The intersection of feminism and pop-culture is one of my favorite topics because so often, when we see popular opinion pieces about pop-culture, the story is told from and about the cisgendered (and mostly white) male perspective. TOXIC was of particular interest to me because I came of age in the late 90s/early 00s, and that shit was toxic as fuck. I am still to this day unpacking some of the harmful messages that I ended up internalizing during that time period. And I don't think anything shows those unattainable and shameful standards for women quite as well as how the media talked about certain celebrities, who either couldn't or didn't want to follow the "rules."
I have mixed feelings about TOXIC because while the subject matter was interesting, the way the author talked about some of these women left a bad taste in my mouth. Take the Britney chapter, which dates itself because it came out pre-Britney memoir: the tone of the essay, while sympathetic, feels patronizing; and in retrospect, some of her remarks about Britney feel quite callous and at times even cruel, such as her analysis of the music video "Everytime." Ditum seems to take it as a mournful song about a breakup, but now we know that it's a heart rending ballad about the abortion Justin made her get that she wasn't allowed to talk about.
The section about Paris reads more positively, but suffers the same limitations because it also came out pre-memoir (her most recent one, I mean; she has two). I liked this chapter a lot because I really like Paris Hilton and I think the author, to her credit, really manages to capture how clever and self-effacing Paris is. However, the essay about Aaliyah was painful to read. Mostly because the focus of the essay is not so much about Aaliyah herself but how she was a victim of grooming. R. Kelly is more prominently discussed in this essay than she is, and the way Ditum talks about her, like a helpless martyred waif who was frozen in time like a bug trapped in amber, made me so upset.
I don't feel like the Amy Winehouse and Kim Kardashian chapters were very well done at all. Neither of those essays really capture how dynamic and conflicting those women are. Kim Kardashian seems to be a celebrity that people really struggle to write about because I've noticed this is a theme in other celebrity-focused books I've read. I think it's really difficult to juggle the fact that while she portrays herself as a selfish and vapid celebutante, she is an expert deflector, and she and her mom have turned their name into both a brand and empire. She also is the recipient of a metric ton of shit talk. The way people talk about her and her body (particularly during pregnancy) can be so traumatic that I am honestly in awe that she can leave her house without crying (because that is what I would be doing if it were me). Amy Winehouse was a similar recipient of that level of hate, especially in the late aughts and early 2010s. And, like, I really don't think this essay captures how she was basically destroyed by her fame; addiction almost felt like her way of self-medicating from the stress she received from being in the public eye and that is devastating. It feels very Valley of the Dolls, which basically had the message that the standards are women are such that to make do, you have to be drugged up... or perish trying.
I didn't really care about the two essays on Jennifer Anniston and Chyna, so I skimmed those.
TOXIC said some interesting things and reminded me of some very disturbing aughts trends that I'd half-forgotten (like Tila Tequila), but I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless you are just really interested in 2000s celebrity culture and want to read about it in a book that almost seems to emulate the same gossipy tabloid formula that it sets out to criticize.
I bought this like ten years ago, back when I was SUPER obsessed with nonfiction. I still like nonfiction but now it feels like a chore to read and I have to be in the mood for it, unless it's a memoir or one of those really poppy books about science.
THE MEDICI GIRAFFE is a book that sets out to explore how animals have, historically, been used as displays of power. It starts out with Alexander the Great's fascination with elephants and their potential for use in his armies and ends with William Randolph Hearst's private zoo, plus an epilogue that sort of skirts around China's use of pandas in global diplomacy.
This book's biggest flaw is that the topics are not cohesive. Apart from the chapters being about rich, powerful people who kept animals (or slaves-- more on that in a mo'), the people they talk about are pretty different and it didn't feel like there was a unifying theme.
So here are some bulleted thoughts.
Alexander the Great's chapter was one of the best because I loved the idea of this dude creating a two hundred strong herd of elephants that he then couldn't be fucked to train. Elephants scared horses and also men, so the armies that had them, had to have handlers who got the horses used to them and were adept at managing the elephants. But Alexander had so much conquering to do that he didn't take the time. They were basically useless. The Ptolemaic dynasty kind of feels anticlimactic after the elephant hilarity, but I did get a kick out of Ptolemy's younger son literally having a name that means sister-fucker because he married his sister. Loooooool. The Greeks apparently hated that and thought that was super gross (lots of gossip about "unholy holes"). I think he's also the guy who put statues of his mistresses everywhere. HILARIOUS. I love that kind of gossip.
Did not care at all about the Roman chapter that followed. Booooring.
Lorenzo de Medici's chapter was mildly interesting. Basically, he was like "fuck you, I'm a Medici, I own a giraffe."
There was a guy from Europe who owned a lion named Rudolph but apparently lions weren't as cool. I wished the side note about the Chinese emperor who told people to stop giving him lions as presents because he had too many was the main chapter. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in ancient China when the emperor was telling everyone that lions are totally last season, you guys. 11/10 would watch.
Josephine Bonaparte was apparently a crazy bird lady. She had so many birds. She had a lot of other animals too but then Napoleon got pissed off and told her to cut it out. The fact that she cheated on her asshole husband and had a ton of spite-birds made me like her more than I already did. After Alexander the Great's chapter, Josephine and her black swan army was the best chapter.
William Randolph Hearst's chapter was weird. The tone almost felt fangirly in parts but this guy was not a nice person. Also, his zoo animals seemed to be pretty badly treated, so that made me sad. I don't want to read about how he didn't listen to the zoo employee he hired to evaluate the health and comfort of his diseased and anxious animals (spoiler: he wasn't sliving for protection against animal cruelty) or how zoo visitors and zoo EMPLOYEES tortured the animals for fun. The only thing about this chapter that I liked was the fact that Charlie Chaplin apparently got a goofy grin while looking at zoos. YES.
The chapter that made me most uncomfy, however, was the "Human Animals" chapter, which was about Hernan Cortez and his colonization of indigenous Mexicans. I don't know, guys, something about writing about human slavery and sticking it in a chapter in a book about animals being used for power gives me the ick. Cortez was an asshole. The only good thing about this chapter was that it made me want to rewatch The Road to El Dorado, which is an excellent movie.
The epilogue about China's panda diplomacy was OK. Vox has a video about it which is way better. I don't think we like pandas because they remind us of ourselves. I think we like pandas because they look like black and white teddy bears who eat leaves.
Overall, this book was OK. I'm not going to keep it but I learned a lot of interesting things that I never learned in my history classes back in school. BRB, adding Road to El Dorado to my watch queue.
Well, the book certainly lives up to the title in the sense that it made me consider Keanu Reeves. I had actually forgotten how many movies he was in, including offbeat titles like Dangerous Liaisons and Little Buddha. This is sort of a biography (a very lite one), but it's also a fan letter to Reeves as an actor and a human being.
I enjoyed this book but parts of it were too silly. At times it felt like the authors knew they were running out of material and were scrambling for more filler, case in point: the quizzes, and the bizarre little Keanu fanfiction short story they randomly crammed in here.
Would recommend this to fans of Keanu Reeves, but anyone else probably shouldn't read this book. At the very least, it might prompt you to revisit some cheesy old movies, though.
Just in time for Pride Month, 365 GAYS (plus one for leap year) is a comprehensive tome of many famous and inspirational LGBT+ people, spanning as many letters of that alphabet as possible (as well as including a handful of allies who performed exceptional works of allyship, such as Princess Diana, who helped normalize people who were HIV+ in a way that very few were willing to do at the time). The careers shown in here are amazing, from writers (Dorian Gray and Alice Oseman), to YouTubers (Troy Sivan and Jojo Siwa) to actresses (Kristen Stewart and Dan Levy) to politicians, activists, royalty, athletes, artists, scientists, and more. It's racially diverse as well, which is also wonderful, because I have read other books about LGBT+ folks that have, unfortunately, skewed very white. This is just a really great and important collection and the cover and illustrations are beautiful, so it's AAAART, as well.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I'm often skeptical about coffee table-style niche encyclopedias like this, because they're often only accessible to the super-fans of whatever they're about, and even though I love Stephen King and he was, at one point, my favorite author, I would no longer call myself a super-fan of his work. I think the last thing of his that I actually read was REVIVAL and I didn't like it.
But you can color me wrong for this book because I actually loved it so much. I actually think this would be a great companion to read with Stephen King's memoir-slash-writing guide, ON WRITING, because it has pictures of a lot of the things he talked about. This book is part biography, part extended bibliography/CV, and part fan trivia. For example, I didn't know that early editions of MISERY had a fake romance stepback inside picturing Paul Sheldon's Misery cover! And better yet, THIS BOOK INCLUDES A PICTURE. AND STEPHEN KING WAS THE MALE COVER MODEL.
The whole book was full of fun little facts like that, including his inspirations, insights into his relationship with his wife and sons (I honestly LOVE how Tabitha is Mr. King's "Ideal Reader." Every time he talks about her, you can tell how much he worships her), and what his life was like after the accident that caused him serious injury. I've read most of his early works and a lot of the ones into the '90s, but everything from the aughts onward was a little new to me and there were several things he did that I hadn't even heard of. After seeing the summary of LISEY'S STORY, I'm kind of interested in picking it up now.
Horror fans, King fans, and movie fans will probably get a lot out of this book. I'm happy to report that you don't need to be a super-fan to get something out of this book. There's literally something in here for everyone and I kind of like that. Bev Vincent knocked the ball out of the park.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
What a fun and unexpected surprise this was. A MIND LIKE MINE is a collection of famous neurodivergent people who have accomplished great things, ranging from past notables like Ava Lovelace and Vincent Van Gogh, to contemporaneous ones, like Serena Williams and David Chang.
As someone who lives with a mood disorder, I wish books like these had been around when I was younger. To those who are neurodivergent or living with mental health conditions, it's so inspiring to not only see people talking about their conditions like it's NBD but also being wildly successful in spite of the obstacles they face as a result of their conditions.
A MIND LIKE MINE is beautifully illustrated, and profiles on the people chosen are alternated with toolboxes on how to talk about those with diagnoses and conditions without being ablelist, and also a little bit about the disorders and treatments themselves. This is the type of book that's great for both the neurodivergent and people who want to be allies, and I really enjoyed some of the facts showcased in this book.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
V.C. Andrews is a beloved icon so I was honestly surprised that her biography had such low ratings until I read the reviews and realized that people were taking issue with the fact that (1) her ghostwriter, Andrew Neiderman, had been selected by the estate to write her biography and (2) apparently he didn't do a very good job (in the eyes of her fans, anyway).
I was late to the V.C. Andrews train. For the longest time, I didn't think I liked her books because someone had given me a bag of her titles but none of the ones she wrote, so there was one about an angry and abusive Southern mom (I know, right? which one?) that was bad and another about a teacher of an abusive school (I know, right? which one?) where the teacher molested her students and also that was bad. I think I poked at two or three more before deciding that V.C. Andrews was not for me.
A few years later, she came up in conversation with one of my friends and my friend was like, "Girl, no. You have to read the ones she actually wrote." And I was like, "She didn't actually write these?" And she was like, "Oh, you sweet summer child." And that was when I found out that OG V.C. only wrote the first four Dollanganger books, MY SWEET AUDRINA, and the first two Casteel books before she died of breast cancer. I believe Andrew Neiderman finished both series with outlines that she had written, after being contracted by her estate, and then the Landry series was the first one he wrote by himself in full.
Now for what it's worth, I'm not a Neiderman hater. I do question hiring on a horror writer to pen gothic novels about young women that tend to be about doomed and forbidden love, but whatever. And also for what it's worth, I think he did a decent job finishing her work and I actually liked the Landry series in a "well, it's not V.C. but it's close" sort of way. Everything went south from there, though. Now it's about vampires and teen escorts and, I guess, this biography.
Despite the low ratings, I went into THE WOMAN BEYOND THE ATTIC with an open mind. And there were things about it I liked. Half this book is actually excerpts from unpublished work V.C. wrote, including a story and two poems and a couple other things. There are also photographs of her and her family that I'm not sure were ever previously released, so that was neat. Where the book goes south is in some of his interpretations about V.C. It goes into strange detail about how pretty she was, and how this got her creepy attention from older men. At one point, Neiderman compares her to Lolita, but in his summation of the book, he makes the erroneous, face-value interpretation that Lolita was actually asking for it (she wasn't-- H.H. is an unreliable narrator and trying to get you, the reader, on his side). He also praises her for downplaying her disability, as if being more vocal about her chronic pain (a rare form of early onset arthritis) would have lessened her work. I found that view incredibly problematic because I think people with disabilities should feel proud about their accomplishments, especially if their disability made it extra hard to achieve them. I don't think it's up to Neiderman to portray people as lesser for discussing about how much harder writing a book is with a disability. Downplaying it was V.C.'s choice, and it seemed obvious to me that she was infantilized by some people for it, and if that's what made her comfortable, then whatever. But V.C. doesn't represent all people with disabilities AND she lived in an era when people were way less open about talking about disability.
The best parts of the book were actually direct quotes from the author's writings. I liked that she was angry about people who blamed the children in her books for things that were the parents' fault. I liked that she seemed to be a feminist, and a lot of her writing was her breaking with some of the conservative thoughts of her town. She seemed to genuinely be grateful for her readers and have a sincere passion for writing, and I think that showed in her books. Which, now that I think about it, is maybe why Neiderman's books never really worked for me. All of V.C.'s heroines had agency. Maybe it wasn't good agency, but they propelled their stories forward. In a lot of Neiderman's books, things just happened to the female protagonists. They were victims of fate, victims of abuse, victims of everything. And there's nothing wrong with being a victim, but it's disheartening to read about characters who are just basically being exploited for the literary equivalent of doom-scrolling. V.C.'s books were like that, too, but I felt like her heroines had an autonomy and a wistfulness that Neiderman's often lacked.
So after skimming through this book, I have to say that I really didn't like it. I can see why fans were upset after reading it or felt betrayed. There were good things about this book and I can appreciate the estate wanting to let the world know more about the mysterious, reclusive author who wrote a series of some truly shocking books, but I'm not sure they picked the right person for the project.
I read this after MEGHAN: A HOLLYWOOD PRINCESS. I actually recommend you do that, too, because AHP is a biography of Markle before her life with Harry, and this book basically takes over where the other book left off. They are both also written from the same sympathetic perspective, and the details sync up nicely.
I bought this book because of all the negative reviews for it on Goodreads or Amazon from people who seemed to be anti-Meghan. Honestly, the hate this woman gets astounds me-- especially compared to the other royals. If you think it's due to anything but racism and classism, I suggest you check out this BuzzFeed article by Ellie Hall comparing the coverage that Meghan gets compared to Kate from the same media outlets. If you ask me, I'd say that Markle is guilty of nothing but "princessing while Black."
Having read FINDING FREEDOM, I will say that it reads like a puff piece, but it's an engaging one, and a harmless one, IMO. If you hate Markle, it probably won't change your mind, but if you're neutral or positive, it's a pretty fascinating read. I liked reading about Markle's interactions with her famous friends (including the daughter of PM Mulroney, Serena Williams, and Eddie Redmayne), her passion for cruelty-free and local goods (one that I share), and her not-so-fairytale romance with the prince. I kept annoying my family with facts I thought were interesting.
I respected Markle before reading this and I still do, now. I can't imagine the pressure of being in the public eye the way she does and I'm glad that she and Harry were able to do what they needed to do for the sake of their respective mental healths (and those of their children).
After reading so many bodice-rippers, I felt like mixing it up a little by reading something super empowering and wholesome. That's why I'm absolutely delighted to have been given a copy of RULE THE MUSIC SCENE LIKE BEYONCE KNOWLES. I have always thought Beyonce was really cool. I grew up listening to Destiny's Child and her solo career really started taking off when I was in college and her feminist songs ended up being anthems for me and my friends.
This is a kid-friendly biography of the pop star. It talks about how she got into dancing and how dancing helped bring her out of her shell as a shy kid. Then it goes into the girl groups she was a part of (Girls Tyme and Destiny's) before she went solo. There's even a section on her daughter, Blue Ivy, and her social activism, and commentary on the difficulty of having political opinions as someone in the spotlight.
The best thing about the book is definitely the art, though, which is by Sinem Erkas. It's paper art, I think, and it looks so good stylistically, transforming what would otherwise be a pretty average book into a magnificent work of art.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Like a lot of people, I'd never heard of Meghan Markle until it was announced that she was dating Prince Harry. Then I did what millions of other people were also doing: I looked her up.
MEGHAN: A HOLLYWOOD PRINCESS is a biography about Meghan Markle. It's thorough, respectful, and exhaustive, delving not just into Meghan's own history, but also her parents (her mother, descended from slaves-turned-sharecroppers) and her father (studio light designer, German, English, and Irish descent). It talks a little bit about Prince Harry and his background, and how a lot of his wild years were borne from frustration at being in the fishbowl and unresolved feelings about his mother's death.
But most of this book is about Meghan.
I found this biography so fascinating. Maybe it's because it's part fairytale, part Hollywood expose. Meghan Markle is half-Black, and half-white, and scrabbled for her good role on Suits with many frustrating failures and setbacks on her acting journey. It was so cool to read about her passion for her now defunct blog and all the jetsetting she did while promoting her career and involving herself in causes and charities. It was interesting to hear about how her ethnic makeup impacted her life and career. She just strikes me as a really interesting, real person.
I think Morton did a good job showing her in a mostly good light while also hinting at the complexities that make her a real, and therefore flawed, person. There are a lot of Meghan haters out there. I've heard people say that she's a bitch and a social climber (and also things that were much worse), and I don't really get it. It always felt like she was held to an unfair set of standards, standards that were perhaps (probably) harsher because of her ethnicity. I don't blame her for being ruthless to get what she wanted in her career and I don't blame her for pursuing the man she believed herself to be in love with. Who of us haven't dreamed of having our own prince or princess charming?
If you, like me, were also fascinated by Meghan Markle's whirlwind, fairytale romance and also enjoy learning about Hollywood and fancy people shit, this is the book for you. I'm definitely going to be checking out some of Morton's other biographies. It looks like he wrote one for Diana, too.
I got this for World Book Day on Kindle! I'm kind of glad I did because it's not the sort of book I would normally gravitate to. THE SON AND THE HEIR is part memoir, part biography. In it, a famous Dutch journalist talks about his discovery that his father was a Nazi soldier in WWII and goes from there to talk about his family's rise and ultimate fall, revolving around his grandfather, the family patriarch around whom everything revolved. The author's father actually joined up with the Germans to spite his father, but Münninghoff delves deeper than that, talking about the complex relations in Europe during WWII, and how many of the countries were torn between fear of Hitler's growing power and fear of Russian annexation.
I can't imagine what a difficult book this was to write. Apparently, the author died a few months before it was published in English. His family's story is sad. It's ultimately a story about how war tears up families and ruins lives and how money drives wedges between what remains, sowing discord and grievances. When Alexander Münninghoff was named the family heir by his grandfather, both of his parents, now separated, fought over him pretty brutally.
The writing (and the translation) are crisp and at times, it feels incredibly impersonal. Maybe the author needed that distance to examine such painful subjects. There are themes of classism and xenophobia that give the book a really intensely claustrophobic feel that make it read like a nonfiction gothic. Towards the end, the pacing of it all got a little slow, but this was such a novel perspective on WWII and the recovering European economy and social structure that I found I didn't really mind. So far, this is my favorite book that I got from my World Book Day haul, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes books that plunge the dark side of "old world charm" or who enjoy learning about WWII.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, this book is a five. The minimalism/pop-art illustrations done by Bobby C. Martin are exceptionally gorgeous and would make great posters (I would be surprised if posters of his work aren't available already). I would gladly purchase a coffee table book of his art at some point (and maybe even a print or two). From a readability standpoint, however, this book is more of a 3 or a 4, for several reasons.
While the message of the book is important and the way it is presented is lovely-- inspirational quotes in color block font, gorgeous illustrations-- it felt too short. I wish this was more of an art book, with even more quotes and illustrations. It doesn't help that the book feels very back-heavy because it has a bunch of micro-biographies of famous Black scientists, artists, politicians, etc. of note just crammed in very plain, very small text in the back half, which are fascinating to read but presented in such a plain, unadorned way in comparison to the vibrant presentation of the first half. It feels a bit anticlimactic!
I'm also not really 100% sure what the age range for this book is. The first half feels like a children's book but the language in the mini-biographies combined with the small font size feel like they're being targeted towards a much older audience, maybe middle grade as opposed to elementary. I think this would be a beautiful book to display in the home or have as a resource in a classroom, but as something to read over and over and use as a reference, it isn't all that accessible.
I'll definitely keep an eye out for more work by Bobby C. Martin, though!
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
In TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH, Mary L. Trump draws a detailed portrait of the Trump family pathologies with the intimacy of a psychological case study-- which makes sense, considering that she's a clinical psychologist. Her even-keeled, neutral (for the most part) tone make the irrational behaviors of the people in this book seem even more abhorrent by comparison. The occasional sarcastic aside is just icing on the cake.
I wasn't too sure what to expect about TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH going in, despite the attempted block from the Trump family to keep it from being published. Trump had also attempted to block Michael Wolff and John Bolton from publishing their "tell-alls," as well, and the result was that both of them became best-sellers and garnered a whole bunch of free press. Literally the same exact thing happened with Mary L. Trump's book, but Donald Trump's inability to admit to fault or learn from past mistakes is just one of his (many) flaws. I was left with the impression that Mary Trump was essentially opening her own "tea" shop to spill all the gossip about Trump, but this book doesn't tell anything too scandalizing or surprising. It basically fills in the gaps about things that are public knowledge but have been forgotten or pushed aside in favor of newer, more recent scandals.
The book starts out with a history of the Trump family, beginning with Fred, DT's father, who appears to have been a high-functioning sociopath that enjoyed pitting his children against each other, reveled in the humiliations of others, despised weakness and personal accountability, and groomed Donald to be his successor, while also enabling him to be antisocial, unaccountable, and superficial by not punishing him for misbehavior and essentially providing him with a bottomless well of cash flow for all of his horrible and/or questionable business decisions. Freddy, Mary's father, was the original successor, as the eldest child, but his personal weaknesses made him distasteful to Fred, and the inability to please or escape ended up facilitating an alcohol addiction that helped kill him.
We follow Trump through the 80s, when he began to be popular as "the poor man's idea of rich" (paraphrased from Fran Lebowitz), his two previous wives, his inappropriate comments and cruelties. It's chilling how his lack of empathy or concern towards the mounting American deaths in the COVID-19 crisis mirror his behavior towards his own family members. For example, when Freddy Trump was in the hospital for the heart attack that would end his life, Donald Trump went out to the movies instead of waiting at home with the family. When his own mother was mugged so violently that she suffered a hemorrhage, and Mary visited her every day, Trump snarked that wasn't it great that she had so much "free time." In his own internal calculus, it seems clear that weakness and suffering are liabilities that he can't afford in a world of superlatives where everything around him must be "great" or "fantastic," and especially if those things are a reflection on him.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of this book-- apart from the obvious, which is how this country facilitated and continues to enable the abuses of power that Donald Trump wields with the carelessness of a child with a dangerous weapon-- is how badly Mary and her brother Fritz were treated by the family. Donald Trump first tried to essentially oust his whole family from his father's will by attaching a codicil to his father's will that would have made him sole executor. It was caught by pure luck and he and his siblings were all made executors with equal power. You would think that this would make the siblings sympathetic to being cut out of what is their due, but the whole family undervalued Mary and Fritz's inheritance when they were cut out of the will and forced to settle for a pittance, giving them a very, very small fraction of what they should have received. And when they tried to sue for what was theirs, Maryanne, Trump's older sister, had their health insurance revoked-- which came as a huge blow to Fritz, whose son had severe medical issues that necessitated hospital visits for frequent seizures. The lawyer suggested that if they were worried about their child not breathing, they could "learn CPR." Charming.
His lack of respect for Melania and creepy behavior with Ivanka get a throwaway scene each, which is all that's really necessary, because they are so emblematic of his usual patterns. Likewise, his pompous, inappropriate form of "leadership" as president is showcased in the opening scene, when he invites his relatives to the White House for a visit that ends up being both classless and disturbing. TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH is a portrait of a person who lacks empathy, shirks responsibility (but would like to take all the credit while also avoiding any blame). I think it's pretty safe to say, objectively, that he is the worst president the United States has ever had, and that his handling of our crises and petty attempts to deny care and funding to those who oppose him while also making a concerted effort to sow dissent while attacking our nation's most vulnerable showcase his bullying mentality and his desperate need to always feel strong by making others seem weak.
Some will probably say that Mary was too kind or too level in her biography of this man, but I think when writing books like this it's important to strike that kind of tone. If you make someone into a cartoonish villain, it becomes too easy to write them off as a joke, and I think that was one of the biggest mistakes of the 2016 election. Nobody took Trump seriously until it was too late. He needs to be held accountable and taken to task for his bad behavior, and his policies need to be questioned, and he needs to be asked the tough questions that he fears will make him out to be the fool he is.
This is a tough review to write because I did like the beginning of the book. I just felt like it was too long and the subject matter was a little too... uninteresting. Part of that is also on me because I misunderstood what the book was about. The subheading-- "the women upstarts who took on Silicon Valley's male culture and made the deals of a lifetime"-- made me think it was going to be about women in tech, engineers and creators and CEOs who ended up in Fortune 500 companies. But no. This book is about four venture capitalists who are women who ended up making bank by investing in said Fortune 500 companies at the right time and place, which is slightly less impressive, imo.
With rich people, I think there is a temptation to paint their stories as a sort of "rags to riches" fairytale that seems easy because we want it to be easy, because most of us think that we would like to be rich. The problem is that even if you have the skills and the know-how, you aren't going to be rich if you don't also have luck (and privilege). The women in this book-- Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane Hanna, Theresia Gouw, and Sonja Hoel-- had luck, and some of them had privilege, even though a lot of them started out in lower middle income situations; they were in families who mostly supported their endeavors and provided them with the right schooling and intellectual tools to get to the positions that they currently hold.
There is nothing wrong with having privilege, but it is important to acknowledge it, and understand that success often walks hand in hand with privilege, and that going to the right schools and learning the right things and meeting the right people are integral aspects of success. Likewise, even though this book is painted as a "girl power!" effort, most of the women in this book don't seem to identify as feminists and some of them even seemed almost anti-feminist. (There was one woman mentioned in here, a CEO, I think (not one of the 4 VCs), who said that she didn't speak at women-only conferences, like that was something to pat herself on the back over or that women-only conferences were somehow lesser. That kind of stuck in my craw a bit. I also didn't really like how, in order to be successful, most of these women seemed to feel the need to dress and act in a masculine way. I get why they felt the need to do that, but at the same time it wasn't a very empowering message. It kind of gives off a "it's a man's world, baby, and you either gotta play the game or go home" vibe. Ugh.
My favorite part of the book was about these women's unique upbringings, and how they got into the business world. However it quickly became cyclical and repetitive. There are only so many permutations of "and then they closed the deal and made tons of money!" one can stand before one starts to feel kind of bored. I've had this similar complaint about a couple of other nonfiction books I've read recently where the concept was interesting, but not enough to merit an entire book, and it started to feel like a very padded out Forbes or Bloomberg article.
I think that unless you're a high up in a tech company or an aspiring venture capitalist, this book probably won't be for you. I work in the tech world and was looking for something affirmative, and this book really wasn't it.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I was inspired to buy A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION after I received and enjoyed an ARC of THE GREAT SUCCESSOR, a biography of Kim Jong-Il's youngest son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-Un. In my review, I praised the author for her diligent research and the honest portrayal of the leader of a hostile nation, where I'm afraid the temptation is, far too often, to demonize. This is dangerous, because cartoonish portrayals of harmful individuals fail to acknowledge what we should all keep in mind: even people who commit harmful acts are people, like you and me, and the things that make them seem most human, even sympathetic, are precisely what make them so effective, and so dangerous. It's important to understand those nuances and keep them top of mind: not just for our own safety, but so we don't emulate those behaviors ourselves.
A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION is one of those "stranger than fiction" tales that reads like an airport thriller but is actually true. It is about the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-Ok and his wife, Choi Eun-Hee, and their kidnapping by DPRK officials. Why? Because Kim Jong-Il understood the importance of the legacy of pop culture and what it had to offer, and that in order to be memorable and leave his mark in his country, he would have to contribute something meaningful not just to his people, but also on an international level, as well.
After several escape attempts and even some prison time in the case of Shin Sang-Ok, they were coerced into compliance and ended up making a number of incredibly successful films in DPRK, some of which received international accolades. Perhaps the most famous is Pulgasari, which ironically was the mark of his decline as a film maker and has since received cult status as a "Z movie" on par with The Room and Trolls 2, and its Western remake, Galgameth, is no less heinous, with a character who looks like an extra from the Dinosaurs TV show. But the content he produced pleased Kim Jong-Il, who accorded them more and more freedoms until, finally, they were able to flee to a U.S. embassy where they received asylum.
Fischer does his best to portray Kim Jong-Il as a well-rounded person, who saw nothing wrong with killing those who wronged him (including the public execution of an indiscreet mistress), but genuinely wanted the admiration of his people, and would be self-effacing and abashed by public displays acknowledging his greatness. Shin and Choi, according to this biography, always wanted to escape, but it seems like they came to identify with their captor as well-- by necessity, yes, but also because he was capable of being charming when he wanted to be, even though he also could be cruel, and took care that they never felt too comfortable or at ease around them.
My heart really ached for Choi and Shin. Shin's chapters in the prison were nightmarish, and the descriptions of what happened to Choi during the Korean War and before were heart-rending. Her relationship with Shin should have been an oasis, but his affairs ended up breaking her heart. Ironically, their mutual imprisonment in North Korea ended up bringing the two of them back together and they even remarried-- first at Jong-Il's behest in a trumped-up PR event of a ceremony, but then on their own terms in Europe. It was heart-rending, how they found solace in each other, and it made sense why they got back together: nobody else could have understood their hardship, and I'm sure they found a comfort in the sympathy that arose from their shared tragedy.
The ending, sadly, isn't completely a happily-ever-after. There were plenty of individuals who believed that they lied about their kidnapping and were actual defectors. Their careers tanked. Choi could not find work as an elderly actress of color, and all of Shin's later attempt to direct were relative failures, including many Disney TV movies with abysmal ratings like the aforementioned Galgameth, and 3 Ninjas. I'm sure that was quite a blow, being one of the hallmarks of an era, only to end up doing kids' movies that nobody really liked.
I would recommend A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION to anyone who would like to get a nuanced history of the Korean war, North Korea, and Kim Jong-Il, as well as insight into a very strange true crime event from history that people still occasionally make references to to this day. It's definitely not happy reading, so I would save it for a day when you're in the right mental state, but if you can stomach the content, it's fascinating and eye-opening, and will definitely give you new insights into a very secretive nation and the storied history of a tragic couple.
History can be dull as dishwater, so I'm always impressed when an author can bring the dead to life-- no, not using necromancy, but their "skillz" as a writer. I can guarantee that some people are probably going to take issue with the breathless, sensationalist way that this is written, but I found it incredibly entertaining. I actually hate nonfiction that is too dry, and as long as you're not muddling the facts, you can be as silly in the narrative as you want.
THE WAR QUEENS is a collection of mini biographies about queens and political rulers who were involved in major coups throughout history. Some of them might be familiar to you, like Cleopatra, Margaret Thatcher (not really a queen, but OK), and Queen Elizabeth I, but there were a couple new ones to me, like Tomyris of the Massagetae (part of the Persian Empire), which was some pretty hardcore stuff-- and then there was Caterina Sforza's "I give literally zero forks" shenanigans of the Italian Renaissance which was like something out of Game of Thrones. Oh, and the African Queen, Njinga, who was my favorite, because she literally did not care who or what she had to defeat to gain success.
One thing I really liked about this book is that it wasn't limited to queens of the Western world-- there were Queens from the Persian Empire, Queens from Asia, Queens from Africa, and yes, of course, Queens from Europe. All of them were interesting in their own way (except maybe Margaret Thatcher-- I really don't like her, and she's not a queen, so she doesn't even go here). I think if you're interested in history but wish it was a little less male-centric, this is a really eye-opening piece to learn more about some pretty fascinating kick-butt women dating from ancient to modern times.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I hate writing reviews for books that bored me. On the one hand, I (usually) go into a book expecting to like it, and on the other hand, it kind of sucks to have to revisit something you didn't like and tell everyone why you didn't like it. Sometimes I don't even bother to review, but I feel obligated to with this one as others may share my expectations and feel similar disappointment.
THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY is a biography about Dorothy L. Sayers (called, bewilderingly, "DLS" through the entirety of this book) and the friends she made at Somerville College, a branch of Oxford that basically treated its female students like a bunch of dilettantes auditing a class, not even awarding them degrees for their work until later. #Feminism
While at school, "DLS" and her friends called themselves The Mutual Admiration Society, and it was basically exactly what it sounds like: a group of artsy, intellectual women who had great respect for each other, supported one another in their endeavors, and basically had a grand old time amusing one another.
The book follows them through two World Wars, various relationships, the many obstacles of being a woman in a time when women were accorded little to no respect, tempestuous relationships, questioning their sexuality, failures, successes, and so many other things. Considering that "DLS" was the baited hook for this book, I was surprised by how little the focus seemed to be on her. Even more surprisingly, I was surprised (ha) by how little I liked her compared to the others like Charis, who seemed incredibly cool and modern for her times, and Muriel, who was a somewhat out lesbian.
Charis Frankenburg was honestly the coolest lady in here, as some of DLS's beliefs seemed almost Ayn Randian, especially in how she seemed to detest other women so much in the beginning. I guess she changed later on in life and you can't really judge people outside the framework of their times, but man. She seemed awful. Charis, on the other hand, was basically a mommy blogger influencer for her time, having huge impacts on the way people raised children (for the better) and did some pretty cool work helping improve the conditions of children living in psychiatric facilities. I would read a whole book about her-- she seemed like she had her heart in the right place.
Maybe I would have enjoyed this book more had I been a bigger "DLS" fan. In some ways, this does kind of read like a fan's ode to DLS, especially with how Mo Moulton often reads between the lines-- or cites others who do-- of DLS's own writing to speculate on her life. I guess it's probably an irresistible temptation to do so when actual facts and journals exist. It's human nature to speculate. That said, I feel like doing that gives the book a sensationalist, breathless edge that reads more like the adulation of an opinion piece and less like a concrete biography.
I can respect the research Moulton put into their book, and I can see why so many DLS fans enjoyed this book as much as they did, but I also agree with the skeptics who did not appear to enjoy it. I feel for those skeptics because I felt the same way. Not all of the women in here are equally entertaining and fascinating, and it often feels like a Vanity Fair that's been padded out to novel length.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I bought this a little while ago because this book has been on my radar for a while and like most people in the public, Ted Bundy name was a familiar one that elicited fear. He killed and raped women by pretending to be injured and luring them to his car, before dumping the bodies. He was an evil man, and the public has a fascination with evil men. People talk about serial killers with awe, make movies about them, write books about their crimes, and it's weird to put people who commit large-scale crimes against humanity on the same scale of importance in our pop-cultural lexicon with athletes and scientists. It feels almost like a celebration of their crimes, even though I know it's (hopefully) not meant to be that way.
Ann Rule was a famous true crime author who worked in crime and law, and understood how things worked in a way that some crime authors don't. She was also in a distinctly unique position in that she worked alongside Ted Bundy himself at a crisis hotline for people who were considering suicide and even thought of him as a friend. Naturally, she was horrified when she found out who he was and what he had done, and I think her brain was frantically trying to do damage control, to figure out how-- or even if-- she'd been fooled, and why.
There's nothing wrong with THE STRANGER BESIDE ME on a purely technical level. The writing is fine and it seems well-researched. It just feels incredibly dull reading about the ordinary private life of a man who committed huge crimes. I don't want to hear about his family life, and I don't want to get to know each young woman whose life he cut short, and who probably died in fear. I don't think crimes like these should be normalized, and if THE STRANGER BESIDE ME was an exercise in catharsis for Ann Rule and gave her the closure she needed, that's fine. But I personally felt bored and a little despairing while reading this, and that's not what I want to feel when I read.
George Remus was a drug store owner, lawyer, and bootlegger during Prohibition. He was finally put away for his crimes after literally thousands of violations and foolishly gave his flighty and theatrical wife power of attorney, which she then used to confiscate his millions and take on another lover while he was in jail. Infuriated, Remus swore revenge, and when he was freed from prison, he tracked her down and shot her in the stomach.
It's quite the story and it makes sense why someone would want to take this menacing bourbon despot and write a book about his life. I was predisposed to favor THE BOURBON KING quite a bit because I've read Batchelor's biography of Stan Lee, also as an ARC, and really, really enjoyed it. Sadly, though, I didn't enjoy THE BOURBON KING as much as I enjoyed STAN LEE.
I think the problem with this book is actually similar to another book I read recently, called THE QUEEN, which was also a true crime novel about a lesser-known historical figure. I just think THE BOURBON KING was too long and dabbled in subject matter that wasn't focal enough or interesting enough to carry this book off to the finish. Your mileage may vary, but I personally felt this book was a bit of a disappointment. The best thing about it was that it pushed me to watch that episode of the Simpsons where Homer becomes the Beer Baron.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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