| by Bel | 7.58am NZ time |

A pile of books I plowed through earlier this year. It was a sad ratio of 50/50 duds to great reads.

Clockwise from top left:

• Game Change creative non-fiction by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
• Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr biography by Stephen Michael Shearer
• Voluntary Madness memoir by Norah Vincent
• The Year of Magical Thinking memoir by Joan Didion
• Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone biography by Nadine Cohodas
• And Now You Can Go autobiographical novel by Vendela Vida

Game Change creative non-fiction by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

This a great book - I was recommending it to anyone I came across as I (avidly) read it. I've used the term "creative non-fiction" as it is a reconstruction of the US presidential election of 2008, with the narrative brought to live by quotes from over 200 interviews.

In any other circumstance, I'd be worried about the legitimacy of this kind of writing, but as the authors as renowned political journalists and editors at Time and New York magazine. Their reputations give this a ring of authority - that and the fact that the brutal characterisations of the political players rings so true.

BONUS: I hunted this down after seeing an interview where Joan Rivers said she'd read it.

DOUBLE BONUS: It's now being made into a TV movie.


Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr biography by Stephen Michael Shearer

A Golden Age film star, Hedy Lamarr died in obscurity and may well have been long forgotten if her scientific prowess had not been revealed. The amateur research done by her and her friend, composer George Antheil, during World War II has now been announced as the underpinning of modern mobile phone technology - as well as a contribution to the war effort in advancing missile development.

There is so much to Lamarr's story which is intriguing (the scandal of her early days as an actress in Austria, her disguised escape from her first marriage, the five husbands that followed, her connections with other survivors of the European Jewish diaspora) and yet this overly long and ridiculously detailed biography manages to suck the life out of it.

With hindsight, it can be seen that despite her much heralded beauty, Lamarr was actually a bit of a B-grade actress. And yet this book pedantically describes her every movie, including each costume worn, with snipped review quotes attempting to bolster her reputation.

Part of the allure of Lamarr was her mystery, with her accented voice and unapproachable beauty, and to plow through such attention to detail dulls the power of the myth.



Voluntary Madness memoir by Norah Vincent

This was awful. The first chapter gave me enough to know I didn't want to read further.

This self-proclaimed "immersion journalist" decides to admit herself to psychiatric care in a experiment to see how sane people cope in those surroundings. She then mentions that she actually has a history of mental illness - including a breakdown the preceding year.

And no less than three times in the first chapter, she mentions her concerns about the food on offer in these facilities and the risk of putting on weight. Not to judge or anything, but, um, ISSUES.

But worst of all, the writing was bad. There were inconsistencies in her reporting even between pages that faced each other in the book! One moment she was saying that patients were left to their own devices, staff remote and inaccessible - then the next she described in detail a chess game taking place between a patient and an orderly! It was impossible to take this seriously.


The Year of Magical Thinking memoir by Joan Didion

Wow. This is an incredible book. But I'm almost reluctant to recommend it, as it made me bawl - and that is not everyone's cup of tea!

A treatise on grief, we follow Didion's journey as she attempts to come to terms with an incomplete life following the death of her husband of nearly 40 years. Her honest portrayal of pain and love is so evocative it's hard not to be affected.


Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone biography by Nadine Cohodas

Nina Simone! Don't tell me you don't love her! And you will have a greater respect for her work and her struggle after having read this detailed biography.

Did you know Nina herself played all the piano you hear in her songs? I did not! I was delighted to learn that the amazing music in songs like this was thanks to the woman herself:


And let's not forget the way it was sampled by Talib Kweli in this:


Wait, wait - no. Check out the official remix - what a line up!


Ok. What was I talking about??

Oh yeah - Nina.

She lived a long life but only saw royalties from her music in the last years - she was not wealthy even when she was at the peak of her career. This alone seems unjust, but when her mental health issues are factored in it makes it seem worse. Both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are mentioned in passing, but the author appeared unwilling to confirm a diagnosis.

Between this, her naturally abrasive personality and the fact that she was outspoken about civil rights at a time when you could wind up dead for doing so, Nina garnered a reputation for being difficult. And yet the legacy of her music is nothing but a pleasure.


And Now You Can Go autobiographical novel by Vendela Vida

Gahhh. Sorry, I was keen to like this, but, um, no. No siree. Barely read past the first pages.

WAIT. I just read a review of this and it turns out I must've read the whole thing!! Ye gods. Not a good sign.

The book opens with a traumatic event - the protagonist held at gunpoint in a public park. The rest of the book shows her dealing (and not dealing) with the aftermath. She ends a relationship, takes a spontaneous overseas trip, relies on her family for support but is shocked by the lengths her friends will go to.

And yet somehow all this is very disengaging. There is no drama beyond the initial conflict, we are just on the first-person ride of this confused woman's stream of consciousness. I remember being a self-absorbed 21 year old all too well, I don't want to relive it.

| Posted by Lou | The time is 7.15pm here in London UK |

Every time I visit the US of A I'm left with the same three questions:

1. Why is there a gap down the sides of the door of every single tolet cubicle? For serious, there is. I don't get it. I thought the desire to defecate in privacy was a universal human trait.

2. Why oh why do Americans not have electric jugs? (aka the humble kettle) I know it isn't a huge tea-drinking culture, but it is a convenience culture and nothing is more convenient than instantly boiled water.

3. What do Americans have against salt 'n' vinegar? In a country absolutely drowning in packaged processed snack foods, it seems insane that the greatest of all flavours be so seldom found.

| Posted by Bel | The time is 10.15am here in Wellington NZ |

Yesterday I promised you lazy. How lazy? How about a blog post copy and pasted from an email I wrote to Lou earlier this week??

If you haven't read Zeitoun, please taihoa because we are chock full of SPOILERS below. Oh and rampant hating on the administration of at-the-time-US president George W Bush.

From: Lou
To: Bel
Subject: Zeitoun
Date: Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:18 AM

Thoughts please!

Did you know about the parking lot prison when you read it? I didn't and literally felt like a cartoon when I got to it - like my bottom jaw literally fell to the floor and my tongue rolled out and I made the Scooby-Doo "huh" noise. It has been in the media a couple of times in the past year but I was hoping you wouldn't have seen so as to get the full impact!

FYI: did you see that George W recently said in his memoirs that his lowest moment was being accused of being racist during the Katrina aftermath. Not the aftermath itself... I saw this on the TV in Vegas and was shouting at the television.

From: Bel
To: Lou
Date: Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 10:16 AM

I had my usual cultural context/current affairs amnesia take over me as I read the book and was so caught up in the narrative that everything came as a surprise.

Like, to the extent that when the storm passes and it's bad, but not that bad in terms of their experiences of hurricanes, I was like "aawh... yay..." and totally FORGOT about the whole FLOODING thing. Shame.

Okay. So.  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
2. And then at the end, it mentions that the other three guys all spent, like, 6 months longer in the maximum security prison than him!! Fuuuuck!!
3. But assumedly not in solitary confinement. Did I tell you (or link to) this article I read about solitary confinement?? It was about this guy who was wrongly imprisoned for like 35 years and spent most of it in solitary (yes, in the USA, of course). There's all the psychiatric studies now about how the worst prison treatment is not being beaten or starved, but solitary. It's pretty much actually guaranteed to send you mental and make you incapable of returning to a normal life elsewhere in the prison, let alone 'outside'. [ETA: this isn't the article I originally read, but there is a great series here on NPR if you want to bone up on this subject.]
4. Nope, no idea about the Guatanomo style prison. (I think I just thought he'd been locked up for ages bc of the paranoia that terrorists were 'around' post-Katrina. No actual idea of the content of the book, thanks to some effective paranoid skimming of articles in the past hehhee.)
5. That bit where he does the construction-business-man style calculations in his head, and figures out how it must have taken them literally days to build it all, with supplies trucked in, while people were literally drowning in the neighbouring suburbs, is so gut-wrenching.
6. I thought it was very restrained the way the book doesn't actually point any fingers. (See George W Bush rant below.) It mentions that all of the funding and administration of FEMA (that's their equivalant of our Civil Defence, right?) had been sucked up into the new formly Dept of Homeland Security (gaaawd that name is sooo ridiculous), but doesn't actually say "Worst. Idea. Ever." and instead just let's you see how that plays out.
7. Same with the military forces in the book. Whenever they appear, they're always these cyphers, nameless, featureless, adbrupt and brutal. They have been trained into machines and they have no humanity.
8. Complete contrast to Zeitoun, who seems to be pretty much the best person in the world.
9. I cried when he got out of prison. I also found it really affecting how Kathy removed her hijab that time and realised chunks of her hair had turned white. (Perhaps bc of my recent hair-related traumas?)
10. I loved the way the book presented spirituality in general. How it strived to show why being religious was an important, integral part of these people's lives. How it was just normalcy for them. I think that for some who views Muslim as 'other' it would have been a good way of bridging that difference, and seeing it as another facet of the same kinds of beliefs for conventional Christianity. I.e. not actually part and parcel of being an evil bloodythirsty terrorist.
11. I thought at first they weren't going to tell the story of how Kathy converted, but rather sort of leave it as just an implict background thing, that that was just part of their normal lives, that this Southern white woman is a Muslim, yeah what of it. So when her conversion story did get told, I was like oooOOOOOoooh. (Crack up that it was her and her Japanese-American friend. Are there ANY proper Muslims in America??)
12. Weird how the book talks a lot about the three daughters, but not much about the older son (from a previous marriage) Zachary. I assume this was intentional....? Like how in AHWOSG he downplayed his older sister (bc she was battling w depression) (the one who was then acrimonious about being left out of the book, who he then made up with, who then killed herself) (sob!).
    

Re George W. He said that the lowest moment in his whole presidential career was being called racist after Katrina. My god. I have SO MANY issues with this:

1. I am conflicted, bc it was Kayne West who called him out on this, and Kanye West is pretty much cuckoo for cocopops....
2. ....and yet when he made this statement [ETA: man, I love watching that, the best jump cut since Goddard was at his peak], it was bang on the money. Hence, why it got censored and hence why it actually did hurt GWB's feelings. THE TRUTH HURTS, BUDDY, IT HURTS.
3. Bush's comment in his memoir seems to be one of those "I'm sorry if you took that the wrong way and you decided to feel hurt by what I said" apologies, you know? When someone weasels their way out of actually acknowledging being in the wrong at all?? (Fuck I hate when people do that.)
   
4. Not to downplay Katrina and its aftermath at all, but really, George, really?? Of all the shit that went down, that is what you think back upon?!
1. Not that bullshit with the fictional WMDs;
2. or the thousands of civilians who died in various countries bc of your and Condelezza's constant hawking;
3. or the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout Africa bc of your refusal to fund health programmes which supply condoms;
4. or the recession brought on through your administrations mismanagement of the economy;
5. or the fact that you CANNOT EVEN SPEAK ALOUD PROPERLY IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE??!!?
5. He has now actually done some really good work in Haiti (with Bill Clinton) and one part of me is like "yay!" and the other part is like "are... you... fucken... kidding... me?? do... you... want... a... medal...??"
6. Last 2 paras of this are HILARIOUS in illustrating the differences btwn the two presidents and why Bush suuuuuccckkksss:
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8580641.stm
   

From: Lou
To: Bel
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:52 AM

Yep. To everything.

I would like to see an earlier draft - I would imagine that Dave probably literally sat down with the manuscript and went through it purely to remove any statements that could be seen to be political against GWB (or military) specifically so as to remove any ammunition for people to disregard the story as being "liberal propaganda". The story so speaks for itself that it doesn't need anything more anyway.

And yep, re: GWB. But he'd have to admit that any of those other things were wrong to name anything associated with that... And I think within the American cultural framework of being "WOO AMERICA YEAH US AGAINST EVERYONE" the way he completely fucked over Americans during Katrina and its aftermath is actually probably the most damaging and telling thing against him from the perspective of Americans (who are obviously the only people he cares about).

FYI: you should now get your hands on the doc Trouble the Water:

It has the documentary footage/ firsthand accounts of the abandoned people to accompany the book and provide the sort of "every(wo)man" experience of the situation.

From: Bel
To: Lou
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 12:20 PM

The draft version where the footer on each page was PS fuck Bush!!!!!!
??
hahahaha

You are right about how the story speaks for itself. It didn't need any (leftist/liberal) trimmings - in fact, it was almost infuriating how Zeitoun is still so pro-America at the end and has all this belief and hope and crap and you're like 'but whhhyyyyyyyy?????'.

Trouble The Water! Yes. I was trying to think of that, but could only remember the name of the Spike Lee one. (I nearly wrote Spike Jonze just then. I don't imagine his take on Katrina would be quite the same.)

From: Bel
To: Lou
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 12:29 PM

Just watched the trailer. EMOTIONAL.

Posted by Bel. The time is 12:36pm here in Wellington, NZ.

In 1916, sisters Augusta and Adeline Van Buren rode their motorcycles from the east to west coast of America. Frustrated that they were not permitted to be part of the armed forces in the build up to World War I, they used this epic journey (on what would now be considered ramshackle equipment) to demonstrate their willingness and ability to be involved.

It was just the public opinion that they had to work against. They were actually arrested on more than one occasion - because they were wearing "men's clothing", the leathers most suitable for this kind of arduous long journey, on roads that were not yet the super highways now common in the States.

You can read about the Van Buren sisters in more detail here.

This story appeals to me on so many levels. I love their determination and their feminist attitude (wanting both sexes to be treated equally). Their plan to carry out action and achieve change as a result brings to mind other inspirational women such as Rosa Parks and Amelia Earhart.

Also, my family are a bunch of motorbike hoons from way back. As a child, my parents often teasingly bemoaned my presence on this earth and how it prevented them from continuing their carefree jaunts on hulking Japanese roadbikes which apparently were a near daily occurrence before the restraints of parenting came along. *rolls eyes*

This is photo of my great uncle, taken in the 1940s. (My mum calls this the 'Che Guevara photo'.)

Conversely he, and his brother, my grandfather, were conscientious objectors, who did hard labour for their pacifist views.

Motorbikes are often a symbol of freedom and rebellion, used iconicly in films such as The Wild One starring Marlon Brando and Easy Rider starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (who also directed. Who knew). For me though, the gloss has worn off - mainly thanks to my cousin who broke his leg in six places coming off his dirt bike. Six places, people. Count it out on your leg. Uggh.

And here endth my rambling vaguely interconnected post. Oh wait - maybe a photo of Brando, just for good measure:

***Addition by Lou***

I love Easy Rider and think Peter Fonda is unspeakably sexy in it, so am adding this piccie:

Posted by Bel. The time is 11:06am here in Wellington, NZ.

As the US military continues its 'war on terror' on numerous fronts, resources are stretched and it has become increasing difficult to recruit and re-deploy soldiers in a battle that even middle America is realising may be costing more than it is worth.

One result of this is a slipping of standards. Official policy is that soldiers are not allowed to be members of racists groups, but this expose on Salon has a lengthy interview with a neo-Nazi who details his experiences, and many other examples. Internal reports have tracked the issue for years, but as a spokesperson for 'Iraq Veterans Against The War' states, "The military is attractive to white supremacists because the war itself is racist."

However, not all standards are slipping. The US military is sticking by its policy of firing anybody who dares to be openly gay. The most high profile example is that of Sargeant Darren Manzella, who served twice in Iraq (read more here and here at the Huffington Post for further dismissed soldiers and background on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy). As far as I am aware, if any other kind of company fired you because of your sexual preference, that would be TOTALLY ILLEGAL, but this is not the first time these guys have demonstrated they believe they are above the law.

This is the same army that George Bush pumped over $800 billion into with a final flurry. That's in US dollars, people.

The "base" defense budget, which excludes the expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has grown 40 percent since 2001 to an estimated $518.3 billion requested for fiscal year 2009. But this doesn't tell the whole story.
If you figure in other military expenditures, such as those incurred by the departments of Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and the numerous defense "supplemental" bills that the Bush administration has relied on to fund its foreign adventures, US defense spending stands at a staggering $863.7 billion.
This exceeds the collective annual defense spending of the world's militaries combined.

[Source: Mother Jones]

How much more is now going to be spent on law suits do you think? Oh well, only a fraction of a fraction I suppose.

Posted by Bel. The time is 11:42am here in Wellington, NZ.

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch