5 comments about Plus One: A Year In The Life Of A Hollywood Nobody.

1. I thought this book was pretty disappointing. I was hoping for a light humorous book with some insights into Hollywood and California culture, as seen by someone Not From Around Here, but it turned out to be mostly about the author's battles with a dog that pooped everywhere. There's hardly a page where the dog doesn't poop. And there's not much about the author actually doing anything or meeting anyone of importance. I don't know why it was written or published.



2. British Claire arrives in SoCal to take a mid-life gap year at the Santa Monica residence of her sister, acclaimed singer songwriter Julia Fordham, and finds to her delight that she has become Julia's "plus one" (for the uninitiated: invitations issued to singletons for publicity and other industry celebratory events almost always inscribe the name of the guest "plus one", indicating the guest can also bring a guest thereby avoiding the shame and humiliation of being alone).
   
   She finds her sister has also invited an additional roommate, a lively canine rescued from a certain short street life in Fiji. These twin circumstances (pooch and parties) lead to a nonstop romp of silliness and zany adventures as Claire attends rounds of parties, acts as her sister's PA and guitar roadie on various gigs including a Philippines tour, and deals with Muttley: the dog who eats condoms, atlases, and deposits his foul turds on Claire's bed.
   
   Will Claire ever meet her secret fantasy boyfriend George Clooney? Or her back up secret fantasy boyfriend David " do shag me" Duchovny? These amorous quests are punctuated by her flings with a tennis buddy and a writer, the visits of her grown-up son and daughter from Britain, and her assimilation into Californian culture ( and no, gentle reader, that is most certainly not an oxymoron).
   
   From the moment I saw her interviewed on Craig Ferguson, I knew : I have to read everything this author writes. Do I identify with her? Well, let's see: we're both single (but not for long - congrats Claire!), stumbling through the lunacy of the Southern California glitterati/literati scene after leaving a sane and socially responsible lifestyle to write about poo-ing dogs, wanker men, and figuring out how to find Roberto Cavalli togs on a tight budget. Ah, that would be a "yes".
   
   I loved, loved, loved this book. Reading it makes me feel like I just had an all night girlfriend pajama party with cappuccino and lemon cake. The writing style is familiar and easy. Claire's life experiences are spot-on-typical, yet described with such wit and style that even the calamitous is given perspective. I recommend it for a sunny Sunday at the beach or café when you feel you need a chirker-up. You'll be the happier for it.



3. Based on the reviews I read here, I anticipated a super-humorous book.
   Based on the title of the book, I was expecting to read a LOT more about Claire's experiences in the Hollywood party scene (as Julia Fordham's "Plus One"). I felt like the book title was quite misleading.
   
   However, I do agree that this is a down-to-earth, "Bridget Jones" type story. It is amusing, but not particularly exciting. I appreciated the 'translations' of British terms and expressions at the bottom of some pages! Claire is a very good writer. Again, I just think the book title was inappropriate.



4. Claire Fordham you are wonderful! Thank-you for this great book, I could not put it down!
   
   This is truly an awesome book, full of hillarious experiences in the life of sweet, beautiful, Julia Fordham, her sweet puppy Muttley, and wonderful sister Claire. Yes, I was a Julia fan, and probably would not have heard about this book if I wasn't on Julia's website so much. Now I can add her beautiful sister, Claire, to my list of Favorites.
   
   This is truly a MUST read for any Julia fan, but it is also a MUST read if you love to laugh!
   
   Claire is a great Mom, sister, and friend.
   
   Thank-you Claire for sharing these wonderful family moments with all of us. Can't wait for the sequel, please, please, hurry!



5. Once I had opened this book to read I could not put it down, it's absolutely the funniest thing I have ever read. I had loads of curious looks on the bus as I was laughing out loud, something you can't help do when reading this book. Unfortunately I finished it far too quickly and can only hope there are more to come. An absolutley fantastic read.

1 comments about Anchoring America.

1. Anchors away? A look at how TV news is changing
   By John Kornacki

   You know it's going to happen, and it's infuriating. The president of the United States has just finished the State of the Union speech, and Tom Brokaw (or Peter Jennings or Dan Rather) will tell you what he just said and what was important. He will say something about the delivery of the speech, too. Though he is trying to be objective and analytical, the selection of key points from a speech is basically a matter of individual judgment; any impression about the delivery is strictly subjective.

   Some viewers are fed up with what they see as a condescending and patronizing attitude expressed by today's news anchors. Others are miffed by perceived bias.

   Either way, if you look at the ratings, more and more viewers are looking at alternatives to the network news offered by the cable channels or by new media like the Internet. Still others tune out to watch Paris Hilton, QVC or anything but the news.

   To blame Brokaw et al. for the falloff is to fault their mentors, the men who pioneered the role of anchorman and set formulas that had worked for a generation or two.

   When John Chancellor or Walter Cronkite summed up key news items and events, we accepted it: "That's the way it is," said Uncle Walter, the most trusted man in America.

   So what happened to television news and the people delivering it over the past 20 years? Did something happen to us? Television journalist Jeff Alan and writer James M. Lane provide some answers to these questions in Anchoring America.

   To understand the modern television anchorman or -woman, one must go back to its creation by a man who didn't think much of TV as a news medium and never really sat in the TV anchor chair: Edward R. Murrow of CBS News. Murrow was a renaissance radioman, as Alan says, "equal parts journalist, celebrity, arranger, composer and keeper of the public trust."

   Murrow's deep voice was a model of finely tuned inflection and measured delivery. It was uniquely American - tough, skeptical and, somehow, soothing. He sounded (and looked) like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Murrow's great gift, however, was in identifying and organizing talent. He knew newsmen and could get the most out of them. He expanded news programming and enhanced the prestige of CBS.

   From Murrow's team came Eric Sevareid and Charles Collingwood. The other two networks followed similar formats based on the Murrow mold of the trusted journalist-commentator as anchorman.

   The two biggest factors in changing television news came from outside of news. According to Alan and Lane, these factors were entertainment and technology. The first big change began with the innovative Roone Arledge and the success of ABC's Monday Night Football in the early '70s. Arledge proved that new formats and new thinking worked in ways that attracted key audiences. The three-person booth, event programming and edgy commentary evolved into similar audience-attracting experiments with the then moribund ABC News. Young Peter Jennings accelerated his TV journey under Arledge with the initiation of the three-headed "World News Tonight."

   The second change emerged a short time later, from the convergence of two irresistible forces: satellite communications and media mogul Ted Turner. His gamble with CNN changed the news from a daily half-hour summary to a 24-hour ubiquitous display. The news set moved into the newsroom. There were so many "anchors" no one really noticed them anymore. As Alan explains it, "the very premise of a national news audience which gave rise to the evening news in the first place was undermined almost completely."

   We are left with a sobering conclusion: that the "news landscape reflects an increasing tribalism, something we see in the culture at large" with fewer original reports and more personality-driven programs: namely, more interviews with Larry King, more two-sided arguments with Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson and more "perspectives" on the news with Pat Robertson.

   Alan thinks it would be undesirable to lose the traditional anchor, and cites the example of how the anchors comforted the nation in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

   Can we live without anchormen and -women in future? This book will make you ponder that question. Ratings suggest that some of you already have made up your mind.

   John Kornacki is a contributing writer for The Hill.

   Book reviewed:
   Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News
   By Jeff Alan with James M. Lane
   426 pages
   Bonus Books, 2003

2 comments about My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism.

1. Andrew Marr is one of the foremost political journalists of the modern age and in his book "My Trade - A Short History of British Journalism" he covers in a series of what are really essays the development of journalism in Britain.
   
   Where this book comes into it's own is the way in which Marr uses his knowledge and experience as a political journalist to explain the love/hate relationship between politicians and the press; and why both sides act in the way they do.
   
   With plenty of anecdotes this book is a serious but easy to read work that would be of interest to anybody interested either in jornalism or politics.
   
   Strangely for a book of this type there is no index, an omission that has prevented me from giving it top ranking but in all other aspects this is one of the best works of its kind that I have read recently.



2. Marr's trade is journalism, he has been a print journalist, an editor and a BBC political correspondent in Britain for the last twenty years. The book gives an overview of the origins of and current influences on British journalism. The book is witty, informed and eminently readable, as you might expect. Marr doesn't spare us the basic ruthlessness of the trade - his early tasks as a cub reporter involved trying to get details on local crimes and deaths from the grieving next of kin, he later says that he wrote disparagingly of a rising Tory minister - John Patten - who had been a source, and Marr had been a guest at Patton's home.
   The book has a series of chapters - in fact they are long enough to be sections - on print journalism, British newspaper proprietors, Video-journalism, and political and special correspondents. In summary his heart is in print journalism, he thinks the proprietors are in general weird, upwardly mobile outsiders who bring business dynamism to the trade, I think he feels that video journalism is too rehearsed, too controlled by legal obligations to be `real', but it is hugely vivid, and he has both respect and a pleasingly level of scepticism about specialist correspondents, political or foreign.
   Marr feels that the development of political reporting (as opposed to British journalism) in Britain was brought about as much by parliament's need to communicate with potential taxpayers (who may not have been voters) during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, as much as by any ancient rites to free speech. One of the things about the book that I found most enlightening is the role of the editors and subeditors in sourcing the stories which will be printed, I suppose I was always aware that certain newspapers supported certain views - for example you will never find the Economist berating market-based solutions - but I was not aware of the extent to which Editors sent out reporters to find particular stories and `rewrite' the results to suit. Marr became editor of the Independent newspaper in England in the early Nineties, and largely judges himself to have failed at the task. The book carries a huge element of wistfulness for this period, and the life of the editor together with deadlines, financial pressure to attract particular types of readers - `more rolexes, less dead babies', and pressure, pressure, pressure. Marr brings us through the details of putting together a newspaper - the fastest changing news goes last to the printer - so sports are on the back page, the headlines and local news are on the first pages, features and soft news are towards the middle - the first pages printed.
   His views on video journalism are quite pointed and, while the technology is quite awesome and the skills involved are quite different to print, he sees the medium as being focused on the visual and the emotional. He quotes John Birt, a former head of BBC, about the emotional impact of video news driving out analysis, and Marr cites genuine dilemmas in news rooms where the news with the dramatic pictures crowds out stories which, even in the views of the reporters and editors, have more importance. And this view is quite important in the book, one of the best sections of the book comes early on when he asks the fundamental, and ultimately disturbing, question ` What is News?'. His description of how reporters copy each other, how marketing focuses reports on some issues and not on others, and how local news gathering is disappearing in a sea of `pushed' news releases - in particular celebrities' activities.
   In general this is a book worth reading. Marr does not spare his own foibles and failures, there is quite a lot of anecdote and insider-gossip - Raggi Omar, the BBC's correspondent in Baghdad during the latest war landed a book deal supposed worth £850,000; Peter Riddel is the Times correspondent most worth reading on proposed government policy. However ,the main use of the book is the twin questions of what is news and how it is influenced and shaped by unaccountable editors and proprietors. Though Marr offers no answers, this is presented in a interesting form and well worth the time spent.

5 comments about The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters.

1. The author's observations are simply not very interesting, and her life is rather blase, although she, herself, finds it endlessly fascinating. She strikes me as a wait-to-talk, rather than listen-and-respond, luncheon companion.



2. Only a sourpuss could dislike this engaging, enlightening and well-crafted autobiography by Threepenny Review's founder and editor, Wendy Lesser. In two dozen essays, we not only learn about the great obstacles inherent in starting a literary journal, we see how Lesser developed as a reader and observer. This is a delightful read filled with Lesser's wonderful observations on love, art and publishing. I highly recommend this book.



3. Wendy Lesser has written an engaging book or half-critical, half-personal essays, a form that has gone out of style. She should be commended for reinvigorating it.



4. The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters by Wendy Lesser is a semi-autobiographical book of short essays. The chapters are in a loosely chronological order, only some pertaining directly to the author's life and career path; the others are simply essays on topics that interest the author. The confusing format of the book -- part memoir and part essay collection -- is a macrocosm for what is wrong with not only the book as a whole but the writing in particular. The book follows no plan or path, and arrives at no ultimate destination, fitting neither genre snugly. Moreover, the essays themselves are unfulfilling, leaving out much detail and ending or changing direction abruptly, neither satisfying as a group nor as individual pieces.

   The cardinal rule for writing an autobiography is that the author should have led an interesting life that the reader will want to learn and read about. This is the first major problem with Wendy Lesser's book. She has written about her life and no doubt her close friends and relatives will enjoy reading about it, but I did not. She is a native Californian daughter of divorced parents who was educated in the lofty surroundings of Radcliffe College and in the company of some illustrious classmates (most notably Benazir Bhutto, the future president of Pakistan, whom she then affectionately called "Pinkie"). After college she spent time as a consultant to various liberal and governmental organizations advising them on the more esoteric aspects of social justice policy. She finally found her calling as a writer and editor, and has published several books, in addition to founding and editing The Threepenny Review, a literary journal. I'm not sure why, but I found myself saying repeatedly to myself, as I read this woman's memoirs, "Who cares?" It may be that Lesser focused too much on the details of her life that would have been more appropriate in a journal, while ignoring the more interesting bits. I would have liked to have read more about the genesis and life of her publication, The Threepenny Review, rather than about her childhood, her hobbies, her self-admittedly insignificant consulting career, and her opinions about culture.

   Lesser's writing on any one subject, whether it interested me or not, lacked cohesion and sometimes even a point. Her sentences were often abrupt and choppy, and lacked explanation. For instance, in describing her college days at Radcliffe, she whets the reader's appetite with her mention of "Pinkie" Bhutto, initially describing her as "innocently giggly and high-spirited," and later "brassily ditzy, bubble-brained," but then says "long after I had ceased to see her, she all at once dropped the mask and became a serious, wily politician, her father's rightful heir. The change seemed sudden; yet if you had asked me, even as a freshman, to guess who among my acquaintance would eventually become a world-famous political figure, I would not have hesitated to answer, 'Pinkie Bhutto.'" And there she ends her narrative, leaving me asking, "Why did you think that?" That is a question I found myself asking repeatedly throughout her book.

   Another failing of Lesser's writing is that it seems not to have been edited all that well -- a supreme irony since Lesser's main claim to fame is that she is an editor -- and many times I was left to wonder why she included certain sentences or whole passages, since they made no sense to me. I found myself writing "What? and Huh?" in the margins a lot, when for instance she described a boyfriend's studio thusly: "The smell of the place was close and oppressive, as if several pairs of sexually active old shoes and socks had been closeted together for weeks." What does this mean? Another egregious error in editing comes as she inadvertently draws a metaphor for her own inept writing, when she writes: "For a year or two I had been writing monthly book reviews for a local organ called the San Francisco Review of Books, which ranged in quality from the somewhat interesting to the truly atrocious (ranged within each issue, I mean). She probably meant that the books ranged from somewhat interesting to truly atrocious, but her misuse of syntax makes this sentence mean that her reviews ranged in quality. Unforgivable for a self-styled wordsmith to write this way, and even less forgivable for a self-proclaimed editor not to have caught the mistake. Moreover, the author seems not to grasp the basic Strunk and White rule about when to use "I" or "me," which she bungles on the very first page of her book and again in the second chapter.

   Finally, Lesser has a truly annoying habit of assuming information in referring to certain literary or artistic works in a shorthand way that makes the reader seem ignorant if their significance does not leap to mind. She also is a name-dropper, a pretension that is unnecessarily belittling to the reader. I do not recommend reading The Amateur, precisely because its title holds the key to why it was so poorly written.




5. I found these essays delightful. I admire intensely the creative path the author has taken in her life, and I find her writing most engaging. This book may be of special interest to those who like to read about a writer's literary passions.

1 comments about True Gris: The Best of Ed Grisamore.

1. Ed Grisamore consistently writes some of the best columns in middle Georgia. "True Gris" showcases his talents at their best. His stories will make you laugh, swallow hard at times, but will always make you think. This is a great first book - only thing is, I've seen the proof of his second, "Once Upon A Whoopee" and it is even better. I'd advise ya'll to get this book now, before Ed gets fabulously wealthy and retires to his Palm Springs abode.

No comments about Tierra de los hombres/ Land of Men.

No comments about Gandhi's Prisoner?: The Life of Gandhi's Son Manilal.

3 comments about My Mother's Ghost: A Courageous Woman, a Son's Love, and the Power of Memory.

1. This memoir was about a family tragedy, the first-hand experience of the accident in which his mother died instantly. He had witnessed her fall from a horse directly in front of the horse he was riding. He'd felt guilty and, as a boy of fourteen, he believed that he had killed his mother.
   
   A son never gets over the loss of his mother at a young age. My brother would have been sixteen when our mother died of cancer. My father was having problems adjusting to the death of his first wife (even though it had been a long and horrible way watch her die), and so he took out his pain on Ralph and Cecil. To escape the daily thrashings and humiliation, Ralph got married the next year at the age of seventeen -- to leave a tormented home situation. In 1990 (42 years later), Ralph was dying from emphesema and liver failure when I visited him in the hospital. A nurse came in his room as he and I were alone and conversing (I lived 200 miles from here then), and casually asked him, "When did your pain begin?" The 58-yr-old man sobbed and said "when my mother died."
   
   Like Ralph, Mr. Bordewich became a man overnight and had to cope with an alcoholic father. But life goes on and he lived through the turmoil to become a father himself. His mother (a beautiful person) was an important person, well-known on a national level. Our mother was an abused woman who'd borne nine children (five died at birth) without a doctor's care -- even I, the baby of the family, had been born at home -- and as a result developed cancer of the uterus. In effect, our fahter killed her. I was nine years younger than Ralph; Cecil and I both thought that we would die at the age of 36, our mother's longevity. My mother did not leave a ghost behind; Fergus is lucky to have had her lingering presence to remind him how fleeting life is.
   
   This is much better than ANGELA'S ASHES and more substantial and heartfelt. Those brothers in New York City even considered putting Angela's remains in a garbage bag out for the trash collectors to get.
   
   So much for being a mother of boys -- you devote your young years to be their chaffeur, first teacher, cook, supporter and see that they are properly cared for, and what glory do you have when they are grown with families of their own.
   
   I'm glad his mother was Irish. I've always like to think mine had been, with the blue eyes and light brown hair. We inherited my dad's dark eyes and dark brown hair; his father's family had mixed with the Cherokee Indians of the Smoky Mtns. When my mother was in her casket, they'd pulled her long hair behind her head and I kept asking, why does she look like a man? Such is life for the youngest left behind.
   
   He has written books on diverse subjects, including the Underground Railroad and many articles published in "American Heritage,' 'Smithsonian Magazine,' and 'The Atlantic Monthly' among others. More power to him!



2. This exquisitely crafted memoir so powerfully conveys the author's terrible loss that at times it's almost excruciating, but like the loss itself, the project is redeemed by Bordewich's remarkable writing, suspenseful narrative and indefatigable reportage. It's not just an investigation of his amazing mother and the gaping hole she left in his life, it's also a profound meditation on memory and loss, not to mention a vivid portrait of its times. The book deserves a much wider audience.



3. Fergus Bordewich gives us a beautifully written book that intertwines his mother's story with his own story of obsession, alocoholism and recovery as he comes to terms with her death. LaVerne Madigan was a classical scholar at New York University in the darkest years of the Depression, a member of the Communist Party and writer of sonnets. After her marriage, she was anything but the typical suburban mom, sharing with her young son her love for Latin phrases and compassion for minorities. She took him with her on trips to Indian Reservations as she crisscrossed the country for her job as executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs. To him, she was a fearless woman who could accomplish anything. Her death in a horseback riding accident when Bordewich was 14 left him devastated. Bordewich takes the reader on a journey first of despair, depression and near suicide and then of recovery. An accomplished writer, he decides to research his mother's life and that of her parents and grandparents, separating truth from family legends. He walks in his mother's footsteps, fingers her papers and sniffs the stains her coffee cups left behind. In the process, he finds healing. He gives us an emotional and engrossing story readers won't want to put down.

4 comments about Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, 1807-1878.

1. I am related to General William L.Cazneau 1807-1876 and his wife Jane McManus Cazneau 1807-1878, the subject of this book. I met the author in November 1999 in Texas. A great amount of research has gone in to this book and it took years to collect it all. I am a direct descendent of General Thomas Nugent Cazneau 1812-1873 of California, brother of William. I am sending copies to libraries and friends. God Bless You !!



2. History is a passion of mine and this book is so very good. I can not imagine how long it took to do all this research. It gave me a different understanding of our government history. Just to think if our politions had had the foresight that Jane McManus and Aaron Burr had, Cuba, Doninican Republic, and Mexico just to name a few, could have been States today. I would love to have been Jane because she was so smart and brave. I found her one of the most fascinating persons in history. I loved this book.



3. History is a passion of mine and this book is so very good. I can not imagine how long it took to do all this research. It gave me a different understanding of our government history. Just to think if our politions had had the foresight that Jane McManus and Aaron Burr had, Cuba, Doninican Republic, and Mexico just to name a few, could have been States today. I would love to have been Jane because she was so smart and brave. I found her one of the most fascinating persons in history. I loved this book.



4. Linda Hudson has done a wonderful job of following the travels and trials of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau from her youth in New York to her involvement in Texas land deals in the 1830's and her mission to Mexico City in the midst of the Mexican War in the 1840's to her life in Eagle Pass, Texas, (which she somehow did not at first realize was literally the middle of no where) to her exploits in Cuba and her return to New York City to play a role in the presidential campaign of 1852.

   She has shown the complexity of the politics of the times especially as they relate to the question of slavery and its expansion into Texas. She has also related the very complicated life of a woman who was liberated long before being a liberated woman was considered cool. In doing so, she has created a far more complex view of society in the United States in the middle of the 19th century than many historians have uncovered...or been willing to admit to having uncovered.

   It is a wonderful trip into the history not only of the United States but also of Mexico and the Caribbean that she has taken with Jane Cazneau and that she allows the reader to share.

No comments about Frankie's Place: A Love Story.