Reading Update

Continuing with my commitment to include my books read here for my own later use and your entertainment---

"Partners in Power The Clintons and Their America" by Roger Morris. I picked this up at a library book sale somewhere on our travels last year and just got around to it. Published in 1996 I don't know how I overlooked this for so many years. A great read! Just the kind of reading I enjoy--politics, history and true life stories. Lots of information, mostly known now about Bill & Hillary Clinton and their rise to power from early times in Arkansas. Talk about some shenanigans! They pulled it all off! Bill's philanderings are almost described as acceptable and surely expected because of the very broken family life he had. Although Bill Clinton avoids alcoholic beverages fearing alcoholism as his father and step father suffered, there is speculation if his indulgence with cocaine. Interesting that Bill Clinton's rise was absolutely with the backing and support of Hillary. The book has chapters on each of their lives and families preceding their move to higher education. I laughed out loud at Hillary's punching a neighbor boy, bloodying his nose and winning the fight growing up. She is a ruthless woman! Bill Clinton's Rhodes scholarship was a breezy sleaze and reading this removed my respect for the mystique of a Rhodes scholar. Bill's easy ability to lie is well documented and why we can remember him as Slick Willy. Hillary's snobbish sense of entitlement is well known now too but reading Morris' description of her career as an attorney, the entwinement with the McDougals, her striking it rich on marginal investment and her makeovers is intriguing. This book covers in depth, their rise to power, which again makes me contemplate how in the world do we elect people in this country? It also has a fascinating history of political changes, turmoil and background including the growth and overtaking of Congress and DC by lobbyists. I have not read any other of Roger Morris work, but would in a minute. I don't believe he has written after this book at least I've not found later works on Google. This is a keeper in my library, political and history.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I read this book in two nights. Written about her journey in life processing grief the year following the death of her husband and the near death of her daughter, Joan has written with translucent honesty. I could so relate to may of her feelings. It was a timely read for me. It was a book I'd wondered about before and likely dismissed as too morose or too down, but with Steve's death I wanted to read this. "People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces.......These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible.. " That sure struck with me. Lots of truth in here and not answers but just one remarkable story of moving through grief and moving on in life. "Time is the school in which we learn." attributed to Delmore Schwartz leads into the discussion of cognitive deficits which can be associated with grief as well as stress. Fascinating. "I know why we try to keep the dead alive. We keep them alive in order to keep them with us." Yes, I know that, but further she writes, "..we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead....Knowing this does not make it any easier."

I am now reading "The Shack" and will tell about it when I'm done which should be very soon. I would almost give up working outside to finishing this book about a man's journey to/with/near/around God and his coping with his Great Sadness after his daughter is abducted. I did not know this was such a heart rending religious book when I picked it up. More to come on it--it will be a keeper.