Month: December 2021

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books and reading

Red Clocks

Title: Red Clocks

Author: Leni Zumas

Genre: dystopian

Finally, not a celebrity memoir! And this one was from my favorite genre- dystopia. And although I’ve read better ones, this one was really interesting. You follow five different women who all live in the same town in Oregon. They all live in a world where abortion is illegal, and the Personhood Amendment rules the land. Sound familiar?? Ugh. These women are tangentially related, which becomes more prevalent as the book progresses.

From Goodreads: Five women. One question. What is a woman for?

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.

I’m not sure how this book would be on audio because it has a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. The characters insert random internal thoughts into their conversations, which is easy to follow since they are italicized but in audio would be a nightmare. I really enjoyed this book, though. I loved seeing how the women all came together and helped each other out. The world they live in is terrifying but very real. There is no reason to think we aren’t headed on that same path.

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Born a Crime

Title: Born a Crime

Author: Trevor Noah

Genre: memoir

Since I’m the last person on the planet to read this much-hyped book, I figure that since I’m on a roll with celebrity memoirs, I might as well. I do wish I could have listened to it, but since I rarely do that, my standby ebook format would have to suffice. I know absolutely nothing about Trevor Noah, other than his job as the host of The Daily Show and the fact that he’s from South Africa. I’ve seen clips of TDS, and he’s really funny, but I don’t watch it. So learning about his childhood wasn’t something I sought out because I’m a fan of his. It’s just been recommended so many times by so many people that I thought, why not?

From Goodreads: Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

This book was great. Trevor Noah is known for his humor, which is evident throughout the entire story. I laughed a lot, but it’s also a really heartfelt read. He loves his mother dearly, even though she was hard on him. He understood that her stubbornness was always from a place of love. She tried to teach them the ways of the world and how life as a mixed boy (his words) in S. Africa was the hardest life imaginable. They were also very poor. Like eating caterpillar sandwiches poor. Even if you aren’t necessarily a fan of his, the book is funny and engaging. I really enjoyed it, and I have a new respect for Noah. He certainly worked hard to get where he is.

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Will

Title: Will

Author: Will Smith

Genre: memoir

And….yet another celebrity memoir. I promise that’s not all I’m going to read these days. Although, I’m reading another right now. Ack! I guess I’m saving up all the ones I would have read during the year for right now. I can’t say I learned a whole lot of “dirt” in this one, unlike the other two, but Will certainly thinks highly of himself, which is definitely earned. In the 2000s, he couldn’t be beaten at the box office. But as he’s grown older, he has learned to take a step back and look at what’s really important in life.

From Goodreads: One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had.

Will Smith’s transformation from a fearful child in a tense West Philadelphia home to one of the biggest rap stars of his era and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, with a string of box office successes that will likely never be broken, is an epic tale of inner transformation and outer triumph, and Will tells it astonishingly well. But it’s only half the story.

Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn’t see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn’t signed up for. It turned out Will Smith’s education wasn’t nearly over.

This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world’s biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.

When someone is young and makes it big, I think it’s often a rough go. Will’s parents were guiding forces in his life, but he still made poor decisions, ended up broke and lost, and had no idea what to do. Getting the Fresh Price tv show broke open his world, and he never looked back. But Will wasn’t just the greatest guy. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he never put others first. He was first. Always. His marriage suffered. His kids suffered. His own happiness always won. So, over the course of the book, his self-realization is really refreshing. He admits his mistakes and owns them. He explains who he is now and what outlook he has. I certainly recommend this for fans of his. You will see him in a new light.

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Exposure collection

Title/Author: Nightcrawlers/Rosecrans Baldwin, The Two Million Dollar Intern/David Gauvey Herbert, Bad Therapist/Evan Wright, Ms. Mirage/Joe Tone, King of Dreams/Christie Thompson, The Officer and the Entrepreneur/Dan Slater

Genre: Non-fiction

I just love these Amazon short stories. I have read Disorder collection, The One collection, Black Stars collection, Faraway Collection, Nameless, Foreward, Out of Line, and Hush. All have been outstanding. This collection was unlike the others. These stories were journalistic investigations. I could easily see each story as its own podcast. Each one, aside from Nightcrawlers, which is actually an uplifting story, tells the story of a person being exposed for being as bad as you think they are. From city corruption to misrepresentation to outright lies, these stories dig deep into the truth.

From Goodreads: Nightcrawlers: It’s a Darien, Connecticut, tradition: an emergency medical service managed by adolescents. One kid is a varsity soccer captain. There’s a future doctor, a band dork, a theater geek. Theirs is a view of town without the niceties. A drunken spouse turned violent. Lonely old people stuck in the bath. A midlife suicide. How do these kids process the sometimes shocking and violent life-and-death secrets of their community? The answer is a story of high stress and uncommon high school lives, told by a writer who spent his own youth on the night shift. Welcome to Post 53.

The Two Million Dollar Intern: A Ponzi scheme was exposed, and a prominent Manhattan hedge fund imploded. Enterprising intern and financial wizard-in-training Gerti Muho saw it as an opportunity. He had insider knowledge and a knack for fraud, embezzlement, and identity theft. His steady supply of speed helped. Muho was on a luxury high. His luck seemed bottomless. Considering what was to come, he’d need it.

Bad Therapist: Chris Bathum was a respected therapist, addiction specialist, and founder of one of the fastest-growing rehabilitation chains in America. But Bathum was a total fraud: he was a meth-head with a history of sexually abusing his patients, scamming insurance companies, and eliminating whistle-blowers. Like Rose Stahl. But this intended victim would be his last. Stahl would risk her life to bring down the monster she and so many other people in need had once trusted for their salvation.

Ms. Mirage: In the era of Watergate and rising feminist awareness, reporter Pam Zekman was queen of the muckrakers. Her biggest investigation: buy a bar, document the inevitable city department shakedowns and bribes, and publicly document Chicago’s institutionalized corruption. Her epic story changed Chicago and also raised serious questions about the future of journalism.

King of Dreams: Peter Candlewood understood the system. That’s how he could commute prison sentences and reunite hopeless families with incarcerated loved ones. For a price. Except there was no Candlewood. No hope. Just a lowly Texas con artist who bet on the desperate—and won. And he wasn’t working alone. The multimillion-dollar deception cost the betrayed more than their savings.

The Officer and the Entrepreneur: After Kevin Corley’s military career came to an ill-fated end, he answered another call of duty, unaware that he was walking into a ruse orchestrated by one of the government’s most enterprising agents. John Leonard was posing online as an underworld figure to entrap those who were predisposed to crime. When he lured Lieutenant Corley into his scheme, he didn’t know how wrong it would go. And Corley had no idea he had so much left to lose.

Nightcrawlers was really great and will give you hope. These teenagers who run Post are just outstanding people, and I really loved reading their stories. All the others are ones where the bad people definitely get outed, and you can’t wait for that to happen. Some of these are longer than a usual short story, more like a novella. But all were really interesting.

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Going There

Title: Going There

Author: Katie Couric

Genre: Memoir

I really don’t read celebrity memoirs, but here we are again. I am a Today Show junkie and have always loved Katie Couric, so when I saw she had written her story, I knew I would read it. And it was definitely worth it. She’s honest and genuine. She doesn’t hold back about a lot of topics including the misogyny in her field and the downfall of her dear friend, (no longer, though) Matt Lauer. She talks a lot about the death of her husband, the father of her children, Jay Monahan. And she reflects upon the good and bad of her career.

From Goodreads: For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious, heartbreaking memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life – a story she’s never shared, until now. Of the medium she loves, the one that made her a household name, she says, “Television can put you in a box; the flat-screen can flatten. On TV, you are larger than life but smaller, too. It is not the whole story, and it is not the whole me. This book is.”

Beginning in early childhood, Couric was inspired by her journalist father to pursue the career he loved but couldn’t afford to stay in. Balancing her vivacious, outgoing personality with her desire to be taken seriously, she overcame every obstacle in her way: insecurity, an eating disorder, being typecast, sexism . . . challenges, and how she dealt with them, setting the tone for the rest of her career. Couric talks candidly about adjusting to sudden fame after her astonishing rise to co-anchor of the TODAY show, and guides us through the most momentous events and news stories of the era, to which she had a front-row seat:  Rodney King, Anita Hill, Columbine, the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, the Iraq War . . . In every instance, she relentlessly pursued the facts, ruffling more than a few feathers along the way.  She also recalls in vivid and sometimes lurid detail the intense pressure on female anchors to snag the latest “get”—often sensational tabloid stories like Jon Benet Ramsey, Tonya Harding, and OJ Simpson.

Couric’s position as one of the leading lights of her profession was shadowed by the shock and trauma of losing her husband to stage 4 colon cancer when he was just 42, leaving her a widow and single mom to two daughters, 6 and 2. The death of her sister Emily, just three years later, brought yet more trauma—and an unwavering commitment to cancer awareness and research, one of her proudest accomplishments.

 Couric is unsparing in the details of her historic move to the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News—a world rife with sexism and misogyny.  Her “welcome” was even more hostile at 60 Minutes, an unrepentant boys club that engaged in outright hazing of even the most established women.  In the wake of the MeToo movement, Couric shares her clear-eyed reckoning with gender inequality and predatory behavior in the workplace, and the downfall of Matt Lauer—a colleague she had trusted and respected for more than a decade.

Couric also talks about the challenge of finding love again, with all the hilarity, false starts, and drama that search entailed, before finding her midlife Mr. Right.  Something she has never discussed publicly—why her second marriage almost didn’t happen. 

If you thought you knew Katie Couric, think again. Going There is the fast-paced, emotional, riveting story of a thoroughly modern woman, whose journey took her from humble origins to superstardom. In these pages, you will find a friend, a confidante, a role model, a survivor whose lessons about life will enrich your own.

Katie is an excellent writer, and her humor comes through loud and clear in this book. She’s also very honest. I believe her when she said she had no idea what Lauer was doing behind the scenes. I also appreciated her ability to look at her past self and declare her questions “tone deaf” at times. We have learned a lot in the past twenty years about how to ask questions that are more sensitive to others, especially to people of color, where Couric admittedly failed many times. But those conversations are what we need. We need to be able to reflect upon the past and learn from our cringe-worthy mistakes. I learned a lot about Couric through this book, mostly that she is just another person. She loves her parents and family. She struggled to be a present mom while balancing her demanding career. And she explains how she faced the worst when dealing with her husband’s death. Anyone who is a fan of hers will love this book.

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Unguarded

Title: Unguarded

Authors: Scottie Pippen and Michael Arkush

Genre: memoir

I love basketball. Like LOVE. And I hate the Bulls. I hate Michael Jordan, even more now than back in the day. I respect his ability, but as a person, he’s just not a good guy. After watching The Last Dance, this is confirmed. Pippen, however, has always had a soft spot in my heart. Sure, I hated him when he was beating my beloved Lakers. But I could see he was full of fire, determination, and quiet kindness. Maybe not on the court, but off, he seemed like an underpaid, underappreciated guy. Always in MJ’s shadow. And when MJ retired, Pippen couldn’t put it together. Of course he couldn’t. He was missing the best player in the league, but the team did the best it could. So when I heard this was Pippen’s answer to The Last Dance (for which Michael got paid millions and the other people interviewed got $0), I was ready. (Personal note: I LOVED BJ Armstrong. I even have his autograph somewhere.)

From Goodreads: Scottie Pippen has been called one of the greatest NBA players for good reason.

Simply put, without Pippen, there are no championship banners—let alone six—hanging from the United Center rafters. There’s no Last Dance documentary. There’s no “Michael Jordan” as we know him. The 1990s Chicago Bulls teams would not exist as we know them.

So how did the youngest of twelve go from growing up poor in the small town of Hamburg, Arkansas, enduring two family tragedies along the way, to become a revered NBA legend? How did the scrawny teen, overlooked by every major collegiate basketball program, go on to become the fifth overall pick in the 1987 NBA Draft? And, perhaps most compelling, how did Pippen set aside his ego (and his own limitless professional ceiling) in order for the Bulls to become the most dominant basketball dynasty of the last half-century? (ahem, personal note: no. 60s era Celtics were the most dominant in the last half-century.)

In Unguarded, the soft-spoken, six-time champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist finally opens up to offer pointed and transparent takes on Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, and Isiah Thomas, among others. Pippen details how he cringed at being labeled Jordan’s sidekick and discusses how he could have (and should have) received more respect from the Bulls’ management and the media.

Pippen reveals never-before-told stories about some of the most famous games in league history, including the 1994 playoff game against the New York Knicks when he took himself out with 1.8 seconds to go. He discusses what it was like dealing with Jordan on a day-to-day basis, while serving as the real leader within the Bulls locker room.

On the 30th anniversary of the Bulls’ first championship, Pippen is finally giving millions of adoring basketball fans what they crave; a raw, unvarnished look into his life, and role within one of the greatest, most popular teams of all time.

This book is mostly about Pippen’s life on the court, but he also discusses his humble childhood with both a disabled brother and father. Pippen is one of several children, and times were tough. His family is close, which helped keep him grounded. Pippen holds nothing back in this book. He minces no words about Jordan, GM Jerry Krause, fellow players, members of the media, coaches, on and on. He lets you know how frustrated it was time and time again to be underappreciated. This book was a lot of fun. I love trips down basketball memory lane and have read Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty, Dream Team, and When the Game Was Ours. I have Showtime (about the Lakers) coming up soon. For anyone who enjoyed 80s and 90s NBA, you’ll enjoy this fun look back.