It was beginning to look like this week was going to get away from me with no reading update. I had a nice Labor Day weekend, full of reading and good food (prime rib burgers for one). And today is the first day of classes at the university. I figured it out this morning: I have endured 24 first days of (fall) classes at the university (nearly 40 first days if you include first day of spring classes!). I love the energy this time of year. And I still get the nervous-giddy feeling.
But on to the reading. I have a lot of catching up to do.
Last week I finished
I tried to total it up the other day, but I lost count. At any rate, I'd say I've read about a dozen books about various members of the Kennedy family and JFK's presidency. Not that I'm an expert or even really a Kennedyphile, but suffice it to say I know a fair bit about the Kennedys. Still, After Camelot has been on my TBR for some time, and I'm glad I finally got to it. The book covers the lives of the various family members from 1968 (i.e. Bobby Kennedy's assassination) to the present. This book is exhaustive. There's hardly an argument or important conversation not covered, and certainly all of the scandals, marriages and divorces, and trips to rehab are addressed. You'll find out all the salacious details of Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick (can you believe I just spelled that correctly on the first try?) incident, Jackie Kennedy's marriage to Aristotle Onassis, Rosemary's lobotomy and being put away in Wisconsin, Sargent Shriver's failed political bids, Eunice Shriver's founding of the Special Olympics, JFK Jr.'s various relationships with folks like Madonna and Daryl Hannah, JFK Jr.'s plane crash, even Maria Shriver's marriage to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I felt a little sleazy reading this one sometimes, when things got too gossipy and I learned things I'm quite sure family members would like not to have brought to print--again. I'm unsure there's anything here that hasn't been told before, and for the most part, it was likely told in a nastier way. The author does a good job balancing a tell-all with partiality. I get the impression that he likes the Kennedys, is perhaps more fascinated by them than most folks, and he obviously thought Jackie was a lovely person, but he doesn't slobber obnoxiously over them either. Because let's be honest, these folks led some wild, privileged lives. On the other hand, and I think this is why they are so fascinating to so many Americans, they put an emphasis on family and public service that resulted in some fantastic accomplishments and changed many lives. The family produced a president, three ambassadors, a senator who served for 50 years, the founder of Special Olympics, as well as dozens of others who continue making a difference today. I found the book fascinating, and though it was long, its short chapters made it so readable. If you want to know the rest of the Kennedy story, this is your book. My rating: 4 stars.
Over Labor Day weekend, I picked up and finished a book in two days. I never do that, no matter how short the book, but All the Gallant Men was just a great read. This is the memoir of 94-year-old sailor Donald Stratton, who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor with burns over 65% of his body only to re-enlist. God bless people like Mr. Stratton, a farm boy from Nebraska, one of the five surviving members of the crew of the USS Arizona. How can America repay the debt it owes such men? Stratton says the debt is cancelled only if we remember that day. I'd put off reading this book for months afraid that it would be dry or dispassionate or sad, but I found it to be intimate and honest. He still deals with the anger he feels toward the Japanese government of 1941. He still struggles with forgiveness. He still has trouble talking about that day, the friends he lost, and the uneasy feeling of having survived. It's a great book, not as detailed and gut-wrenching as Unbroken, so it's a book you could give to boys and young men to reinforce what honor and valor and patriotism is. America has lost sight of those qualities, doesn't value them like it once did. History is to be remembered, though, and I'm glad to have books like this for that reason. I'd donated a copy of this book to the university library in memory of my father, who served in the US Navy, before I'd read it, and now I know it's the perfect book to stand in his memory. My rating: 4.5 stars.
And now for something a little lighter. As a palate cleanser I decided to listen to the second Chief Inspector Gamache mystery by Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace. This one takes place around Christmastime, so if you're looking for a good seasonal read, this would be perfect. (If you don't mind mixing Christmas and murder, that is.) CC de Poitiers, whom no one in Three Pines, Quebec, likes, is murdered at a curling game in plain view of most of the members of the town. Who did it? How did they do it? Why did they do it? For the most part, I really enjoyed this book, but I don't know that I'll ever love Louise Penny books like some folks. I think Penny tends to overwrite her characters. Her bad guys (who are normal people who off people) are so bad that you've never seen anyone act like that or say the things they say. The first chapter or so of the book was a set of scenes that made me want to turn off the book and call it quits. My second issue with Penny's books (and this is only my second, so take my "expert" opinion with a grain of salt) is that they try to do too much. There were plot points I didn't even follow--and they were introduced at the end of the book. Perhaps that's to keep you interested for the next book, but it made me want to throw in the towel with the series. I anticipate that all those plots that weave around the main (murder) plot will become more clear in future books, but I can't be sure. So, I think the books have their issues, but they aren't really meant to be high literature, so I enjoy them for what they are. I did enjoy this one more that the first, perhaps because of the winter setting which almost felt like a character in itself. My rating: 3 stars.
And then there's Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Sigh. You guys, I wanted to like this one, and in fact, I feel like a bad person for not liking it, but psychology books just aren't my thing. And I had no idea this was one. Frankl, a survivor of four Nazi concentration camps, and a neurologist/psychiatrist, divides his book into two parts. The first part is about his experiences in the camps, the second part is post-camps where he explains his psychological theory of logotherapy. I was disappointed with this book on a couple of levels. First, I expected a much more intimate discussion of his life in the concentration camps, but he seemed unwilling or unable to go into it much. What he did do was bring to mind various incidents from his time in the camps and discuss them within a psychological framework. That's fine, I guess, but it wasn't what I was expecting and frankly, it wasn't very interesting to me. The second part of the book, where he does heavily into logotherapy (which I unfortunately still can't define) and his theories about suffering and meaning, was even less interesting to me. His overall thesis is this: suffering is important to life if its existence brings meaning to the sufferer. Perhaps that was groundbreaking in 1950, but I'm just not so sure it is anymore. Perhaps no natural or social science is so at odds with Christianity and a faith-based framework for life as the psycho sciences. I know many Christians can square psychology with what they believe about God, but I for one, cannot. My beliefs about God and suffering and meaning cannot be explained with Frankl's branch--or any branch--of psychology. I'm glad this book has brought meaning and healing and hope to so many, but it left me cold. My rating: 2 stars 
And we'll end with something utterly enjoyable, the fourth book in the Clementine series, Clementine Friend of the Week. You know by now that I'm a huge fan of Clementine. She's an emotionally expressive, unintentionally naughty, hilarious, little girl whose brand of kindness makes you feel warm fuzzies all over. In this book, Clementine is chosen to be "friend of the week" at school. She'll get to be the leader when they line up, take the lunch money to the office, and at the end of the week she'll receive the class book keepsake in which all of her classmates write nice things about her. That's the plan anyway, but when her kitten, Moisturizer*, goes missing, she's too distraught to decorate their bikes for the bike rally. Will her broken promise make her friends hate her? Will they forgive her? What will they write in her class book? Will she get her kitten back? I can't say that I have a favorite in the Clementine series, because each is as good as the last. This one was pretty fantastic, though. My rating: 4.5 stars.
*Because she believes products found in the bathroom provide the best names for pets.
Last week I started:
Having finished After Camelot on the first and All the Gallant Men on the third, I'm way ahead of schedule in my September reading. So I've added another chunkster to my reading list. I'd been wanting to read Margaret Truman's biography of her mother and first lady, Bess W. Truman, for months, and I've finally begun. It's a little slow--it took 100 pages for Harry and Bess to get married--but I hope it picks up when they reach the White House years.
I also began Kory Stamper's Word by Word, which is about her job "writing dictionaries" for Merriam-Webster. It's quite good and quite funny.
I'm also reading:
I'm enjoying Ann Hood's little book about growing up a reader, Morningstar.
And I'm reading Winston Churchill's Painting as a Pastime on my Kindle.
My audiobook
Homegoing is the last of my "high profile" reads of the year. I'm not loving it, but I think it might be picking up. I'll likely finish it no matter my feelings, because I really wanted to know what so many people liked so much about this one.
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