Three Women

This one. This is going to be hard to describe. But, I just shared with the woman who recommended it to me that this book was "so fascinating and so uncomfortable and I couldn't stop reading it."

I should probably explain.

First, a shout out to the woman who told me I should read this book. Kristi is crazy smart, well-read and wonderful. Her dad is one of three on one of the most popular radio shows in Spokane and I'm lucky enough to have met Kristi through him. She asked if I wanted to borrow it, then dropped it off at my house. But, she didn't just leave it on the porch in a plastic bag, which is what I would have done. She put it in a cute bag, added a card and included a candle - because she said she thought I would appreciate reading a book with a new candle burning. Isn't that wonderful? It really has nothing to do with the book, but I just wanted to say we should all be a little more like Kristi.

Anyway.

This book is billed as a revolutionary, groundbreaking, unflinching look at the concept of female desire. Over centuries, female desire has been misunderstood and dismissive. The author of Three Women actually set out to write a book about male desire, only to discover it was female desire that deserved more thoughtful exploration.

So, she dove in.

Taddeo followed the stories of three women in various parts of the country with complicated levels of desire. One woman is in a sexless marriage in which her husband won't even kiss her on the mouth. She aches to be desired and thinks she's found it in an old high school boyfriend. Another is a young woman who, as a teenager, had a sexual relationship with her high school teacher. The last is a beautiful, chic, successful woman whose husband likes to bring others into their relationship and likes to watch her have sex with other men. The book ping pongs between their stories and you feel yourself rise and fall as their emotions become intertwined with the desire they chase.

Guys, it's a lot. At first, it felt like you were reading someone else's diary. As the book continues, though, you feel like you're reading things most people wouldn't write down, let alone be able to admit about themselves. It's cringe-worthy, heartbreaking, fascinating... But, it can be really frustrating, too, and really hard to read.

Even Oprah said this book was groundbreaking feminism. I found what I learned disappointing. Not that the book was disappointing - not at all. But, what I took away was that women followed their sexual desire, couldn't detach from the emotional connections and found themselves in ashes while the men with the same desires simply walked away. The teacher, in fact, was named North Dakota Teacher of the Year. I found that - the reality of how female desire is portrayed and received - incredibly disheartening.

I may take away something completely different than you would. I feel like this book, more than most, is colored by a thick layer of your own personal experience. I also think there's a hell of a lot more that needs to be de-stigmatized about the way women satisfy their sexual desires.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

It's weird to be critical of a book based on such an incredible story of love and survival.

It's weird to be critical of a book that moves so quickly, you finish it on a single Phoenix to Spokane flight.

I'm about to do both.

Let's get weird.

I've seen this book for awhile now and never picked it up. I read and studied a lot about the Holocaust in college - fiction writing and historical - and something has to really stand out now to get me back to it. But, I was about to board a plane without a book and needed something to pass the time. This looked compelling enough and it was in paperback, so what did I have to lose?

The novel is based on the true story of a man imprisoned at Birkeneau who takes a job as the man who tattoos numbers on new prisoners at nearby Auschwitz. The job feels like cooperation with the SS, but it's a way to survive and even be given some "perks" in a truly horrific place. While carrying out his job, he meets and falls in love with a fellow prisoner. The rest of the book is their story of survival and a story of how they found love in the midst of human tragedy.

Is it powerful? In story, yes. But, for me, the pages simply flew by. It's not that I'm insensitive or even immune to the horrors that took place. But, the writing simply lacked the depth a story like this deserves. I can't explain why, but it left me wanting more. More lessons. More insight. More... depth.

A Holocaust novel should not be a quick read. But, I was uplifted (spoiler alert - but, it's written on the back cover, too) by the fact that their love did survive the camps.

Men We Reaped

I grew up white, middle class, in a city/state/region of the country that doesn't carry the burden of the history of slavery.

Jesmyn Ward's life and DNA couldn't be more different.

If you've read any of her fiction, you know Ward has the sins of the American South deep in her bloodline. If you've taken the time to anyone like her, you know that history is nearly impossible to shake.

Ward's memoir lays in all bare: the hate, the fear, the weight... I could never truly know what it's like to grow up black in the South. With Ward's book, you can't - and, shouldn't - look away.

Her story is about the deaths of four young black men. Men she knew, men she loved, even her own brother. They die from violence and from circumstance - and, what they have in common is that their deaths feel inevitable. Ward intertwines the stories of their deaths with the story of her life. It's heartbreaking and heavy. The weight of that history makes a relatively short book feel like it will never end.

"The land the community park is built on... is designated to be used as burial sites so the graveyard can expand as we die," she writes. "One day our graves will swallow our playground. Where we live becomes where we sleep."

It's a book about the scourge of poverty and of being black and poor in the South. About the things we know about and the things no one pays enough attention to. The percentage of black men and women who receive care for mental health is half that of non-Hispanic whites. It's not that they don't experience it; they don't ask for help. And, it's killing them one generation after another.

Ward "escaped" that life in a way few others do. She went to California, went to Stanford, got an education and a glimpse of life away. But, the history of the men she lost and the responsibility to those still there was stronger. She now lives back in Mississippi and writes about it so that maybe the rest of us - even those of us in the opposite corner of the country/spectrum/circumstance - might understand and finally bring about real change.

A Gentleman in Moscow

I totally got it. Then, I didn't. Then, I kind of did at the end.

By "it" I mean I totally get why really brilliant people like Bill and Melinda Gates speak so highly of this book. But, a couple hundred pages in, I didn't get what the hype was about and I desperately wanted this book to end. When it finally did, I thought, "Oh, wow. That's really something."

This is a terribly explained review so far.

Let me elaborate.

A Gentleman in Moscow is about an aristocratic man who collides with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. He angers the leaders of this new way of life and while his life is spared, he is placed under house arrest in a Moscow hotel for the rest of his life. In a story that spans 30 years and even more lifetimes, we see how he shrinks his life into the walls around him. You sense not frustration, but hope, despite the world passing by outside his windows.

Early on, Count Alexander Rostov meets a young girl in the lobby of the hotel. Their sudden and unlikely friendship changes the course of both of their lives forever.

This book is beautifully, eloquently written. It's sad at times, but mostly hopeful. And Count Rostov is simply a lovely character.

But, y'all, it's SO BORING.

The first 200+ pages could be shrunk down to 100 or less and I swear that's just not the impatient TV journalist in me. There's so much unnecessary background and detail. Still, the writing and the characters were too good to let go of. It wasn't really until the last 30 pages or so that I realized I would really enjoy the fact that I read this book -- but, the satisfaction wouldn't come for me until after it was over.

There's No Crying in Newsrooms

Let me start off by saying the title of this book is a misnomer of sorts. I've worked in TV newsrooms for more than 20 years. There's a LOT of crying. We cry out of frustration, we cry out of anger, we cry when we've worked a 16-hour day and we can't open the lid on our juice (that literally happened to me in early July on the day we launched our new set!) We cry, too, because some stories are really, really hard to cover. I once stood on the side of the road and looked at body bags covering five children who were killed in a car accident. I've cried on my way to stories and on my way home - and, I've cried years later thinking of lives lost or powerfully touching moments.

This job - this field - brings with it a lot of tears.

But, generally speaking - as women - we're told not to cry at work. And, the women in this book have heard their share of instructions like that. Instructions about how to behave less like women in order to advance.

You don't have to be a journalist to get something from this book. But, as a woman who works in a newsroom - and, tries to lead one - this book was like manna from heaven. I should carry it around and have certain passages ready to go.

The women who wrote this book have been news leaders. They also interviewed many other women who either work in the field now or who helped pave the way for those of us who do. They tell stories of breaking barriers to be the first women in their positions and also about the no-in trade-off of being a news manager AND a mom. What ends up on the page is a mix of inspiration, advice, commonality and solace.

If you're a woman still working in the trenches, you'll be grateful for those who went before us. You'll be grateful for women like badass NPR reporter Nina Totenberg who once sat at a dinner in the Clinton White House next to a public official who reached over and put his hand on her leg. Her response: "What was I going to do? So I held his hand for the whole dinner. I ate with one hand. My theory was the hand couldn't move if I held it."

Thank you, Me Too movement, for moving us ever-so-slightly beyond that.

I marked passages in this book as I read, and earmarked pages. Then, I realized I wanted to earmark the whole damn thing. To remind myself why I'm often perceived the way that I am; that men are allowed to be tough, demanding, confident, etc. and that women are supposed to be soft and sweet. I'm grateful for the women who have said "Hell no." And, blazed a trail in high heels for the rest of us.

I'm grateful, too, for stories of how having women leaders changed the way news stories were covered. Newsrooms with women leaders brought forth more thoughtful coverage about community issues and brought a much-needed different perspective to the news of the day. It reaffirmed the way I'm trying to lead my newsroom and the coverage I'd like to see that I don't see enough of overall.

I loved, too, the stories of working news moms trying to balance the demands of life and home. I'm so grateful to know that I'm not the only one. And that it's OKAY to say "I love my job and I love my career and I wouldn't be as fulfilled if I was a stay-at-home mom." I just had a conversation with a friend who is also a news boss and feels that familiar twinge of guilt because she loves walking out the door to go to work in the morning.

I have gushed enough, right? You get it. This book was exactly what I need at this point in my career. Every woman who manages, has managed or wants to manage a newsroom should read it.

And, we should all strap on the heels and get to work to write the next chapter.

The Alchemy of Noise

Back in my college days, we called it "open to close." You go to the bar when it opens and drink all day until it's over. This is a bad analogy, but that's what came to mind yesterday when I realized I was going to read this book in one day. I simply could not put it down.

To be fair, I did put it down briefly. I went to the gym, took a shower, did some laundry, made dinner... But, for the most part, my entire rainy Sunday was spent with this book attached to my hand. I fell so deeply into the characters right away, I had to know what happened to them, even as I felt them careening towards disaster.

The book is about a white woman named Sidonie who hires, then begins dating, a black man to work at her nightclub. Somehow, the chemistry between these two jumps off the pages and you find yourself building with anticipation for when they finally end up together. From the beginning, there are cultural issues that turn both of their worlds upside down. She's with him when he's randomly pulled over by police. She can't understand why he's not outraged at the unfairness of it all. When she shares their relationship with people she loves, she finds out their racial biases that she never knew existed. All along, you root for them. Then, a violent arrest and a legal case tests whether this relationship can overcome the cultural differences.

At times, it had a Romeo and Juliet vibe. At times, it felt like cliche. But, cliches exist for a reason. Overall, it just worked. The writing was clean, the story was straightforward and the characters were real enough that you really rooted for them. And, I think it shines a light on the biases we all have about relationships, culture, bias, policing and prejudice - whether we want to acknowledge them or not. 

Any book that you can start at 9 am and finish at 10 pm begs to be celebrated. Open to close. 

The Castle on Sunset

I had high hopes for Hollywood gossip, my friends.

I'm just enough of a "news about celebrities" nerd that I thought an in-depth story about the history of one of its most famous haunts would keep me interested.

Alas, dear readers, it did not.

It's not that the story of the Chateau Marmont is not compelling. I mean, Lindsay Lohan used to party there and Belushi died there, for crying out loud. The problem is the book was actually too thorough for my liking. The painstaking detail about everyone ever involved might be interesting for others, but for me, I was just trying to get to the "good parts."

I commend the research the author did. But, I found myself skimming just to get through it.