Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

Old Blue Eyes himself – very up close and personal. I never knew much about Frank Sinatra but you always hear about him, you actually hear him in every elevator; he plays a melodic part in almost every romance movie. This is a spoilt, lazy boy from Hoboken, NJ who became a cultural phenomenon that changed the way music was experienced and how fans interacted with their icons (The Beatles could probably blame/thank Frank for starting the crazy idolization by fans thing).

Frank started out as a do nothing brat with an overbearing mother (he told Shirley MacClaine “she scared the shit outta me. Never knew what she’d hate that I’d do”) and a pretty quiet father. He bought his way into his early bands in true Draco Malfoy fashion but was never satisfied and was always convinced he deserved more, he WOULD be the best. I never knew that he had several slump years where people were pretty much writing him off – he couldn’t get a gig, couldn’t get a real part in a movie, couldn’t manage his personal life – Frank wasn’t the cool cat we think of for many years.

The parts on his personal life (it does go in to his mob connections but not very deep) were positively insane – what he put his first wife through (though it does sound like she got him in the end) and then his relationship with Ava Gardner – wowza, talk about textbook crazy pants – all of that combined is such an interesting look at a classic narcissist.

My one complaint about the book is despite how very long it is, it stops when he is in his late 30s – right as he won his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He lived for 50 more years! Was he a watered down version of his footloose and fancy free self that last half of a century that the author didn’t want to bother or is there sequel coming out?

I completely recommend – it was such an all-encompassing, real portrait of someone who is a part of all of our lives just about every day! Warning though, I couldn’t get his songs out of my head the whole time I was reading it and still have “That Lady is a Tramp” in my head just about every other day!

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This was such an unexpectedly fascinating book (I guess I will actually read anything, even if I have no idea what its about!). The whole premise of the book is to look at the “Great Migration,” of blacks from the south to northern cities from the period of Reconstruction through the 1970s and the social/cultural/economic affect that has had on their families and their adopted cities.

The author conducted 1,200 interviews and focused primarily on three stories (she appeared to be very closely involved with these three people – with one of them when he died sort of thing) but the story is populated with corroborating stories and examples of particular experiences from all of her interviews.

What I thought was really interesting was the big emphasis the author put on making the choice to leave. Some people stayed behind with the thought “better the devil you know,” and some just knew their situations couldn’t be borne any longer, not if there was hope for basic survival elsewhere or god-forbid, a chance to flourish.

It is also an interesting to concept to suppose things had been different – what if a more sensitive approach had been taken during Reconstruction, what if the southerners hadn’t felt so desperate to clamp the Jim Crow laws down? What if no one had felt the need to leave? Is that even feasible? All things considered it certainly doesn’t sound so but what if things had been different? What would northern cities be like, hell what would the south be like? Would we all be the same we are now without this huge cultural revolution? How would we be different? Would there be less strife between races or is strife always a foregone conclusion?

I know all of history is this way but it’s such a crazy thought to think that decisions that were made 140 years ago have had such lasting ramifications on people’s daily lives.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Okay, call me a modern day Pollyanna but if I was going to adopt a religion, I think it would be "The Happiness Project." I came across it in a magazine and downloaded the sample on my Kindle just before Christmas because I thought it would be nice to start the new year off on a happy note - I was thinking it would be primarily a beach read. Instead, I found a whole new way to look at life EVERYDAY!

Gretchen Rubin is a writer who lives in the UES of New York and decided one day that while she was not fundamentally unhappy, she could stand to have more happiness in her day-to-day life. She set a goal to make herself happier over the course of a year and broke each month down into overall goals with specific strategies applied to each month (e.g.: March: Work on Marriage - Do a week of "Extreme Nice", etc). It was a very formulaic approach, which I appreciated because sometime when people say "I'm going to get happier" they go about it by "learning to see the beauty in things," or "stopping to smell the roses," yack. Gretchen takes a real life approach to this concept and God love her, she has her short-comings but she is very candid when sharing them - this girl has a temper and I must say I totally identified with her on most of her self-professed faults.

What I really loved were some of the conclusions she came to - she realized that by making herself happier she was really making others around her happier/calmer and their happiness made her happy (see where the Pollyanna thing comes in).

Having a good attitude / being nice are such fundamental, basic things that I've noticed so often gets overlooked or pushed to the side (especially in NYC). Sometimes you don't have the time to think of others or you dislike them and you don't have the inclination or sometimes it really doesn't occur to you. Taking a step back and thinking of how your actions affect those around is an absolutely fascinating project that I have been doing these past few weeks. Just looking at my attitude and how when I put on a happy face, others do too and we all have a better day - WOW, BREAKTHROUGH.

I can't wait to read this book again and if it wouldn't make me feel like a missionary, I would probably send gift wrapped copies to everyone I know so they can join the bandwagon.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I picked up this book because I had read The Summer Guest by the same author and enjoyed it. (FYI, Cronin teaches English at Rice University in Houston.) Warning for those who also read The Summer Guest - this book is nothing like it, hard to believe the same author wrote both! That said, once I got into the book I couldn't put it down even though at 750 pages in hardback it was very difficult to read in bed.
The Passage is a futuristic, end-of-the-world/human-race type book about VAMPIRES but these are not the kind of vampires made popular in current mass media, there is nothing remotely romantic about them. A bioengineering experiment designed to cure cancer and prolong human life goes bad and creates vampires (called virals in the book) instead. The human race is wiped out except for a few pockets of survivors who don't know about each other. Most of the story takes place a little more than 100 years from today.
This is not the type of book that I usually select but it is well written with good character development and enough action to keep you reading.

Everything but the Coffee by Bryant Simon

"Learning about America from Starbucks" - Simon, a professor at Temple University, analyzes the meteoric rise and rapid decline of Starbucks, what it says about the American consumer and culture, and the reality behind the corporate myths created and promoted by the company. Although I never was a regular customer of Starbucks, I did consider it a treat to buy a skinny mocha latte on occasion. After reading this book, I will think twice before spending the money (and consuming the calories) on products that we have been led to believe help make the world a better place by saving the environment and supporting independent farmers in third-world countries. Starbucks means well but it is all about corporate profit, not about helping anyone but the owners or stockholders. Interesting read, a little too academic at times but certainly worth the time.

FYI, I didn't say I would NEVER buy another Starbucks beverage (I am rather fond of their chocolate banana vivanno) but I will be a better informed consumer and may opt to purchase from a locally-owned company (CC's Coffee House) instead.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

I just finished reading the latest book by the author of The Girl With One Pearl Earring (one of my favorite books even though NOTHING happens!). Remarkable Creatures is about Mary Anning, the woman who discovered the first dinosaur fossil in England in the early 1800s, creating a major impact in the areas of science and religion. Because she is a woman and a member of the working class she is not initially given recognition for her discovery. Lord Henley, the local gentry who buys Mary's "crocodile", actually says, "Mary Anning is a worker...a female. She is a spare part." when confronted about taking credit for her discovery. Hard for us to understand today, but at that time women truly were treated as second-class citizens.
One of the things that I really liked about this book, was the different "voices" that Chevalier uses for the two women, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpott. Because she uses different conversational styles and word choices based on their social and educational backgrounds, the reader never has any difficulty knowing which of the women is telling each part of the story.
Chevalier is a master of creating stories around historical information (see also The Lady and the Unicorn, another great book). She brings her characters to life and, at the same time, shares information that you didn't learn in school.

Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen

This is the first book Anna Quindlen (author of Blessings) wrote. It's about an Irish Italian family and is set in a suburb of New York City in the 1960's. The story is told from the perspective of several family members, but primarily Maggie Scanlan. The story takes place the summer Maggie is 12 and is about the year, actually the summer, everything changed. Chief among those changes is that her grandfather John Scanlan, who rules the entire Scanlan clan through manipulation and sheer force of will has a stroke. Maggie's father, Tommy, is the only one of John Scanlan's children to openly defy his father by marrying an Italian woman and living in a home he chose and pays for himself, unlike his siblings who live in homes selected (and sometimes paid for) by their father.

Over the course of the summer, a series of events cause Maggie and her lifelong best friend Debbie to drift apart. Maggie's mother, Connie, discovers that she's pregnant with her fifth child! Connie reconnects with an old high school friend, Joey, who is overseeing construction of a new subdivision in the area. When he discovers she can't drive, Joey offers to teach her. Meanwhile John Scanlan hands Tommy the key to the new home he's bought for Tommy and his family.

Quindlen does a good job of depicting the 60's, including the social standards of the time, and the cultural setting of the strong Irish Catholic family. The one thing I find a bit irritating about her writing style is that she'll be in a particular scene, then she segues into a reminscence by one of the characters about something that happened to the point that when she goes back to the original scene, you've forgotten when and where you were. (This was her first book, so perhaps she got better at this over time.)

Overall this was an enjoyable read with fairly satisfying resolutions for most of the characters, sometimes surprising in the case of Maggie's grandmother Scanlan, sometimes comeuppance for her bitchy cousin Monica.