The author says that a re-run of the I Love Lucy, which was on television from 1951 to 1957, is on somewhere in the world at any time. Its fame is not limited to those who saw it as it ran; my 12-year-old granddaughter knows the candy-factory episode. I just watched it again on YouTube and it remains funny and appealing. In the Prologue Purdum spells out Desi and Lucy’s strengths clearly:...
Like the last book I wrote about, this is a memoir by a woman. Catherine Coldstream’s background is about as different from Emilee Hackney’s as possible. Her father, Sir William Coldstream, born in 1908 (same year as my father), was a well-known British painter and taught at the Slade School of Arts and Crafts, which flourished under him. Catherine is one of three children from his...
I can hardly find the words to say how much this book has brought to me. It’s a self-revelatory book and lets us into this person’s effort to understand her own thinking as a teen and young adult. I first learned about it from a local story that about this young woman who grew up in the former coal country of Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. She now lives in Nelson County and...
I listened to this 2022 memoir after I saw it listed as one of the ten best books of that year by both the NYT and The Washington Post. Having read a review of it, I knew it focused on a college friendship the author had at Berkeley in the 1990s with a fellow student who was tragically killed by carjackers. After listening to it, I read about the author and learned he is a professor of English at...
Like the people in her fiction, the people in Ann Patchett’s life seem to be kind, funny, smart, beautiful. This is part of the reason her essays are such a pleasure to hear, especially if they are read by her. And I concluded she can see what is kind, funny, smart and beautiful in most people. This collection includes essays about her three fathers, going to Europe with her friend Marty in...
Because of my interest in Australia literature and history, I was aware of James Cook, that great explorer and cartographer, the first European to map and record visits to Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Between 1768 and 1779 he made three voyages of exploration and this book details his third voyage. He was commissioned to look for a northwest passage across North America, beginning from the...
What a treat to listen to a book written by a Pulitzer Prize winning historian about her travels to historical sites, museums, and iconic spots throughout the country. She included places of interest such as Disneyland and the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, as well as Williamsburg, Monticello, and the Alamo in her explorations. In the introduction read by Beverly herself, she said she visited...
The enterprise the title of this book refers to is the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 to 1806 launched by Thomas Jefferson looking for a waterway passage to the northwest coast. Well, that didn’t work out, but they did make it to the West Coast, a miraculous feat, given the challenges of the terrain. Jefferson wanted reports of the plants and animals they encountered and Lewis was...
In 1994 when she was seven years old, the author arrived in this country with her mother to join her father who had arrived two years earlier. They knew no English and their visitor visas would soon expire. This book describes the horror of the five years they spent in New York City, barely surviving until her mother took the initiative to get them to Canada where they could receive the support...
This short audiobook grew out of a multi-part podcast by Freakonomics Radio Podcast host, Stephen Dubner. He became enamored of The Messiah by George Frideric Handel at the time of the pandemic. He put the podcasts together with additional material for this audiobook. My own connection to The Messiah occurred when I was very young. Music was important for all my family members, in particular...