Other Women's Stories: What I'm reading this week (2/25/19)

Last week I finished:

I'll read most anything about the Kennedy family, and that includes books about Jackie. The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters is a biography of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill Ross (the girls did a lot of marrying). The book takes you through their privileged childhood with their father, Black Jack Bouvier, and mother, Janet, who divorced bitterly when the girls were quite young. The girls idolized their father, though most folks thought he wasn't much, a philanderer, and when he lost his fortune, and the girls grew, he didn't have much of a relationship with Jackie and Lee. Janet remarried well, a man who had several children, and they had two more together. Within the family, Jackie and Lee were always considered the poor stepchildren. We go through their boarding school years, college, and then their various romances and marriages. Lee marries Prince Stas Radziwill, and though he had to give up his royal title when he fled Poland for England, Lee used the title "Princess" throughout her life--even while married to other men. We see Jackie marry and lose Jack Kennedy, have her children, marry Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, who died just prior to divorcing Jackie. Lee flounders around dabbling in different arts and hanging on to artistic friends like Truman Capote. The sisters draw together and pull apart throughout Jackie's life, and while they seemed to have reconciled at the end of it, Jackie made a point of leaving Lee nothing in her will. Lee died earlier this month at 85. Last year I read Jackie, Janet and Lee, and whether because I read it first or because of the added dimension of Janet's life, I found it the superior of the two books--though they are very similar in tone and information. A good read, but rather a rehash after JJ&L. My rating: 3 stars.

I finally tackled Fahrenheit 451 (on audio), and while I'm glad I did, I dread having to write a review. I know folks love this book, consider it a classic, and hold it up as the bible of anti-book banning, but it left me cold--and not cold in the way it was meant to. Perhaps, what leaves me cold isn't the book itself but the way it's revered by the literati. I'm so over outrage, you guys. When something gives off the whiff of outrage these days, I tend to walk away. The story is this: at some point in the future, Guy is a firefighter, tasked not with putting fires out, but with burning a person's home if they own books. But Guy starts to wonder what's in those books that he's been destroying, and that's when his trouble starts. It's an allegory on thought suppression and shows the terrible consequences of what happens when literature is taken away from a society. I get it. But I wonder if the title has outlived its usefulness. Is there really anyone (other than, perhaps, middle schoolers and a few high schoolers) who haven't thought about these things? And why has the recent surge in popularity of this book not pointed out the atrocities of socialism? That's all I got out of the book--that socialism is bad and to be avoided at all costs. But I don't think that's what the literary class is taking away. At any rate, I'm glad to have it crossed off my list, but I don't see myself ever going back to it. A note on the audio. It's rather overly dramatic, and often sounds like a radio play, so maybe read this one (it's short) if you're interested. My rating: 2 stars.

To continue the theme of books I pushed myself to finish: The Minimalist Home. I've long lost count of the number of books about decluttering I've read, but it has to be at least 10 or 12. And I'm rather certain this one is the worst one. Becker (no relation) seems to think it's enough to give you a list of the rooms in your home, tell you that you own more things than you need, and tell you to get rid of stuff. It's the least helpful approach I've ever encountered. He does share his experience getting rid of things in his family's home, but there are absolutely no examples given, no pushes up the mountain. If you're someone who feels like they're drowning in stuff, someone telling you to just get rid of it isn't very helpful--and all that stuff will likely come back. Any book or decluttering guru that doesn't deal with the psychological issues associated with owning too many things just isn't doing anyone any favors. I took away nothing useful from this book, though I know a lot of people have. Perhaps if it's your only book on decluttering, it's enough. I don't know. To be fair, Becker's premise is that getting rid of stuff will open up your life to accomplishing greater things. If your house isn't messy, you'll be able to find your keys, and you'll save time not looking for said keys which you can devote to more important things. Okay, so that might give a person, what, 13 extra minutes a year? What I kept waiting for him to arrive at is the conclusion that realizing why we own too many things and how to cut the ties we have with our things, will bless us by opening up our hearts and psyches to better, deeper, more fulfilling relationships than those we had with our possessions. I felt like that's what he wanted to say, but he never got around to it. Or perhaps he's never thought about it. The one thing the book did spur me to think about, just because my head was in that space, was when our home is paid off later this year (we are paying off a 30-year mortgage in eight years), what is our next step? Will we sell? And if we do, what do I want from my next home? And how do my current belongings fit in this desire? Also, it made me think I should write a book called The Abundantist Home--because I'm sick and tired of feeling that being a collector and lover of things is wrong or immoral. So, my copy will be going to the used bookstore, but it might be exactly what you need. My rating: 2.5 stars.

When Dimple Met Rishi has been on my TBR for awhile now. I love the cover, and I enjoy stories about Indian-American girls and families. I chose to listen to this one as a palate cleanser after Fahrenheit 451. This is a YA novel about Dimple, an Indian-American girl who is on her way to Stanford University in the fall to study computer science, and Rishi, a traditional Indian-American boy who is headed to MIT. They meet up at San Francisco State University the summer before college to attend Insomnia Con, a computer design/coding workshop, their parents thinking that their meeting is the first step toward an arranged marriage. The two have to come to terms with what they want out of life--and each other--and what they're willing to give to make their dreams come true. Most of the action you can see coming a mile away, but I still found it rather adorable. Dimple and Rishi were well-conceived and drawn, and their romance felt quite real. I had a big issue with the pre-marital sex--I did not anticipate that, and it added nothing to the story whatsoever. But I enjoyed this enough to look forward to Sandhya Menon's newest, From Twinkle, with Love. So if you're looking for a YA romance (and can get past teenagers having sex), give it a try. My rating: 4 stars.

One of my all-time favorite reads has been A Girl Named Zippy. I read it first in 2006, a handful of years after it came out, and I've been wanting to reread it since. I was afraid that after that much time it wouldn't quite hold up to my fond memories, but it really, really did. This is the memoir of the author, Haven Kimmel's (called "Zippy" by her family) childhood in small Mooreland, Indiana. This is one of the few books that actually makes me laugh out loud; it did 13 years ago, and it still does. Many of the tales Kimmel tells are rather tall, but then, that's kind of how young Zippy thought--tall. I find this book endearing and wonderful. And yet. There's an undercurrent of dysfunction in the family. Clues indicate that Zippy's father is perhaps a mean drunk, that her mother is apathetic or depressed, and that the house is unkempt. Nothing is said overtly, though, so there's always this feeling of the other shoe about to drop, but it never does. I can't remember if it does in her follow-up memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch, or not. I do remember feeling (for years) that there should have been a third book to tie it all together, but there never was. Still, I've always wondered if the author never addressed the dysfunction head on because Zippy, as a child, didn't yet know her home was dysfunctional. I highly, highly recommend this one to folks who love memoirs, good writing, and rascal girl characters, because Zippy is one of the best. My rating: 5 stars.

Last week I abandoned: