Hope you are all enjoying this lovely winter month, and please read on to see what I have read this month.
The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
Few memoirs have received as much critical acclaim as Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club. A recollection of her childhood, it is a tough, lewd, sad story that leaves one wondering if something good can come of even the most difficult situations.
Summary: The Liars’ Club is meant to detail young Karr’s unconventional and sometimes horrific upbringing in swampy Leechfield, Texas (and later in Colorado), with her sister Lecia, her unstable mother Charlie, and her short-tempered father Pete. That’s why it seems out of place when, in the last few chapters, the book skips ahead nearly twenty years to when Karr is a young woman and her father is dying. It’s clear these chapters are important as they reveal, finally, the mother’s secret past, but they don’t flow well and seem out of place with the rest of the story.
How much do you remember from the time you were nine years old? More than likely, those memories include a few lucid moments, lots of imagery and some emotion, but not much else. However, if we are to believe Karr, she can recall word-for-word conversations along with vulgar details from her early childhood.
If you can skip over the feelings of embellishment and disbelief while reading Karr’s book, The Liars’ Club is a bit immersing.
Undelivered The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum
“For almost every delivered speech, there exists an undelivered opposite. These "second speeches" provide alternative histories of what could have been if not for schedule changes, changes of heart, or momentous turns of events.”
This book, a gift to me from my daughter (the daughter), Undelivered is a fascinating insight into notable speeches that were never delivered. A presidential speech writer himself, author Jeff Nussbaum artfully examines the content of these speeches and the context of the historic moments that almost came to be.
Undelivered details the most notable speeches the public never heard, from Dwight Eisenhower’s apology for a D-Day failure to Richard Nixon’s refusal to resign the presidency, and even Hillary Clinton’s acceptance for a 2016 victory—the latter never seen until now.
A delicious combination of history and words, for me, it doesn’t get much better.