What I'm reading this week (4/9/18)

Last week I finished

This is the second book I've read by J. Randy Taraborrelli, and after finishing, I have to say I'm a big fan. He's written three books about the Kennedys, Jackie, Ethel, Joan; After Camelot; and the newest, Jackie, Janet & Lee. He conducts dozens of interviews with folks intimately connected with the principle characters in the biographies, including family members, servants, friends, lovers, exes, and politicians. The books feel very well researched, but they are also very readable. They never bog down with uninteresting detail. They skip along, giving in-depth personal information, and sometimes border on, but never quite cross the line into, salaciousness. They're also quite balanced, not seeming to take sides, as it were. Taraborrelli knew Jackie Kennedy Onassis when she worked as an editor, so the author has a personal frame of reference. This book details the lives of and relationships between Jackie Kennedy Onassis, her mother Janet Auchincloss, and Jackie's sister Lee Radziwill. There were powerful dynamics between the three, power plays, hurt feelings and resentments, and years and years worth of meddling and coping with each other. Janet was a controlling woman who insisted she knew what was best for her daughters. Jackie was a taciturn woman well-loved and quite damaged by the assassinations of her husband, JFK, and his brother, Robert Kennedy. Both women believed that money was power, and both money and power were essential to happiness and security. Lee, the younger of the Bouvier girls, harbored deep resentments toward her famous sister, Jackie, for always having life handed to her so effortlessly simply because of who she was. The book details the numerous romances, marriages, and extramarital affairs of the three and the men they were involved with. It details the various family relationships with the Bouvier sisters, their Auchincloss stepsiblings, Janet Jr. and Jamie, and the half-siblings from Hugh Auchincloss' previous marriages. It takes us from Jackie and Lee's early childhoods to Janet and Jackie's deaths. It ends heartbreakingly, when we realize that the difficulties of their relationships were not resolved. In all, it was a very good book, a look at how the other half live, and I enjoyed it very much. I was also glad to go back to my much simpler life when it was over. My rating: 4.5 stars.

I have been a fan of Li-Young Lee's poetry since he burst onto the poetry scene in the early 1990s. I have read some of his early poems so many times I have them nearly memorized. So, I was excited when his latest book, The Undressing, was released earlier this year. Lee's poetry is complicated. Some of his poems are as accessible as unlocked houses, others are impenetrable as stone fortresses. The title poem of the collection, the first poem in the book, was one of the latter. It alternates between two lovers, one undressing the other, while the undressee speaks at length about...something. I have no idea what was being said or what it meant, and I fretted for pages the Lee had finally taken his verse to a place of unintelligible jabberwocky. But the poems that followed felt more like the Li-Young Lee poems I enjoyed so many years ago. I didn't find anything here that set me on fire, but I enjoyed the feeling of familiarity while reading his poems. He definitely has a style of his own. I would recommend the reader look at his earlier books, especially Rose and The City in Which I Love You, before tackling this one. My rating: 2.5 stars.

This week I'll finish

 

Oh my gosh you guys, I am loving this book. I read a lot of books each year, but only a very few of them make me want to not put the book down until it's finished. This is one of them.

I recently abandoned

I forgot to report on this one. I've read at least a half dozen books about women escaping the FLDS cult run by Warren Jeffs (and other polygamist FLDS communities). They're all pretty similar, lots of sister wives and half-siblings, lots of poverty, lots of violence and abuse. But Breaking Free is the only one I have not finished. Rachel Jeffs speaks so descriptively about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hand of her father, Warren Jeffs, that I just had to put it aside. It wasn't a bad book otherwise.

I'm continuing with

 

This month of reading is shaping up to be stellar, and these two books are part of the reason. My review of Hillbilly Elegy will be up next week.

Last week I began

I'm enjoying Roger Housden's latest in his "Ten Poems" series, although I can assure you we cancel each other out when we go to the polls.

My audiobook

I think this one is too long by half. It's not unenjoyable, but I'm glad I'm listening to it instead of reading it. I think it would really drag in paper. I'll review it next week.