Although I read Claire Tomalin’s biography of Jane Austen years ago and thought it was very good, I feel that historian Lucy Worsley’s book provides a more personal look at Austen with more detail about her everyday life. Although some references are drawn from Worsley’s knowledge of Georgian society, she doesn’t hesitate to draw inferences from Austen’s novels and letters. Further, I think she has a better sense than some biographers of when in Austen’s letters she is joking Worsley points out how important a settled home is in Austen’s fiction. Certainly, from the time of her father’s retir ..read more

I looked for a biography of Katherine Swynford after reading Anya Seton’s Katherine, a novel about her life. I had a suspicion that the story was greatly romanticized, and acclaimed biographer Alison Weir agrees with me. The bare bones of Katherine Swynford’s story are dramatic. Of undistinguished foreign parentage, Swynford was married to a low-ranking knight in the army of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and son of Edward III. John was the most wealthy and powerful noble of his time except for the King. Katherine was attached to the Duke’s household as sort of a governess for his child ..read more

TV host and comedian Mo Rocca loves obituaries and little factoids. So does my husband, so I bought him Mobituaries last Christmas. Then, after listening to the podcast, I decided to read it myself. Unfortunately for me, a good deal of the content of the book was in the podcast and in seemingly greater detail. Still, it’s a fun book to read and full of factoids. Rocca has written not just about the lives of people, some well-known, like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, some whose contributions are less known, like Elizabeth Jennings (the first black woman to refuse to leave a streetcar, 1 ..read more

Up until now, it has seemed to me that biographies fall into two categories: more academic works that are full of notes and citations and are sometimes turgid or too detailed or works meant primarily for the public that often list no backup material whatsoever and are sometimes sensational or even untruthful. Dostoevsky in Love makes an interesting compromise between the two. It is short at a couple hundred pages, it does include notes, and it somehow distills a sense of the true person that pages and pages of detail may not. Dostoevsky lived an interesting life and Christofi relates the even ..read more

I happened to read a comment that Sir Walter Scott had led a sad life, which made me realize that I knew nothing about him. So, I looked for a biography, but I might have done better to look for a used book. I was concentrating on not getting a print on demand book but ended up with one anyway. Boy, I hate those things. I wouldn’t necessarily call Scott’s life sad. He overcame childhood disease that sounds like polio and resulted in a withered, weakened leg. However, because of strenuous exercise, he became remarkably fit until the strains of later life. He was also crossed in love but overca ..read more

As a young adult in the late 60’s and 70’s, I did not have a high opinion of Lyndon Johnson. Although I was not political, like many people, I was against the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until I lived in Texas that I saw another side to Johnson, who was revered for, among other things, bringing electricity to rural Texas to ease the work of women. Doris Kearns Goodwin worked in the White House in the late 60’s, and when Johnson asked her to help him write his memoirs, she declined because she also was against the war. However, Johnson was a master of persuasion, and she finally agreed. The memoir ..read more

JFK is a biography that makes you feel you really understand John F. Kennedy despite it being the type of biography not necessarily aimed at mass consumption. Although it is eloquently and clearly written, it contains about 150 pages of notes and sources. It examines the first 39 years of Kennedy’s life in a balanced fashion, showing both strengths and faults, and is absorbingly interesting. It also tries to dispel some of the myths about Kennedy’s political career, showing, for example, that his interest in politics began long before his older brother’s death, in answer to the belief that he ..read more

My curiosity about this subject was piqued by seeing the movie starring Kiera Knightly. Predictably, the movie exaggerated the story of Georgiana’s home life and left out her role as a serious political negotiator. (Those scenes of her on the podium don’t really count.) For the Duchess of Devonshire was a complicated person, intelligent but too trusting, generous but also profligate, adored by most but not by her own husband, a savvy politician, a serious amateur scientist, an author who never published under her own name, and an important figure in 18th century social and political life whos ..read more

In the opening of The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan talks about his uneasiness with the narrow focus of his historical studies in school, to Europe and the countries affecting Europe. This struck a chord with me, because I remember discussing this with my father when I was in high school. “Why don’t we learn about China or Japan?” I remember asking, and I didn’t even think of Central Asia or the Middle East. So, The Silk Roads seemed as if it would be very interesting to me. Frankopan shows that while Europe was a backwater, the countries of Central Asia and the Middle East were vibrant with tr ..read more

I have a few disclaimers before I begin my review of this book. First, punk, progressive, and grunge rock are not genres I’ve listened to, so I am profoundly ignorant of Maynard James Keenan’s work, which is perhaps a handicap for my review. Second, the author, Sarah Jensen, is a friend and ex-housemate, with whom I’ve been out of touch until recently. My belated discovery that she had written this biography piqued my interest in reading it. Jensen follows Keenan from the time when he was a boy, leading a difficult life, to his present life as a musician, actor, comic performer, artist, winem ..read more