5 comments about The Company She Keeps.

1. I was determined to finish this book just to count the number of times Georgia Durante mentioned how beautiful she was. It was a million plus. You get the drift. This little lady couldn't get over herself. Her poor daughter Toni took the brunt of her mother's bad, bad choices and paid the price. There was claptrap galore, from her inane, juvenile musings to the stupefying way she portrayed herself as a hapless victim. And the verbatim dialog? How could anyone possibly remember exact conversations from three decades ago? Come on!!
   
   Georgia Durante should just have named her book, "All About Me". At least it would have been an honest if not vacuous biography by just another celebretard who managed to sleep her way to the top of the heap.



2. The author keeps you turning pages with an incredible life, as fast as the company she keeps. I enjoyed this read, the author's no nonsense delivery, the woman's perspective, and the story told straight and true. If there are embellishments, you wouldn't know it as it's told. An excellent memoir.



3. Having lived in Rochester all my life, I recognized a lot of the names that Georgia wrote about, even remember her as the Kodak Summer Girl.
   Excellent read



4. I have recommended Georgia Durante's The Company She Keeps to many of my clients who are recovering from being sexually, physically, or psychologically abused. Ms. Durante's story, her courage, and her subsequent success in a field dominated by men serves as a wonderful source of encouragement and inspiration. It is the true story of a very remarkable person who had many things to overcome, including not being taken seriously because she is so physically beautiful. When you read this book, you learn her inner beauty and strength.
   
   Larry M. Raskin, Ph.D.
   Clinical Psychologist
   Louisville, Kentucky



5. This is a brave book. I can't imagine going through some of the things the author went through and not have a heart attack from fear! My sister loved the book too!

No comments about The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 6 (1955-1966).

5 comments about Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move.

1. If I lived in Manhattan, I would want Katherine Lanpher to be my next-door neighbor. She radiates self confidence and conviction worthy of a motivational speaker. Yet, she is fallible, human and privately insecure. As you read her casual autobiography, Leap Days, you feel like you are spending a memorable morning with a long lost friend. In one short book, she invites you to visit nearly every facet of her soul. I read her book in one three-hour plane ride. I didn't want the flight to end!
   
   Leap Days was written as a therapeutic vehicle. In 2004, Katherine accepted a gig, on a lark, as the side-kick to comedian Al Franken on the Air America radio network. To begin this new chapter in her life, she quickly moved to New York City after spending most of her life in Middle America. Finding herself newly alone in a big city, she sat down and wrote her heart out to us. You'll wish she had sooner. This lady certainly knows how to write.
   
   Throughout the beautifully crafted passages of her book, Kate's stories paint realistic portraits of all the important times in her life. I often felt as if I had been by her side. Most memorable were her recollections of her tumultuous marriage to an irresponsible Frenchman and her indoctrination into the world of journalism in Minnesota. Being someone who also began their professional career in a newsroom in the 1970s, I felt great empathy for her. As for the Frenchman, Kate, we all make mistakes!
   
   I especially enjoyed her description of her premiere broadcast on radio. Maybe you've had this nightmare: Someone leads you into an announcer's booth, points at you and says 'You're on!' I love the way she can tell a story. You'll have to read the book to see how it turned out!
   
   Katherine is a dyed-in-the-wool journalist who has never given up on herself. In Leap Days, she shares her childhood, her family, her career and her loves. It is comforting to know we are not alone in the trials of life. I wonder how she found the courage to reveal everything in her heart. I am glad she did. Her book is cleansing for both writer and reader. Take her hand and enjoy her journey. You'll delight in every page.



2. If Katherine Lanpher's touching, funny, brave and darling book doesn't quicken your heart and make you want to add her to that imaginary list of dinner guests - seated right between Einstein and Cary Grant (or is it Wallace Shawn and Paul Lynde?), then I suspect you're not old enough to vote and you've probably never risked anything bigger than a bagel.
   
   Katherine's move to New York from the Midwest at Midlife has a pioneer spirit that could stand up to anyone's idea of a covered wagon on a trip to the Promised Land. I am a born and bred New Yorker and my family has barely moved more than 200 blocks in nearly 400 years, but that journey loomed large in our family story and I believe I recognize a Pilgrim when I see one; where the limb you climb out on may, indeed, be your only reward, but also, the only reward you really want.
   
   Let me take a moment to cheer,"Buy this book!" --- for everyone you know who's frightened of the road ahead; or brave and daring and not looking down; or settled snug, perhaps forgetting that their journeys may not have flown over miles but over roadblocks that appeared on the maps of their own imaginations. And buy it for yourself. You won't regret a page you spend with her.



3. I didn't know Katherine Lanpher, I simply read the book because I love New York. I had no idea she was connected to Liberalism or any of the other -isms that disgust men in general. Her experiences were typical of first-time New Yorkers and the culture shock they endure. Her style is simple yet poignant, and it really picks up halfway with her chapter on feminism ("That Girl") and how she struggled finding her way in the world of journalism.



4. I was drawn to this book by its premise--a mid-life move to New York--expecting witty fish-out-of-water anecdotes, and, yes, Ms. Lanpher delivered. But what I also got was a beautifully written, thoughtful, compelling memoir, insightful, funny (yet poignant), foody, and self-deprecating. I really loved this book and have been recommending it to all my friends.



5. Easy to identify with many feelings expressed by this author. Interesting adventures. I recommend this book as a quick read that leaves you thoughtful. Thoroughly enjoyable throughout.

1 comments about Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling.

1. Engaging read from start to finish. I saw Mr. Hayter-Menzies do a book presentation and signing at the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian, bought the book on the spot and read it immediately on the flight back to California. Hard to believe Der Ling not only survived, but thrived in this time period with such a before-her-time, women's rights attitude in Chinese society, not to mention French and American societies where women weren't supposed to be self-sufficient and bold. You could almost credit her with the popularity of compact, personally owned photo image cameras - Kodak should have paid her a commission or marketing fee. I'm also amazed that Der Ling was able to "pose" so readily as "Chinese royalty" and got away with it for so long. The fact that she did "live" the true life of a Chinese Princess within the royal court made her books, lectures and performances accurate, entertaining and believable - so I guess her audiences must have been captivated by her stories. If Bush can pose as a president, why couldn't Der Ling pose as a royal Chinese princess? Absolutely a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese culture and world history in general.

5 comments about Giving Up the Ghost : A Memoir (John MacRae Books).

1. I love the way Hilary Mantel writes. Her imagery and descriptions are so true, so evocative, sometimes I need to put on a sweater or snuggle deeper into the duvet just to cope. She strings me out and keeps me roped in. I have no other way of expressing just how fine her writing feels to me. When I'm reading her work, I feel that she has tapped into the great reservoir--the man-made basin brimming with pain and suffering, dreams and devils. This book is haunting and grim--yet one identifies so strongly with the author, risk and all.



2. The cover on the hardback edition and the cover on the paperback caught my attention..but you can't judge this book by its cover. I complete dud!!



3. This is a book to be read and re-read; Hilary Mantel's prose is so spare and sharp that at first glance it conceals the depths that unlie her descriptions of events and people throughout her life. The "ghost" takes many forms; her reactions to them become her life. Although she has led a life of hardships and pain, she tells of times of pleasure and inserts wry and very amusing lines as counterpoints to dark and dramatic moments. Women in particular will understand much of what Mantel has been through both physically and emotionally as she wrestles with disease and doctors. I recommend this highly to anyone who has read and enjoyed Mantel's novels.



4. Only one review for this????
   This is the first of hers I've read, but she's wonderful! Small (no denigration there), but wonderful. The details, the juxtapositions, the starkness, the pain, the wonder...



5. This is a hard book to comment on, as it is both excellent and incomplete. As all memoirs- to an extent- probably feel somewhat unfinished, "Giving Up the Ghost," is particularly hard to reflect on with any sense of conclusion. Whether this adds to or detracts from the book's strength changes from day to day after reading it, but the work, and its content, does keep you thinking for a long time afterwards.
   
   It seems that, with the exception of "A Place of Greater Safety," this is a quality shared by her earlier fictional works and, here, her non-fiction. In a few cases, as in "An Experiment in Love," the ending feels abrupt rather than simply inconclusive. This is preceded by a good 200-odd pages of bulldozer honesty, however, and the force of the revelations are only never quite relieved. Her shorter books read most of the way through as if you are being pushed blindly towards a cliff, and are only pushed off in the last few pages. The final paragraphs, then, which seam up an ending, feel like the thoughts you are having on the way down. In theory, the novel would be incomplete, but while they don't feel settled, you never exactly complain that you haven't reached the bottom yet.
   
   "Ghost" is more gradual, even measured. Her insights are both condemning and self-questioning, and the most beautiful writing finds itself where she returns to previous conclusions and reevaluates them. I am probably stupidly young to be applying a critical view to the majority of the book's described experience, but Mantel creates a familiarity with her characters, and herself, that is at once both painful and comforting in its imperfection. Any perceived fault in her writing is never in character development or settling you into their place, but in adhering to the arc defined as "fiction making sense". She seems to stick to a disarming incoherence, which follows and develops with each novel. If her shorter works feel incomplete in themselves, there is continuity between them as a whole. There are great truths, but nothing didactic upon which to hang an definitely instructive ending. This is true in "Ghost," where she gives an honest experience that cannot be constructed into a moral, so there is none made of it. What we do want at the end, though, is a connection between the experiences she presents us with. In "A Place of Greater Safety," the length allowed for a thorough examination of the incongruities within and between characters, which gives a shape to the irresolution. I recommend buying "Ghost", simply because it is a great book, but I found myself here again wishing Mantel's work had been longer.

No comments about In Love with a Serial Killer.

4 comments about Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years.

1. This is a wonderful book to read for those interested in Mead's personality. I was surprised to read how innocent, delicate, loving, stubborn, and calculated this woman was. As she goes back through her life, she realizes how perfectly it all seemed to fit. She also seemed to realize, as she wrote this book, how much she always knew exactly what she wanted to do at each crossroad in her life. Margaret Mead tells us her story, from her perspective and it is a breath of fresh air.
   
   Yes, this book is a must for future anthropologists. She walks us through the many struggles in the field (I found her insights on language learning of great value) and sets the picture for an age where American anthropology was teeming with its most famous characters even today. Mead paints a unique picture of the personalities of Boaz, Benedict and her three husbands.
   
   Mead became something only the slightest fraction of us wannabe anthropologists could ever become. For those wanting fame and respect (come on admit it we all do at least a bit). There are few clues in this book to how Mead managed this. The book is nothing more than a beautiful account of being human. However, with her timing at a particular point in American history, her confidence and perhaps a splash of luck Mead became and remains an icon.



2. This book provides Mead's accounts of the people and events that most affected her thought and research. About half the book is devoted to her life before she began her career as an anthropologist. We meet her parents, Edward Mead and Emily Fogg Mead. Edward was an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Emily divided her time between managing the household and pursuing her doctoral studies in the social sciences. Edward's mother, Martha Ramsay Mead, a former schoolteacher and principal, also lived with the family and was the primary director of their home schooling. Margaret describes her relationship with each of her parents and with her grandmother and siblings in turn. We learn how the family moved every season from one domicile to another, and how this shaped Margaret's concept of "home". Margaret also discusses how Edward related to his academic work and colleagues (such as when he organized a group to guarantee Scott Nearing's salary for a year after his dismissal). Margaret describes her schooling in detail, from the approach to learning that her grandmother and mother instilled with their home schooling efforts, to the various traditional schools that she attended and the social lessons she learned from them. She also discusses her college years and friends.
   
   The second part of the book describes Mead's adult and professional life. She explains her relationships with all three of her husbands, and how in the case of Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson, they collaborated together in their fieldwork. She also relates how she came to work with Franz Boas, and how he directed her research early in her career. She tells us about how she came to know Ruth Benedict, and how she considered Benedict one of her closest colleagues and friends. The last part of the book, covering Margaret's experiences as a mother and grandmother, is not as detailed, but does provide some personal observations.
   
   For me, the most interesting aspects of this book were Mead's own interpretation of her motivations and accomplishments. She was a firm believer in both the value and necessity of studying cultures very different from her own. On the first page of the text, she tells us "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples, faraway peoples, so that Americans might better understand themselves." Later she notes, "to clear one's mind of presuppositions is a very hard thing to do and, without years of practice, all but impossible when one is working in one's own culture or in another that is very close to it." In summing up her work, she states, "I went to Samoa-as, later, I went to the other societies on which I have worked-to find out more about human beings, human beings like ourselves in everything except their culture. Through the accidents of history, these cultures had developed so differently from ours that knowledge of them could shed a kind of light upon us, upon our potentialities and our limitations, that was unique." Some anthropologists today have a different approach, believing that since one cannot understand a foreign culture completely, it is better to stick to observing one's own culture. There is still much validity, however, in Mead's point that you can't know what is natural or unnatural, innate or learned behaviors, unless you are aware of the wide range of possibilities exhibited by the myriad cultures of the world.



3. This book is a must read for a future Anthroplogists.
   It clearly brings together all her theories and it is a
   heartfelt view on a extremly successful and inspiring
   person in this field. I truly enjoyed her book and her
   views on culture and the future of Anthropology. I became a big
   fan of hers and will continue reading the rest of her books.
   If you are only slightly interested in Cultural Anthropolgy
   then I suggest you read her books. They are easy to read and
   very insightful about culture.
   It is worth every penny spend.



4. This autobiography is especially interesting for its insight into the professional life of a woman scholar in the 1920's and 1930's in a then new field of inquiry, although Mead did not encounter the extreme levels of resistance that make heroes and role models. Greek societies at her first college seem to have been far more repressive and damaging than were her graduate programs or employers. The professional rivalries are interesting. The book is especially strong in its depiction of Mead's parents, whose contrasting traits we can easily see influencing the daughter's ideas and character. Mead seems to be a keen observer of them, frank about their strengths and weaknesses, as dispassionate as she was in describing people in New Guinea. Mead is far less interested in or detailed about her three husbands. In fact, the autobiography seems oddly reticent, considering that its author was open minded, professionally interested in the sexual habits of other peoples, and unintimidated. She was able to ask Pacific Islanders what positions they preferred for intercourse, but unable in the autobiography to give a sense of the life of her marriages. We learn in detail what she packed for a trip, but only discover in passing that a divorce occurred. This book rewards readers more with cultural history than with a sense of the author's emotional life.

1 comments about Napoleon and Josephine: The Improbable Marriage.

1. Evangeline Bruce must be congratulated for this excellent dual biography of Napoleon and Josephine. This is the most useful kind of biography, in that we not only learn the idiosyncratic details of individual lives, but the protagonists serve as windows through which we observe an age.

   I have assigned this book to my students in a 300-level seminar on "The Age of Napoleon," and it has generated innumerable classroom discussions on valuable topics: the role of women in revolutionary and imperial France, the sources of political power, the nature of Thermidorian society, and many other things. Despite the length of the book, the students ate it up.

   Bruce makes an occasional small error. She describes Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte as "uxorious," despite the fact that both men (indeed, all the Bonaparte men) had several lovers. She describes Andre Massena as "over six feet tall," although he was actually only about an inch taller than Napoleon. She describes General (later Marshal) Augereau as "illiterate," which was true of him before he became a general, but he had learned to read and write before the period she describes.

   But despite these things, her grasp of the "big picture" is so good that this book will become one of my standard texts on this period for years to come.

5 comments about Chasing Rubi: The Truth About Porfirio Rubirosa the Last Playboy.

1. Once I started reading "Chasing Rubi," I couldn't put it down. The authors have done an extraordinary amount of research and produced a captivating portrait of a man who led a truly unbelievable life. It's a crazy, pedal-to-the-metal journey with glamorous highs, heartbreaking lows, intriguing plot twists and more close calls than you can imagine! Just when you think Rubirosa's story can't get any more amazing, it does. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.



2. I love how this book details one of the most amazing people in our history, yet many may not have heard of him, which only adds to his mystique. His accomplishments and exploits outweigh those of 10 men combined. The authors did a great job of showcasing Rubi. If you want to find out what life could be like if you were to mix James Bond and Hugh Hefner along with the adventures of Richard Branson all in one person -- you have Rubirosa. Entertaining and historical. A great read.



3. I really don't understand all of the five star ratings for this book - it isn't that well written. The strength of the book is the subject matter, the life of pleasure and hedonism of Rubi.
   
   Specially, the book fails to bring Rubi to life. Like a B-grade high-schooler's report, the story is mechanical, overly relies upon big quotes from Rubi's memoirs and FBI documents, and is pedantic. The story lacks any magic; instead, it's just a rote string of descriptions of one biographical event onto the next. The story doesn't get the reader into the head or personality of Rubi; it just tells what he did from one happening to the next. The story fails to deliver any rich anecdotes of his high-life that would inject zest into the story line.
   
   The gnawing question the book only makes a meager attempt to answer is, "How?" Surely with Rubi's fascinating life, of cavorting with Hollywood's leading ladies, pursuing the world's richest eligible bachelorettes, and his associations to the mob, the rat pack, and to President Kennedy, how did the man come about to make this happen? The book provides a few pithy but poor quotes from some celebs who knew him, but they fail to capture the essence, instead only presenting simple quips. Unfortunately, the book doesn't provide its own analysis, of who Rubi was and what made him special.
   
   Rubi is a whirlwind of a story. Too bad this book doesn't bring it out.



4. A friend recommended this book to me. I knew nothing about Rubirosa. What a fascinating character and enjoyable read.



5. I have always had a fascination about Porfirio Rubirosa and this book makes me realize that he really was the Latin James Bond and an inspiration for the subsequent books and movies.
   The book contains truely interesting no where else to be found facts and is written in such an easy to read way. I think that anybody that has ever enjoyed a James Bond movie or book should read this book. I am sure that one day this book will be turned into a move.

2 comments about Covered Wagon Women 4: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails 1852 : The California Trail (Covered Wagon Women Vol. 4).

1. More adventurous accounts from the diaries and letters of six westward women. Braving the dangers of river fordings, cholera, fatigue, food and water shortages, etc. these women write with much ambience and flavor of their trail experiences.
   Seventeen year-old Eliza Ann McAuley is extremely descriptive and articulate of day to day activities along the way: remedies for cattle after drinking alkali water; ferry boats sinking; intolerable weather; constructing a makeshift road, later charging a toll to increase income; they even had a 'pet' antelope for six weeks while venturing west.
   Francis Sawyer was another very descriptive writer of daily occurences: first of all, her party traveled at a remarkable speed, many times averaging over thirty miles a day; depredations by Digger Indians along the Humboldt River; insufferable weather conditions, etc.
   Marriett Foster Cummings shoots from the hip when describing people (such as Jim Bridger and Brigham Young), places and incidents while crossing the country.
   Lucy Rutledge Cooke's letters read like a novel: very sincere, compassionate and composed in her writing style.
   These Covered Wagon series of books are an insightful look into our past and give the reader a sense of respect and connectedness to our yesteryears.



2. The way these people had to live is almost unbelivabl.The hardships and the frustrations were real.