Here, most likely is the best book of my reading year.
I feel heard and validated. It’s all I need.
Marriage, Motherhood, Menopause in all the wonder Here, most likely is the best book of my reading year.
I feel heard and validated. It’s all I need.
Marriage, Motherhood, Menopause in all the wonder and horribleness.
*be warned that there is a lot of vag humor going down in these pages.
*be warned there is a smidgen or even a smattering of left leaning political agendizing going down in these pages and it centers around abortion. If that’s gonna make you mad, sad or otherwise spoil your day just leave this one on the shelf.
AS FOR ME, I adored this whole beautiful everything. ...more
It will be on my best of list this year. It’s almost June and that list is still mighty small. Tho there are 3-4 books that This book was everything.
It will be on my best of list this year. It’s almost June and that list is still mighty small. Tho there are 3-4 books that show promise this summer.
The hard, hard story of addiction and the ones left to do the telling. The one that doesn’t take the narcotics or booze and instead chooses to overachieve in the other direction.
“I think of the choices my own mother made—and realize, painfully, that I am not so different from her after all. It’s only the nature of our respective addictions that diverged: hers was narcotic, clear-cut, defined. Mine is amorphous, but no less unhealthy. Something to do with self-righteous, or self-perception, or pride.”
This one quote is the whole meaning of this story for me.
I’ve seen plenty of chemical addictions in family and friends. And I recognize myself in that quote. Self-righteous, self-perception and pride are also highly addictive and can be just as damaging to a family in relationship.
The moral of the story: They are not all bad. You are not all good. We are each some of both.
Those are long, hard and sometimes very painful lessons to learn.
Read this and let Mickey and Kacey tell you their story of all this.
Here is the book I didn’t know could be written. It should be no wonder that Doris Kearns Goodwin would be the one to do it. If this is DKG’s swan sonHere is the book I didn’t know could be written. It should be no wonder that Doris Kearns Goodwin would be the one to do it. If this is DKG’s swan song, wow - she achieved! Recognizing that 81 is the new 71, of course. There could be more from her!
This book has been described as part history, part biography and part memoir. I agree and here are some good bits of each:
MEMOIR: (who knew Doris was married to this man?? I surely didn’t!)
“Throughout the Sixties, Dick [Goodwin] had participated in an inordinate number of pivotal, defining moments of the decade. He was there with JFK on the “Caroline”, a member of the small team that traveled with the candidate through the 1960 Presidential campaign; he was in that room to help JFK for his first debate with Richard Nixon; he was in the White House in the middle of the night when the president’s coffin returned from Dallas; he was at Lyndon Johnson’s side during the summit of his historic achievements with the Great Society and civil rights; He was in New Hampshire with Eugene McCarthy’s crusade, and with Robert Kennedy when he died in a Los Angeles hospital. Now, in Chicago , he was a central figure in the convention’s debate over the Vietnam peace plank.”
HISTORY: (My 1998 baby just asked if the riots he’s watching on tv now were worse than the Vietnam ones. I read this part of the book shortly after he asked so this is for him.)
“During the voting on the Vietnam plank, demonstrators in Grant Park, numbering around ten thousand, announced their intention to march to the convention hall. They had no permit to do so. When three protesters climbed the flagpole and started to take down the American flag, the police charged into the crowd surrounding the flagpole. Chaos ensued. The police threw tear gas bombs; the demonstrators responded with rocks and bottles. As people spilled into the street, the Chicago Tribune reported, ‘Michigan Avenue was turned into a bloody battleground.’”
BIOGRAPHY: (June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel)
“It was nearing midnight when Dick rose to accompany [Robert] Kennedy and a small group of family and friends and staff down to the hotel’s Embassy Ballroom where nearly two thousand supporters awaited his arrival and victory statement. Just as they were leaving, Dick received a call from an important McCarthy supporter. Dick never looked up as Bobby touched him on the shoulder and said, ‘I’ll go downstairs and do this, then we can talk some more over at the Factory,’ a local club where the campaign had reservations for a private party…. Shrieks sounded up and down the corridors outside, shrieks multiplied on every television…. Robert Kennedy had been shot.”
STOP READING AND GO LISTEN TO ROBERT KENNEDY’S FINAL SPEECH ON YOUTUBE NOW.
The end of this story has started me down Rabbit trails of Bobby Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy after Bobby’s Death and I definitely need to read The Death of a President by William Manchester.
I feel like I participated in a once in a lifetime opportunity in reading this book. I am most grateful for DKG for writing this and all her presidential history and that great baseball book too. She has been my most bountiful guide through many moments of my own discovery of our rich American history. ❤️...more
It gets 5 because it is genius in its pissiness. It is well written. It will be a top read of 2024.
This book is about an affair. IWhat a pissy book!
It gets 5 because it is genius in its pissiness. It is well written. It will be a top read of 2024.
This book is about an affair. I have very strong feelings about those.
I hate Warren. Selfish SOB.
The themes I did appreciate are those of adult children and our responsibility to them and theirs to us when they are no longer under our care.
When you marry, and have children, is the vow until death do us part extended to the family that’s created?
What do we owe our adult children?
Do they owe us anything in return for that vow?
How do we handle when our children marry and we stop being invited into their hearts and minds?
I’m learning the answers to a lot of these questions in real time. This is not easy.
I’m not on GR to express my opinions and those questions and my feelings about affairs go unanswered here. If you ever encounter me in real life, feel free to ask. I will tell you....more
Here we go. Top ten of ‘24 for sure and maybe best book of ‘24. And it’s only February.
For living right through this war albeit birth to age 8, I remHere we go. Top ten of ‘24 for sure and maybe best book of ‘24. And it’s only February.
For living right through this war albeit birth to age 8, I remember so very little about this war. I think I was just busy being a kid.
I had no idea that the women were forgotten. Not considered veterans. That just makes my head want to explode.
I did my math. Frankie would be 80 today. Her IRL war sisters are 80 year old women. We should all just stop to think about that when we so quickly discard old ladies as being irrelevant. These women are the real deal. They are tough mother truckers no doubt. They have seen more than the rest of us who came after will likely ever see or know. They did it as their duty. They did it without recognition. They suffered and maybe still suffer with PTSD. Just take a minute to reflect on that.
“Frankie never spoke about her struggles, tried never to say Vietnam out loud. And when she felt a rise in her blood pressure, a flood of grief or anger, she smiled tautly and left whatever room she was in. She’d learned that people noticed a raised voice; quiet was the perfect camouflage for pain.”...more
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