Category Archives: Books

Here’s ten books of recent vintage (2009-2010) that the Holy Bee found especially entertaining and/or informative this past year…

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Unlike the last noteworthy Washington bio, Joseph J. Ellis‘ brief 2004 His Excellency, Chernow’s work is not a cover-the-basics summary for the casual reader. (Not a criticism. That was the book’s purpose.) Chernow delves into amazingly rich detail, while never losing his grip on the forward momentum of the narrative flow. Interested in Washington’s famous dentures? Chernow provides lengthy paragraphs on not only the materials used in their construction (not wood, you simpletons), but how they affected Washington’s appearance and interactions, and deep background on his relationship with his dentists. (Washington was very ashamed of his dental deficiencies, and the letters to his dentists are in kind of a code language, to spare him embarrassment if his correspondence was ever made public.)

Chernow also sheds light on the difficult relationship between Washington and his battle-axe mother (who lived to see him become president, not that she seemed to care — she was more interested in hitting him up for money.) His somewhat lazy, shiftless step-son also caused him much worry, although it seems doubtful that any offspring could live up to his exacting standards. He never had biological children of his own. His marriage to rich widow Martha Custis, though a happy one, was made as more of a business arrangement, which was the custom of the time among 18th century landowners. Washington admitted privately to a friend that there wasn’t a lot of “fire between the sheets” (I’m paraphrasing, but not by much), but straying beyond his marriage would be unthinkable for someone of Washington’s level of self-control and sense of honor. Chernow believes there’s simply not enough evidence to confirm or refute the commonly held belief in G.W.’s infertility. A similar lack of evidence prevents Chernow from making any conclusions on Washington’s much-ballyhooed (in previous bios) youthful dalliance with his married neighbor Sally Fairfax — it seems the relationship was affectionate but chaste. [Anyone remember the ’84 CBS mini-series with Barry Bostwick as G.W.? In an otherwise even-handed telling of Washington’s life, former Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith (!) stuck out like a sore thumb, portraying Sally Fairfax as a panting, sex-starved seductress.] Whatever level on which his feminine relationships existed, Washington always preferred the company of women, where he felt he could be truly relaxed and less scrutinized.

Continue reading →

Happy New Year. Some Holy Bee New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Floss more regularly. Floss swords are awesome and make it much easier.
2. Watch more movies. From my peak of watching 5-6 movies a week, I’ve dwindled to about two a month. The last time I went to the theater was for Inglourious Basterds at the end of August. The Hangover, District 9, Paranormal Activity, and just about every other major 2009 release are all as yet unseen by me. (I did see Year One, so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.) My Netflix has fed me a steady diet of TV shows over the past year (House M.D., It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, How I Met Your Mother, many others). I r dum.
3. Read more fiction. See below.
4. Don’t be such a filthy alkie and quit taking drinks to bed. I shouldn’t pretend I’m going to “sit up & watch a DVD”. I will fall asleep almost instantly, wake up at 3:30 to the Family Guy DVD menu on a constant loop, and the drink will have gone to waste (not that it will stop me from taking a watery sip as I turn off the DVD player.) I probably set a record by breaking this resolution six minutes after the Times Square ball dropped. But I will do better. So to start the Holy Bee Year-End Round-Up, we’ll be taking a look at the books I’ve gone through this year, followed in a later entry by the Holy Bee Top 20 Albums of the Year. (No Movies of the Year entry for reasons described above.)

Now that I have a few years of adulthood under my belt, my mind is a little more disciplined (I wouldn’t say “mature”), and I feel the time is right to try again. Davis takes the reader through both books of the Bible, chapter by chapter, and explains the historical and political context of the writings. A good, basic introduction (or re-introduction) to an area of study I am going to try to make something of a priority over the next year or two.

4. Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America’s Most Famous Residence by John & Claire Whitcombe (2000)
A behind-the-scenes look at how the White House functioned as a home, rather than a symbol or seat of power. President by president, the Whitcombes take the readers through the routines and changes each occupant brought to the building.

5. Education of a Felon: A Memoir by Edward Bunker (2000)
I’ll quote myself from an earlier entry:  Another young L.A. thug-turned-writer is Edward Bunker. Bunker spent the late 1940s and 1950s in and out of juvenile hall and foster homes, or living on the streets. Bunker was unable to resist the easy money of drug-dealing and armed robbery, despite an off-the-chart IQ and a taste for Shakespeare and Dickens – which he had plenty of time to peruse once he started doing hard time in places like San Quentin and Folsom prisons. Bunker’s memoir, Education of a Felon, recounts his escapades, both as a criminal and his attempt at a “straight” job: working as an assistant and confidant for the mentally unstable wife of Paramount Pictures’ super-producer Hal B. Wallis. His descriptions of prison life make it sound not so bad for someone who follows the official and unofficial rules, at least until the race wars began in the late 1960s, and suddenly no one was safe. Upon his release in 1975 after almost two decades behind bars, he was already a published author — his autobiographical 1973 novel No Beast So Fierce was adapted into the 1978 film Straight Time, with Dustin Hoffman as the Bunker character. Bunker continued to write and also dabble in bit-part acting – culminating in his crowning achievement, at least as far as most people are concerned: his performance as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs.

6. Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers (2009)
A quadruple biography…of sorts. It almost entirely ignores the professional accomplishments of these distinguished performers in favor of anecdotes about their excessive boozing. Naturally, I loved it. Yes, its shallow and sensational, in a style more befitting a British tabloid than a serious examination of what drove these four men to such self-destructive behavior — but the book is totally unapologetic, just like it’s subjects. The author’s informal style extends to the use of Cockney rhyming slang (he would never say “phone” when he could say “dog and bone,” and “porky pies” repeatedly took the place of “lies”).

It also introduced me to the sublime-yet-humble, unpretentious, masculine, stolidly British cocktail: the gin-and-tonic. I had always had it in my head that I don’t like gin, but inspired by its frequent appearances in this book, I decided to give it another shot. I liked it so much that it’s currently my facebook profile picture. (And make sure it’s real tonic water with quinine, not club soda or that flat piss that comes out of the soda gun at your local bar.) Oliver Reed would have his mixed in a bucket with plenty of lemon slices, and simply dip his pint mug in it at frequent intervals. I prefer lime slices and the traditional collins glass, but who knows what the future holds?

7. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald (2003)
Despite Wald’s narcissistically academic, self-aggrandizing writing style (Hello, pot? This is kettle), this is a solid attempt to not only separate fact from myth in regards to the fabled Mississippi bluesman, but also a concise history of blues as a genre. In conjunction with some other material I’ve read on the topic (see the list below), a picture emerged of a style that was not necessarily an authentic expression of oppression and heartache emanating directly from the cotton fields, but rather a much more commercially-oriented case of giving an audience what they wanted.

The original itinerant blues performers of the 1920s and 30s considered themselves “songsters,” human jukeboxes, happy to play a paying audience whatever kind of song they wanted – minstrel tunes, Broadway show numbers, country, jazz, you name it. When white academic folklorists such as John Hammond and Alan Lomax, or “race record” label owners came calling to record these performers for posterity, it was the more hard-edged blues numbers they were interested in, and the performers were happy to oblige. In their well-meaning-but-still-slightly-condescending way, Lomax and his ilk considered this primitive style more “authentic.” It was, of course, brilliant stuff, and it sold, sending more talent scouts and folklorists out to juke joints and shantytowns for more blues artists, creating a situation that fed on itself. The “bluesmen”’s versatility was forgotten, as was the songster tradition. It was all twelve-bar, slide guitar, my-woman-done-left-me from then on. Not that I’m complaining.

8. When Giants Walked The Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin by Mick Wall
A solid bio that neatly balances musical & personal, and brings the story up to date as of the big reunion concert at the O2 Arena in December 2007, and the subsequent out-of-left-field success of Robert Plant’s collaboration with Allison Kraus that seems to have permanently scuppered the more lasting reunion that was within our grasp. The perfect book to replace that worn-out, well-thumbed copy of Hammer of the Gods that should be sitting on the bookshelf of anyone who loves the rock and roll. One small quibble: Frequent interludes where each band member’s backstory is told in their first-person “voice,” as imagined by the author. Kinda lame. One smaller quibble: Wall has a pretty shaky grasp of American culture and geography. But it’s probably better than the average American’s grasp of British culture and geography.

9. Last Words: A Memoir by George Carlin (2009)
The late George Carlin’s autobiography. (Although he detests that word – “only criminal business pricks and politicians write autobiographies.” He prefers the term sortabiography.) It is the influential comedian’s final project, pieced together by collaborator Tony Hendra (a British ex-pat known for his association with National Lampoon and his role as Spinal Tap’s manager Ian Faith) from hours of tape-recorded conversations spanning a decade. Carlin tells of being raised in New York City by a single mother, his days as a class clown (of course) and misfit Air Force enlisted man, the beginnings of his comedy career as a radio DJ and member of the nightclub comedy team Burns and Carlin, his 1960s fame as a middle-of-the-road comic appearing frequently on The Tonight Show and Ed Sullivan Show, and the 1970 epiphany that caused him to abandon his career in “safe” comedy and blaze a trail of goofy outrageousness, and at times seething anger. Throw in a bit of a love story, the usual show-biz “nightmare descent” into drugs and alcohol, rocky recovery from same, and a bittersweet ending (the material in the book was originally meant for a one-man Broadway show, New York City Boy, which he didn’t live to realize) and you have all the makings of a fitting last statement from one of the greatest comedic minds of all time.

10. Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King
My sole foray into fiction this year, these stories are some of King’s best work in over a decade (and includes one old story from the Shining/Stand era of 1977 that’s actually the weakest link here). I always tell myself I’m going to read more fiction, to go deeper into Charles Dickens’ oeuvre, to explore Flannery O’Connor and T. Coraghessen Boyle, and really try to get a feel for fictional storytelling. But every time I pick up a fiction book, it’s usually popcorn genre-type stuff, like Andy McNab’s British spy novels, the Godfather sequels, and Stephen King. And even that doesn’t happen too often. I re-read King’s It and Danse Macabre every few years (and I did so this past summer) — both amazing examinations of horror’s place in pop culture, one fiction, one non-fiction. (I actually read Moby Dick three years ago and I’m still patting myself on the back for it.)

Other Books Read in 2009:

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon – Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton

The Holy Bee’s Gin-and-Tonic Recipe

Quarter a small lime, and squeeze two quarters’ worth of juice into the bottom of a tall collins glass. (Toss in the two quartered lime pieces as well.) Fill to the brim with ice. Add 4 oz. of your favorite gin. Fill the rest of the glass with tonic water and enjoy. Save the other half of the lime for the second drink you will undoubtedly have. Cheers.