BOOKS THREAD

Thanks. I didn't know this until I started following Emily Wilson on Twitter, but I was shocked to see how weirdly nasty the fights over which Odyssey translation is better can be. I suppose there's a lot at stake—including which version becomes required reading for college courses.

Again, I absolutely loved hers and heartily recommend it.

 

A friend got me into the Slow Horses series. Loved the first one, loving the second, and will definitely have to check out the TV series once I'm through all of them. Can certainly imagine Oldman being fantastic as Jackson Lamb, who's such a great character on the page.

 

If you like The Talented Mr. Ripley and other Patricia Highsmith crime stories—as I do—I just finished reading Georges Simenon's The Man Who Watched Trains Go By and it flirts with similar heights.

 

Am a little over halfway through "Hey Hun! Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, And Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing." Over the years, in anth school, working in clinic, just living, I've had these moments where the only response I can formulate is, "People can be awful to each other." This book is giving me that same feeling.

 

"Forever Blue" a solid bio of Walter O'Malley from Michael D'Antonio. Lots of interesting intrigue between him, Robert Moses and the mayor of LA. From 2009.

 

Just completed a trio of presidential biographies. Two recent, one from 2002.

"Becoming FDR" by Jonathan Darman. Covers the life of the 32nd POTUS up to 1933. Breaks no new ground, but Darman is an excellent writer and the book is worthwhile.

"The Natural" by Joe Klein. This short work on Bill Clinton is more than 20 years old now. Some good insights but is hobbled by absurd both-sides arguments. For instance, he declared the rejection of Bork and the criticism of Clarence Thomas as equal to Gingrich's malevolence House conduct.

"The Trials of Harry Truman" by Jeffrey Frank. Fairly negative take and not particularly engaging or comprehensive. Also it is irritatingly riddled with inaccuracies. Some examples: he states John Nance Garner was a Senator at the time he ran for VP. He was never a Senator. Then he writes that SCOTUS justice Harold H. Burton was a Democrat....when of course, he was a Republican.

 

Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee" a scathing study of how the media covered Reagan's presidency with kid gloves. Trenchant analysis and even though it is from 1988, still packs a punch and doesn't seem dated. Often infuriating, though.

 

Any idea how it was received back then?

 

Not sure overall. Stephen Ambrose reviewed for the NY Times, but can't access it. Kirkus called the book a "mean-spirited, overstated, and less-than-credible polemic."

 

Kate Flannery’s “Strip Tees” isn’t particularly well-written, a first-hand account of an American Apparel Girl, but it did send me down a rabbit hole of reading about the rise and fall of American Apparel. There’s a good book and movie in there if someone wants to dig into that story and the failure of aughts hipsterdom, with all its good intentions and ultimate failures.

 

This isn't a book, but Tom Junod's "My Mom Couldn't Cook" is a short, near perfect story. It's on the website now; not sure about the mag.

 

Paul Craddock’s “Spare Parts” is a delightful book about the history of transplants, which date much further back in time than I ever imagined. One can only marvel at anyone trying a transplant or transfusion in 1680. It traces how we got to where we are now in medicine because of these brave and sometime wacky men.