Month: November 2013

Audiobooks: That Voice…

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few months I’ve been tearing through audiobooks like a mad thing. On the way to work. Making my work drawer tremble in fear as I lay waste to it’s contents. Washing the dishes. Cleaning. Cooking. It seems like suddenly my local library is bursting with amazing things to listen to versus the usual bestsellers. Did they get a grant? Did the audiobook fairy visit? Who knows? What I do know is I’m counting on my fingers trying to remember if I’m at my checkout limit of 5 audiobooks when I’m staring at the shelves.

So no surprise I’m writing about audiobooks right? Maybe it’s me but some of these treasures? End up right back in the library book bag before I can even finish the first disc. And it’s not the fault of the story. Many times the book is something I’ve read and loved but the audiobook version? Can’t get it out of the house so enough. Other times? The audiobook gets listened to so many times I can almost recite along. Why? It’s the narrator.

Confession time. This is most likely a huge and horrible thing given how large he looms in the audiobook world and you can certain tell me what a total idiot I am who doesn’t deserve to listen to audiobooks in the comments but <very small voice> I don’t like audiobooks narrated by George Guidall. I’ve watched interviews with the man and he seems like a lovely person. But when he puts on headphones and starts to narrate? THAT. VOICE. <shudders> I can’t quite describe why it annoys so very much. It just does and distracts me from the story at hand. Pity, since I do like to listen to classics and Recorded Books has some awfully good ones. If I pick up a Recorded Books offering and see George Guidall is the reader? Back on the shelf with you Mr Audiobook!

Then there are narrators who were so perfectly cast in one book that hearing them read another is a jarring experience. When I stumbled across the Recorded Books version of 84, Charing Cross Road read by Barbara Rosenblat? Perfection. The sassy Helene Hanff I imagined writing these zippy little letters was captured perfectly. Barbara Rosenblat reading If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? Sure why not? Erma Bombeck always struck me as a very sassy lady and Barbara Rosenblat? Does sassy so well. Barbara Rosenblat reading a Diane Mott Davidson culinary mystery? <backs away> Nope. No thanks…

If you’re thinking “hey Gwen, maybe Diane Mott Davidson isn’t as good as Helene Hanff?” Yeah, that’s for sure.  While trying to get ready for the perfect storm of Coworker 123 retiring and an upcoming vacation I snapped up the unabridged audiobooks for Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. Both are fine Shirley Jackson novels that aren’t on my favorites list but I have friends who adore them. Popped in The Haunting of Hill House. Started listening. Hey, “Toby” from The Year of the Flood (aka Bernadette Dunne) is the reader. Elinor grates. I would like to smack Elinor really hard. Realize I would rather be listening to The Year of the Flood. Next day. Pop in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Same darn thing.

Bernadette Dunne does such an amazing job bringing Toby in The Year of the Flood to life that no matter what I listen to that she narrates? Bernadette is always going to be Toby to me. It’s like watching a Harrison Ford movie, any Harrison Ford movie and only seeing him as Han Solo or Indiana Jones.

But even with narrators I can’t stand (sorry Mr Guidall), I’ll be in the audiobook section of my local library, picking up an audiobook, flipping it over and then sometimes popping it into my bag. Because, my commute isn’t going to get any shorter and there’s eight glorious hours at Company X to fill my ears with all the books.

MaddAddam Redux

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s not a huge secret I didn’t love Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t connect with the story. And this disconnect has happened before with other books. I sure couldn’t stand Terry Pratchett’s Snuff when I tried to read it the first time. But, then I listened to Snuff and a book I wanted to jump up and down on became well…not so bad. So when I was at the Berlin Peck Memorial library last week and saw the audiobook of MaddAddam I added it to my pile and brought it home. Now I am fortunate to have a job where I can listen to audiobooks and podcasts all day long as I plug away at my work. And Monday morning I popped in MaddAddam and started to listen. Would the audiobook trick work again?

Having finished up MaddAddam yesterday I can say for me…MaddAddam works so much better as an audiobook versus the book I spent all that time tracking down in September. Unless I’m crazy, the audiobook seems to get rid of the prologue summing up the events from Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood that so many people didn’t like. Bernadette Dunne returns as Toby and there is just something about her voice that makes Toby’s “ZOMG does Zeb wub me?” seem less outtakes from <shudder> Bridget Jones. And she’s able to make the subtle shift in her tone to convey the experience of telling stories to the Crakers something you picture right down to the face she makes when given the undercooked fish. Bob Walter portrays Zeb and has just the right blend of smart/schemer/trickster to bring Zeb into 3-D. And Robbie Daymond as Toby’s shadow aka the small Craker boy Blackbeard turns that character from an annoying device to an interesting character who makes some of the more bizarre elements of the plot just that much more believable.

The audiobook version of MaddAddam isn’t perfect. I’m still missing the stories that haven’t been told. And some parts of the plot still have me rolling my eyes and almost snorting out bits of chocolate on the keyboard while they unfold. But it’s a good companion to the previous MaddAddam trilogy audiobooks and sure makes the hours fly by.

 

Empty Mansions

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The very rich have fascinated me since I was just a little thing. You could blame Gloria Vanderbilt, now best known for being news anchor Anderson Cooper’s mom, putting her famous name on jeans, perfume and whatnot. I was dragging home just as many books about the Vanderbilts, Astors and Rockfellers and their ilk as I was sex and shopping novels from Madames Krantz and Collins. (Blacklight: “So once again you’ve changed how?”). Now I have another person to add to my pantheon of tragic and creative socialites. If there is an afterlife for these talented ladies, I really hope Mary Millicent Abigail Rogers and Doris Duke are welcoming Huguette Marcelle Clark with open arms and a quiet sunny art studio.

So you might have heard of Doris Duke (her family put the Duke in Duke University) and Millicent Rogers (granddaughter of Standard Oil’s Henry Huttleston Rogers) but Huguette Clark? Who she?

Instead of shoving Mr Laptop open to Huguette Clark’s Wikipedia page, I can calmly hand the questioner (let’s say…Blacklight) Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr’s excellent Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. It’s not one of those doorstops about the Astor or Vanderbilt clan I would pour over as a teenager. But it’s not a cheap and quick tell all either with Gothic horrors detailed in inflammatory language. The very best way I can sum up Empty Mansions is (and I mean this as quite high praise) it’s like one of those amazing profiles Vanity Fair used to run back in the days before Tina Brown and when Dominick Dunne was at the top of his game. The kind of writing that had me saving my allowance so I could buy the multi-year Vanity Fair subscriptions and line them up issue by issue on my bookshelves.

In all my mooning over the lost Gilded Age mansions in New York City, I never heard of the Copper King William A. Clark.  I never realized the grand and insanely wondrous creation he built for himself, second wife and their two young daughters which was torn down just sixteen years after it was built. Or that the first Girl Scout camp was founded after their older daughter Andree died much too young. And that their surviving daughter Huguette would go into relative social seclusion for decades until the descendants of her half siblings from William A. Clark’s first marriage feared the worst had occurred and decided to find out what happened to her.

There are parts of Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune were you’ll shake your head in sheer disbelief. Or feel to make sure your eyes haven’t popped right out of your skull. Huguette Clark wasn’t a Hetty Green, taking extreme measures to save and grow her fortune. Remember the subtitle? Just how Huguette Clark spent her fortune isn’t stinted. Picture the scene, I’m curled up on my bed in Moderate Income Apartments, feeling like a used up SOS pad and reading about how Huguette Clark decided to buy herself a lovely retreat in New Canaan, CT. Which she never lived in or set for in for the whole sixty years she owned it. A retreat with a 5000 square foot bedroom. A retreat were the groundskeeper earned more than my yearly pittance from Company X. This account with lesser writers? Would have me closing the book, stomping into the living room like a baby Godzilla and ranting to Blacklight about the sheer unfairness of the world. But Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr aren’t lesser writers, so I kept reading.

Now remember I mentioned how Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune reminded me of profiles in Vanity Fair? Those profiles always seemed to have a snake in paradise. A caretaker getting too big for their boots. Greedy extended family. Well, the story of Huguette Clark offers both. You have her day nurse/companion Hassadah Peri who ended up getting over $31 million in gifts from Huguette Clark. It makes me wish my mother was alive so I could call her and say “Mom, you were doing the housekeeper thing all wrong” because my mother thought it was amazing to get an extra $50 in her pay packet. She scrubbed toilets on her knees. Nurse Peri? Try walking around with a five million dollar personal check from Huguette Clark. Then you have extended (and yes we are talking about great-nieces and nephews and great-great-nieces and nephews) family who didn’t seem to know if their Auntie Huguette was even okay until they heard she was selling some of her treasures. Now add contested wills and courtroom battles and you have a juicy read better than anything my Company X workers say I have to read (please stop trying to get me to read Fifty Shades and Twilight people, really) .

As much shock and scandal Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune reveals, there is also a human side. Scattered among accounts of wild or unusual spending are remembrances of phone conversation author Paul Clark Newell Jr had with his great-aunt. Because from behind her wall of wealth and privilege Huguette Clark did care about her family and friends even remembering small details. You can feel the warmth and shots of joy she gave to people such as her beloved goddaughter even if she couldn’t let them get closer than the telephone. And at the end, you want to know more about that side of Huguette just as much as you want to know what happened to her estate.

*Note: at the time of publication for Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, the lawsuits over Huguette Clark’s wills were ongoing. On September 24, 2013, a settlement had been reached with monies going to Huguette Clark’s extended family and her intended arts foundation.

 

The Perfume Collector

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I’m a sucker for well written historical novels and Kathleen Tessaro’s latest offering The Perfume Collector? Doesn’t disappoint and has me checking my Amazon gift card balance to see if there’s enough left to snap The Perfume Collector up before the Kindle Daily Deal ends at midnight.

Like Kathleen Tessaro’s previous historical novel (The Debutante), The Perfume Collector tells the tales of two women separated by a generation. In post World War II England, lovely Grace Munroe should be happy but her marriage is crumbling and her future feels as bleak as her empty womb. Her husband? Tom-catting about with a slinky society beauty who doesn’t realize married means “hands off”. One day, Grace receives a letter from a French lawyer about an inheritance and decides to throw off her suffocating life and go to Paris to find out what the letter means. After all, who does Grace even know in Paris? A generation earlier, an orphaned French teen-age girl begins to work at a posh hotel until one guest changes her life forever.

Now even the stuffed dragons and I figured out the plot twist about 20 pages in. Maybe because we read a lot of trashy and less well written books? Or have low minds? Who knows. (No, am I not going to tell you the plot twist. Pick up the darn book and figure it out yourself.) A lesser writer would handle the plot twist in a much more ham-fisted manner (coughcoughAnnoyingAuthorcoughcough). But how Kathleen Tessaro unveils the plot twist is delicate and intriguing and engages the reader. Finishing The Perfume Collector, you might (okay, once again I) wanted to race off to the best perfume counter you can find and discover a scent as enchanting as Madame Eva d’Orsey concocted. The only thing holding me back? This silly trifle called rent… <sighs>

So snap up The Perfume Collector, make a nice lovely hot cup of tea and settle in for a good read!

Counting My Chickens

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Out of the marvelous Mitford sisters, it’s no big secret my absolute favorite Jessica “Decca”. But Nancy? The baby sister you nicknamed “Nine” for her presumed mental age? She’s closing in on your perch as my second favorite Mitford.

Now just in case you don’t know who the Mitford sisters are (which is okay, I forgive you, not everyone’s personal book collection spans Lovecraft/King/Bloch/Jackson to Louisa May Alcott to Jacqueline Susann/Grace Metalious to the Mitford sisters) these six lovely ladies were the daughters of David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and the granddaughters of Thomas Gibson Bowles (founder of The Lady and the UK Vanity Fair). Eldest sister Nancy wrote wickedly sharp novels, second sister Pamela took up the country life, third sister and family beauty Diana become a political prisoner in World War II, fourth sister Unity was entranced by Hitler and Nazi Germany, fifth sister Jessica ran away and became the infamous muckraker who made the funeral industry shake in its black boots and sixth sister Deborah aka Debo? She grew up and married a sweet young man named Andrew Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire.

Along with helping turn the family seat Chatsworth House from a financial sinkhole into one of the premier stately homes to visit in the UK (all you Jane Austen fans? Chatsworth House is used as Mr Darcy’s Pemeberly in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice), Debo has inherited the literary gene turning out charming books about her beloved Chatsworth House and memoirs. Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts, is a slight book, only a 192 pages of Her Grace’s thoughts and observations of her life, family and being the mistress of Chatsworth House but what a wonderful 192 pages.

You might think a Duchess would be snotty, aloof and beyond writing a book for the masses. Maybe. But Her Grace The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (her husband, the 11th Duke of Devonshire died in 2004) is a down to earth lady who buys her clothes at agricultural fairs and shows because they’re comfortable and wear well. She’d rather grow a lettuce by the front door than the finest rare orchid. When asked if she’d rather have tea with Elvis or Hitler, she chose Elvis. One of her favorite books of all time is Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Ginger and Pickles.

How could you not love this lady? Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts makes me want to save up my pennies, go to Chatsworth House and hope I run into Her Grace in the grounds. And you know just how very much I “love” Outside. Closing Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts made me very glad I’m snapped up Wait for Me!… Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister and In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor at the Friends of the Ferguson Library Book Shop to add to my Mitford collection. Now off to see if the Central Connecticut library system has any more of Her Grace’s books!

 

 

 

Inside Peyton Place

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when you read a book, you want to fire up the old Literary Time Machine (Blacklight: “Lemme guess, you want to make out with H.P. Lovecraft” Me: <death glare> “No…”) I want to go back to the 1956 and smack away every glass of Canadian Club and 7 UP that Grace Metalious even gave the slightest longing look at. And I also want to frog-march her directly to a competent agent and financial manager and not let her sneak back to The Plaza until every last paper was signed. I wonder if Emily Toth ever had the same crazy thoughts while she was working on Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious. Because let me tell you, out of the Shirley Jackson/Grace Metalious/Jacqueline Susann trio? Grace was the clear winner of the shouldn’t be coveted Most Bleeped Up Her Life title. And we’re talking about some stiff competition because Shirley Jackson and Jacqueline Susann? Lots of Bad Life Choice Theater.

Blacklight: “Who the heck is Grace Metalious again?”

In case you haven’t visited the Grace Metalious page or are my beloved Minecraft addicted spouse Blacklight, Grace Metalious is an author who wrote the mega best seller Peyton Place about the secrets of a small New England. This novel spawned an Oscar nominated movie, several television shows and sequels. If you’re under 40 years old? Your parents or grandparents read Peyton Place in secret, clucking over all the s-e-x. Unless of course you’re my parents. Neither of them read the darn book, even though my mother remembers watching the 1964-1969 prime-time soap opera and “not liking that Allison girl at all”.

Now of course as a wee lass reading Peyton Place, Return to Peyton Place, The Tight White Collar and No Adam in Eden, I had no idea that the lady behind these crumbling paperbacks I found at tag sales died young and broke. Or that we shared a French-Canadian heritage. Grace Metalious just seemed so young and innocent and sad in the iconic “Pandora in Blue Jeans” picture. Nothing like the glamorous leopard clad Jackie Collins whose books I was devouring as fast as Her Collins could produce them. Then one day, after I had a license and realized my library card could be used at any public library in the state, I found Emily Toth’s Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious. And boy oh boy was my image of Grace Metalious shattered.

Grace Metalious’ rise from child of blue collar workers in a New Hampshire mill town to marrying young to living a shack of a rented house  with a dry well to writing the bestseller Peyton Place was like something out of a Hollywood movie. One with Joan Crawford in Adrian gowns at the end. And what happened after the fame and fortune from Peyton Place? Something John Waters and his stable of stars would film with Divine in a sloppy housecoat with booze stains down the front as Grace. How do you just sign over all the film rights to a movie studio without protecting yourself? Or blaze through all your royalties and that sweet $250,000 studio check in less than eight years?

Would you still want to read Peyton Place, Return to Peyton Place, The Tight White Collar and No Adam in Eden after encountering Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious? YES! It’s worth the trouble of tracking them down. Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious adds annotations to the experience. Who knew Grace could have avoid certain legal troubles if she just changed certain character names? Or just how much of her own life was being woven into her books. The quick end coming out of nowhere in No Adam in Eden is easier to understand once you know the circumstances in which the book was written. And after reading Grace’s notes for a third Peyton Place novel, you wonder what could have been if Grace Metalious was able to stay away from the bottle long enough to plop her butt in that lovely office in her dream house and write. A lesser writer than Emily Toth would have sneered at the wreck of Grace Metalious’ life  with all it’s scandals but Emily Toth has the skill make you care as deeply about her subject as she did.

Thank You Carolyn Keene

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Somehow I have managed to tear myself from the loving arms of Mr Couch and a good book to write almost 149 posts for the Book Slut Gwen blog over the years. Now what to write about for milestone post Number 150?

I don’t come from a family of readers. We did have books in the house, almost of all them my father’s (a handful of textbooks from his college days, some books on aviation and running off to Alaska and starting a life in the wilderness). But my parents never considered going to the bookstore or library as necessary as breathing. (Blacklight: “Are you sure you and Andy aren’t adopted?” Me: “Dude, I look just like Grandma Lucille! Andy looks just like Grandpa Philippe!” Blacklight: “So you’re both changelings?” Me: <deep sigh>)

But my parents took turns reading to me every night. The books I remember aren’t the usual things you read a very small child. No Clifford the Big Red Dog, no Velveteen Rabbit or Mother Goose or Dr. Seuss. I’m not sure how they came across the books they picked. Maybe the garage sales my mother haunted every weekend? They went through the Little House series one by one and then turned to the Nancy Drew series.

One day, when I was clamoring for my mother to read to me, and overwhelmed with house work and my little brother, my mother told me to read the book (Nancy Drew #16 The Clue of the Tapping Heels) out loud myself. Between her and Sesame Street, I could see and understand very basic words. I stumbled and sounded out a page or two. And then my poor mother told me to read to myself. So I did. Did I understand every word? Of course not! I was four years old. But doing something the grownups could do with ease was magical. And there was CATS!

Was my mother being clever or just trying to get a moment’s peace? Who knows? Those three words unleashed a monster and opened a whole new world to me. You could have read to me for hours and I would demand “more!” and get upset about how very slow the whole process was. Maybe things haven’t changed that much because there are certain audiobooks I can start listening to at work and then get annoyed over how very long it’s taking to get through them when I can read them so much faster. One prime example? Back around 2001/2002 Marian Keyes’ Sushi for Beginners hadn’t been released in the US yet but somehow one of the local libraries had the unabridged audiobook. I would listen and by tape 4 be wondering just how expensive it would be to order the darn book from Amazon UK.

The wonderful and grownup magic of reading was mine. I didn’t have to wait for a grownup to make time to read to me. I could take a book, go into a quiet place and just read myself. If I wasn’t reading, I was thinking of how to get more books. (Blacklight: “And you’ve changed HOW?”) The back pages of the Nancy Drew  series had this wonderful promotion about getting the new titles as they were released for a low low price with a whole 50 cents shipping and handling. I would count through my piggy bank and wish I was a grownup who could just buy all the books they wanted. (Blacklight: “Wait, you still wish you could buy all the books you wanted…”) Sure there was the Scholastic catalog and book fairs at school but you can’t get very many books on a $1.00 a week allowance.

And now, here I am at 41. I still adore books (Blacklight: “Do you love books more than me?” Me: “Hmm…that depends…”). When my father called earlier today to see how I enjoyed my vacation he asked “So what books did you get with your birthday money?”. And didn’t seem at all surprised as I told him about my adventures in used books including finding the Folio Society edition of Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels for $15.00 at Book Barn. But as thrilling and delightful as my birthday books are? Nothing is as awesome as the gift my mother and Carolyn Keene gave me that afternoon so long ago.

 

She Didn’t Write That…

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I’m on vacation and when I’m not zipping along the highway headed to used bookstores (do I dare make a third trip to Book Barn this week?), I’ve been curled up on Mr Couch with books trying to savor them like the pound of Lindt almond truffles I bought at the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlets vs inhaling them whole like the box of Junior Mints on my nightstand. And as I re-read Barbara Seaman’s Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann, Judy Oppenheimer’s Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson and Emily Toth’s Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious, all three controversial authors had something in common besides stirring up hornets nest of discontent and scandal. There was always a vicious rumor “She didn’t write that book/story…so and so did”.

Think this is one of my Crazy Literary Theories (TM)? Sadly, no. Even when Valley of the Dolls was selling so many copies an entire edition was printed with whatever paper was lying around the printing plant (believe it’s unofficially called the layer cake edition by collectors) people swore up and down her editor wrote the whole darn thing. Grace Metalious spent hours sitting at her typewriter, weaving bits of her own life and stories from small town New Hampshire to create Peyton Place (working title The Tree and the Blossom) but rumor had it her husband George or George and Grace’s dear friend Laurie Wilkins actually wrote the book. Some gossips claim Stanley Edgar Hyman wrote his wife Shirley Jackson’s chilling story The Lottery.

Now why were people so reluctant to give these three ladies credit for their creations? Was it the nature of the work itself? A look at humanity (The Lottery), pulling back the facade of a small town (Peyton Place), the raw gossip and sex (Valley of the Dolls)? The fact all three authors, married mothers, could shuck the bonds of house and home and devote themselves to writing..like a man? None of the three were known for their housekeeping and Jacqueline Susann adored living in a residential hotel and not having to cook or clean. There is one point in Lovely Me where the Susann refrigerator is pretty much bare beyond some bitters and suppositories. And Jacqueline’s main concern? That hubby Irving used one of her suppositories vs the almost empty refrigerator. Who needs to whip up a meal when there’s Room Service and amazing restaurants all around you? And at their primes Shirley, Grace and Jacqueline could most likely drink any man under the table. The then perception women just aren’t smart or clever enough t0 do anything besides cooking and cleaning and having babies? Granted only Shirley Jackson achieved a higher level of education and even that was a struggle but Jackson, Metalious and Susann, for all the challenges education brought were not dummies. And yes, you could argue Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls needed heavy editing but you know what? Stephen King needs heavy editing and no one says anyone but him wrote his books.

How often does this “She didn’t write that book/story…so and so did” still occur today? Has anyone looked at a Tabitha King novel (she’s a terrific author who just happens to have passed her talent along to her son Joe Hill) and think “Oh Stephen/Joe/Owen must have written it?”. Does…ugghh and it hurts me to type this given how much I loathe this particular author…does J.K. Rowling have people thinking her husbands were responsible for the Harry Potter juggernaut? Then again it wasn’t just Shirley Jackson, Grace Metalious and Jacqueline Susann who had their authorship disputed. There are people out there today who firmly believe Branwell Bronte was the real author behind his three sisters masterpieces…

 

Private Demons

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There are biographies that make Blacklight scream in terror when he stumbles in the living room and finds me curled up on Mr Couch reading (i.e. Eric Myers’ Uncle Mame: The Life Of Patrick Dennis but I think it’s because Blacklight is terrified of the Patrick Dennis in the tub picture on the back cover). And then there are biographies I’ve checked out of the local library so many times that the darn book spends more time at my house then on the library shelf, the ones I would own if only they weren’t out of print and didn’t cost more than a tank of gas or a month’s groceries or even <shudder> the electric bill. Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer is firmly in the second category.

So what makes Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson something that has me seriously wondering if Blacklight would object to me feeding him spaghetti and baked ziti for dinner for a month vs his usual boneless loin pork chops so I can buy the like new hardcover copy from Amazon? Judy Oppenheimer has done the hardest trick in the biographer’s tasks, she not only makes Shirley Jackson come to life but makes you want to visit the house with the pillars and spend an evening with the Hymans circa 1954. Anything could and did happen with Shirley. Imagine being at the Hyman’s on a night when Shirley got up from the table, went into the study, pounded out a story and then read it to the group, took the editing suggestions and had said story ready for submission by morning?

But Shirley Jackson was more than a machine for cranking out perfect tales to chill your soul or warm your heart. Oppenheimer draws back the facade that Shirley Jackson constructed through her writing to the public, friends and family to reveal the different facets making up such a creative soul. There’s the ungainly girl who never could win her mother’s approval even to her dying day. A devoted mother. A wife who almost waited on her literary critic/professor spouse hand and foot while supporting the household on her writing fees. A women who didn’t seem to care about her appearance but spends oodles of time tracking down a pair of elegant shoes. A mother who fiercely loved her children but didn’t seem to notice when they needed bath time and a good long shampoo.

Some of the very best parts of Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson are when Oppenheimer steps back and allows Jackson’s children to speak about their mother. It’s interesting and very heartbreaking to know how Jackson’s older daughter felt like she was an offering to her grandmother and how the younger daughter felt pressured into being her mother’s shadow/double. Did the pressure of being Jackson’s daughter rob us of another literary light? Do Jackson’s sons feel like their mother loved them less or more than their sisters?

So if you hear Blacklight wondering why baked ziti or pancakes or scrambled eggs are on the menu every night, be assured I’ve broken down and ordered Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from Amazon or Thriftbooks. Track down Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from your library, spend some time curled up on the couch reading and you might find yourself doing the same.

 

 

 

God Bless America

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Let’s set the scene.

It’s about 4:30pm in mid-October. I’m on the couch checking my e-mail and IM’ing friends. Blacklight has finally lurched out of the bedroom and into the living room so I don’t even have to ask if it’s a high pain day. Every day is a high pain day for Blacklight. Reaching for his sweatshirt, which is flung over a chair, he notices a stack of library books on the dining room table and starts poking around to see what I checked out. Then he holds up one book, looking puzzled.

“God Bless America?  Is this about crazy Tea Party Republicans or something?”

“What? No. It’s the book Dr Karen from Monster Talk wrote about different religions in America. Do you want me to make your nasty eggy sandwich now or after you’ve gotten pretty?”

Now even though I’m a well-read adult (Blacklight: “But you refuse to read Richard Dawkins…” Me: <gives death glare>), there are gaps in my knowledge of the religious world. I did get baptized, made my First Communion and was confirmed in the Catholic Church but was because it was my parents choice and even then I grew up in the laxest of Catholic households. I have picked up things here and there but there are still things I can’t wrap my head around when it comes to the different religions and their beliefs. But religion doesn’t interest me enough to make a deep study of it like my father-in-law. What I need? Something to give me the basic facts so I don’t ask my Mennonites, New Age and Christian friends ignorant questions.

Luckily a person like me can turn to Karen Stollznow’s God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States.  Yes, that title is certainly a mouthful. But the book itself is easily digestible with chapters covering everything from Fundamentalist Mormons, Amish and Mennonites, New Agers, Satanists, Quakers and more. Each chapter blends a history/breakdown of said religion’s beliefs and experiences Karen Stollznow and her husband Matthew had in interactions with the believers. There is a part in Signs, Wonders and Miracles chapter (about Charismatics and Pentecostals) that had me darting into the living room and re-enacting Matthew’s session with the Charismatic “healers” complete with a stuffed cat filling in for Matthew.

Thanks to God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States, I now know what an Anabaptist is and sorry Conradin from Saki’s excellent and chilling short story “Sredni Vashtar”, an Anabaptist isn’t as thrilling and wicked as it sounds. I’ve also found out the differences between Amish and Mennonites. No stupid questions about why some Mennonites use computers and others doesn’t from me! <cue my Mennonite friends sighing in relief>

Would I recommend God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States? Certainly! God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States isn’t Religions for Dummies. And it’s not a skeptic and her fellow skeptic spouse bashing every religion they encounter. The author’s willingness to explore the different religions even if she might find them or some of their practices silly or foolish or unbelievable is admirable. What God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States is a concise and well research look at various religions and beliefs that many people might not know about or only think the wildest and most crazy ideas about. It doesn’t talk down to the reader. You might not agree with each religion or it’s beliefs after learning more about them but you will come away with a better understanding of each religion and be more informed when you encounter it in the future.

Would I recommend God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States? Certainly!