out will stop up the toilet?" And we're all sitting there looking at this highly placed engineer who'd been there forever, and we're saying, "What mucous?" 
• The anecdote about how Sally was provided with 100 tampons is definitely in this one, as is Sally's "you have got to be kidding me" look. "There just seemed to be this endless unfurling of Lord only knows how many tampons." When asked how many to include, Sally suggested about half that number. Fun fact: Sally was jogging 25 miles a day and that stopped her periods, so it didn't come up for her. The author reports that the anonymous first woman who actually menstruated in space noted that she also needed a pad, and later NASA let women figure it out for themselves as to what they needed. 
• At one point Sally was handed flowers ,which she handed back so she could have her hands free. "Bouquet-Gate" of course happened. "That one little action--giving back the flowers--probably touched off more mail to me than anything I ever did or said as an astronaut." 
• Sally refused to go on The Bob Hope Show because he exploits women. She then literally fled down, not even telling her husband where she'd gone. He was a bit annoyed with that.
• Sally had to sneak around to meet Svetalana Savitskaya, the second woman in space, due to politics. They only got to meet once and it sounds like they could never speak again, but they had a great time meeting each other. 
• Sally didn't enjoy meeting the US ambassador to Norway when he made a rape joke. She called him out for that one, saying those aren't funny any more in the US.
• When on the Rogers committee investigating the Challenger disaster, Sally was slipped an anonymous report about the O-rings and their performance in cold temperatures vs. warm ones. She knew if it was traced to her, someone would get fired, so she slipped the paper to another commission member, who in turn planted the idea to look into that into the head of Richard Feynman. Feynman never knew the source, but he got it done. 
• Sally thought Chuck Yeager was a jerk because he didn't actually bother to participate in the committee, snarking that he "showed some class by not coming to final ceremonies, would have shown more by resigning from Commission." 
• Sally just told her husband Steve that she thought she didn't want to be married any more, and he went along with that. She never told him who she left him for. 
• There's a quote from Sally about how high school boys get C's in math and think they can be engineers and high school girls with A's in math think they're not good enough. I hear that. 
• Being on the Columbia investigation committee gave Sally an unfortunate case of deja vu. "I'm hearing a little bit of an echo here." This time Sally did her own leaking to the press about what they'd found. 

I found it pretty interesting, and I think the author did the best she could with what she had to work with. Overall I give it about 3.5 stars, but that's really not the author's fault so much as there's only so close one can get to Sally, I think? It's probably about as comprehensive as you'd be able to do with a lady like that. 

Do Let's Have Another Drink! The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

By Gareth Russell.

A while back--after the queen died, I think--I bought some book on the wit and wisdom of Elizabeth II. I still need to finish it sometime, but I mostly remember it as apparently not having a whole lot of QE2's wit and wisdom because while reportedly she was very funny, most of the time she kept it under wraps and not in public, so the book was subbing in other royal relatives as well.

That's not a problem with this book on Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, QE2's mum. She is indeed a fizzy delight with a good sense of humor. It's barely over 200 pages, but there's definitely fun dish included within this biography. The author says it's told through 101 anecdotes, one for each year of her life, and isn't intended to be an exhaustive book, it's a "skimming-stone" biography. That seems about right for her.

Notable things:

•  The Queen Mum (QM from now on) wasn't interested in her future husband at first. She turned him down twice before finally caving in.
• Queen Mary went so far as to "weed out the competition" by offering one of the rival guys a very lucrative oil job in Oklahoma...requiring him to travel via boat during the worst weather of the year. Apparently he didn't clue in on what had happened until he got to America. This fellow, James Stuart, later proposed to a friend of hers right before her wedding and married her on QM's birthday. Also he cheated on QM with other friends of hers. Class act, that one.
• Some claimed that QM was really interested in older brother Edward/David, including um...Edward/David five decades later. Since they freaking hated each other, this is pretty weird?
• Tommy Lascelles also haaaaaaaaaaated Edward/David, straight up saying he didn't have a soul.
• Charmingly, Edward/David totally refused to talk to Bertie (the future King George VI) for days before he abdicated. He finally told Bertie on December 7 and bailed on the 10th.
• While bored on a boat trip, QM read Mein Kampf, being fascinated and appalled in equal measure. She used to think the Nazis were a goose-stepping joke and mocked them and did impressions of Hitler at parties, and then after reading the book, realized this shit was not funny. She then sent copies to other people to convert them to her POV.
• Hitler, in return, dubbed QM "the most dangerous woman in Europe." Awesome.
• After Buckingham Palace got bombed, QM remarked that she finally felt she could look the people of the East End in the face. This actually led to a very sweet relationship between her and that area, as people sent her a birthday cake every year after that, and at one point she visited a pub there and poured her own drink. Everybody loved her when she visited and at one point she coaxed a scared dog out of a half-collapsed house.
• She talked to inmates in a local leper colony and when the King mis-clipped an ostrich, stepped in and did it herself.
• Like me, she didn't particularly like those mixed boxes of chocolates from fancy businesses. She said the fancier they got, the more likely they were to combine dubious flavors together and then everyone had to pretend to like them. There's a mention of her having to eat a rose petal and lavender chocolate (same ingredients in bath salts), and writing Prince Paul of Yugoslavia to thank him for sending her cheap/reasonably priced chocolates.
• Poor Sir Frederick: having a "dicky tum-tum" in a bathroom without a lock on it, right as the QM is giving a tour.... "Sir Frederick, sans culottes, decided that under the circumstances, bowing to the dowager queen seemed ill advised." She regally announced, "And this is Sir Frederick's bathroom!" and took everyone out, and of course they all forgot to close the door.
• QM liked to tell the story of visiting a retirement home and when she asked a woman if she knew who she (QM) was, the lady said if she didn't know, there's some nice nurses who can help you out.
• QM claimed to have found and burned a secret wedding license between Queen Victoria and John Brown.
• When a server accidentally spilled on the QM, she sent him her apologies for accidentally nudging his elbow and saved his job.
• The QM could apparently outdrink anybody, including outlasting various members of the military while giving toasts to all the counties in northern Ireland.
• She would politely and coldly not comment on certain things, and would distract people in conversation if she had to.
• She was very supportive and protective of her gay friends.
• She REALLY got into watching boxing when it was "accidentally" put on in front of her. She started punching in the air and yelling "PUNCH HIM!" at age 96.

Quotes from the QM:

• "The chopper has made more difference to my life than it has to any queen's since dear old Anne Boleyn's."
• On cocktails: "Can't we call them drinky-poos instead?"
• On sailing past where the Titanic went down: "How reassuring."
• On chocolates: "I have never had a box of chocolates before which didn't have pink flavoured bath-salts, or nougat made of iron fillings and sand..."
• Upon being pelted with toilet paper, she handed it back to the protester and said, "Is this yours? Oh, could you take it? Thank you."
• At one point she took people to a chalet for lunch, thought she had the key in her pocket and didn't, and knocked on the door. "Who the fuck is it?" "Don't worry, it's only the Queen!"
• On the revolving door romantic life of Colonel William Whitbread, who would claim any woman he was dating was his niece: "Billy! Another niece?"
• On dressing for warmer weather and it ending up being cold: "Don't worry, darling, I've got my pearls to keep me warm."
• Andrew was described by anonymous people as "He's a total dickhead, an arrogant shit" and "a rude, ignorant sod and I felt like decking him." One stable staff guy hit Andrew and knocked him into a pile of manure, Andrew yelled that he'd tattle to his grandmother about this. Grandma's reaction? "You mustn't worry about it. I'm quite sure Prince Andrew deserved it." Heck, even Prince Phillip told off Andrew when Andrew was harassing a guard.
• On a gentleman checking to see if any ladies were around and announcing that "thank goodness, they've all fucked off to bed!", the QM surfaced from behind a curtain saying, "I'm rather afraid we haven't."
• On her footman being distracted by having a fight with his boyfriend: "Would one of you old queens mind getting this old queen a drink?"
• "People say it's not good to eat butter. People say butter is bad for your heart. Well, I have eaten butter all my life and look at me."
• Upon hearing there was a nudist enclave near her: "Embarrassing? For whom? I'm longing to see them. Perhaps the corgis will nip their bottoms." (I note that Camilla and Judi Dench later tried to find these people.)
• Colin Burgess the equerry literally tied the corgis' leashes to a car and slowly drove around to get them to walk. And told the QM this, she laughed and said, "Oh, Colin, you are wicked!"

Fun off-topic stuff:

• It's mentioned that after Queen Charlotte died, people STILL kept throwing birthday parties for her. "Although Queen Charlotte herself would henceforth be a permanent declines-with-regrets.... Never keen to sacrifice a good party for something as trivial as a death, an aristocratic lady was often asked to be a surrogate to Queen Charlotte to ceremonially cut said cake."
• Nicknames for eligible bachelors:
  ** "Hooray Henry" = rich, stupid, loud
  ** "Chinless Wonder" = rich, stupid, stupefyingly dull
  ** NSIT = "not safe in taxis," sex pest.
  ** VSIT = "very safe in taxis," gay.
• Prince Charles decided it might be a good idea to make amends with Edward/David and his wife. He was converted to believing they were awful after spending more time with them. "All that she talked about was whether she would wear a hat at the Arc de Triomphe the next day. Uncle David then talked about how difficult my family had made it for him for the last 33 years."
• There's a mention of QM getting photographed for a book, "and the only being who proved difficult was Minnie the corgi who, no matter which way she was positioned, would ostentatiously shuffle round to present nothing but her back and bottom.

Four stars. A pleasure and a fun read.

 

Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears

By Michael Schulman.

Exactly what it says on the tin, chronicles Oscar wars from the inception of the Academy being created and handing out awards in the first place up to The Slap. It covers:

• The creation of the Academy
• /Rebellious directors
• Oscar campaigning against Citizen Kane
• The Best Actress race of 1951
• The Hollywood blacklist and trying to still have a career (and get an Oscar) under a pen name
• The 70's takes over
• Allan Carr's Worst Oscars Ever
• Harvey Weinstein being an asshole and his depressingly successful campaign for Shakespeare in Love trumping Saving Private Ryan
• African-Americans getting Oscars
• OscarsSoWhite and the wrong envelope
• The Slap.

I enjoyed all of this, but probably the most poignant/depressing is the chronicles of Allan Carr being SUPER EXCITED to have a flashy gay Oscars with Snow White...and everybody hating it and it basically leading to his long decline and death. Poor guy. Lilkewise, Harvey Weinstein is...Harvey Weinstein. I did enjoy the clashing personalities of the Best Actress race and Dalton Trumbo and other screenwriters dealing with the whole Communist drama.

Memorable quotes:

• On Dalton Trumbo's very eventual Oscar, which he didn't get to really enjoy properly? "She keeps the Brave One award--once the source of the saddest, most complicated prank in Oscar history--on a bar. In a tutu."
• Rob Lowe: "Never trust a man in a caftan."
• On Allan Carr: "The truth was that he had liver cancer, which was spreading through his body like a deadly glitter bomb."
• Nikki Haskell on Allan Carrr: "That was the end of his life. What did he do that was so terrible that everybody got so hysterical? He made it too much about himself; that was the problem. He made it so much about himself, that was the problem. He made it so much about Allan that, when it wasn't flawless, they killed him."
• "But Carr had committed multiple Hollywood sins: he'd been too self-aggrandizing, too tacky, too gay. He'd slipped past the line that separates schmaltz from schlock. More than anything, he was the victim of a snowball effect: If the reviews hadn't been so damning, Disney might not have sued." 
• Courtney Love came across Lynn Hirschberg, who had written a damning Vanity Fair profile of her, and tried to clobber her with Tarantino's Oscar. Tarantino: "If she had killed you with an Oscar, it would have been like a scene from one of my movies."
• Terry Press was told by Spielberg to keep the Oscar campaign clean and not nasty. After Weinstein won, she fumed, "I will never take the high road with these people again. The next time, you'll find me in the mud." I think she's right. 
• And the final paragraph: "Smith held his glistening statuette in one hand. In a matter of hours, he had assaulted someone on live television, ripped his soul open while winning an Oscar, and written himself a bizarre new chapter in Academy Awards history. Had we witnessed a psychic meltdown? A husband defending his wife? A jerk? A victim? A monster? In a Hollywood ending that seemed too dark and surreal to be true, he appeared to be having the time of his life." 

Four stars. Long, in depth, good and juicy read. 

  

The Lonely Hunter: How Our Search For Love Is Broken

By Aimee Lutkin.

Aimee wrote an essay years ago that got famous, and eventually became the seed for this book, along with an experience at a dinner party in which she said something taboo: "I think there's this idea that everyone finds someone eventually. And I just think realistically, there's no reason that would ever be true. Some people are just alone forever."

That was the reason why I wanted to read this book because ME TOO, but in all honesty it's more of a dating memoir. (Which in all honesty are not my bag: either you read about a bunch of meh/bad/shitty dates and that's it, or she finally finds someone...and spoiler alert, that's not this book.) After that experience Aimee goes to a personal trainer, loses some weight, and forces herself to go on two dates a week for a period of time to get used to being rejected. She admits she doesn't learn a whole lot from that experience, though she does get a few one night stands. She finally falls for someone who is only into her once in a while to get laid but doesn't have much interest than that. Then she keeps going on with single life again.  Frankly, I wanted to read about what it's like to give up and to be forever alone and hopeless, and that wasn't quite this book, even though in a way it is. 

I'm not saying it's a bad book, because it isn't, but it was not what I expected. I wanted to hear more about how you deal with people insisting that as long as you're alive there's hope, that you have to be "self-actualized" before you can find love, that you have to be perfect, that you have to work on yourself, that you have to stop caring before you can find someone. She does note that that stuff seems to translate into "no one will want you like that."  But there's grumbling that a book isn't what you were going for, and you're supposed to review what you've got. Overall I kept on reading, but I didn't quite feel like it was covering what I had thought it would from the title. 

I do agree with some things she said:

• "Over the years, I've found that a common misconception about writers is that they share stories about their lives because they think they are good people; actually, I share stories about myself because I know that some people are bad in the same way I am, and talking about it can make us better."
• "It did not, however, feel like it had actually changed anything about the future. I could very easily still end up alone, and all these dates hadn't made me feel less lonely."

And even though obviously the one dude she dates for longer than a few dates, Adrian, doesn't come through, she admits some things I certainly think after I run into the crush that rejected me again.

• "You can find someone better and more reliable," he told me, after I admitted to reaching out. He was wrong. Not only had I not met anyone else I'd felt more than a passing interest in, none of them had been particularly reliable. It made more sense to gamble on the person I really wanted, even if it was a losing bet."
• "For the last few hours, I'd been given the focused attention of a man I still, on some level, completely adored. Knowing he was a dishonest and manipulative guy hadn't altered whatever that chemical reaction was, or the twisting path he'd taken across my love map of cultural volition. Any recovery I'd made in the last four months had been completely swept away by the look in his eyes and our third half-priced drink."
• "Nothing else would happen with this person. He could be attracted to me still; he could be basking in my obvious attraction to him. He could just need a little thrill. I didn't want to let him go again, even as I recognized he wasn't really there with me in the first place. The glow inside me was still valid to me, even if I couldn't glow for him again." 
• "Loving someone had given shape to a lot of my days, added poignancy to a lot of my nights; it had motivated me, made me feel anger, sorrow, passion. It was even part of the final decision to move my life from one place to another, both internally and externally. Love is a story, one I'd heard many, many times before. While in love, I could very easily picture what a future would look like, if Adrian (or anyone) would only love me back. Even knowing he never would, I'd been waiting for some denouement to make sense of it all."

Hear, hear. 

Anyway. I'm giving it 3.5 stars, whatever that's worth exactly? Interesting read even if it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I don't get why nobody wants to love Aimee (or me either), or why she's still single and unwanted by everyone while everyone else around her couples up. It doesn't make sense. She sounds lovely. I hope she gets what she wants someday. (Meanwhile, I just prayed to St. Jude.)

Mary Astor's Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936

By Edward Sorel.

"After I read her memoirs and realized she had a gift for writing, I really fell for her. I decided to become her champion...She wasn't even a huge star, and that in itself made me want to shine a light on her. Then, too, the fluky way in which I found out about the scandal led me to believe that I was somehow fated to be the keeper of her flame. She was a great actress, and dammit--I want to see her on a goddamn postage stamp!!"

The author is a cartoonist who got really, really obsessed with the life story of Mary Astor, particularly the scandal of her second divorce/child custody trial, in which her diary was waved around like a big ol' threat. Per his day job, he throws in a fair number of cartoons he drew of the scandal, and mixes in his personal fascination of Mary's life with the occasional aside as to how he first married a woman he didn't love, got divorced, and married happily a second time. The author's writing style is dishy as heck, which makes it worth reading.

Though I am ah...wondering about the chapter in which he supposedly held a seance to talk with Mary herself from beyond the grave about her sexytime with George Kaufman. I note that in the acknowledgements, he mentions "the chapter where I imagine meeting Mary Astor," and having a friend "conjuring the actress out of a guy from the Bronx," which I will always wonder about. 

It's pretty short, and Mary definitely did not have a happy life or marital relationship (sounds like the first husband, who didn't want to have sex, was the best of the bunch), and she drank and drank and drank. Awww.

(Wondering what the diary was like? Oh look, excerpt.)

Here's some quotes so you get the idea of what I mean by the writer's style:

• "Forty years after my fascination with Mary began, I still cannot fathom her desire to simply play the bourgeois wifey and breed. Did she really have no ambition? No respect for her talent or profession? No curiosity to find out what she was capable of?"
• "Cursed with the world's foremost fixation on Mary Astor, I had to know more about what happened during that trip than the bowdlerized version she presented in her memoir...I decided the only thing to do was to channel her in Catholic heaven."
• "I was appalled at Mary's inability to protect her daughter from that hate-filled scene. Where was the ferocity she would show with Peter Lorre in Falcon, when she kicks him in the shins? How could she sit silently while her terrified daughter was forced to witness the hatred her parents now had for each other? Why was Mary powerless everywhere except on a movie soundstage?" (Me: "Because movies aren't real and this was real life?") 
• "As for the diary, its final disposition rested with the court. "It is part of the agreement," said Thorpe's attorney, "that no one, save the litigants, their counsel, and  the court, will ever know what became of that diary. It will remain a mystery." ... "In 1952 Mary's diary and its copy were removed by court order from the bank vault where it had sat for sixteen years, and, with a judge standing by, the pages were set aflame and turned to ashes."

It's short, but dishy and entertaining for what you get. Alas, I don't feel like I'm doing this book justice in the review, so read this one instead, it's better. Overall I give it 3.5 stars but only because I wanted more. It's fun.

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood

By Maureen Ryan.

I'm gonna quote from this interview.

Hollywood is a moving target. The book will be out of date a year from now, maybe six months. But I think there are things that are eternal. And I think that for me, the biggest thing is let’s illuminate these norms and these myths and not hide behind the thinking that “Well, everyone’s trying their best, and everyone’s basically a good person. And these things are outliers and anomalies.” These bad, terrible things that we heard about are not anomalies. I wish I could say there are a lot of people working to make terrible work situations an anomaly, but we’re not there yet.

Five stars. Literally everybody (unless you have zero interest in television, anyway) should read this book. Especially women. Especially people of color. Especially everyone with societal privilege they may be misusing. Go buy it or put yourself on the list at the library, I care not. But go read it. In the meantime, please read these excerpts from the book of the juiciest drama so you at least know what everyone else around you is talking about. Lost, Sleepy Hollow, The Goldbergs, and SNL are particularly called out for having abusive environments for the staff.

I'm not going to recap all of that here since the excerpts should cover that, but I'd like to mention since it isn't covered already online that Adam Goldberg decided to send his staff links to Jennifer Lawrence naked because "the writing staff (including the women)"  wanted to see it, and "I have a rule that there is no nudity or p0rn shown on their computers, so I sent the writers a link so they could look at it on their own time." (Apparently that wasn't followed, either.) There's also mention of a guy who literally didn't want to let staff out to pee and openly said they should get catheters if they really cared about the show. Bathroom Guy was reported to HR, HR said he did nothing wrong, and it took years for Bathroom Guy to finally get fired. (I note the author keeps some people anonymous/under false names for safety.) 

Mo Ryan has been writing about television for a long time, and after hearing all of this shit for years, started feeling like she was writing a crime beat. "All the industry anecdotes I had eaten like candy in the past--this time they tasted of ashes." She also says, "Each time I have done a big, wrenching story, I have vowed never to do it again." And also that she can only do work like this thanks to a husband with a stable job in another industry. 

Anyway, half the book is dedicated to shitty behavior, and the other half is how to stop doing that shitty behavior and how to practice having a safe work situation and how to NOT have crap like this going on. It's flabbergasting how much rigamarole will go on to keep and save an abusive star or showrunner just because they are making people a bunch of money, but also think of how much money goes to say, revolving doors of staff being driven out of the industry.  Fire one asshole, and you can make things better, gee, who knew? I appreciate that she has a half of the book dedicated to rare good stories and other ways to not be like THIS in Hollywood, or elsewhere.

Everybody go read this.

Changed For Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical

By Stacy Wolf.

This is a scholarly but not too scholarly (by which I mean "good god, reads like a sociology textbook, I can't read those"), book, which I enjoyed reading. Topic covers it. The author devotes a chapter to the 1950's and female duets during that period; the 1960's and solo dancing and musicals about fabulous middle-aged women;  the 1970's getting more angsty, the 80's hardly featuring women at all (good points on Les Mis and Phantom), and then women of color becoming more prominent in the 90's, and finally, two chapters (and a prologue and an epilogue) on Wicked, because I think that's the suthor's favorite. Mostly those cover the women's friendship being "queer" even if they don't get involved...however that goes. 

Overall enjoyed, four stars. 

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

By Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.

I hadn't heard of these two and their long-distance friendship podcast before this book, but it's an interesting take on friendship because it focuses on how their friendship was so good and then eroded with distance, illness, misunderstandings, unintentional gaslighting, the joys of interracial relationships and differences, and feeling that things aren't going well and the friendship is on the decline. The two write in a mutual voice (even when it's obviously coming from one person's perspective, they write in third person about it) and analyze the slow death that was going on and what went wrong. A spa weekend wasn't going to cut it for fixing things. What they do best here is the descriptions of a death by a thousand cuts. A difference of opinion as to what's a problem here, another one there, omitting information about guys you're dating for months when you'd normally blab....the distance. 

]I admit: I'm kind of in slow motion ghosting/disappearing/de-escalating situation with a friend this year and that's why I picked this up. There were several moments of what I consider to be hurtful insult and it seems pretty clear the other person thinks of me in a not-good way deep down, and I can't get past that to have the same level of ...whatever...we had before. I don't think they've noticed if I'm gone since I had to be the initiator and we're not running into each other any more. I truly don't know if it's worth trying to save or not, knowing that truth, and knowing that they won't miss me. They might feel differently, but frankly I'm afraid to ask. I guess I read this book trying to figure out if it was worth trying and if so, how, because brutal honesty about my hurt fee-fees feels like it'd be blowing things up instead of letting it die slowly and quietly.  I can't say I figured that out from reading this, but I certainly did relate to the thousand cuts sort of deaths these two were going through.

As for "how to fix it," these two have apparently made enough from jobs/podcasting(?) that they could afford to do couples therapy. Which is great for them, though they admit that's not an option for everyone. If anything kind of skimps here, it's that, but you can kind of understand why if they perhaps didn't want to go into their therapy sessions. It leaves the book a bit short, though. Maybe the point of it is to illustrate the problems and pitholes of friendships and how they can start to slowly go bad.  Which makes sense, but not really going into "how to fix it" is why this book's getting about 3.5 stars from me. 

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963

By Robert Dallek.

This is the third and last JFK book I got at the library, and I've been dredging through it for months. Finally made myself plow through the rest of it's 700+ pages today. It seemed like one of those Definitive Biographies so I should read it, but I gotta admit that I preferred this one better. This was kind of a slog. I find that my experience of reading Kennedy is he's a big ol' mixed bag, an interesting personality, but I cannot find his international political dealings to be interesting to read about and that was probably 60% of it. Maybe it's just me. You'd think the Bay of Pigs thing would be gripping, but...um, nope. This is also another book in which a president was assassinated and the author has no interest in talking about it at all, which I think is ridiculous. At the very least, one should have like, half a chapter on that sort of thing. 

(I'm dreading starting LBJ, y'all. HUGE FUCKING TOMES OF LBJ, another "mixed bag" guy with a dose of large penis (literally) behavior. I think I need to go through the reviews on Best Presidential Bios first and see what looks like the most interesting before I pick at the library. That said, he reviewed this book at 4.5 stars but clearly has the same criticisms I do, so....I'll be skipping more Dallek, I think.) 

Bookmarked bits of interest:

• JFK writing letters in college was categorized by his bestie Lem Billings as "dirty," "very dirty," or "not so dirty." 
• While double dating with Lem, he'd insist that they trade identities and see how that goes. (Apparently very well for Jack.)
• 'He had so many women he could not remember their names." He was very wham, bam, thank you ma'am, 15 minutes and no foreplay. This does not sound so great for the ladies.
• One employee of his, Priscilla Johnson, asked why he kept acting like his father and getting into potential scandals. "He took a while trying to formulate an answer. Finally he shrugged and said, "I don't know really. I guess I just can't help it." He had this sad expression on his face. He looked like a little boy about to cry." 
• On his time in the Senate: "It's the most corrupting job in the world" and "I've often thought that the country might be better off if we Senators and Pages traded jobs" and "I look at the senators and I pray for the country."
• Evelyn Lincoln was his secretary. "If I had said just now, 'Mrs. Lincoln, I have cut off Jackie's head, would you please send over a box?' she still would have replied, 'That's wonderful. I'll send it right away. Did you get your nap?'" 
• JFK ducked out on voting on McCarthy, coming up with a bunch of health excuses and vague shit, but also sounds like he didn't really care. "I was in bad shape, and I had other things on my mind." 
• Lem Billings categorized J&J's marriage as "they were both actors and I think they appreciated each other's performances." 
• Chuck Spalding thought Jackie was attracted to womanizers like her dad and said it was surprising that she was so intelligent on other things, but "didn't seem to have a clue about this one." She didn't think any men were faithful to their wives.
• Jack realized if he didn't run for president in 1960, he might be too sick to do it later--legit. 
• Quote from Jackie: "I have to confess, I was born a Republican, but you have to have been a Republican to realize how nice it is to be a Democrat." 
• Bobby Kennedy drove everyone nuts by being an asshole, and there were a lot of fun nicknames about him, like "Little Brother Is Watching You," "Black Prince," and "that little shit" (Eisenhower did that one). Bobby didn't care.
• Truman on supporting Kennedy: "I never liked Kennedy. I hate his father. Kennedy wasn't so great as a Senator...However, that no-good-son-of-a-bitch Dick Nixon called me a Communist and I'll do anything to beat him." When asked how he could see Kennedy as ready for the presidency when he previously said he was too young and inexperienced, Truman said, "When the Democratic convention decided to nominate him, that's when I decided." 
• Kennedy said being a Catholic wouldn't affect his presidency and he'd resign if there was a conflict between his conscience and national interest. 
• Kennedy was Super Disturbed by the nuclear plan he inherited, which would just blow up a lot of the world. "And we call ourselves the human race," he grumbled after that.
• "Having criticized Eisenhower's refusal to act on housing by emphasizing that it required only a stroke of the pen, Kennedy began receiving pens in the mail as a reminder of his words during the campaign. In response, Kennedy "kept muttering and kidding about how in the world he had ever come to promise that one stroke of the pen." 
• Kennedy tried to intervene about trying to get a black member of the National Civil War Commission hotel accommodations. He wrote to (ahem) General Ulysses S Grant II, head of the commission, asking for equal treatment. Grant III said the commission had no business interfering in racial matters. They also moved the commemoration dinner to a segregated US naval base. This "embarrassed Kennedy and reinforced his decision to shun 'racial politics.'" 
• I'm confused on the whole Freedom Riders thing, because JFK wanted it called off, but Bobby was sending assistance (or trying to, anyway). 
• Richard Reeves: "In a lifetime of medical torment, Kennedy was more promiscuous with physicians and drugs than he was with women." JEEBUS H MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST ON THAT ONE!!!111!!!!!
• There's a lot about how when Kennedy and Khrushchev didn't get on. Fun times. At one point a guy says Kennedy seemed pretty calm during it all and Kennedy was all, "What did you expect me to do? Take off one of my shoes and hit him over the head with it?" Legit. 
• Jackie sounds like she shopped like Mary Todd Lincoln. 
• During the Bay of Pigs incident, Kennedy was calling up former presidents because only they would get what he was going through. "No one ha a right to grade a President--not even poor James Buchanan--who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made decisions." 
• Bobby met with some black activists and was continuing to be a pain in the ass, apparently. Lorraine Hansberry said, "Look, if you  can't understand what this young man" (Jerome Smith) "is saying, then we are without hope at all because you and your brother are representatives of the beset that a white America can offer; and if you are insensitive to this, then there's no alternative to our going in the streets...and chaos." 

I think I'm going to give this about 2.5 stars for interesting reading. I definitely had more bookmarked at the start of this than the middle/end of it. 

Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

By Andrew Lownie.

I read this book all night when I was unable to sleep. The book certainly tried to get me there, but obviously did not work and here I am in the light of day having finished it. I listened to some podcast (British Scandal) on these two recently that was citing this book, enjoyed the interview, found it at the library.  I found it to be nearly 400 pages of slogging through how these two were stupid, drunk, rude, mean, boring, shallow, spendaholic, cheapskates, gay, obnoxious, ugly, work-shy, etc., etc. etc.....oh yeah, and they were Nazi sympathizers, too. Alas for the author, there's not enough material on that topic--the obvious inspiration for this book--to go for that many pages, so most of the book is dedicated to the incredibly shallow afterlife the two spent together after their marriage. I give the author credit for staking out a new area of material for these two that isn't usually covered, i.e. the aftermath. But lord knows it's unpleasant to read. Then again, the subject matter is terrible, so what do you expect? But even I thought some of the razzing didn't quite ring true. I don't particularly want to defend Nazi sympathizers, but god knows I've read a lot of royal stuff and I was just like, really/! to a lot of it. 

The Nazi stuff comes up early on, and is brought up again in the middle and at the end in kind of a "just to recap it" sort of way. There's certainly documentation for most of that, we know the D&D did hang out with Hitler and the Germans were kissing their booties in just the way they wanted and needed. Did they blab stuff if they knew it? Wouldn't be surprised. But the British government manages to maneuver the D&D out to the Bahamas and thus the Hitler stuff never quite comes to fruition. It's creepy and icky, but didn't exactly hurt the nation under the circumstances. A fellow named Nigel Law describes the visit as him seeing very little of real leaders and barely met the Fuhrer, and he didn't understand half of what he said or what was said to him.  When warned of the dangers of the Germans, the duchess ignored the warnings and the duke "is in such a state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis." I'm still trying to figure out how "in" Wallis was with the Germans/von Ribbentrop and I'm still wanting to know how people thought she was juggling both a prince, her husband, and Mr. Nazi all at once. 

Basically the duke wanted to do a little somethin-somethin for a "job" but didn't actually want to do a job, just wanted some kind of prestigious title. He wanted to move back home and was categorically NOT ALLOWED TO. I don't see as much bitching over a lack of funds in this one that I've seen other places, but they seem to go back and forth between being cheap, sponging off others, refusing to pay debts, etc. versus doing way too much shopping. After a not-particularly-enjoyed stint in the Bahamas, "jobs" kinda ended for the duke, so they just basically threw parties and went to nightclubs until they were too ill to do so any more. Though I'll give Wallis credit for actually doing some charity work while in the Bahamas, which I get the impression she was into. 

I find it very confusing that this author has simply tons and tons of bibliographic listings at the back and all these footnotes citing sources, so you'd think at least all things here are well researched. On the other hand, he tends to throw in total rumors like "Wallis was having an affair with (insert name here, there's a lot of names floated)" and "Both of them were totally gay," and  "the Duke cheated too," and "the Duke had an illegitimate child," which I think was in there for like a page with no follow-up, without that much to go on.

I find it hard to believe that the world's most besotted dude was cheating on Wallis, especially so recently after the wedding like the author thinks or at least implies. Given that the duke had mumps, no body hair, and I guess some um, sexual issues and wasn't exactly fully manly matured (which comes up at the end), I'm pretty sure I've read elsewhere that the guy was suspected to be infertile, and we know he didn't knock anyone else up. So how much do we know about this illegitimate child? Not a lot? Hmmmm. There doesn't seem to be much evidence on most of Wallis's suspected affair partners (I'll get to the one that's covered later). The gay stuff seems to come more from the Duke having a femme-y childlike personality and Wallis being an emotional domme more than actual evidence of Wallis banging ladies or the Duke banging men. I'm not entirely sure Scotty Bowers (you may not want to Google that, I'm not gonna), sex procurer, is the world's most reliable source....? The author's convinced that Scotty told the truth in general, apparently but I'm not even sure if it was spelled out more about the D&D? Honestly, the book feels like the author threw in every tacky-ass story he ever heard about these people, and the really weird/scandalous sex shit doesn't always feel like it rings true. 

I can't help but laugh at the end of the book, in which it's debated why Wallis had a hold on him. Their emotional S&M relationship seems to be the key--he liked being bullied about--but it also gets into "sex tricks she learned in the Orient" (lol) and how only Wallis could get him off because of her special knowledge and sex games, or have they actually managed to P-i-V at all?! ... Oh my. I felt so dirty. 

About the one rumored thing that seems fairly covered is Wallis's "affair" with the extremely gay Jimmy Donohue. The three traveled around as a threesome (Jimmy footed bills and partied with Wallis all night long) for years before the duke hit his limit. I definitely got some kind of pseudo-boyfriend vibes on this one, kind of like Eleanor Roosevelt had various pseudo-boyfriends that were married, and I don't think schtupping occurred, but she more or less "partnered" with them to some degree. I pretty much think that happened here, and also, how plausible is it that a very gay guy and an older lady were schtupping or giving blow jobs, as this book indicates?  Jimmy himself said he loved her like his mother. 

Mostly this book is a whole lot of quotes as to how awful the D&D are. Probably what I think is the most well researched thing n here is all the quotes about how horrible they are. Just tons and tons of stories of them being bratty rich people, written down in people's diaries. Let's do a brief roundup of quotes!

• Alan "Tommy" Lascelles, who worked for him and hated every minute of it, said he didn't have a soul and no intellectual or artistic interests and had no friends.
• MP Robert Bernays: has a case of arrested development, hasn't thought through abdicating and hasn't realized that "abdication means exile and that for the rest of his life he can serve no useful purpose."
• When drunk, he'd imitate Winston Churchill trying to get him to not abdicate. 
• Both of them thought that handing out autographed pictures of themselves were a gift.
• The King refused to take his calls, can't blame him.
• Baba Metcalfe at the wedding, after musing as to how unattractive Wallis is in looks and speech, "I feel I am passing the weekend in an ugly chateau with people (with the exception of HRH) who are unattractive and completely ignorant of what is happening and who I never want to see again."
• Wallis: "Here was someone whose every day had been arranged for him all his life and now I was the one who was going to take the place of the entire British government, trying to think up things for him to do."
• Fruity Metcalfe, the Duke's best man and supposed best friend: "He might do anything--anything except the right thing. I live from hour to hour fearing to hear the worst." He worked for the Duke without pay and one day he's calling in for work and finds out that the Duke has bugged off to Biarritz without a word, left behind. "He has taken all cars and left not even a bicycle!...After twenty years I am through--utterly I despise him, I've fought and backed him up (knowing what a swine he was for 20 years), but now it is finished...The man is not worth doing anything for." 
• Wallis claimed to only be interested in buying presents for the children of Nassau. LOL, nope, shopping for herself. 
• Patrick Skene Catling ran into him while the duke was drunk and golfing. "I thought he was an awful shit and a fool." 
• The duke didn't have interest in much other than golfing, gardening, music/entertainment, and running his mouth. A lot. Apparently not saying much of interest, either. 
• Apparently Wallis claimed a bunch of her jewelry was stolen, then it turned up in the Sotheby's catalog. "She clearly could never wear the jewels again after she and her husband had collected the insurance." 
• The duke, lifelong party animal: "I never take life easy. I never have and I never shall." 
• Naturally they didn't write their own memoirs. It sounds like it was pulling teeth to get anything out of them about it. Naturally the duke claims he was slaving away at it and did it all himself. The duchess went through several authors quitting on her, one of them grumbling that he couldn't turn her into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and that she lied a LOT.
• Noel Coward: "Poor dear, what a monumental ass he has always been!" 

So how do I rate this book? Hell if I know. I guess I'm gonna split the difference and go with 3.5 stars. It was a complete lulu to read, honestly. 

Note: this review feels similarly.