Recent Reads

It's been a good week for reading. Well, reading something besides Better Homes and Gardens. I explained to Lindsay that the magazine drove me up the wall, and she suggested I find a similar magazine that wouldn't irritate me, so I could enjoy it. I replied, "But that's part of why I enjoy it, being irritated at it." A few fuses blew in Lindsay's mind while I went back to reading an article that informed me, "The couple leaped at the chance to buy the 1700-square-foot house, even though they knew it would involve shoring up the foundation, tearing out walls, and renovating the kitchen." And this article is helpful because everybody has the know-how and resources to buy a house that has foundation and inner wall problems.

But, on to real reads. In the past two weeks, I read books that:

* Charmed me
* Entertained me
* Confirmed a long-held belief

The charming book was one Darren found at the bookstore: What Happy Couples Do by Carol J. Bruess and Anna D.H. Kudak (Anna needs to shorten her author name). I skipped all the PhD commentary: I just read the parts where couples told about some of their silly, funny, or rather odd couple-things they do to keep them united in their marriage. The rituals range from picking a flower every day to eating supper naked to calling each other funny names. It's a warm-and-fuzzy read, because you put it down thinking, "Ah. Marriage. It's so fun to be Two in One!" (There are too many small people in our house for us to try the supper thing, by the way.)

The entertaining book was one Stuart found at the library: Abracadabra to Zombie. (He thought he'd like it because it had zombie in the title.) It's a book on word origins, which I always enjoy. This one has well-written, concise commentary, which makes it even more readable. Opening it at random, I find: "Geek: In the 15th and 16th centuries, a geek was a carnival performer of weird, sick acts, such as biting off the heads of live chickens. Today, the word is used as a derogatory term to describe someone who just doesn't fit in." There's a whole section on car names ("Toyota" was actually designed by someone named Toyoda, but "Toyota" used only eight characters instead of ten, and eight is considered a lucky number in Japan.) and a whole section on how states got their names (Idaho is a completely made-up word.) Me and the book spent many happy hours.

The last book reaffirmed my suspicion that I don't wish for myself, or anyone I even remotely like, the curse of celebrity. It was Not the Girl Next Door by Caroline Chandler, and was a "personal biography" of Joan Crawford. The "personal" part is because most of the book is taken from interviews with Crawford and others who knew her.

I'm fascinated by biographies about Hollywood's Golden Age, in the same way that I sit and look through picture after picture of hurricane devastation. Crawford was a huge star in her time (20s-50s), but she's mostly known now as the horrible mother in her adopted daughter's book (and subsequent movie) Mommie Dearest. Despite four marriages, she never had any children of her own, so she adopted four of them -- a bold move for a single woman at the time. She did it merely to gratify her own desires, however: even her own words about them indicate that she saw them as glorified pets, children who owed her gratitude and love because she'd taken them in and given them a life of luxury.

A contest in a fan magazine decided on Joan Crawford as her M-G-M star name. She spent her entire life playing the part of Joan Crawford, and never really seemed to know who she was without approval and applause. But, then, very few of the stars in Hollywood's Golden Age were very happy... and very few of them nowadays are, either. Which reminds me why I so like having an ordinary life.

-- SJ