The 2018 Nonfiction Challenge Part II: Biographies in February

And it's already time to move on to February, and the second month of our "challenge", or collective reading of non-fiction, or whatever you want to call it! Remember: there are no points and no prizes awarded here: or if I do decide to dole some out in December, they will have NOTHING to do with how many books you log each month, or whether you finish a book in the month you begin reading it, or whether you manage to complete a book for each category. So pack your competitive instincts away and just resolve to enjoy reading some interesting non-fiction and lobbing some great book bullets in the direction of your fellow readers.

The focus for February (don't you love alliteration??) shifts to biographies. I'd note that later in the fall there is a separate category that I've dubbed "First Person Singular", in which you can place all memoirs, autobiographies and books of that ilk (diaries and letters, as well), so this month is reserved for books by one person about another person. That said, it can also be a dual biography (I've seen an interesting one about Hemingway and Dos Passos during World War One, for instance, and a few years ago read a great one about Catherine de Medici and her daughter, as well as one about Mary Wollstonecraft and HER daughter, Mary Shelley.) Or you can look for a book that is primarily about an individual but also about their era. In this case, my personal guideline would be either that it is clearly a biography, OR that the subject's name appears in the title or subtitle. For instance, I'll be reading The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. It's partly/mostly about Conrad, but broadens the focus to place him in his era, and explain how that explained his writing. So, be a bit creative, as long as you don't venture into first person singular territory. If someone is writing about their father and using the pronoun "I" in their writing, odds are that the book is partly memoir. Certainly family members have written biographies of their relatives (the members of the Bloomsbury Group spring to mind) without resorting to making themselves the center of the book, and then it's fine. "I" is OK in the preface of any book, but not in the text. So that means that Tatiana de Rosnay's bio of Daphne du Maurier wouldn't count, I'm afraid, as she interjects herself into the narrative fairly often (a very unusual tactic.)

Hopefully that's enough in terms of guidelines! As always, if you have questions, post them here, and if I don't answer them quickly enough, shoot me a PM. Overall, the goal is to post some details about the book(s) you'd like to read at the beginning of the month and then come back later on and tell us how you're doing. Do you like it or loathe it? Perhaps you'll convince someone else to pick it up and read it, or set it aside for December's catch-all category.

What we're reading:









What's coming up during the rest of the year? Well, to help you make your plans, here's the list...

March – Far, Far Away: Traveling -- travel narrative.

April – History -- another perennial.

May – Boundaries: Geography, Geopolitics and Maps -- a new offering. Anything about places, and boundaries, and how they affect our lives. So, a book about maps, about geographical features (Krakatoa?) or about geopolitics (Samuel Huntington?) or anything like that -- all are OK. I'm making this as eclectic as possible.

June – The Great Outdoors -- another hybrid challenge. Want to write about gardening? About the environment? About outdoor sporting events, from baseball to sailing? Do you want to read Cheryl Strayed's book about hiking and her misadventures on the Pacific Coast trail? As long as it happens out of doors, it's all fine.

July – The Arts -- from ballet to classical music, to jazz and rock and roll, to sculpture and painting, and the people involved in these -- oh, and books about books, of course!

August – Short and Sweet: Essays and Other Longform Narratives -- self explanatory. Essays from any anthology, longform pieces from the New Yorker, etc. Please make them reasonably long and not just an 800-word news feature from Mashable. Think, New York Times Magazine, perhaps, or London Review of Books, or...

September – Gods, Demons, Spirits, and Supernatural Beliefs -- from the Book of Common Prayer to things that go bump in the night. A biography of the Dalai Lama? Go for it.

October – First Person Singular -- This is the spot for anything first person. Anything that anyone has written about themselves and their lives in any way. Tina Fey? Paul Kalinithi? (sp?)

November – Politics, Economics & Business -- The stuff we all know we should know about but sometimes hate to think about, especially these days. Call it the hot button issues challenge. Immigration/Racism? Banking regulation? Minimum wage debates?

December – 2018 In Review -- Frustrated because you've got leftover books? You've got too many book bullets from other people? Or -- omigod -- that new biography was just published and you must must must read it? Or you've been reading the lists of best reading of 2018 in the NY Times and just realized, omigod, you MUST READ this one book before the end of the year? This is your holiday gift, from the challenge that keeps on giving...

Happy reading, everyone....

Whoops -- an accidental double post.

So I'll just note that I'll be back later to update the little book images. As usual, I have an overly ambitious agenda. The Joseph Conrad book that I mentioned earlier; a bio of Oriana Fallaci, Be Like the Fox by Erica Benner (about Machiavelli) and an ARC of Nancy Goldstone's upcoming book about the daughter of James I of England and VI of Scotland, and her daughters, from the youngest of whom the Hanoverian dynasty and Elizabeth II are descended. I've got others that are calling to me -- a bio of Patty Hearst, the Walter Isaacson bio of Benjamin Franklin, a bio of Elizabeth Bishop -- but these are my priorities!

I'm definitely going to read Molly Keane: A Life in February. The author is Molly's daughter.

>3 Caroline_McElwee: I've got the Molly Keane bio out of the library too.

I'm currently reading Nicola Sturgeon: A Political Life by David Torrance, and Darden Asbury Pyron's Liberace: An American Boy. I think it's fair to say you couldn't get two more dissimilar characters!! The former is a library book, the latter was a freebie a few years ago in the University of Chicago Press free ebook programme.

Also going to squeeze in Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation.

>4 elkiedee: will look forward to your thoughts.

I've also got the Conrad book on the "hoping to read soon" shelf. Have heard great things of the author.

I'll be reading MESSAGE TO OUR FOLKS: The Art Ensemble of Chicago by Paul Steinbeck.

It is a biography of an experimental music group from the 1960s which includes short biographies
of the five individual musicians before the group was formed, their biography as a group,
then updated life stories.

It also features coverage of Bronzeville, Chicago's vibrant African American community
which grew after The Great Migrations from the South.

Like professor Steinbeck, I was a student at The University of Chicago and fortunate enough
to hear The Art Ensemble's farewell concert before they headed to Paris.

It's a toss up between a biography of Georgette Heyer, Brigham Young: A Concise Biography of the Mormon Moses and The Profession of Violence, which is about the Kray twins. A little bit of a range there. I guess it will depend on my mood.

I’m finally going to read Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

I plan to read Jean Fagan Yellin’s biography of Harriet Jacobs from my TBR stash. However, my library has Hidden Figures on display and it keeps catching my eye...

>11 cbl_tn: I read Hidden Figures last year and really enjoyed it.

I'm going to read Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci.

I will start - and perhaps even finish! - I'm Your Man, a bio of Leonard Cohen, by Sylvie Simmons. I've heard from 2 different people that it's a very good one.

I have Samuel Adams: A Life and Grant on the shelves and I am not sure which one to read. I am leaning toward Samuel Adams just because it's shorter - February is not the longest month. I have several books about Winston Churchill, but I think they are more in the history category.

I've added two bios to the list, one being Queens of the Conquest by Alison Weir, a group bio of the first three queens of England (the Matildas/Mauds), two by marriage, one regnant. I'm almost halfway through this audiobook already. The other is more, ahem, aspirational: finally reading/listening to the bio of Napoleon by Andrew Roberts.

I may try to delve into a biography of Thomas Paine, but we'll see...

The biographies I am planning to read include The Man Who Knew Too Much about Alan Turing, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which is a biography of Lacks, and hela cells.

If anyone is looking for a science biography, I recommend e=mc2 by David Bodanis, a biography of the equation!

>17 raidergirl3: - The Henrietta Lacks bio is excellent! I read it a few years ago

>17 raidergirl3: >18 jessibud2: ditto, I couldn't put it down when I read it!

>18 jessibud2: I should have said it's a re-read. My book club picked it, so this time I'm going to listen to the audiobook which I've heard is fabulous. I loved it the first time I read it.

>20 raidergirl3: - I did *read* it in the audiobook format and yes, it was excellent that way. I was on a road trip with a friend and we brought a bunch of audiobooks from the library. We didn't want to get out of the car, with that one!! :-)

>20 raidergirl3: >21 jessibud2: Who does the audio, please? I think I'd like to get hold of it on audible, but don't want to get the wrong one! The UK edition I can access is read by Cassandra Campbell, if that rings any bells. (Maybe there is only one?)

I think I'm going to attempt Catherine the Great by Robert Massie. I took it off my shelf, and it's a brick. The library has it for Kindle and on audio, so I may try those formats...

>14 jessibud2: Definitely joining you on the Cohen. It’s been on my e-shelf for a while; time to get at it.

I’ll also be reading Woodrow Wilson: A Life by Louis Auchincloss. It’s a slim Penguin volume and part of my Auchincloss collection. Time to get to it.

My energy/will may flag, but I’d like to tackle The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, which is another bio that’s been hanging around for far too long.

>22 charl08: - It's been at least 5 years since I listened to it so I honestly don't remember. But I recognize the name Cassandra Campbell from several other audiobooks I've listened to and she is good. So you should be ok with that version. I didn't realize there were different audiobook narrators for the same book!

I am for sure planning to read Lincoln: Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan, a book off my shelves. Sometimes if a book or subject is particularly good I get a little mini obsession about the topic, so I also have Lincoln at Gettysburg: The words that remade America by Garry Wills on my shelves if I want a deeper dive. My understanding is that the Kaplan book focuses on Lincoln's pre-presidential writings, so the Gettysburg book might round things out nicely.

>23 katiekrug: Katie, I thought about that one but opted to find something shorter since February is such a short month. It's been on my to read list for awhile, but I've got so many other reading commitments for the month and want to read a few fun things too. She is such a fascinating person. I really enjoyed the exhibits they held in Memphis years ago including her artifacts.

>22 charl08: yes, my edition is Cassandra Campbell, who is always excellent. Part of it is that she's one of the few narrators whose name I recognize, but she is always good. Sometimes I'll check the library for audiobooks with her name and pick a book because she is that good.

>23 katiekrug: Yes it's a brick. I own the hardcover because I just had to have it but I expect I'll be reading it primarily on my ereader this month.

I am going to finish reading Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. I started reading this book before Christmas, but now I am going to devote myself to it as my non-fiction work for the month.

Looks to me like there is a whole lot of women in power reading going on this month. You go Girls!

>1 Chatterbox: I saw The Dawn Watch on the shelves at B&N the other day and it looked really interesting. Looking forward to your review.

I am reading The Africa House by Christina Lamb which is about Stewart Gore Browne, an Englishman who settled in Northern Rhodesia and became involved in the transition of Northern Rhodesia to Zambia.

>27 thornton37814: - Lori, I have a feeling this is one that will dribble over into the next month!

>16 Chatterbox: Oh dear. I really want to read Queens of the Conquest. I have that and The Wars of the Roses languishing on my Kindle. I may or may not have forgotten about them...

I'll be reading Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack.

>23 katiekrug:. >29 SuziQoregon: That's great that there will be three of us reading about Catherine. It is a brick, but I started it and it seems like it will be a compelling read. Plus, I am excited to read something that is about a character so long dead that it won't make me anxious about current politics.

All of you who are reading Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman and referring to it as a brick keep in mind that you will fly through those pages. I read it a few years ago and could not put it down. Sooo good.

I’m planning to read The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss. It’s been sitting on my Kindle for ages.

I’m also going to read another one that’s been on my shelf for years and that is Straight on Til Morning: the Biography of Beryl Markham by Mary S. Lovell. I bought it just after I read Markham’s memoir, West With the Night which was an incredible read.

>36 brenzi: - I read West With the Night a few years ago and really enjoyed it, too.

I agree with Bonnie about the readability of Massie's Catherine bio. It's not a ponderous tome, by any means. A lot of pages, but it reads very smoothly and is very compelling.

>36 brenzi: Yes, that one has been hanging around here for a long long time, too -- The Black Count, I mean. I just couldn't get launched into it.

>26 rosalita: Those look interesting, will look forward to your thoughts.

Thanks, Bonnie and Suzanne! Now I'm very much looking forward to the Catherine bio!

>36 brenzi: Good to know - thanks

I almost hate to commit, since that usually means I read something else. :)

I plan to read Crazy Horse: The Lakota Warrior’s Life & Legacy which was written by Crazy Horse's descendants, and based on oral history. It's apparently quite a bit different than his 'accepted' biography. For instance, the authors say he was not killed by a crazed fellow Indian, but by a conspiracy led by the US government to abort further uprisings. Given the history of the government interactions with Indians, it really doesn't sound that implausible.

I'm planning to read a soon-to-be released book about the late Chicago mayor, Harold Washington. Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago by Roger Biles.

>42 streamsong: So you commit to one book and read another? That's a tragedy? Meh. That's life in the world of bibliomaniacs everywhere, right??

And in that spirit, I might as well add another ARC to my VERY aspirational list -- this one about Ritz and Escoffier. It's a joint bio, about how their creation of modern deluxe hospitality.

Thanks for the Cover Posts - awesome and inspiring variety here!

>45 m.belljackson: I confess that they can be finicky to do. On a few occasions I've just finished updating them all when I've accidentally hit the "close tab" when coming back to this page from the page where I'm pulling up the images. Then I have to go back and start from scratch. Incredibly frustrating, especially if I do that twice running. Then I just give up and do it again the next day... So if there are delays with updates, that is usually why...

>42 streamsong: I’ve done that many times. It’s a reason why I’ve opted out of most challenges. This challenge, though, is exactly right for me this year, as I’m trying hard to cull the shelves.

>46 Chatterbox: We appreciate all your work on this challenge, Suzanne.

#42
I read Crazy Horse, the Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz a few years ago and then made a point to visit the Little Big Horn National Battlefield and took a long drive through the Nebraska Sand Hills in honor of Mari Sandoz. I did not make it to her home in the Sand Hills, but just driving through that beautiful country was an amazing experience.

Sandoz's biography of Crazy Horse was also considered controversial when it was published in 1942. It was more narrative and academics and scholars scoffed and turned-up their nose even though it was based on notes that she took while traveling and interviewing people (Native American and White) in Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska in the 1930's. It also was very favorable to Crazy Horse which didn't help any. It took me awhile to read it, but I am glad I did.

>47 Matke: Glad you are here!! And it is a flexi-challenge... I still am somewhat ill at ease with the word challenge, as I really don't want people to start feeling under pressure or as if they NEED or SHOULD do anything. Or worse yet, to feel competitive. Ideally, this should just be a forum that reminds people that there is some great non-fiction out there, and not to forget about it when thinking about what to read next -- broken down into monthly groupings because that's what makes it manageable and stops it from drifting off into nowhere.

>44 Chatterbox: LOL! If only I could easily change the cover of the book I do read since I know that's a lot of work to have all the covers up there.

I'm still working on the January award-winner book The Long Tail.

>47 Matke: Yes, it's a very large club, isn't it? I'm also trying to read from my shelves. But I say that every January. LOL

>48 benitastrnad: Benita, I remember you talking about that one. I haven't read it, although I have read The Journey of Crazy Horse which is by a Lakota author. Crazy Horse is definitely a controversial figure.

>50 streamsong: Is Crazy Horse controversial within the Lakota community itself??

Wait, what? I just fininshed Bonhoeffer a few days ago. However, Grant by Ron Chernow looks good!

>52 brodiew2: We'll give you credit... And you can read another biography!

Started Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation last night, and suspect I will steam through it.

I am not a biography fan and I don't really like celebrity biographies. My real life book discussion group has a tradition of starting the year out in January with a biography. Each person in the group gets to choose the biography of their choice and present it to the group at the January meeting. It always amazed me how many people choose to read celebrity biographies, so I decided to see what the hype was all about and read one. Since then, I choose a "celebrity" biography every year. I interpret the term celebrity biography rather loosely and for that I thank Suzanne, who has a unique way of making a topic nebulous and specific at the same time. It's a trick and she has it down.

The celebrity I picked this year was Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. I saw a PBS program (originally done by the BBC) on English Country Houses and one of the featured homes was Chatsworth House the home of the Dukes of Devonshire. Georgiana was the main topic of that program and she seemed to be an interesting person who lived a very controversial public and private life. Her best friend was her husband's mistress and she had several lovers of her own. She was addicted to gambling and managed to rid the Cavendish family of a great fortune. She was a political mover and shaker and a style setter. I found a biography of her in libraries collection by Amanda Foreman and started reading. I did not finish that biography in January as I got engrossed in the book I choose for this challenges' topic, so will finish reading about Georgiana this month. I am a little more than half done with the book and find the descriptions of life among the ton interesting as well as the social mores of the time. The political parts are equally fascinating as I am seeing the development of the British Parliamentary system and how that clashes with the concept of kingship. There is lots of food in this biography.

I may not post as often this month as I have a busy semester happening and I will be joining Suzanne in Denver for the ALA conference next week.

If I get time I plan to start Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan, but I really doubt that I will get to it. This may have to be my "celebrity" biography for my book group in January of 2019.

>55 benitastrnad: What a great definition of "celebrity" -- she definitely was a celeb in her own era. (Oddly, the author is a friend of someone who was formerly a close friend of mine, with whom I used to spend almost every Xmas and Thanksgiving in NYC; she didn't approve of my book about Wall Street, though, and we're no longer in touch.) This is apparently what going to Cambridge does for one. Blythe also was friends with Andrew Roberts via his first wife; I actually made a crib quilt for Andrew & Camilla's first baby, Henry -- and now I'm reading his Napoleon bio, which I remember him talking about as an ambition way back 20 plus years ago one summer. This is how you KNOW you are VERY OLD.

I do like your definitions of "celebrity" -- and it's a reminder that few people who get bios are NOT celebrities, in some way. Genghis Khan would have been a celebrity in his day. Imagine, for a moment, an edition of People magazine with Genghis on the cover!!

>54 Caroline_McElwee: I'll be interested to see what you think about that. Speaking of being old, I vaguely remember the final season of "Civilisation" on BBC, which aired just after we first moved to London when I was little, and I was fascinated. Since then have caught various episodes, and it has made me want to watch the whole thing, from soup to nuts. I can do it on BritBox, if I sign up for that, but don't know if it's available on Roku or just laptop. Shall have to check into this now that you have planted the seed!!

I read 'Over the Hills and Far Away': The Life of Beatrix Potter by Matthew Dennison. It used a lot of academic verbiage thus losing some of its appeal to fans. It's really a shame because the book could appeal to both markets if the author created more readable prose.

#57
Somehow I was thinking there was another biography of her published in the last decade that was very well done. It is the one that was used as the basis for the movie that starred Rene Zellwiger. Beatrix Potter is quite a story.

I'll be reading in Peter Longerich's Goebbels: A Biography. There's no way I'll finish it this month, but I'll be working on it if that counts.

>59 LizzieD: Everything counts, always. That's the essence of this "challenge". And please circle back here, or wherever, and let us know what you think whenever you do finish it.

>51 Chatterbox: I don't know how the biography of Crazy Horse is viewed within the Lakota community. I heard the authors speak when they traveled through here. They were very emphatic that this is the true story and that Crazy Horse's family are not associated with any other biographies of him, written by other tribal members or whites.

>55 benitastrnad: I remember enjoying that book when I read it Benita.

If anyone reads both the Chernow GRANT
and THE MAN Who Saved the UNION: ULYSSES GRANT IN WAR AND PEACE
by H.W. Brands,
a comparison would be welcome.

>49 Chatterbox: Thanks, Suzanne. I’m mostly staying under the radar this year, but I was delighted to find that you’re keeping this challenge going.

My enormous hoard of unread books has finally started to oppress me. I don’t need any prompting to read fiction, but just a nudge to remind me of the acres of nonfiction waiting on the shelves.

So far I’m about half-way through the Kennedy book. It’s not bad, but not great. Certainly it’s good enough to finish.

I'll read Frantz Fanon: A Biography by David Macey.

I went to see the movie 'Jane' about Jane Goodall and her work in Afrika with chimpanzees.

I know, a movie, not a book.

But it was very interesting, a woman who does exactly what she has wanted to do from a child. Starting out with reading Tarzan and dr. Doolittle. She didn't have the right education, but still kept to her dreams, went to Africa, met dr. Leaky and was picked by him for the research.

More about the research itself, shots of her interacting with the chimpanzees, all very interesting, and left me with admiration for her as a person, and the work she does.

>66 EllaTim: - Jane Goodall has long been a hero of mine, Ella. I have read many of her books and LOVED this bio film. Quite a legacy she will leave when she goes.

>67 jessibud2: I am glad to hear it! I thought the movie was very good, and was thinking of reading something more by her. I admire her for her tenacity and well maybe optimism is not the right word, but she doesn't give up easily. What would you recommend, what books did you like best?

>58 benitastrnad: Could be. This was just published in the last year and appeared pretty high in Overdrive's filtered recent results when I clicked on biography. It was the first one that grabbed my attention.

Just finished up Hedy's Folly, a short but interesting book about Hedy Lamarr and her invention of frequency hopping in radio controlled torpedoes during World War II. Really, quite an interesting woman and story.

#70
I have that one in my shelves and have been wanting to read it. Maybe I will get to it this year. Hedy Lamarr was quite interesting.

>66 EllaTim: - When I was in high school - so in the US ages 14-18 or so but I don't remember exactly how old I was - Jane Goodall came to our school, did a presentation, and went to various science classes and toured our campus zoo. It was amazing, and she was so inspiring. I've been interested in her ever since and can't wait to see that documentary.

Our local Art house theater will be showing Jane this week for a two day run. I won’t be able to see it as I am teaching one night and have a prior engagement on the other. I can say that the trailer for the movie looked good.

>70 drneutron: Just saw the movie called Bombshell: The Hedy LaMarr Story. It was a very interesting portrayal of her life and her invention and the lack of recognition for her frequency hopping idea. There was lots of real footage and great interviews with family members and people who knew her. She of course was gorgeous and had a full and complicated life.

>74 mdoris: - Mary, I just posted on Jim's own thread about the Hedy Lamarr doc film. Wasn't it great?

>68 EllaTim: - Ella, it's very late here at the moment (I just got in from being at a concert. I will come back to this spot tomorrow with Goodall recommendations. I have several on my shelf

>72 katiekrug: That would have been wonderful, I can imagine. I don't think you will be disappointed in the documentary.

>73 benitastrnad: That's a pity, that they are only showing it for two days. We were surprised by the number of people showing up to see it on a Saturday afternoon. It was quite popular.

>75 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley!

Finished the informative and intriguing MESSAGE TO OUR FOLKS and
wish I knew how to read music as that would enhance the reading.

For my Birthday, Simon and Schuster sent the choice of a free ebook,
so I've added Clint Hill's MRS. KENNEDY AND ME.

I completed Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. Definitely not a great book. Written by a committee of Boston Globe reporters, the book is repetitive and choppy.

A lot of surface information is included, but there’s little depth to the book. It seems to be an attempt to make Ted a saint—a flawed saint, yes, but a saint nonetheless.

I have a rather forgiving attitude toward the Kennedys, and I think Ted was a great senator. But this book is just too much.

Nicola Sturgeon: A Political Life is the first edition of a biography of our currently serving First Minister, from my current go-to Scottish publisher of choice, Birlinn. This edition takes us up to just before the UK election in May 2015, where the SNP almost swept the board in Scotland, taking 56 of the 59 seats available (presumably the next edition, now published, covers at least that, and maybe also the 2016 Scottish elections where the SNP remain the largest party, and thus Nicola Sturgeon is still First Minister, but just lost their overall majority. It may also cover the Brexit referendum, I'm not sure). The book covers her early political awakening (she joined the SNP as a 16 year old), her initial activism and subsequent rise through the party including being the youngest candidate for the Westminster elections of 1992, when she was just 21, through to eventually being elected as a list MSP in the first Scottish parliament in 1999 and rising up the ranks to become Deputy Leader to Alex Salmond in 2004. Following the SNP's narrow (1 seat) victory as the largest party in the Scottish elections in 2007 she became Deputy First Minister as well as Cabinet Secretary for Health, a position that was strengthened in the SNP's landslide victory in the 2011 Scottish elections and the subsequent Independence Referendum (Indyref) campaign leading up to the referendum in 2014 which was narrowly lost. After that referendum loss Salmond stepped down and Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, a position she still occupies.

The book, written by a Scottish journalist, draws mainly on already published interviews and media appearances, but he did also speak to a number of her associates. At times it felt a bit nit-picking, as he highlights certain inconsistencies in things that she says, which honestly reminded me of the kind of 'spot the difference' pictures you get in kids books - they certainly weren't, as far as I could tell, particularly earth-shattering or inconsistent. It also, as the author himself asserts in the introduction, is necessarily an incomplete picture, as a full assessment of her political career can't really be made whilst she's still in the middle of it. For me though the main disappointment was that Indyref and the whole campaign leading up to it was only one chapter - I do think that it is so significant, not only in Scotland's contemporary political history and landscape but also in Nicola Sturgeon's career as a politician, that there could have been an awful lot more there. No doubt those books will follow in the fullness of time.

As a person and politician, I can't say that this book particularly changed my view of Nicola Sturgeon - I think that she is a very admirable person, a phenomenally hard worker who really tries to master her brief, a committed social democrat, a voracious reader, a very skilled Tweeter (she does use Twitter herself, I have followed her for a number of years and she really knows how to use it well. Let's just leave it at that), and a very caring and competent politician. I do think (and this book confirmed that, for me) that economics is her weakest area, but even there I think that compared to many of her contemporaries she is considerably more of a safe pair of hands than many.

So, I think this book was a good read for a first attempt at assessing her impact on Scottish politics, but I would expect subsequent biographies in the fullness of time to have considerably more depth. 3.5/5.

Coincidentally, when I went to the library on Saturday to renew this book and to get out my February book (one of my New Year's Resolutions is to get a book a month out of the library), I decided as I had over-run the end of the month to just get a very short book, and the one I picked up was Suffrage in Stirling: The Struggle for Women's Vote. I thought it was a good complement to the book I was just about to finish, about a woman political leader, but hadn't realised that this week (today in fact) marks the 100th anniversary since some women were first allowed the vote in the UK (although it was to be another 10 years before we had universal suffrage). I'm going to leave the final word though to Nicola Sturgeon, who today on her facebook page posted a picture of the Scottish Government offices with this caption:

This was once the site of Calton Jail where many Suffragettes were imprisoned. Today, it is the seat of the Scottish Government and the Suffragette flag is flying high.

Thank you to all the women who fought for our right to vote - and enabled a woman to occupy the office of First Minister.

>1 Chatterbox: I found a duo biography which I think qualifies. The author interviewed the family members as well as their friends and aquaintances: My Father, My Son. It's not really memoirs, not really an autobiography...what do you think?

Edit: I finished reading it last night, and I am counting it as a biography. There is an author, John Pekkanen, who puts the quotes together and adds other information to round out the story. In my opinion, he deserves credit for writing the book, not Elmo Zumwalt. I think the publisher put Zumwalt's name on the cover as his name was well-known in the 1960s and 1970s, and he recently had an entire class of Navy destroyer named after him.

The Africa House by Christina Lamb

This book, ostensibly about a house at Shiwa Ngandu in Zambia, is really the story of the man who built the house, Stewart Gore Browne.

Stewart Gore Browne was an English nobleman who visited what was then Northern Rhodesia shortly before the First World War and fell in love with an area around Lake Shiwa Ngandu (Lake of the Royal Crocodile).

Following his service in WWI, Stewart Gore Browne returned to Northern Rhodesia in 1920 and set about constructing his own version of an English country estate in the midst of what was then a relatively unsettled portion of Africa. Gore Browne set about employing large numbers of the local populace and built from scratch much of what was needed to construct his ideal mansion. This including setting up a wood shop and training locals in wood working, setting up various agricultural operations, creating his own roof tile kilns, and so on.

The house project is quite interesting but the extraordinary portion of the book is the portrait of Stewart Gore Browne. He started as a purely Victorian colonial throwback and was called Chipembere (meaning rhinoceros) by the local people he employed. He thought himself utterly superior to the backwards Africans and believed it was quite proper to use violence to motivate his workers.

He insisted on rigid, outdated manners at all times. He sat down to formal dinners every night with African servants wearing uniforms complete with white gloves to serve him. He dressed impeccably and actually regularly wore a monocle. For much of his early life at Shiwa Ngandu he strolled about his estate alternating between Great White Hunter of the various game and harsh overseer of his African plantation.

Equally weird, he spent most of his life wrapped up with an apparently unrequited love for his aunt, Ethel Locke King, with whom he corresponded frequently (maybe weekly?) even while he was in Northern Rhodesia and she in England. Yet that wasn't the weirdest part of his personal life. Prior to his first visit to Northern Rhodesia, Stewart Browne courted, for almost three years, a woman named Lorna Bosworth Smith. However, when he had the chance to propose marriage he hesitated and she married another man she did not particularly care for. Stewart Browne spent his life mourning this failure to propose marriage. However, he availed himself of a weird second chance of sorts. At Lorna's funeral, he met Lorna's daughter, Lorna Goldmann. He fell for her just as he did her mother but this time marries her despite the fact that there is a 25 year age difference between the two of them. Because you can't make this stuff up, the two of them had a daughter and name her Lorna also.

All of this would make for an odd and mostly disturbing story except it doesn't end there for Gore Browne. As he continued to build and expand his estate and agricultural pursuits, Gore Browne become ever more enmeshed in the local Bemba people. The Bemba treated him almost as a chief and as Northern Rhodesia slowly developed, especially after the Second World War, Gore Browne increasingly acted on behalf of the Bemba people and the Africans themselves. He set up schools and hospitals, made a point of employing as many people as he could and eventually got involved in politics.

Once in politics, he become involved in fighting racial views that were coalescing into governing rules like apartheid in nearby South Africa and generally becomes a staunch advocate for de-colonialism and self governance by the Africans. As Northern Rhodesia gained independence and becomes Zambia, Gore Browne was the first major white political figure to openly ally with the majority African party. The first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, was a friend and mentee of Gore Browne.

In addition to his political role, Gore Browne created a vibrant and long lasting friendship with his Bembe driver, Henry, to the point that that Gore Browne made arrangements for his friend to be buried beside him after his death.

Gore Browne died in 1967. He was buried at Shiwa Ngandu as a chief of the Bemba people. He was also afforded the only Zambian state funeral for a white man in that nation's history. President Kauda spoke at Gore Browne's funeral.

The house, after a long period of disrepair, is still there and has been restored. http://www.shiwangandu.com/ After reading the extraordinary story of Stewart Gore Browne, it is very high on my list of places that I would like to visit.

>81 Oberon: You’ve sold me on this one. It sounds fascinating.

I am reading A Bold and Dangerous Family The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Sons and Their fight Against Fascism by Caroline Moorehead.

I finished my other book so now I can focus on Catherine the Great. She's on her way to Russia.

#81
You got me with a book bullet with that review. What a story!

>81 Oberon:

What caused Browne to stop using violence against the conquered people?

>84 SuziQoregon: - Juli, I'm finding the book really fascinating!

>87 katiekrug: I've read a lot of history of the Romanovs but Massie is he best of that category.

>83 torontoc: Thought the Caroline Moorehead I read last year was brilliant. Hope to read this one too.

>81 Oberon: fascinating Erik. I think I've been hit with a bullet.

Finished Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon a week ago. It was very good with lots of stuff I did not know already. Would not want to have been her, though I wouldn't object to having a tiny portion of her dough.

Late checking in this year! For the first time in several years, I read NO nonfiction last month. I'll try to change that, however, for the rest of the year.

I have three books as possibilities for this month:
Yours, Isaac Asimov--trade paperback
Tesla: A Man Out of Time--mass market paperback
The Black Count--Kindle

I've been blowing through a reread of Le Guin's Earthsea books, all six of them, and I do have two nonfiction library books home, but neither would qualify. Well, The Queen's House could be a biography of Buckingham Palace maybe. Maybe not. And The Rise and Fall of Nations is huge and looks dry.

The Asimov would probably do better in October, as it is an autobiography. And The Rise and Fall of Nations would be a great November book--maybe I'll return it and get it back then. The Queen's House would be an April candidate.

Although MRS. KENNEDY AND ME is billed as Clint Hill's "Memoir,"
it is more importantly a biography of three years in the life of Mrs. Kennedy,
of the love of a man for his career, and a man falling in love
with the woman he was assigned to protect with his life.

I am about to finish Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I hope to get it done this week.

I read Candice Millard’s Hero of the Empire and thoroughly enjoyed it. Much like The River of Doubt, it reads more like a novel than nonfiction. In both cases, Millard benefits from an interesting person doing interesting things, but she is adept at providing the right amount of background information to really put you into the story without getting bogged down. Highly recommended.

I finished Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire yesterday, and will get a short review up in the next day or two.

I am thinking that my reading of Catherine the Great may extend into March. I am about half way through; really enjoying it.

But talking about future reading is always a pleasure. I am thinking of reading The Odyssey: a father, a son and an epic by Daniel Mendelsohn for March -- would that count?

I am getting annoyed with the writer of In Search of Mary Shelley lots of supposes and perhaps and not much actual historical content.

>97 banjo123: You're farther along than I am. I'm enjoying it but haven't had adequate time to devote to it.

The Leonard Cohen biography trudges on...

Perhaps it will improve? I’ll finish it this month, I’m fairly sure. But it’s a long one.

>100 Matke: - Are you reading the same one I had planned on reading this month, I'm Your Man? I will admit to total failure on that. I never even started it and perhaps should not have bothered to commit to it. It's a chunkster and I am in the middle of a bit more than I usually am so my commitment to such a tome was probably not a good idea. However, that said, I did read 2 bios in January which I will post here just as a point of interest. I will try to get to the Leonard Cohen bio at some other point this year

>98 charl08: It sounds like you might be happier with Muriel Spark's biography of Mary Shelley. I got a lot out of it when I read it a few years ago.

>98 charl08: >100 Matke: thanks for taking the hits for us Charlotte and Gail

Hi -

is it still possible to find the list of books with descriptions that showed cover
of THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES?

Also, for December "2018 in Review," does ANY leftover book qualify or
only one published in 2018 or...?

Thanks again.

>104 m.belljackson: I don't know about your first question, but personally I'm interpreting the 2018 in review to mean a book that's either been published in 2018, or one that's relevant to issues that cropped up in 2018. I already have a book planned, which was published in 2017 (about Brexit) (just to depress me for the end of the year!).

>105 Jackie_K:

Thanks for the response and I hope there will be cause for celebration everywhere by the time you read about Brexit.

>104 m.belljackson: Not sure I understand the first question -- could you elucidate?

In the spirit of openness, I'll say any book that you had previously planned to read in 2018 but didn't get to (regardless of when it was published) OR a book published in 2018. In other words, not a book published in 2006 that you suddenly discover in late November and decide, gosh, I'd like to read that for this challenge next month. (By all means, still read it, but it wouldn't "qualify" for the challenge.

Sorry to have been so AWOL this month. (A reminder: you can always ping me via PM with any queries; I'll usually update my reading lists even when I'm not checking threads, and see those notifications.) I was off to Denver and ALA Midwinter, where I got flattened by the altitude (no pun intended). Incredibly dehydrated, intense fatigue, blah blah blah. Came back on a red-eye flight which was the cherry on the icing on the cake. It took me almost a week to crawl back to life, and now am back to normal, aka battling migraines. ENOUGH! I want to scream. However.

I haven't done a great job of my self-assigned reading, but instead of that read Asne Seierstad's biography of a Norwegian-Somali family: Two Daughters: A Father, His Daughters and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad. It's a group biography that moves between Sadiq, the father in the title, and his two teenage daughters, who receive pseudonyms in this story, who become gradually more fundamentalist and eventually decide to head for Raqqa. As Sadiq decides to try to get them back -- even venturing inside Syria and himself being captured by ISIS -- the girls marry foreign jihadists, and try to convert their increasingly antagonistic elder brother, left behind in Norway to try and hold together what is left of the family and cope with the scrutiny of security services. She uses everything from e-mail and social media records to interviews to tell this story, which at its heart is a biography of a family trying to balance tradition and the new in Norway: what it's like to be Norwegian by citizenship and yet NOT to be Norwegian by culture or identity. The way she approaches this, via a group biography, enables her to explore the many different kinds of ways that individuals cope with uprooting, resettling and balancing old loyalties with new ones, even when they conflict, as they do most painfully in Sadiq's case -- he's a man who believes he has reconciled all this only to find that schisms open up wide. I gave it 4.2 stars.

That's a lot better than my verdict on Queens of the Conquest by Alison Weir, which proved to be a boring slog. I wanted to learn more about some of the queens I know less of -- i.e. not Maud, the empress/queen, who fought to become England's first queen regnant, but Henry I's two queens, a Scottish princess and Adelaiza, a Flemish noblewoman, and, to a lesser degree, Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, and also the final character, the wife of King Stephen, who proved her mettle (and perhaps that she was a better leader than her husband) during the civil wars of the 1140s. But... too much of this was about who was where when, signing what charters, and writing to what pope or bishop and so on. Weir has shown what she can do with relatively sparse documentary evidence of her subject's life (eg with Katherine Swynford, third wife of John of Gaunt, and the progenitor of the Beaufort/Tudor dynasties) but this is a case where she had more to work with and it resulted in a book that is as dry as dust, even if it's worthy. At this point, I can't even judge the question of worth, because it was so unbelievably DULL. I'm giving it 3 stars, but as a book to read -- well, if you can read more than 10 pages without succumbing to narcolepsy, you have my admiration.

I'm now reading Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend, which has a tinge of hagiography about it, but which is still interesting. It's about Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci whose ability to pen compelling interviews became legendary. I think my final judgment will depend on how the author tackles Fallaci's rather appalling (to me) anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rants in her later years -- in an even-handed way or not? I've read The Rage and the Pride and found it troubling, although I also hate and loathe the fact that it triggered death threats for Fallaci (who died of cancer a few years later. So, we'll see. Right now, as I say, it's very clear that the author reveres Fallaci, and I don't get the sense that this is a plain biography, but more of a tribute, if a fascinating one.

It has been more than a day or two since I said I would put up a review of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, but here it is.

The life and times of Georgiana made a perfect celebrity gossip biography. (I normally don't read a celebrity tell-all biography, but I figured that since Georgiana has been dead for 200 hundred years, a biography of her really wasn't a celebrity tell-all bio.)

Georgiana Cavendish was born in 1757 into the family of the Earl's Spencer and married the Duke of Deveonshire in 1774. She became an important political mover and shaker for the Whig party, a sort of fixer, who was in opposition to George III and his policies of absolute rule of the monarch. She was also a leader of society and famous for partying and supposed affairs. She was also magnamimous in her sharing of husband and displayed an odd acceptance of her husbands peccadilloes as well. However, her biggest scandals involved in her gambling debts. In fact, she and her sister, who also married into the Cavendish family, practically ruined the Cavendish family financially. She and her husband lived openly with her husband's lover, Lady Elizabeth Foster, in a mutual friendship society and she openly accepted her husbands illegitimate children. He did not return the favor when Georgiana had an illegitimate daughter by her last lover. She left voluminous papers and letters that were mutilated and highly redacted by her later Victorian relatives. This leaves modern historians with an incomplete accounting of this fascinating social and political hostess with the mostest.

The author of this biography was sympathetic to her subject and stated at the end of the biography that Georgiana never got her just accolades for all she did for the Whig party because she as a woman. That goes without saying for the times, and is still true today. What bugs me the most, however, is that all the reviews of this, and other biographies of this paradoxical woman, is the constant mention that she was a Great Aunt of Lady Diana Spencer, who was the Princess of Wales. To that I say, Georgiana, was just as illustrious and worthy of attention as is Lady Di, and probably did more of substance for England than her modern day relative. She shouldn't be compared to Princess Diana as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, stands or falls, on her own merits. She doesn't need a mention of the late Princess of Wales to sell her story. It is fascinating in and of itself.

Kenneth Clark: Life, Art, Civilisation (James Stourton) ****1/2



I really enjoyed this romp through the life of art historian and polymath, Kenneth Clark. He became the Director of the National Gallery in his 30s, just before WWII broke out. He transformed access to the gallery, then when war started had the collection relocated to caves in Wales to protect it from the bombs in London. He then agreed to organise lunchtime concerts in the gallery throughout the war, and invited living artists to submit work to be displayed as the monthly picture, throughout the war. Art was for the masses, not the few, and we are still benefiting from decisions he made now. He was also responsible for the Royal collection at the same time. And worked towards setting up many art or culture based institutions that are still running, including the Arts Council and the National Theatre. Along side all this, he lectured, wrote and presented the iconic 'Civilisation' documentary series in the late 1960s, and wrote three of the finest art history books of the 20th Century.

>107 Chatterbox:

Thanks for response and to clarify Question # 1:

Page I had copied had the cover of THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES at the top,
then said =

"What's on tap for the rest of the year? Well, to
help you make your plans, here's the list...

February - - Biographies..." Etc. annotated all the way through December.

It would be good to have this again.

************************************************************

And here's a cheery message from Cigna to clear up your migraines:

"Why did we deny your request?" (for RX coverage in 2015)

"...the diagnosis given migraines is not a medically accepted condition."

S'there - it's all really just in our throbbing minds.

>110 m.belljackson: - The topics for the rest of the year are listed in >1 Chatterbox:.

>110 m.belljackson: That list (if that's what you're looking for) is now below the images. I always put it there, after the cover images. But here it is again:

March – Far, Far Away: Traveling -- travel narrative.

April – History -- another perennial.

May – Boundaries: Geography, Geopolitics and Maps -- a new offering. Anything about places, and boundaries, and how they affect our lives. So, a book about maps, about geographical features (Krakatoa?) or about geopolitics (Samuel Huntington?) or anything like that -- all are OK. I'm making this as eclectic as possible.

June – The Great Outdoors -- another hybrid challenge. Want to write about gardening? About the environment? About outdoor sporting events, from baseball to sailing? Do you want to read Cheryl Strayed's book about hiking and her misadventures on the Pacific Coast trail? As long as it happens out of doors, it's all fine.

July – The Arts -- from ballet to classical music, to jazz and rock and roll, to sculpture and painting, and the people involved in these -- oh, and books about books, of course!

August – Short and Sweet: Essays and Other Longform Narratives -- self explanatory. Essays from any anthology, longform pieces from the New Yorker, etc. Please make them reasonably long and not just an 800-word news feature from Mashable. Think, New York Times Magazine, perhaps, or London Review of Books, or...

September – Gods, Demons, Spirits, and Supernatural Beliefs -- from the Book of Common Prayer to things that go bump in the night. A biography of the Dalai Lama? Go for it.

October – First Person Singular -- This is the spot for anything first person. Anything that anyone has written about themselves and their lives in any way. Tina Fey? Paul Kalinithi? (sp?)

November – Politics, Economics & Business -- The stuff we all know we should know about but sometimes hate to think about, especially these days. Call it the hot button issues challenge. Immigration/Racism? Banking regulation? Minimum wage debates?

December – 2018 In Review -- Frustrated because you've got leftover books? You've got too many book bullets from other people? Or -- omigod -- that new biography was just published and you must must must read it? Or you've been reading the lists of best reading of 2018 in the NY Times and just realized, omigod, you MUST READ this one book before the end of the year? This is your holiday gift, from the challenge that keeps on giving...

Re the Cigna denial of coverage -- What the ACTUAL FUCK? Excuse my language, but really. I do hope you appealed, especially given that language. That's akin to what my mother used to hear from the docs. It's all in your head, little lady.... To which she would reply, yes, I know, and it HURTS. She didn't swear of course. I would.

Darden Asbury Pyron's Liberace: An American Boy is a book I got from the University of Chicago Press free ebook programme a few years ago, when I was getting most of them regardless of subject (I suspect if it had appeared more recently I would have passed on it). I picked it up for this month's Non-Fiction Challenge in the 75ers group (this month's theme is Biography). I have to say, for my complete lack of interest in the subject, this was a surprisingly interesting book, although at 590 pages it was really really long and personally I think could have been a bit shorter without losing any of its effect. Liberace was undoubtedly a very strange and sad as well as talented character, and I think where this book is strongest, in the second half, is where the author really works hard to place Liberace, and the whole phenomenon of his personality and performing persona, within the wider 20th century American context. Clearly that includes things like life for gay men pre- and post-Stonewall, and the advent of AIDS (the illness which Liberace died of), but so much more than that - the post-war boom in syndicated TV shows for example. His over-the-top and flamboyant costumes and props as well as his opulent homes make a lot more sense when you learn of his poor upbringing, and in the context of his conflicted early family life his political and religious conservatism, not to mention the extraordinary lengths he went to to ensure that his homosexuality did not become public knowledge, did have a sort of logic. Overall then this was a very interesting book, and I feel I learnt as much about 20th century America as I did about Liberace. 3.5/5 (although really it's more like 3.75).

Interesting, I know someone I can buy that book for Jackie. Thanks.

>114 Caroline_McElwee: Glad to drop an unexpected BB!

>113 Jackie_K: What an amazing cover!

I sometimes think there should be two editions of any biography / autobiography - one for the fans (c.600 pages) and one for "people who just want the highlights" c. 250 pages. Elvis Costello's autobio (I was interested, but really not *that* interested...) springs to mind.

>116 charl08: It's really something else, isn't it?! Sadly my kobo only does B&W, so it was fairly muted for me!

>116 charl08: I like that idea! Kind of like the "Eminent Lives" series (and I think there's a newer series like that, too) where the bios are kept to 250 pages or so, and some are only 200 pages.

>111 katiekrug: >112 Chatterbox:

Thank you both - I have printed the list out again and will write all my plans in pencil this time.

Re: good old Cigna = appeal went nowhere except that I cancelled my insurance.

Unfortunately, aetna's (no caps - they want us to know how down they are with us) was more expensive,
so I'm trying AARP United Healthcare for RX this year. So far, not bad and no denials.

>119 m.belljackson: Try GoodRX? I have been using them for some of my prescriptions. My Fioricet costs half of what BlueCrossBlueShield wants, so I will use it instead of my insurance for some of my meds. It's a no-cost program (though you can pay a small amount which will cut your costs even further, I believe.) I was quite surprised. You print out coupons the first time, based on where you are and the pharmacy you use (it may pay you to switch pharmacies) and the quantity.

To others: sorry for the temporary off-topic stuff here. But mebbe it will be useful to others??

>120 Chatterbox:

Thank you for RX information - I had GoodRX last year, but found that WebMd was a a better deal.

Hope your migraine has evolved into a pleasant medicated haze.

>101 jessibud2: Yep, Shelley, same book. More below.

>103 Caroline_McElwee: Caroline, I don’t usually feel as though I’ve made a real mistake in choosing a book, largely because I rely heavily on the recommendations of those readers I trust. In this case, however, I relied solely on my interest in the subject.

Never again.

>120 Chatterbox: No need to apologize, Suzanne. Topics come up randomly sometimes.

I’m Your Man by Sylvie Simmons didn’t work for me in any way. That’s unusual for me; there are few books which don’t have some small thing to justify reading them.

How could a 500+ page book about someone who’s enigmatic, influential, and interesting turn into such a snoozer? I don’t know.

This was written while Cohen was still alive, so perhaps objectivity was impossible. However...the endless repetition of names, musical instruments, and assorted favorite phrases soon makes one’s eyelids droop.

In all fairness, what I wanted was a thoughtful exploration of a man’s life and beliefs. What I got was a mostly superficial skimming of Cohen’s ideas, and a thorough (not to say exhaustive and exhausting) exploration of every recording, every tiny alteration, even phrasing adjustment of his music. All this accompanied by a very shallow running commentary on Cohen’s endless affairs.

So. If you’re vitally interested in how songs and performances can morph over a forty-year career, or if the minutia of the recording business fascinates you, this book would be ideal. If other aspects of Cohen’s life interest you, then you might want to try something different.

>124 Matke: - Thanks for the honest opinion on this book. I have one friend who thought it was great (she is a serious music fan) and my mum thought it was just meh. I did hear an interview on the radio with the author and it was because of that that I thought I'd give it a try. Now, I am not sure so I want to invest that kind of time. I do have another (shorter) book about Cohen called A Broken Hallelujah that I might turn to instead. If I get to it I will post my thoughts here.

#124 & 125
Leonard Cohen was not only a fascinating person, but a literary figure of some importance in the music scene. It would not have surprised me to see him get a Nobel, but that upstart from Minnesota did instead. It also will not surprise me that there will be plenty of books written about him, his work, and his life in the future. I suspect his poetry will live long after he did. To bad these earlier works didn't handle all the nuances of his life better.

>126 benitastrnad: - Last November, when I was visiting my mum in Montreal, we went to an exhibit at the museum all about Cohen. It was the first anniversary of his death. When you first walked in, there was a long table in a rather stark room. On the table were a lot of books: books written by him, about him, books in many languages (translations). It was an interesting intro to the exhibit. I will be honest, I tried reading one of his earlier books a few years ago and thought it was awful. I couldn't even finish it. I can't even remember now which one it was. I have always loved his music, though, and while I never *loved* his voice (I used to put him in that monotone, tuneless drone category, along with Dylan, Neil Young and a few others), I think it matured well and it grew on me. His lyrics are wonderful, and when others cover his songs, it can be magical. If you don't mind a little musical interlude, here is a link to him singing with his long-time backup singers, Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla. I love this, and the chemistry between them is obvious:

Dance Me to the End of Love

And isn't that violinist magnificent?

>127 jessibud2: I love that song, but my favorite cover of it is by Madeleine Peyroux....

>127 jessibud2: That was the performance that re-introduced us to Leonard Cohen. In the BBC program "Later with Jools Holland" he performed "Democracy", "The Future" and "Dance me to the end of love". We taped it on the VCR, played it many times, bought the CD "The Future", that stayed almost permanently in our CD player for a long time and still is THE CD of the 1990s for both me and Frank. Later we got more Leonard Cohen CDs, the song "The Partisan" can always bring tears to my eyes.

On bios of Mary Shelley -- there was one that was a group one by Daisy Hay that I loved, Young Romantics, and a more recent one, that tackled her life in tandem with that of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft -- Romantic Outlaws, by Charlotte Gordon, which made my best of 2016 list.

It would be great to find a good, succinct bio of Leonard Cohen.

I was fortunate enough to see him live on his very last tour. An amazing experience.

>126 benitastrnad: I was silently fuming when Cohen didn’t get the Nobel. I thought he deserved it more than the one who actually received it.

His voice, as it grew deeper and deeper (all that whiskey and all those cigarettes) sounded better to me every year. I have many favorites by him, but especially “Who by Fire” and of course “Bird on the Wire.” He was a complicated, talented, and thoughtful soul who is missed by many of us.

ETA: Speaking of a tangent, Suzanne...

Love the way we're all avoiding mentioning Dylan's name... (LOL, re your eta in >131 Matke:...)

I'm making progress with the Oriana Fallaci bio, although it's really more of a very introductory book for those completely unfamiliar with her -- like an extended blurb, rather than a critical evaluation or her or her works. I can't help thinking that Falllaci or any self-respecting journalist (unless overcome by an attack of extreme vanity) would blush at this. Her own work speaks more for her.

A gentle reminder that we'd like to get to 150 posts by the end of the weekend. Whoever rejoiced in the name of "pembasarpenis" did his part (it has be HIS part, doesn't it?), so this would be a great time to chip in and tell us all how you're faring with your biographies, share thoughts on the state of biographies these days, or anything else that is relevant (more or less) so we can avoid the last-minute scramble.

Has anyone stumbled over a great bio that intrigues them that won't fit into the month, time-wise, but that they'll put on their radar for later? I picked up an ARC at ALA Midwinter, a dual bio of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth, who were rough contemporaries; the author, Marian Veevers, is billing it as "a true tale of 'Sense and Sensibility'". Due out in early April, it's called, simply, Jane and Dorothy. My next literary bio will be the one of Joseph Conrad that I have just started, but this will be one that I want to read sooner rather than later. Also, NetGalley had Andrew Morton's upcoming bio of Wallis Simpson available for me from a publisher that has pre-approved me, so I thought "why not?", after watching two seasons of "the Crown". Were it not for the latter, I would probably have passed it up, though I confess I found Phillip's family, rackety and dispossessed, a bit more intriguing.

I finished Crazy Horse: The Lakota Warrior’s Life & Legacy which is his story as told by his family's oral history. It's always quite interesting and heartbreaking to hear history from the Native American perspective.

I can answer a few of the earlier questions and comments now.

>51 Chatterbox: The controversy within the Lakota comes from a branch, that according to the Clown family, stole Crazy Horse's ration card after his death and continued to use it. They offer this artifact as proof that they are the real descendants. And someone, (probably from the same pseudo-branch) broke into a Clown family home and stole Crazy Horse's sacred pipes, medicine bundle and a sketch of Crazy Horse.

So the last few chapters are a geneology of sorts tracing his descent - and were less interesting to me than the earlier chapters.

>48 benitastrnad: This book refers to Mari Sandoz's Crazy Horse, the Strange Man of the Oglalas as a 'fine novel which was believed by the whites to be nonfiction for many years'.

There is actually a Kickstarter campaign from the family to make a documentary of the book. It also gives a pretty decent summation of the book if anyone wants to read a bit more.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/153620067/crazy-horse-and-his-family-docume...

There is one of the larger rewards that I would love - imagine having a Lakota guided tour of the Black Hills!

A biography on my shelf that somehow escaped my attention this month is the third volume in Blanche Wiesen’s biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. I had about despaired of this ever appearing; of course, when it did I tucked it away because I was involved with other things.

I’ll easily finish up the Auchincloss book on Woodrow Wilson. I must say that it was a great pleasure to turn to his elegant but not flowery prose after reading the other two biographies I chose for this month.

And for something completely different, I just acquired a biography of Frida Kahlo: Frida: The Story of Her Life told in graphic novel format. Honestly, I can’t wait to read it.

>135 Matke: That Frida Kahlo book does look good. I read a graphic novel-style biography last year, Red Rosa which was amazing.

I'm still plugging away at Catherine the Great. She has just become Empress... It's very good, but I am mostly listening to it on audio and haven't had a lot of audio time lately. I'll definitely still be reading it in March!

I'm struggling with some of my other challenges. Luckily my book for the January ColourCAT in the Category Challenge group (which I am still only 60% of the way through, despite having started it in mid-December, and I apparently still have nearly 9 hours left to read) fits March's non-fiction challenge theme perfectly, so at least I'll get a couple of completed challenges out of it eventually.

>139 rosalita: I am absolutely not giving up on finishing Lincoln: Biography of a Writer yet this month, but i can Report now that I am absolutely loving it. I think anyone interested in how someone's writing style develops and the influence of their childhood readings would find it interesting.

Language mattered because he needed it to work through what seemed to him real, to separate fact from falsehood. It mattered even more because he began to feel that only though writing and speech could he understand the world. He needed language as the tool by which knowledge was acquired and communicated. Also, he took satisfaction in how language worked and in the pleasure of words and rhythms. Learning gave him an intellectual high.

And here is an excerpt from a letter Lincoln wrote to his great friend Joshua Speed, when that man told him of his impending marriage and move away from Springfield to Kentucky:

How miserably things seem to be arranged in this world. If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.

I didn't get to the Mollie Keane biography this month, but I might squeeze in a memoir about Muriel Spark.

I think the magic...

Number is 154...

So not too far to go.

>141 Caroline_McElwee: >142 Caroline_McElwee: >143 Caroline_McElwee: Can I respectfully ask that we not do this anymore? It's extremely frustrating to see that a thread has a bunch of new posts only to open it and find junk. I know it's been a popular tactic in the past and it led me to avoid these threads altogether by the end of the year. If we don't have enough real posts to create a thread continuation, why can't there just be a manual link?

I've got distracted by Sapiens which I've got to read for book club. I spose at a real stretch it could be a biography of humankind?? Maybe?

I finished Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.
Now this is a story of a true genius! As much a scientist as an artist, da Vinci's insatiable curiosity led him to explore everything from architecture and geology to weaponry and how birds fly.
I don't much about art techniques, so I was fascinated by Isaacson's in-depth analysis comparing da Vinci's paintings with those of contemporary artists (such as Michelangelo).
This book also includes beautiful color plates of da Vinci's most famous paintings as well as sketches from his numerous notebooks.

>146 GerrysBookshelf: If you put the number 19828689 inside the square brackets for the touchstone, followed by :: and the title it should work. (Number can be found on the work page)

Thank you! I fixed my post and learned something new.

>144 rosalita: I'd prefer not to have junk, which is why I asked people to discuss biographies in particular. The reason I ask people to try to get the post count up is because in the past, folks have lost the thread. As you know, the 75 group is a particularly busy group, and it's ONLY when we reach 150 posts that a star automatically goes on to the new thread that we create. Otherwise we all have to search for and star that new thread ourselves. Yes, I know, it shouldn't be that hard for folks to do -- but experience has shown that it IS, and that some people have lost the better part of an entire month of the discussion. Now, I suppose we can argue "well, if they don't care enough to (a) hunt for it (b) star it...etc., then they deserve to lose out" but I'm reluctant to go that route. I think we're all accustomed to opening threads and finding stuff that doesn't interest us, and skimming on past. In a perfect world, would I rather not have to do this? Abso-bloody-lutely. I would hope that people had enough interest to chat during the course of the month that I didn't have to nudge them into this. It even has made me wonder whether it's worth maintaining this challenge. But given the choice between people feeling that they are deliberately feeling overlooked or made to do extra work each month, and people (yes, including me) being slightly irritated by thread-inflating posts, well, I'll take the latter as what others have indicated as being the lesser of two evils, requiring less work/anxiety. (It's also less work for me, as I don't have to remember to put the link at the bottom of the old thread when I create the new one -- it's there automatically -- one less thing to do after the time I spend setting up the new link, creating the little images, etc.) I do hope you understand the reasoning behind this, Julia. (And it's not Caroline's responsibility, but mine.)

If other folks have very, very strong views on this, please let me know. I'm open to voting on it, but it is more hassle for me, as well, and I'll be the person that those who have the opposite POV end up complaining to, so....

>146 GerrysBookshelf: Thanks for the comments on the Leonardo bio! I've been contemplating that one, and you've convinced me that it's one that I'll have to purchase in hardcover at some point, given the existence of the color plates.

Closing in on the home stretch with the Fallaci bio, but it's at best going to be a 3.5 star book. I'm still hoping to read Joseph Conrad In a Global World, although it's a hybrid literary biography.

My apologies, Suzanne. I certainly never meant to make things harder for you, or to cause problems within the challenge. I only mentioned it precisely because the 75er group is so busy and I have so many threads I try to keep up with and it's discouraging to waste time loading a thread to find no content. But I won't mention it again, and everyone should please continue to do what they like.

I'm not going to get to either of the biographies I had planned to read this month. However, I'm about halfway through the audio of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. I've been meaning to get to this one for nearly two years. Unless you already have the audio (as I did), I would recommend the print version over the audio version. It is narrated by the author, and it's obvious that he isn't a professional reader. He pauses and breathes in odd places and sometimes it makes it hard to follow his line of thought.

I finished and enjoyed The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss. I learned a great deal about Napoleon and that was good because my knowledge was thin at best. And I found the back and forth policy on slavery by the French government to confirm the idea that politics sucks no matter what century we’re in. All in all a good read.

>151 rosalita: Thanks for your understanding, Julia -- and for my part, I'll just urge people to try and post substantive comments when possible, much as I appreciate the assistance with the push to get to 150. And I will do my part.

For those awaiting March's thread, with a focus on travel, check back tomorrow -- it will be up by about noon Eastern time in the US! (As soon as I return from grocery shopping, basically... too tired to do it now and I know I won't get it done before I go in the morning...)

>153 brenzi: I’m not sure I understand, but I’m more than usually confused before coffee...is Dumas pere the model of the Count of Monte Crsto in any substantial way? Or is the point of the book more that he (pere) lived a life of great interest, with plenty of exciting and horrifying episodes?

I won't have time to read Frantz Fanon: A Biography this month, but I hope to be able to finish the much shorter biography Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff by Wednesday, or at least by the end of the work week.

>155 Matke:. I should have been more clear I think. The book is based on Alexandre Dumas’ grandfather who was originally a Black slave in the West Indies but goes on to become a general under Napoleon in the French Army. He is the model for The Count of Monte Cristo. The book details his grandfathers life and in so doing discusses Napoleon and French history. I learned quite a bit about those two things. I hope I’ve made it a bit clearer.

>157 brenzi: You have indeed made it clearer and hit me in a vital spot with a B.B. Thanks!

>156 kidzdoc: Fanon would be weighty in subject even if not also weighty in heft (i.e. length)... With the 'Trane bio, you have the extra benefit of being able to have the music playing in the background as you read!

>157 brenzi: I added that to my Kindle back when it came out and a lot of folks were reading it -- and promptly never read it (or never got past the first chapter or so.) I really should go further, as the era and subject intrigues me. I also need to try Dumas again; I'm letting my general aversion to swashbuckling yarns deter me. I suppose we could call him, in his own way, the French Dickens? Very popular and populist, but more romantic; prolific and long-winded at times; an emphasis on story telling, etc.

OK, off to set up the March thread. Think travel, folks!

#134
That is part of the controversy about the book. It is a biography but it is based on interviews with people who were dead at the time of the publications of the book, and the fact that when it was published in 1942 it was not considered “academic.” Futhermore, Sandoz was not considered to be an impartial biographer because of her “connections” to the Lakota tribe. It was given a devastating review at the time and it is only recently that it has been taken seriously as a biography. However, I think that its reputation precedes it. It nearly wrecked Sandoz’s career.

Nowadays, a biography written in the format using the sources it quotes from would have no trouble being considered a biography. The times they are achangen’ to quote that “author” from upthread, who shall not be named.

>149 Chatterbox: >151 rosalita:

Usually, Chatterbox makes a polite request toward the third week or so of each month for
contributors to please add a review or recommendation or comment on the book they are reading.

When this is done, which has happened in all the months I've seen, this brings us up and over 150.

>159 Chatterbox:

From an NYC fan, my daughter and I got both the CD and the DVD titled "CHASING TRANE."

Memorable!

When guests come, I often have Coltrane's "Welcome" playing.

>160 benitastrnad: Hi Benita; Thanks for your thoughts and the clarifications; there is definitely food for thought in what you wrote. All I can say, is that in the book I read for this challenge, the descendants of Crazy Horse regard Sandoz's account as fiction. As to how it varies from their story, having never read the Sandoz book, I can't say. Perhaps at some later time, I'll give it a try.

For this month's biography I read about two men, the Kray Twins. The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins was a close look at the lives and nefarious deeds of the Krays who sewed up a large part of London's underworld during the late '50s and into the '60s. Unlike many criminals, they sought publicity and wanted their story told. They cooperated with a biographer who was able to get close to them but also obtained information from other sources. It really was a story of their rise and fall.

It turns out that the book on Asimov that I was thinking of reading was not a bio but a collection of his letters, NOT what I wanted. So I have started The Black Count even though I won't get it finished this month.

>165 ronincats: Well, you can still log it for this challenge, even if you finish in March. Or count it toward April's challenge, which is history!

I finished the Oriana Fallaci "biography" by Cristina De Stefano, and am using the parentheses because it's more of a reverential recounting of the events in her life (in the present tense -- yuck, hate that in a biography) than it is a thoughtful or even somewhat even-handed accounting of her importance in the world of journalism. She was a controversial figure, but her interviews with some of the world's most notable figures, some collected in Interview With History, were works I read avidly when I was starting out in journalism. To some extent, it answers a few of my questions about craft, and a handful of superficial questions about who she was as a person, but there's not attempt to be critical or analytical, which is depressing, especially given her late-in-life turn to the ultra-right anti-immigrant position in Europe, with ill-founded and alarmist rhetoric replacing thoughtful analysis. Those books were a disappointment, and what I wanted from De Stefano was some way of reconciling this very opinionated individual, who ultimately allowed her opinions to shape her writing to a disproportionate extent (by most journalistic standards) and the woman who was such a brilliant interviewer. Was it that the celebrity she acquired in that latter field gave her the sense that she was an intellectual and great thinker? Certainly, the author here wants to present her as one, quoting her friends and admirers, but there's no evidence supporting that. (At least, no unbiased evidence.) So this was a deeply frustrating book to read, and not what I wanted. 3.2 stars.

I read a biography in January but posted my review on my own thread at the beginning of this month. I am not sure if you will accept this as a bio of a person because it is a bio of a musical group, but I'll post it here anyhow.

It is called Barenaked Ladies The Authorized Biography. I am not a groupie, by any means, and only own one mixed tape (cassette!) of their music, made for me by a friend, many many years ago. But I have always liked this band. They are talented, intelligent, clever and just really fun.

This book was published in 2001 and as such, is rather dated, considering that I am reading it in 2018. That said, however, it was a joyful romp and quite well-written. Myers goes into the background lives of the original members of the group - and I loved the section of photos, including childhood photos! - and chronicles their evolution and journey from their individual musical interests, to summer music camp, to local gigs to the *big time*. It took me longer to read the whole book than it might have, though, because, although I love BNL, I wasn't familiar with a lot of their songs. So I did what anyone in 2018 would do: I went to youtube to find and listen to songs. Many of the youtube offerings showed the videos and written lyrics, as well, so while that was a bit of a timesuck, it was also a real delight.

Myers goes into a lot of the backstories of the songs, as well as into the actual recording sessions and album playlists, etc. I could have skimmed over those session parts as that isn't really of major interest to me, but in fact, I didn't skip any of it. He is a good writer and I really enjoyed all of it. One of the things I liked was learning about how much crossover there was in the industry between other Canadian musicians and performers. And these guys - BNL - were/are so talented!!

It would be interesting to have him writer a sequel, or an update now since there have been so many changes in the group since 2001. I would read it! And so, as BNL are about to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, it felt like the right time to read this book. Another one off the shelf! Yay! I will be giving it to a friend who has a rock and roll library!

An interesting after word: during my googling, I found a one hour documentary narrated by a local CBC radio guy, that was done in 2004 and was also quite good. So that was like having a final chapter to the book. Still not quite up-to-date, but definitely a leap forward from the date of the book publication.

Of course, I have been sleeping and waking up with earworms, so why not share a few.
Many of you will probably know this one:

Big Bang theme

And this is probably their most famous:

If I Had A Millionn Dollars

Ok, I am done now. :-)

If you want to hear more, I have linked to other songs in my own thread, post #3

Oh, one more thing. A friend of mine who is a rock and roll and music junkie, told me that the author, Paul Myers, is the brother of zany actor Mike Myers. I had no idea but knowing that now, it's easy to see the physical resemblance in his cover photo. Talented family!

I also read another short bio this month. I always try to read something in February that connects with Black History month, and since I had picked this one up at Word on the Street, Toronto's book and literary street festival last September, I thought it would work. It's called Harriet Tubman Freedom Seeker, Freedom Leader by Rosemary Sadlier. It was a short bio, aimed, I think, at a younger audience. Sadlier is (or maybe was) the president of the Ontario Black History Society and has written other books, as well. Aside from knowing the name of Harriet Tubman and her connection to the Underground Railroad, I really did not know her back story in much detail so this was a good intro for me. I did find the book a tad repetitive, in places, and perhaps it could have used a bit tighter editing but overall, I think it was a good overview and glimpse into a horrible era of history, for school-aged kids. There were also pictures and illustrations scattered throughout and a timeline at the end that put some context to Harriet's life and other events in the world at that time.

Not sure I'm going to finish Catherine the Great by the end of the month but I'm sure going to try. It's excellent!

#163
Your explanation also explained. I didn't realize that it was his family that thought the book by Sandoz was fiction. I was speaking from a purely academic standpoint and they are coming at it from a different angle. It is totally reasonable that they would think it was fiction, as it was probably unauthorized from their viewpoint.

It just goes to show what a terrible tangled web it all is - from so many viewpoints.

Of course, one of the books I requested for this month arrived at the end of the month. There's not a chance in the world I'll finish it in February. It was Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. There are 620 Kindle pages or units or whatever you want to call them, so I guess it's a chunkster. I'll just read on it gradually.

I have 125 pages to go in Catherine the Great. Maybe I can finish it today.

I finished Catherine the Great! It was fascinating.

<173 I finished it last night too. Excellent book!

I almost forgot to post here.

I finished Woodrow Wilson by Louis Auchincloss. My copy indicates “Penguin Lives”, but I think this belongs with the Brief Lives series, at just 130 pages.

While the focus of the book is naturally on Wilson’s year’s as president of the United States, his background and earlier life are sketched in enough to give us a picture of the forces that shaped the man.

Neither fulsome nor overly critical, the book is an even-handed picture of a brave, brilliant, and incredibly stubborn man who was very sure that his opinions were the correct ones.

Two aspects of his life were most interesting to me. The first is the devastating effect his stroke had on the nation’s government. He was a very ill man for months, who was completely incapable of fulfilling his duties, which were mostly handled by his second wife.

It’s also fascinating to learn just how uxorious Wilson was. A happy family man who relaxed and enjoyed parlor games, jokes, music, and reading with his family, he was crushed by the death of his first wife—so lost, in fact, that he remarried fifteen months later to a much younger widow who was deeply devoted to him, as he was to her. It gives one a different angle from which to consider Wilson.

Elegantly written by a master craftsman, this short book is well worth reading.