Stepping in the Write Direction

I’ve been reading One Damn Thing After Another by William P. Barr (or as I refer to it: “one damn page after another”) since June 9th; July 10th I was halfway through it, finishing it August 21. The audiobook is 22 hours long, and I contemplated why such long biographies weren’t published in smaller volumes, such as two eleven hour audiobooks. I believe the reason is the sales of subsequent volumes might be significantly lower than the first one, so from that standpoint, better to cram it all into one product to market.  Barr’s high school goal was to specialize in China during his post secondary academic study and become head of the CIA. When his first child Mary was born with a heart issue requiring surgery, the quality of health insurance caused him to seek employment in a law firm.    My favorite parts of this book were those about his childhood, the discussion of death sentencing, his in depth discussion of the 2020 George Floyd incident and its nationwide aftermath,...

As I begin this review, I’m only 39% into this Amazon First Reads book, and almost didn’t get it because some reviewers complained there were some awkward phrases in the early part of the book, and it was poorly written. I checked author Victor Methos’ author page and listened to a sample of one of his audiobooks to see if the thousands of positive ratings his previous books received were the products of people who don’t know good writing when they see or hear it. I was impressed by the sample, decided to roll the dice, and make The Secret Witness my June First Reads selection.  Despite having read one reviewer’s listing of several of the “awkward phrases,” as I listened to voice over on the book, I never recognized them. From the beginning this book grabbed my interest and it hasn’t let go yet. If this is bad writing, bring it on! I have been disappointed by far more First Reads selections than I have been pleasantly surprised by them. Choosing a First Reads book takes me such an ...

In the acknowledgement of Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance, author John Waters thanks 3 staffers for being “top notched researchers and copy editors…as they typed each draft of this novel from my hand written original, they teetered on the literary edge of taste with me, hopefully protecting my cockeyed balance.” This book dips into what many may consider “bad taste.“ It is not the book for them. It is a book for those fond of Waters’ gift of painting the societal extremes, humanity’s eckveldt, in rich, resonant, luminous, and humorous literary tones. No one does it better.  Waters is the kind of artist you might think it’s not proper to like, too much sex, too many weirdos, too much sleazy sordid societal underbelly, but as a fan of Flannery O’Connor and Carolyn Chute, such grotesques in literature and film fascinate, and reveal the human condition in all its glory. The only thing better than a feel bad romance from John Waters, is listening to his narration of it on an audiobook. Wa...

Jill is a very different book from Biden’s 2019 memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself. That was a very personal book  (she narrates the audiobook) , wrenching at times. The biography Jill by Julie Pace and Darlene Superville,  is someone else’s observations of her, like taking a class in Jill, taught by two Associated Press professional writers who have followed politics and its players for years, and have had a close up look at Jill throughout their years of White House reporting.   The effort may seem perfunctory at first glance, as though the authors have a specific goal to accomplish in the writing of this book. The book reveals all the things it takes to be a politician’s spouse on a very public stage, the importance of having a career, family as a core value, and the continuous juggling of priorities between family, professional, personal and political obligations. She comes across as fiercely independent. Jill took up long distance ru...

The Pulitzer Prize description of 2013 General Non-Fiction winner Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King: "a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle." Should one be driving on a warm spring night to Groveland, Florida in the late forties with the windows down, a stunning wave of intense floral sweetness might suddenly shock the car, the product of millions of unseen orange blossoms exuding their exotic fragrance in the darkness. Such spontaneously appearing clouds of unimaginable nocturnal loveliness, infusing passing vehicles, belied the human condition residing in surrounding communities.  Racial unrest in midpoint 20th century Lake County Florida throbbed like skin under a torn scab, as it did in many areas of the south following the civil war. The KKK was well represented, and seething c...

Tucker Carlson notes in his Introduction of  The Long Slide, Thirty Years in American Journalism : “Americans should be able to read whatever books they want, publishers told us, but they should start with the books authorities have tried to suppress.” I can’t imagine any authority trying to suppress the 15 articles Carlson included in this sampling of his works published over the last 30 years, and  I haven’t enjoyed articles/essays this much since reading Tom Wolfe’s  The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby . That’s been a long dry spell, so I’m glad I decided to read this book.  My favorite articles (listed with their original source and publication date) were:  “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” Esquire 2003, is a great choice to open the book with. Carlson documents his rich experiences traveling with Al Sharpton and a “delegation of American civil-rights activists into the middle of the Liberian civil war” with the hopes of brokering a peac...

Thank you Todd Fisher for your flawless book My Girls:  A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie.  It’s so much more than a biography or memoir. It is a love story for two amazing women that anyone with at least half a brain had to love. It’s also a love story for families, and for this family in particular with so many singular talents, who reached the apex of global (possibly intergalactic) cultural adoration, that had at its powerful roots the critical life sustaining nutritive forces of love, faith, family connection, humor, drive,  forgiveness, resilience, persistence, making family a priority, caring for each other despite individual imperfections, never giving up on a person or a situation despite facing multiple chronic personal, psychological, medical, and financial crises, and a sustaining love for people. The vastness of such love is literally breathtaking, a celebration of life in all it’s bawdy, vaudevillian, comic incarnations, and a testament to the worth of core ...