Tag Archives: Biography

A Year in Books/Day 43: The Big Bam

Posted on February 13, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Big Bam The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
• Author: Leigh Montville
• Year Published: 2006 (Doubleday)
• Year Purchased: 2010
• Source: History Book Club
• About: A first-rate biography of Babe Ruth, written by a first-rate sports writer, Leigh Montville (‘Ted Williams’). A good biography is easy enough to find. If you can manage to locate one that combines in-depth research with a nuanced understanding of human psychology, all blended together with sports knowledge and the ability to tell a damn fine story, then you are likely in the presence of greatness.
• Motivation: I grew up watching baseball with my Grandpa (the Indians, not the Yankees). It remains one of my favorite past-times, evoking fond memories whilst simultaneously creating new ones. I love a good character study and, wow, is Babe Ruth’s life perfect fodder for that!
  

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• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 122: “The Los Angeles Times reported that this was the biggest national rumor since the famous “Fake Armistice” story of November 7, 1918, which at first sent people into the streets in celebration of the end of the world war, then resulted in a number of riots when the news turned out to be false. The Babe rumor, while it did flash through poolrooms and boardrooms everywhere in the country, had a much quieter finish as baseball officials immediately denied it.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 41: Mary Queen of Scots

Posted on February 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Mary Queen of Scots
• Author: Marjorie Bowen
• Year Published: First Edition-1934/This Edition: 1971 (Sphere Books Limited)
• Year Purchased: 2001
• Source: Book Harbor, Westerville, Ohio
• About: A fine biography that gives the Scots queen her full due. A true classic.
• Motivation: I have a largish collection of Tudor-themed books. Although I have never been strongly attached to Elizabeth’s cousin, I thought it was time to give a few feet of shelf space to the House of Stuart. I’m glad I did.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 200: “It was Sir Henry Killigrew who brought the official warning and the secret complaint to Edinburgh. He had his notes to make on the affairs, domestic and politic, of the young Queen of Scots who should, by the birth of her son, have been at the height of her triumph.”
• Happiness Scale: 10
  

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A Year in Books/Day 40: The World’s Most Notorious Women

Posted on February 10, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The World’s Most Notorious Women Secrets, lies, murders, and scandals….The Notorious Acts of Women
• Author: None listed. I cannot say that I blame them (see below).
• Year Published: 2001/This Edition 2002 (ALVA PRESS)
• Year Purchased: 2003/2004
• Source: Via mail/unknown source
• About: When I bought this book for a dollar or two, my hopes were admittedly pretty low. I thought it would be an easy, quick, silly beach-type read. Little did I know then how wrong I was. This is, without any doubt, the shoddiest book I have ever seen or read. If writing 2,000 words enumerating exactly how awful it is, in every damn way, was not wildly out of proportion to its inherent insignificance, I would probably do so. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 36: Shadows, Fire, Snow

Posted on February 8, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Shadows, Fire, Snow The Life of Tina Modotti
• Author: Patricia Albers
• Year Published: 1999 (Clarkson Potter/Publishers)
• Year Purchased: 2002
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Tina Modotti, though little recognized today, was a woman of many talents: she worked as an actress, artisan, photographer (which is her main claim to immortality) and communist revolutionary. Her fierce abilities, ideals and passions took her from her native Italy to the shores of America, Mexico and Russia.
• Motivation: I love strong, artistic, intelligent women. Her photography is stunning, never-to-be-forgotten.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 32: “Meanwhile, the military debacle had cut off communications with the family in Italy, leaving Tina, Mercedes, and Giuseppe frantic with anxiety. Was Tina also experiencing guilt that she had been absorbed in playacting as her loved ones suffered? If so, it was not the last time she would anguish over the thought of art making in the face of human affliction.”
• Happiness Scale: 10
  

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A Year in Books/Day 35: Ford Madox Ford

Posted on February 5, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Ford Madox Ford
• Author: Alan Judd
• Year Published: 1990 (Harvard University Press)
• Year Purchased: 2004
• Source: Unknown
• About: A biography of the great, prolific and mostly forgotten English writer who was so closely associated with Joseph Conrad.
  

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• Motivation: Although I mostly concentrate on dead female writers, I am always eager to add to my collection of literary (auto)biographies. I especially love those obscured by time or circumstances; the more out of favor, the better! I actually bought this volume as a vacation read for a 3-week trip to Canada in the summer of 2004.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 168: “Goldring adds that he cannot vouch for the accuracy of the story ‘but if it didn’t happen it ought to have done. Events of this description occurred daily, almost hourly, during the twelve month’s of Ford’s editorship of ‘Review’. Looking back, it seems amazing to me, that so much could have happened in so short a time. It was only a year: but what a year!’ “
• Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 27: Vera

Posted on January 29, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Vera [Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov]
• Author: Stacy Schiff
• Year Published: 1999/This Edition: 2000 (Modern Library Paperback Edition)
• Year Purchased: 2002/2003
• Source: Barnes & Noble Clearance Rack
• About: Vera Slonim Nabokov was never a writer. Nor, as far as it is known, did she ever harbor that ambition. She was, by a series of disturbing historical circumstances, something of a professional refugee. Although she held a number of jobs, the impossibility-and ultimate imprudence-of separating Vera from her husband and their famous 52-year-marriage jumps starkly from the page. To her husband and posterity’s great good fortune, she quietly trespassed outside the bounds of musedom: it is every bit as impossible to separate Vladimir from his wife and her contributions to his psyche and soul and, eventually, his literature.
• Motivation: Nabokov, Nabokov, Nabokov! So fantastic, revolutionary, disquieting (eh, I know his opinions on women writers and still I return to his words). This was a literary biography by proxy, in a way, as I knew it would be. The upshot was becoming acquainted with the enigmatic Vera.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 24: “Some things were to be insisted upon, on the other hand. Vera Slonim learned a great number of lessons from her father, only one of which was how to how to hold a thirteen-year-grudge, a lesson she would put to good use.”
• Happiness Scale: 10
  

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A Year in Books/Day 26: Door Wide Open

Posted on January 29, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Door Wide Open Jack Kerouac & Joyce Johnson A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958
• Author: Introduction and commentary by Joyce Johnson
• Year Published: 2000 (Penguin Books)
  

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• Year Purchased: 2003/2004
• Source: Unknown
• About: When 21-year-old novelist Joyce Johnson (then Glassman) embarked on a relationship with Jack Kerouac, she met all of the surface requirements of non-conformity. In her letters, she made a calculated, mighty effort to match her peripatetic lover’s passionate, friendly detachment; as if writing it down made it so. But her commentary, written in her sixties, reveals the truth of a young woman desperately trying to break free of the gendered emotional conventions of the 1950s.
• Motivation: I love the intimacy, and sense of immediacy, found in the personal letters of famous people (especially writers and artists). When the correspondence is between one of the leading-and most controversial-icons of his time and one of the few women artistically associated with the Beat Generation, then I’m extra intrigued.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 45: “The need and love Jack finally declared obliterated from my mind any consideration of the consequences of the earthquake. Nor did I take sufficient note of the fact that Jack had written this letter, so different in tone from all the others, during one of the few periods in recent years when he was completely sober. I only knew there suddenly seemed to be a profound change in our relationship. Here were the feelings, the “real” feelings, he had always held back.”
• Happiness Scale: 8