Last week I finished
I've always been interested in the press corps that follows presidential candidates around the country for months, even years, prior to a presidential election. I'd always wondered how it worked, exactly. How much access did they have to the candidate? Did they personally support the candidate or did that even matter? How much of their lives did they have to put on hold in order to chase a story that would become history? Chasing Hillary answers these questions. In this journalistic memoir, Amy Chozick of the New York Times gives the inside scoop on her years following Hillary Clinton's two bids for the presidency. I had several takeaways from this book, including the answers to my basic questions about the life of an inbed (or as Chozick calls them, "travelers"), but also about Hillary Clinton's campaign and the traveling press's role in reporting it. The thing that struck me most was just how surprised the liberal media (including newspapers and cable news) were by everything that happened (just this week it was reported that President Obama as "blindsided" by the election results). Nothing unfolded without flabbergasting the candidate, her staff, and the press. All of us here in "fly-over country" were just shaking our heads while folks on the coasts were scratching theirs over the fact that Trump was surging and establishment candidate hopefuls like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio were dropping out one by one. The travelling press never seemed to know which stories were big stories (the email scandal, the "deplorable" comment, etc.). Hillary seemed to loathe the press as much as Donald Trump, but at least Trump still played ball. He showed up the tell the press he didn't like them. Hillary didn't give press conferences for weeks, months. She didn't trust even the mainstream liberal media, so she didn't connect. She miscalculated, and she didn't make her way to states like Wisconsin (ahem) which handed the election to President Trump. The campaign never seemed to realize an unconnected candidate is sure to lose, a candidate with a "likability" problem needs to reevaluate the way she is connecting with "the everydays" (as the American electorate were called inside her campaign). The Clinton camp relied too much on old sense data from their previous campaign and "knew" they had certain groups in the bag. But they didn't. They seemed to have no vision. They didn't see Bernie Sanders as a threat until he started pulling the rug out from under them in key states, and then they scrambled to maintain their lead in others. And no one seemed to see Donald J. Trump as a threat (except for us adorable deplorables in the middle). They didn't understand that independent women would not vote for Hillary just because she was a woman, because those of us in the middle states realize that is the very definition of sexist. In short, the book offers no new insights regarding the shortsightedness of the campaign or the press. It's basically just a play-by-play of high and low points of Secretary Clinton's candidacy. I was hoping to come away with a more sympathetic view of Hillary as a person, but while there was no gushing here, there was also very little good to say about the democratic nominee Chozick saw day and night for months, the candidate who did not seem to like her at all. If you were not someone who followed the race closely, watched a couple hours of news coverage each night, or kept abreast of the minutiae of the campaign, this isn't a book for you. It's an account written in such a way as to not explain or remind the reader of these events, but just to recall them as they happened. That didn't necessarily bother me, I definitely spent enough time watching the race to keep here, but it does limit the audience that will get much out of the account. My rating: 3 stars.
If you are like me and enjoy a good historical mystery without a lot of violence and bloodshed, you'll be happy to know about The Mitford Murders, the first in a new mystery series by the woman who puts together the Downton Abbey companion books. (I believe she's the niece of Julian Fellowes.) In this book, we meet Louisa, who grew up poor in London and is escaping a tyrannical uncle. Louisa takes a job as nursery maid for the titled Mitford family. She and the eldest Mitford daughter, Nancy, are fascinated by the murder of a World War I nurse, Florence Nightingale Shore (a niece of the famous nurse), on an English train. Together with a young railway officer, they launch their own investigation where the official investigation left off. This is a long book, over 400 pages, and I think in print it would have dragged, but I "read" this one audio, and it was a nice listen. The writing here is expository, one declarative sentence after another. I find that kind of writing serviceable for mysteries (though undesirable in other fiction), but unengaging. That made the audio a good choice for me. Beyond the rather uninspired writing, my only real complaint is that I just didn't understand why the Mitfords had anything to do with the book. Why choose them? Why choose any real family? Why not just write a straightforward mystery and make up a family for Louisa to land employment with? I guess it was fun for the author to imagine, but it really made me scratch my head. But overall, I did enjoy listening to this one, and I look forward to others in this cozy British series. My rating: 4 stars.
Next up
Next in my unofficial mission to read all the Kennedy books...Eunice, a biography of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.
I continue with...
This really is a wonderful book.
Last week I began
I started four of my five evening reads at once last week because I like variety. :) The Antelope in the Living Room is a light memoir about marriage. Writing the Australian Crawl is a re-read from my college poetry workshop days. The Way It Is is a re-read of William Stafford poems. And At home is a decorating book by William Yeoward.
My audiobook
This isn't quite what I expected, but I think I'll stick with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment