Last week I finished:
As you know, I love to read about the Kennedys, and since there are so many of them, the books are endless. Never before, however, have I found a biography of Eunice Kennedy Shriver alone. From my previous reading, I'd decided she was a unique character within the Kennedy family, and Eunice by Eileen McNamara tells us why. The fifth of the nine Kennedy children, Eunice was raised as the others to be tough, competitive, and Catholic, to realize that "to whom much is given much is expected." Joe Kennedy, however, true to a father of his times, directed the majority of his paternal energy to his sons, Joe Kennedy Jr., and then Jack Kennedy, then Bobby and Ted, to rise to the highest positions in the land. Jack, of course, became president, Bobby was Jack's Attorney General and ran for the presidency, and Ted became a senator, a job he kept for nearly 50 years. But some say that of all the Kennedy children, it was Eunice Kennedy who had what it took to become a great president. But this was not something that was considered in the 1950s and 1960s, so Eunice put her enormous energies into social causes, especially helping juvenile delinquents and the mentally retarded (I'm using the terms of the times here) and fighting for the rights of the unborn and against the spread of abortion. Likely due to her feelings for her older sister, Rosemary, who suffered some sort of mental retardation (and later a botched lobotomy), she made mental abnormalities her cause. She established Camp Shriver on the expansive yard of her family's home, and her children spent their summers with mentally retarded youth who were learning to swim and ride horses and just generally run and jump and play freely. This idea became what is now Special Olympics, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next month. Eunice was a good look at the remarkable woman who never took no for an answer and changed many lives with her tireless work. It examines her place in the family without ever losing focus and becoming a biography of her more famous siblings. And it takes us through the years Shriver spent advocating for the less fortunate. She pushed her agenda to the forefront of JFK's presidency, and the last legislation he signed into affect before his assassination was the Community Mental Health Act which changed the lives of scores of Americans with mental health issues. Reading this book made me hope that someone will soon write a biography of Sargent Shriver, Eunice's husband, who supported his wife without question, who gave up his own political ambitions again and again for the Kennedy brothers, and who brought a little bit of humanity to the way his children were raised, reminding them their last name was Shriver, not Kennedy. Parts of the book were rather slow, and overall I had a hard time reading this book at the pace I normally read, but I never felt the book was anything other than fair, showing Shriver's faults and strengths in equal measure. I learned a lot. My rating: 3.5 stars.
I'd had Capital Gaines on my TBR pile since it came out last October. I finally picked up my Kindle copy (I also have a paper copy) and finished it last week. I'd expected it to be good, to be fun, to have some good advice, but I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Chip Gaines, married to the style maven, Joanna Gaines, and one-half of the design team behind Fixer Upper and the Waco, TX, Magnolia enterprise, delivers a handy, heartfelt, and humorous account of some of his failures in business, how he and Joanna listen for divine guidance to drive their business decisions, and what he hopes we all can learn about chasing dreams and being good people. Part business book, part self-help book, I actually found the book inspiring. Gaines is someone with capital-V Vision. He is a dreamer who acts on his dreams quickly and welcomes the growth that failure brings. He's unfailingly optimistic, unabashedly trusting, and radically bold. I love reading books by people like this because I am definitely not these things. He talks about how different he and Joanna are, how she likes to plan, run the numbers, and feel completely at peace with a decision before moving ahead. He likes to jump in and deal with issues as they come up. I have the same dynamic in my marriage. I'm married to a capital-I Idealist, an impatient (and I mean that in the best possible way) man who does his thinking and doing at the same time. Me, I often let "perfect" get in the way of "done". It's a classic Mars/Venus scenario, and I loved reading about how the couple deals with it. Chip touches on a lot of things in the book, including two things I've always admired the couple for: their fidelity to Waco, Texas (just think of all their Magnolia businesses have done for the place!), and their fidelity to following God's lead. This one really surprised me, and I think it would be a great book for college grads and others who are set to make some work or business changes. My rating: 4.5 stars.
I've gotten better this year at quitting books that I don't like or that don't meet my standards in writing or morality, but every now and then I still finish a book that I really shouldn't have. The Alice Network was one of those. I did not like this book. I felt the author's plot was above her writing ability, and I didn't care for the characters (I've met them all in other authors' books) nor many of the situations in the book. The plot follows Eve, a spy in World War I, and Charlie (Charlotte), a pregnant teen in 1947 who's looking for her cousin, Rose, presumed dead in World War II. Charlie enlists the help of cantankerous Eve to help her find her cousin, but Eve is also in search of someone herself because she has some scores to settle. I'm not used to the amount of foul language and immoral situations that this book suffered from in my historical fiction. Generally, historical fiction is pretty clean and any nastiness must only be hinted at; it's kind of the unspoken rule of historical fiction. This one used all the four-letter words you can think of (including the one Samantha Bee recently called Ivanka Trump), the three main female characters all were pregnant without being married, there was an abortion, there was violence, there were sex scenes. It made me sick to my stomach. The plots did resolve into a neat package, but the writing was not masterful, which made the book feel cheap. I have no problem with war situations that are real and honest, but here they felt like misunderstood backdrops for a much simpler plot of romance, sex, and revenge. Maybe that was my biggest problem here: it wasn't serious enough about the history, a very real and horrific history was just a prop. I love history and hate to see it trivialized. I can't recommend this one, but it has been very popular and well-received. To each her own. I guess you just need a tougher stomach than mine for this one. My rating: 2 stars.
Next up:
Finally, finally, finally.
I'd planned to read The Last Castle next, but I just couldn't get into it, so I settled on another from my TBR.
My Kindle read:
I'm not far in yet, but I'm working on clearing out some storage in the basement, and I need a boost.
I continue with:
Due to serial headaches and no nighttime reading, I haven't gotten far on any of these. I'd like to finish Writing the Australian Crawl soon, as that's the one I'm having the most trouble sitting down with.
My audiobook:
I just began The Perfect Mother, and it's quite engaging.
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