While we're talking about the Kennedys...

Here's a 6-minute video created by the New York Times about "The Umbrella Man"--the guy standing under an umbrella near the site of JFK's assassination.

Interesting.

And it does my enough-with-the-conspiracy-theories heart good to see such a thing debunked.

(Just placed a hold on the Warren Commission report. It's 888 pages, so probably I'm gonna be skimming.)

She never wrote a memoir, but she did do this...

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy: Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1964

(photo credit: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

It’s a book, it’s an audiobook, it’s one of the coolest things ever.

This is exactly the kind of historic record that I’ve been know to pray will appear on the scene during my lifetime. And it’s fabulous.

Arthur Schlesinger was part of JFK’s brain trust, and it sounds from these recordings, like Jackie was reasonably comfortable with him. At any rate, she’s rather candid, and there are things she talked about that later she said she didn’t want to have shared.

Of course, these are the good things.

Such as: There were kids’ bath toys lined up along the edge of the bathtub in JFK’s bathroom—the one their visitors to the family quarters would use—because John, Jr., would hang out in there while his dad was in the tub.

And, of course, when she speaks of her husband, Jackie idealizes him completely unrealistically. Of course this is what a wife would do. It was up to her to set the tone for his legacy. And besides, the man had just been assassinated mere months before. So of course she’s going to make him sound like a saint.

But, beyond the perfected version of things that she presents, there are some little glimpses of both of them as real humans, such as when she says he’d sometimes call her “Kid,” and when she describes how he wept after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And that he ate breakfast in a t-shirt and underwear, on a tray in his bedroom.    

These tapes are also completely fascinating as a relic of the-way-(some)-marriages-were. She provides a very clear view of how she saw her role as a wife, and it’s old-fashioned-y stuff: Don’t ask your husband about his work day unless he offers information; Make sure the children are in a good mood when your husband gets home; First and foremost, provide a comfortable home life for your husband.

The intimacy of listening to the actual interviews is pretty darn amazing—of course, there’s her famously breathy voice, but there’s all kinds of wonderful background noise, too: ice cubes clinking in a glass, cigarettes being lit, airplanes overhead, and John, Jr., tearing into the room.

This is good enough stuff that probably even the Normal (non-Kennedy-obsessed) out there will find it worth a listen.

Also—it comes with a book that has helpful footnotes (to remind us who Douglas Dillon was) and some good photos.


(Coincidence? Or not? Today is the 51st anniversary of John, Jr.'s birth. Just realized that when I looked at the date.)

Well, I liked it, anyway.

After This by Alice McDermott

This was one of my book club selections, and I was the only one who got all the way through it (and one of only two who wished to).

The criticism was that nothing much really happened in this book. And I can see that.

But I really rather liked it anyway.

Now, if we apply the test, Would I have finished the book had it not been assigned?  ...well, prob’ly not. But I’m glad I read it. 

I’m also glad it qualified for my Reading Madly challenge, particularly since it evoked that time period very clearly for me. These characters could live across town from the Drapers (not quite across the tracks from them, but not next door, either).

There are certain scenes that I keep thinking about, such as when Jacob springs his little sister from school so they can drive around and look at his old haunts the day he leaves for Vietnam. And the moment when his sister is called to the school office, and she knows it’s because her brother has died in the war. And the moment, years before, when their parents first met each other as strangers in a diner in Manhattan.

It’s a fairly quiet family story, and it’s told in vignettes—almost like a short story collection. Each chapter / vignette / story has a particular family member at its heart, and by focusing on one character at a time, we get to see the others in a different light.

It’s all about the characters here. If you read for character, and you’re looking for a slice of life in the 1950s-1960s, here’s one to try.  

Literature abuser?

I saw this somewhere on the interwebs, and if you're reading this blog, probably you, too, are a Literature Abuser.

Take the quiz. 

Best sellers for a reason

Killing Floor by Lee Child

For years now—and I mean years—I’ve been looking up Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books for others. I’ve been placing holds, finding out the proper order of the series, all that stuff. And all the while, I was thinking, Not the books for me.

OK.

I’m wrong so often it’s almost a hobby.

After hearing a presentation by Karin Slaughter, in which she said some really nice things about Lee Child, I stewed on that for a while and then decided to check out the eBook of his first Jack Reacher novel.

I was not able to put it down.

Despite these facts:

1. Early on, there’s a prison scene. (Usually this is a no-go for me. Cannot.handle.prison scenes.)

2. Reacher kills without remorse. (That is not normal human behavior. Yet the fellow’s likeable! How’s Lee Child do this?!)

Whilst I was falling in serious like with this series, two things were happening in the wider world:

1. Lee Child’s latest book The Affair was released, and it tells Jack Reacher’s back story.  (love this!)

2. It was announced that Tom Cruise is slated to portray Jack Reacher in a forthcoming movie, and that ain’t nothing but wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all: height! I mean, seriously!

Meanwhile, back in my own little world, I was checking out the eBook of book 2 in this series. (BTW, these puppies are custom-written for eBook reading, because they go fast and I get all caught up in the story and keep turning [swiping] the pages.)

Ain't gonna finish this thing

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Everyone on earth is reading and loving this book, and I thought it would also happen to me.

It didn’t.

I bailed at page 106 out of sheer not-wanting-to-read-on.

But not before finding a line I’ve got to keep: 
“Tara and Lainie do a little bit of everything. Sometimes dancers, sometimes actresses. Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.” (p. 58)

Now, that is funny.

Hired guns of the old West

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

My first book of the fall Read-a-Thon, and it was a doozy.

Ann of Books on the Nightstand positively raved about this book, which is what helped me get past a couple of things that otherwise would’ve prevented me from reading it: This is historical fiction, and it’s got a horrible cover.

Yes, I know I’m doing that Historical Fiction reading challenge, but that’s only because I’m in a genre study these days, so I’m reading the stuff by prescription already. Otherwise, I don’t really favor it.

Then a book like this comes along, and I have to wonder if a re-think is in order.

The Sisters brothers are hired killers, and these dudes kill people the way the rest of us swat mosquitoes: without mercy and without remorse.

…Until Eli, who narrates the story, starts to think he’s ready to be All Done with killing. He’s kinda thinking he’d like to open a trading post. 

Well, his brother Charlie doesn’t plan to quit his day job anytime soon, but he’s OK with Eli taking off as soon as they finish their current job. And of course, the current job’s a nightmare and a half.

Plenty of things about this book put me in mind of True Grit, and that’s high praise. It's a Western that's got all kinds of good stuff going on. The only thing that’s missing is the tough girl character; this book’s mainly grown-up boys.

And they are boys. Here’s evidence:

“‘What’s that? You’re not smiling, are you? We’re in a quarrel and you mustn’t under any circumstances smile.’ I was not smiling, but then began to, slightly. ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘you mustn’t smile when quarreling. It’s wrong, and I dare say you know it’s wrong. You must stew and hate and revisit all the slights I offered you in childhood.’” (p. 46)

Guys, that’s funny. The tone of the whole book is like that, which, combined with the endless string of killings, is what makes it possible/desirable to read this book all in one big gulp.