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Book 42: Dead Wake

 

“A Cunard captain was supposed to be much more than a mere navigator. Resplendent in his uniform and cap, he was expected to exude assurance competence, and gravitas. But a captain also served a role less easy to define. He was three parts mariner, one part club director. He was to be a willing guide for first-class passengers wishing to learn more about the mysteries of the ship; he was to preside over dinner with prominent passengers; he was to walk the ship and engage passengers in conversation about the weather, their reasons for crossing the Atlantic, the books they were reading.”

Dates read: April 11-16, 2016

Rating: 9/10

Sometimes I find myself wondering about historical what-ifs. Like, what if Adolf Hitler’s art career had taken off and he’d never gotten involved in politics? What if Joseph Stalin had gotten in a bar brawl as a young man and been killed? What if Lee Harvey Oswald had gotten a bad stomach flu the day that JFK visited Dallas and spent the whole day in the bathroom? Our history, our whole world would have been a very different place. But different is not necessarily the same as better, and you never know if that alternate history would have ended up even worse somehow (although it’s hard to imagine so in some cases).

Since it came so close to not happening at all, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is one of the most tempting what-ifs of all. Do we look back on World War I now and see Europe as a powder keg ready to blow, with the assassination as just the spark that happened to ignite it? Sure. But maybe there never would have been a spark at all. Maybe there would have been a diplomatic solution to the problem. Maybe not, and maybe it very well could have been something else that pushed it all over the edge. But we live in this world, where World War I did happen, and in the course of that war, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk.

I didn’t know anything about the ship (or honestly, much about the war or the players) before I started reading this book. My history major husband was able to fill in some of the blanks for me, but most of what I now know about the time period and the Lusitania and the circumstances that led to it being torpedoed and sank came from Erik Larson’s Dead Wake. The information is well-researched and well-presented. Larson takes multiple threads: the ship, its captain and crew, some of the passengers, the u-boat that sunk it and its captain, President Woodrow Wilson trying to keep America out of the war, British naval intelligence, and draws them together, weaving the story slowly and surely towards the sinking. You know it’s coming, but Larson masterfully creates tension with his narrative and the torpedoing feels like a shock.

Oftentimes historical non-fiction (especially when it’s about military events) feels academic, but Dead Wake reads like a story that just happens to be real. I was glad to get the opportunity to read more about World War I in a way that was engaging and compelling…it’s piqued my interest in the time period, and isn’t that what good writing should do? Make you want to learn and read even more? I know I’ll be looking to acquire copies of the rest of Larson’s work (I already have a few, but I want them all!) so I can enjoy his wonderful storytelling. This is a true non-fiction novel and honestly a joy to read.

Tell me, blog friends…what historical what-if really gets your brain going?

 **I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Broadway Books, through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Book 40: Suspicious Minds

 

“From inside our head, our thoughts and beliefs seem to be the product of an impartial, accurate understanding of reality. Once again, however, we have been tricked. Just as our ability to see the world depends on extensive behind-the-scenes processing and sophisticated guesswork, so too does our ability to understand the world.”

Dates read: April 3-9, 2016

Rating: 6/10

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a quasi-rural area. When I was a kid, we had a septic system in our yard (we finally got hooked up to sewer service around when I started high school, if I’m remembering correctly). And to this day, the water that comes out of the faucet in the house I grew up in comes from a well. Which means that it’s not fluoridated. And combined with my soft teeth, I have six crowns at the age of 30. But I live in a decent-sized American city now, so when I have kids, they’ll at least have fluoridated water and be protected from cavities, right? Wrong! The people of Washoe County, Nevada have decided that fluoride in the water isn’t for them. That putting a chemical that has no adverse effects and helps prevent tooth decay in the water is a sinister plot of some kind is, of course, a classic conspiracy theory.

Suspicious Minds is a book by Dr. Rob Brotherton on this very topic: conspiracy theories. Unlike what you might be thinking, it’s not a reference catalog for all the theories out there, or a deep dive into any particular theories. Rather, Brotherton examines the psychology behind them. If so many of them sound completely ludicrous (the New World Order…really?), why do we believe them? How do they perpetuate?

Brotherton examines the history of conspiracy theories (despite feeling like conspiracy theories are especially prevalent in our era, they’ve been around and popular for hundreds of years) and some of the logical fallacies that underlie them (for example, the assumption that the “bad guys” are incredibly competent). He dismisses the notion than all conspiracists are paranoid crazies, but does cite research that shows that they are more likely to be hostile and close-minded than non-believers. One of the tidbits I found most interesting was that he showed how not only are people who believe in conspiracy theories more likely to believe in other conspiracy theories, they are more likely to believe in ones that directly contradict each other (say, simultaneously believing that Princess Diana faked her own death and that she was killed by the British royal family). He then goes into the processes that underlie our acceptance and belief in conspiracy theories (like our inability to accurately assess our own lack of knowledge and understanding) and why the brain holds on to them even in the face of evidence in opposition.

My quibbles with the book are probably fairly unusual, in that I wanted more academic detail. I thought I was going to get a fairly research-heavy book that went into at least some depth about the brain science underlying cognition. In fact, Brotherton spends a solid half of the book talking about history, defining “conspiracy theory”, and gently pointing out that these theories require strained or even broken logic. Only in the second half does he even begin to get into the thought processes underlying conspiracy, and he never gets especially deep into it. It’s clearly a book written for a generalist audience, which is fine, but with a background in the subject I wanted more.

Tell me, blog friends…do you believe in any conspiracy theories?

PS: If you’re interested in conspiracy theories, check out this list for books about them!

**I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Book 37: Yes Please

 

“My phone is trying to kill me. It is a battery-powered rectangle of disappointment and possibility. It is a technological pacifier. I keep it beside me to make me feel less alone, unless I feel like making myself feel lonely. It can make me feel connected and unloved, ugly and important, sad and vindicated.”

Dates read: March 28-30, 2016

Rating: 6/10

There is a line, I think, between knowing your own mind and being open to new experiences. If I’m being honest with myself, I’d say that I fall a bit too far on the “knowing your own mind” side of that line. I’m a person with strongly felt and sharply defined likes and dislikes. It is very rare that if you present me with an idea and ask me how I feel about it, that I shrug and say “dunno”. Part of this is just who I am as a human, but I know that there’s room to make more of an effort to let myself try something a few times before I decide if it’s the actual best or the actual worst.

That being said, this book unfortunately reinforces my already settled mindset that I’ve told you about before: I just don’t care for comedian memoir-essay books. I’ll admit that I’ve always thought of author Amy Poehler as the less funny part of Tina ‘n Amy, but once I started watching Parks & Recreation, I got a lot fonder of Amy. Her Leslie Knope is the first time I’ve watched a character onscreen and felt like I was seeing someone like me up there. Not physically, the only thing Amy/Leslie and I share there is being short. But the optimism, the determination, the gravitation towards politics…she’s a great character and one that’s honestly been kind of a role model to me.

So I really wish that I could tell you that Yes Please is an amazing book filled with wit and wisdom that you should rush out and acquire a copy of it right now. But that wouldn’t be right, because it’s actually an enjoyable enough but pretty standard-issue famous-funny-person-writes-a-bunch-of-essays-about-their-life-and-how-they-got-where-they-are. Amy recounts a very prosaic childhood outside of Boston in solidly middle-class comfort, where she made up stories to add drama to her life. She talks about her time in comedy, starting in Chicago and meeting Tina Fey (their friendship is not especially highlighted, she actually ends up talking more about her bond with Seth Meyers), working on Saturday Night Live, and some of her triumphs and missteps along the way. She talks about Parks & Rec (the book was written between the sixth and seventh/final season of the show) and how much she loves being a part of it. She doesn’t talk much about her then-fresh divorce from Will Arnett, but she does talk about being pregnant and becoming a mother at length. Which makes sense, she has two small boys and clearly loves them like crazy. Basically, she just talks about her life.

It’s written with warmth and an enjoyably humorous tone, but none of it is especially fresh or revelatory. Part of me wants to believe that you can write a compelling memoir of a more-or-less normalish life without having to relate giant obstacles you’ve managed to overcome or outrageous things you’ve gotten up to in your youth, but the available evidence that I’ve come across suggests otherwise. Amy Poehler has obviously achieved tremendous success, but the way she describes her days of being young and dead broke focus so little on that and so much on the sheer enjoyment she got out of building her comedy career that it hardly seems like she struggled much on her way up the ladder. Which is great, on the one hand. She doesn’t try to engineer specious complications, she never pretends that she didn’t party and have fun while she was also working her tail off, and it was clearly hard work that led her to the opportunities that she’s taken and run with and that have paid off so well for her. But on the other hand, her completely understandable refusal to really get into what seems like her most challenging experience (her divorce) makes it so the book has no dramatic tension. Fundamentally decent person works hard and capitalizes on opportunities she was fortunate enough to have access to and prospers is just not a story that really goes anywhere, interest-wise. If you’re a Poehler superfan, you’ll love it, but it didn’t do much of anything for me.

Tell me, blog friends…what TV character have you seen yourself in?

Book 35: Sex With Kings

 

“Royal mistresses maneuvered adeptly in an environment rife with intrigue, where the fundamental human matters of life and death and love meant little compared to the crumbs of success or specks of failure at court. To courtiers a little nod from the king in passing spelled exultant victory, the lack of a nod humiliating defeat. The court was a world of twisted values, strange honor, and disgraces incomprehensible to later generations.”

Dates read: March 25-27, 2016

Rating: 6/10

One of the things I find myself wishing I’d done more in college is take more gender studies classes. I took a class about gender and sexual identity in cinema as an undergrad that was a psychology course, and I was intrigued by the new-to-me concept of gender performance, the idea that at least part of our gender presentation is acting out the parts of “man” or “woman” as we’ve been taught they look like according to our surrounding culture. I think I like wearing dresses because I just do, but there are a variety of social forces acting on me, most of which I am completely oblivious to (including the pressure to perform my gender), combined with my own preference that all add up to “I wear dresses most of the time and I think it’s because I personally have decided to do so”.

What this has to do with anything is that in Sex With Kings, a companion volume to Sex With The Queen, Eleanor Herman sheds light on royal men and the mistresses they took. At least in part, the implication is that royal men took mistresses not only because they wanted to, but to demonstrate to their courts that they were virile and vigorous. An overactive sex drive was (and to a certain extent, continues to be) an expected trait in men, and the king was supposed to be the manliest man of all. But the services that a royal mistress was to provide went far beyond sex (look no further than Madame de Pompadour, whose sexual relationship with King Louis XV ended long before her reign as royal mistress ended): she was to provide pleasant companionship to the King whenever he wanted it. That meant being available at all times, never being snappy or rude (although some mistresses were famous for quick tempers, most were not), never complaining of any inconvenience. They were rewarded with fancy rooms in the palace, titles, and estates, but those could be stripped when a new favorite was installed, so the smart ones got jewels and cash.

This book was actually published prior to Sex With The Queen, and I think Herman learned from her issues with Sex With Kings in writing the second book. While the structure is fairly similar (a topic, like the children of mistresses, is the focus of each chapter and various examples are highlighted to illustrate it), Sex With The Queen also took a deeper dive into a few stories, like Catherine the Great, and told them straight through. I think that approach was ultimately more successful than the one used in this book, which has a few women to whom it constantly returns (Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry, Louise de Keroualle, Lady Castlemaine, and Lola Montez are particular favorites). You don’t really get a sense of the full scope of these women’s lives as their stories get told piecemeal, and it can get confusing to try to keep them and all their details straight. I found myself having to flip back, try to remember which king they were attached to, who their rivals and predecessors were, what country and era they lived in.

Along with the issues with the way in which the stories were told, Herman’s fondness for cheesy physical description gets a little eye-roll-y at times. The women seem to uniformly have “cascading hair”, “sparkling eyes”, and a “dazzling complexion”. I like that she’s trying to make the mistresses and their lives and struggles feel contemporary and real instead of something out of a stuffy history book, but I think their stories are compelling enough without the gushy language. That all being said, these are interesting stories and ones which we don’t usually come across. Herman does a good job of shedding light on details we might not usually think about when it comes to how these women’s lives actually played out behind the scenes, and this would be a great starter book if you’re interested in this kind of thing, like I am, and want to get ideas about biographies you’d like to explore. I’d heard of Madame de Pompadour before, and the information in this book was definitely enough to make me interested in reading more about her!

Tell me, blog friends: do you have any favorite historical scandals to read about?

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 32: The Nazi Hunters

 

“A big part of the motivation for holding the war crimes trials was exactly that: to provide examples of justice at work for the whole world to see. By presenting the record of the Third Reich, aggression by aggression, mass murder by mass murder, atrocity by atrocity, the trials were critical to establishing exactly what had happened- and establishing the principle that the perpetrators bore direct responsibility for their crimes, whatever they understood their orders to be.”

Dates read: March 16-19, 2016

Rating: 6/10

If you’d asked me, after high school, what history looked like from World War Two on, based on what I’d learned in class, I’d have probably said something like this: WW2 started in Europe, but the US stayed out until Pearl Harbor was attacked. There’d be a brief aside about Japanese interment on the home front, but once we got into the war overseas, America kicked ass and took names. We won the battles and liberated the concentration camps. Then there was the Cold War, which meant McCarthyism, the Space Race, and then the glasnost/perestroyka stuff and the Berlin Wall came down. That was usually as far as we got before the end of the year.

If you wanted me to tell you what happened to the Nazi leadership after the war, I wouldn’t have had much to offer besides that Hitler and his mistress killed themselves. This isn’t to tear down public school curriculum or teachers or insinuate that I was taught poorly or anything like that. World and even US history are such broad topics that you kind of have to focus on the highlights or you’d never get through it. But the fact remains that I (and I imagine many others) are largely clueless about what actually happened to the Nazis. Now that it’s 2016 and many of the major players are very old or gone, there is perspective to look back at how it all played out: both with the Nazis and the people who sought to bring them to justice. Hence, Andrew Nagorski’s The Nazi Hunters.

If you’re like me and you have only a vague understanding of the topic but find it interesting, this book is a good choice. It’s very comprehensive. Nagorski begins by discussing the immediate aftermath of liberation of the camps, including military personnel literally looking the other way on some occasions in which survivors assaulted and killed their former tormentors, then the Dachau trials and the Nuremberg trials. This was largely (but not totally) the end of judicial proceedings against former Nazis, and Nagorski covers why that was, with the rising tide of the Cold War cited as a particular distraction for the international community.

It might have been the effective end of the trials, but it was not the end of people seeking justice against senior members of the Nazi party. The most high-profile story is the abduction and Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann, but there’s also the stories of former Nazis Klaus Barbie, Latvian pilot Herbert Cukurs, and former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, among many many others, and their hunters, like Simon Wiesenthal, Tuvia Friedman, Isser Harel, and Beate and Serge Klarsfeld.

I’m not sure quite what I was expecting going in, but I think it was more along the lines of a narrative/non-fiction novel style book. This is not that. It’s very factual…not quite as dry as true academic writing, but more like newspaper reporting. It’s very well-researched and thorough, but if you’re looking for a thrilling true life pageburner, this will probably disappoint you.

Tell me, blog friends…what gaps did high school history leave in your knowledge?

**I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 30: Sex With The Queen

 

“If the queen followed the traditional pattern of bearing children, embroidering alter cloths, and interceding for the poor- pious duties that the Virgin Mary would have approved of- even if she took a lover she was usually left in peace. There was rarely reason to shoot down a political nonentity at court. But an intelligent ambitious woman who spoke her mind and built up a faction was always open to the accusation of adultery by her political rivals, whether the accusation was true or fabricated.”

Dates read: March 12-14, 2016

Rating: 7/10

I don’t know about you, but when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. There was the influence of Disney, but there was also the influence of Prince William (this was obviously before he grew up and started to look a lot more like his dad). From what you see on the outside, as a young girl, being a princess looks wonderful. You’re rich, famous, and you get to wear a tiara. As a 13 year-old, I was pretty sure I’d found my future.

As it turns out, not so much. Also as it turns out, being royalty kind of sucks. There’s plenty of speculation that Prince Harry’s trouble in finding a steady girlfriend is (at least in some measure) the pressure of becoming a member of the royal family. As an adult, the idea of trading living under a microscope, with public interest in your private life extending not just to juicy stories, but to snooping on your phone and long-lens photography hoping to catch you taking off your top to tan more evenly, is a devil’s bargain for getting to wear some pretty headgear once in a while.

But as much as there are significant downsides to being royalty today, it used to be much worse, especially for women. Author Eleanor Herman details the very real drawbacks being a princess or a queen. Royal women weren’t people, they were bargaining chips in international diplomacy. They were married off to princes and kings who were old and fat, who were impotent, who were gay. They were expected to tolerate their husband’s infidelity without doing anything that would cast doubt on the true parentage of their children. Those children were frequently unceremoniously confiscated from them and raised according to the wishes of others. Their lush castles were drafty and dirty, and their expensive physicians were as likely to kill them as help them. Their access to funding was usually controlled by other people and so they were slaves to the whims of those who held the purse strings. They were often deprived of the company of those to whom they could speak their native languages…their ladies-in-waiting from their home countries could be dismissed without their consent and seeing their family members required long, complex negotiations that fell through more often than not.

Some princesses and queens, though, didn’t follow the rules. They took lovers at great risk to themselves…and even greater risks for the men in question. It is those women (and their men) who Herman’s Sex with the Queen is about. After detailing how awful it actually was (and still is, on a certain level) to be a princess, Herman moves into the good stuff: dishy gossip. From the Tudor queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard all the way to Princess Diana (it’s not just English queens, there are stories from all over Europe), we’re regaled with tales of forbidden passion and courtly intrigue. It covers the expected subjects (the aforementioned Tudor queens, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great) as well as some lesser-known stories, like that of Sophia Dorothea of Celle and Queen Maria Francisca of Portugal. There’s not a lot of substance here, it’s mostly well-written soap opera, but it’s fun and frothy and easy to read.

Tell me, blog friends…would you want to be royalty?

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 26: Without You, There Is No Us


“Was this really concionable? Awakening my students to what was not in the regime’s program could mean death for them and those they loved. If they were to wake up and realize that the outside world was in fact not crumbling, that it was their country that was in danger of collapse, that everything they had been taught about the Great Leader was bogus, would that make them happier? How would they live from that point on? Awakening was the luxury available only to those in the free world.”

Dates read: March 1-3, 2016

Rating: 7/10

Traveling internationally, even the small amount I’ve been able to do, is wonderful but alienating. The language is different (even when it’s the same), the food is different, the entire pattern of life is different. And that’s in first world, Western countries. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to go to North Korea. It must be like going to the moon.

Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us, emigrated to the United States from South Korea with her parents when she was about 13 years old. She became a writer and a habitual wanderer, ending up on a few news trips to North Korea. When an opportunity came up to go there on an extended sojourn by joining the teaching staff of a missionary group running a university, she jumped at the chance. And so she found herself at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), teaching English to upper-class North Korean young men for about six months before returning to the U.S. and writing a book about her experiences there.

This is a memoir, so Kim’s family history and personal struggles during her tenure at PUST are recounted along with what it’s like to be one of very, very few foreigners living in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The teachers (all missionaries apart from Kim) are effectively imprisoned on campus, only allowed off the grounds for carefully arranged and supervised outings. They are constantly wondering if revealing even small details about life outside the DPRK to their students will lead to their deportation (in the best case) or imprisonment (in the worst). They know their use of limited internet is being constantly monitored, so they have little contact with the outside world. Kim cares for her students, who are eager and obedient learners, while simultaneously being horrified by how easily and often they lie to her. She wonders if they are informing on her for even the smallest line-crossing. She loves them, but she can’t trust them or anyone else.

I’m not usually drawn to memoirs, but information about how the hermit kingdom works on the inside, even on the limited scale Kim was able to experience, is fascinating. I’m honestly boggled that a country in our hyperconnected day and age manages to be so isolated from the world around it. You have to think that it’ll end one day, that either reunification will happen or it will re-enter the global community as its own country. And when it does, what will North Korean citizens think? Kim’s students, the best and brightest the country has to offer, struggle to write essays because the concept of supporting a thesis with facts is so foreign to them. How will the North Korean populace cope with an outside so different than they had been led to believe?

Tell me, blog friends…what do you think about North Korea?

**I received a free copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 19: Creative Mythology

“Whereas formerly, for generations, life so held to established norms that the lifetime of a deity could be reckoned in millenniums, today all norms are in flux, so that the individual is thrown, willy-nilly, back upon himself, into the inward sphere of his own becoming, his forest adventurous without way or path, to come through his own integrity in experience to his own intelligible Castle of the Grail- integrity and courage, in experience, in love, in loyalty, and in act.”

Dates read: January 19-February 10, 2016

Rating: 3/10

After exploring ancient, Eastern, and Western mythology and religion up until the approximate time of the Dark Ages, Joseph Campbell’s final volume of his Masks of God series deals with the “modern” world. As societies became increasingly mobile and fluid, the social purpose of religion and myth (transmission of local cultural “rules” to each generation, and the acceptance of those rules) fades in importance. Now what?

Creative Mythology explores what happens as cultures begin to intermingle, how local symbols are repurposed for new reasons in new places. He uses the lens of epic poetry to show us the heretic Christian ideas of Tristan & Isolde, the heavily pagan roots of Beowulf, and the Islamic influence on Dante’s Divine Comedy (which was super interesting to me, since I took a class on just this work in college, and to the best of my recollection, this never came up). He moves into the modern world by dissecting some of the works of Thomas Mann and James Joyce (Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Portrait was something I read several years ago that I enjoyed not at all and remembered precious little of, and after reading about it here, I’m not sure I want to read Ulysses even though it’s a “classic” because it sounds very tiresome. Campbell wraps up his review by discussing the Holy Grail mythologies in the Knights of the Round Table/Arthurian legends (this section is very very long), and then concludes by reflecting back on the functions of mythologies, and how they have and do work (or not, as the case may be).

I’m not going to lie…I’m very glad to be done with this series. It was very informative, but only sporadically interesting. Do I feel much better versed in world religion and mythology? Yes. Would my life have been just as lovely without it? Absolutely. Sometimes pushing through books that you aren’t really enjoying can be rewarding, but just as often it isn’t. I’m a die-hard finisher, though…I haven’t abandoned a book since high school.

Tell me, blog friends…are you okay with a DNF (did not finish) of a book you don’t like or do you keep slogging through?

Book 18: The Woman Who Would Be King

“She had just embarked upon the highest-stakes move any woman had made in the history of human politics. With this novel and irregular kingship, she had arguably created more problems than she had solved. She would need to unite all her abilities in the years to come- ideological, economic, military, and political- to maintain what she had wrought.”

Dates read: January 14-19, 2016

Rating: 7/10

When I was a little girl, my mom bought me a book about King Tutankhamen. It had beautiful glossy photos, and I was fascinated by the short life of the boy king…and the maybe-supernaturally shortened lives of the people who excavated his tomb and awakened the mummy’s curse. From there sparked a love of ancient Egypt, peaking when I was absolutely nerdy enough at age 9 or so to write a letter to the editor to correct one of the Detroit papers when they ran an article that misidentified Osiris as a goddess. While my hardcore Egypt phase eventually faded, the Egyptian exhibit is still one of my favorite places at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and I’m always interested in reading more about it.

Quick, name me an Egyptian queen. I’m guessing that for most of you, Cleopatra crossed your mind. Maybe some of you went for Nefertiti. But while Cleopatra is remembered for her dramatic life and death and Nefertiti is remembered for her beauty, the queen that had probably the most successful reign as the ruler of Egypt has been largely forgotten: Hatshepsut. Like most Egyptian queens, she was initially married to her brother, Thutmose II. But he was sickly, and when he died when she was only about 16, she successfully finagled a role as regent for her toddler stepson/nephew, Thutmose III, and from there, had herself crowned king in her own right alongside him. In The Woman Who Would Be King, author Kara Cooney walks us through how Hatshepsut pulled off this highly unusual feat by using the authority and power she’d acquired through her religious role, surrounding herself with the right advisors, and emphasizing her own royal lineage. During her reign, she embarked on an ambitious temple building program and maintained her country’s security while continuing to subjugate its vassal states. Her gender was, of course, the elephant in the room, and Cooney describes how Hatshepsut’s depiction of her own gender in statuary shifted over time, from frank acknowledgement of her femininity near the beginning (when she served as regent) to an entirely masculine presentation as her co-ruler grew up and became a man himself. She goes on to detail what became of Hatshepsut’s legacy after she passed and how Thutmose III initially embraced but ultimately rejected reminders of her rule, having artistic depictions of her altered or destroyed to erase to her from the record as much as possible.   

Cooney is an actual Egyptologist, and it shows: she presents tons of information about ancient Egyptian social, religious, and royal life in the context of spinning Hatshepsut’s story. She must be a good teacher in her day job as a college professor…the information she gives us is detailed but not dull; it doesn’t feel like reading a reference text. For as much as we do know details about ancient Egyptian society, it’s amazing to me how much we don’t know at the same time…Cooney’s writing, as well-researched as it is, is peppered with “probably” and “might have”, because there is just no way to know for sure. I’ll admit I found this same quality irritating in Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life, but maybe that’s just because I’m relatively accustomed to reading about Cleopatra in the context of historical fiction. I’ve never read about Hatshepsut before, so I don’t have the same kind of expectations about being told a fleshed-out story. Also, Cooney makes it very clear, repeatedly, that the kind of records that would lead to a better story simply don’t exist, because the Egyptians at that time kept written records only of the official version of events, with any sort of juicy personal interest tidbits left off entirely.

Cooney’s writing is lively and interesting, and I think she does a good job of presenting the information in a way that makes you care about it…she doesn’t just dump it out there without context, it’s always clear that the things she’s telling you about are necessary for an understanding of what happened. That being said, unless you’re inclined to enjoy reading a factually-dense non-fiction book, you might find your attention wavering during some of the longer passages about religion or royal administration.

Tell me, blog friends…did you ever go through an Egypt phase?

**I received a free copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 17: Approval Junkie

“I was weirdly comforted by the fact that my new husband chalked up most of my distasteful behavior to my being possessed by the devil himself. It was as if he saw the best in me, and my best self was haplessly caught in an evil stranglehold that made me do things like show up sullen to the party his network threw to celebrate his show that I wasn’t on, as aggressively passive-aggressive as I could appear.”

Dates read: January 11-14, 2016

Rating: 6/10

I want people to like me. My friends (obviously), people at work, the people reading this. I’m pretty sure I should be embarrassed by how much it matters to me what people think, but it does matter all the same. The older I get, the more I’m okay with the idea that since some people aren’t really my cup of tea, it’s fair that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea either. But that means that I’m okay with about 2% of people not liking me, maybe 3% as a worst-case scenario. Everyone else, I’m going to go ahead and need your approval.

Which is why I was intrigued enough by the title of this book to put it on my to-read list, even though comedian essay/memoir isn’t the end of the reading pool I do more than lightly dip my toes in very often. Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie chronicles her lifelong pursuit of other people’s regard, from her childhood acting career, to her determination to win her high school’s Miss Aphrodite crown, to trying to build a career as an actress in Hollywood, her relationship with her first husband, her divorce, remarriage, and eventual family life with children. Her writing voice is strong, sure, and entertaining, and she doesn’t just go for funny (although when she does, her chapter about trying to win over Bill O’Reilly is a highlight). She also hits pathos, describing her difficulties dealing with the death of her mother when she was 26 and her struggle to conceive a child; as well as life advice, in her chapter about how to conduct an interview/genuinely listen to other people.

At the end of the day, I remembered why I don’t usually read these kind of books unless they’re by people I already love, like Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey. Even with their books, I find myself smirking wryly rather than actually laughing out loud. It’s really hard to be laugh out loud funny in print…the only comedy book I can actually remember triggering more than the occasional light chuckle was My Horizontal Life. I’m not super into Chelsea Handler, but that book was hysterical. Salie’s book is pretty decent, but not up to the Kaling/Fey level. On the whole it’s more funny than not, and it’s entertaining if not particularly memorable. I’d recommend this for a slightly older crowd…a lot of its humor deals with divorce, fertility treatments, and childrearing. While it can certainly be appreciated by people who haven’t had those experiences (like me), I feel like it would be most enjoyable for people who can relate better. 

Tell me, blog friends…have there been any books by comedians that have actually made you laugh out loud?

**I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 13: The Creation of Anne Boleyn


“Why is Anne Boleyn so fascinating? Maybe we don’t have to go any further than the obvious: The story of her rise and fall is an elementally satisfying- and scriptwise, not very different from- a Lifetime movie: a long-suffering, postmenopausal wife; an unfaithful husband and a clandestine affair with a younger, sexier woman; a moment of glory for the mistress; then lust turned to loathing, plotting, and murder as the cycle comes full circle.”

Dates read: December 29, 2015- January 2, 2016

Rating: 9/10

Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. It’s how you remember what became of the six wives of Henry XIII. That there’s even a way to help you remember the love life of a monarch whose reign is 500 years in the past speaks to the enduring cultural relevancy of Henry and his wives. And if you were to ask someone off the street to name you just one of them, I’d put my money on it that they’d name Anne Boleyn. Witch, feminist before her time, seductress, all of the above and more….a lot of people have a lot of opinions about Anne, who she was, and what she did. But who was the “real” Anne Boleyn, and why do we still care?

Susan Bordo is a popular culture/gender studies academic, and brings a welcome level of inquiry, research, and critical thought to her examination of the legends that surround Anne Boleyn. Nearly all of Anne’s personal correspondence and even official portraiture were destroyed by Henry in the aftermath of her death, so we have to rely almost entirely on secondhand accounts (many of them hostile, like Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys) to know much of anything about her at all. This has created a narrative with substantial gaps, which can only be filled by conjecture.

The book begins with a walkthrough of what we do and can know with relative certainty about Anne (what she probably looked like, her upbringing in the French court, her move to England and courtship with Henry, her proto-Protestant religious beliefs, her short reign, and the circumstances of her death). It then examines the myths that have sprung up around her, and how they’ve varied over time. Bordo’s research pops up interesting facts, like that the “Anne as headstrong teenager” strain of Anne’s mythology only pops up after World War 2, when the concept of teenager-hood was just becoming a thing and audiences were primed by wartime media to be ready for plucky heroines.

Bordo is displeased with the popular historical fiction surrounding Anne, and she rakes it over the coals pretty hard. Phillipa Gregory gets an especially high dose of her ire, to an extent which I actually feel is unfair. Gregory has never pretended to be writing scholarly, academic history, and while there are definitely people who probably look at her books and think they’re reading something that’s been heavily researched for historical accuracy, I have to imagine that most of us understand that she’s using outlines of the actual people who were her characters and taking pretty heavy dramatic license with the rest. It’s not Gregory’s “fault”, per se, that her book became enormously popular and is probably most people’s go-to reference for Anne Boleyn. Some of her statements imply that she does hold herself out as somewhat of an authority in the era, but at the end of the day, there’s a reason her books are filed in the fiction section. Then again, I own and enjoy many of Gregory’s books, so maybe I’m just defensive.

At the end of the day, if you have an interest in Anne Boleyn that was sparked by the dreaded The Other Boleyn Girl, or Natalie Dormer’s incredible portrayal on The Tudors, or Wolf Hall, or anything at all, really, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s accessible, well-researched, and put together in a way that makes for a really enjoyable reading experience!

Tell me, blog friends…do you have a favorite historical figure to read about?

Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read

Book 12: Hood



“After the US-Dakota War of 1862, a US military commission tried 392 Dakota men and boys in seven weeks and sentenced 303 to death, although President Lincoln reduced the number to 39. In Mankato, Minnesota, the army arrayed the prisoners in rows on a custom-built scaffold, with identical white muslin hoods muffling their faces. The victims, who’d had no lawyers and were prohibited from speaking in their own defense during the trials (which were in English, anyway), sang through their hoods. They were hanged all at once, before 4,000 witnesses. It was the largest mass execution in US history.”

Dates read: December 26-29, 2015

Rating: 5/10

When Trayvon Martin was shot, there was a movement to blame what he was wearing (a hooded sweatshirt) for his death. A young black man should apparently know better than to wear a hoodie out and about in public. Never mind that Trayvon was a 17 year-old kid who was threatening only to the Skittles he was carrying with him, never mind that Trayvon was a human being who should have been able to wear whatever the damn hell he pleased while going about his own business. A hooded sweatshirt, obscuring his face, made him scary. Made him responsible, somehow, for his own cold-blooded murder.

Obviously that’s ridiculous (if you disagree, you should feel free to take your pageviews elsewhere…this blog and blogger are probably not going to be for you). But the hood has been a potent symbol for centuries, and this book examines the cultural history of hoods. Who wears them, and why? What do they mean? Author Alison Kinney traverses a wide history and a variety of contexts to explain the role of the hood; from state-sanctioned execution and terrorism like the Inquisition, the Klan, and Abu Ghraib, to protesters, fairy tales, and all the way down to college students to show how the hood is used by both the powerful and on the powerless to signify the roles they play. The first two sections, which focus on the death penalty and terrorism, are the strongest ones to me, the most cohesive. The rest of the book is more loosely organized and lacks the kind of narrative focus and drive that makes the first two sections compelling.

It’s interesting to focus in on one object this way, to think about how its meanings have changed through time. And this book is one of series (other entries include the remote control, drones, etc), but honestly this is the only one that sparked my curiosity enough to pick up. Kinney has clearly done her research…she illustrates how not only has the use of the hood changed over the course of history, but how there have been latter-day distortions of past use of the hood (which she refers to as “shaggy medievalism”) to serve the purposes of those who use it in their own time. It’s a quick and engaging read, especially if you’re inclined to enjoy thinking about privilege and abuse of power.

Tell me, blog friends, what object would you enjoy reading a cultural history of?

**I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review**

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