This diversion we will discuss books about real people: biographies, memoirs, and historical fiction. I read about people mostly through historical fiction. I adore all the books written by Fiona Davis, Lynda Cohen Loigman, and Kate Quinn. After I proclaim for the umpteenth time, I am so done with WWII, I stumble upon a masterpiece like Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray. I will gobble up the occasional juicy memoir or biography. Who could resist Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (which must be […]
The Politics of Being a Medical Examiner and Coroner
L.A. Coroner by Anne Soon Choi
Note: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. L.A. Coroner is about as much about the politics of criminal investigation as it is a biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner in LA from 1967 to 1982. That time frame means he was the one in charge of doing the autopsies and some other forensic investigating for the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, victims of the Manson Family, Janis Joplin, and other celebrities. I have little […]
The Other Empresses
The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe by Nancy Goldstone
While Victoria of Great Britain is the most well-known of the empresses who reigned in Europe in the 19th century, she is by no means the only one. While Eugenie of France and Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary did not rule in their own right, they left their own marks on the lands and people over which they reigned too. I read omnivorously, but sometimes one wants to come back to the basics, and for me books about royalty count among the basics. I’m quite familiar with […]
“She was a nice girl from a good family.”
Mistress of Life and Death by Susan J. Eischeid
As Head Overseer of the woman’s camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maria Mandl was the highest-ranked female perpetrator of the Holocaust. In this book, author Eischeid examines how she came to reach this position, and more broadly the role of women in the Nazi killing machine. The architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust that most people are familiar with are male, but female Nazi party members played a major role in running the concentration camps too. Though the vast majority of them managed to slip back into […]
An extraordinary friendship (cannonball!)
The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien by John Hendrix
The Mythmakers is a graphic story written for middle schoolers and older. The narrators of this biography/history are a lion (CS Lewis) and a Wizard (JRR Tolkien). The Mythmakers covers the life stories of each man in brief as well as going into detail on their ideas about storytelling and myths. Lewis and Tolkien shared some remarkable things in common but clearly they were two very different men whose friendship inspired them to write their greatest works. Yet their differences (other relationships, perhaps jealousy, differences […]
“I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.”
Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn
CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing. Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way. […]
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