WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

1. What are you currently reading? No Judgments by Meg Cabot. Sabrina suffered a bad break up and wants to start a new life. So she changes her name (call her "Bree"), her hair (from blonde to pink), her job (she's waiting tables) and addresses (she's now in a tiny apartment in the Keys). Everything is going well, until a hurricane sets its sights on South Florida. Like many conchs, she decides not to evacuate but instead ride it out.

I like chick-lit and know the locale pretty well, having traveled to Key West regularly for decades, and so I'm enjoying this book well enough in a Hallmark movie kinda way. I mean, if you can't tell by page 5 to whom Bree will ultimately give her heart, you have never read this genre.

2. What did you recently finish reading? Cary Grant by Marc Elliot.I read a lot of biographies, and have seldom encountered a subject whose real self is so different from his public persona.

On screen he was suave, immaculate, and witty. Offscreen, he was insecure, petty, jealous and cheap. This, in large part, was due to his upbringing. Hardscrabble and devoid of emotional security, his childhood left indelible scars. Therefore, the man who brought joy to us for decades was really pretty joyless. Fortunately, by the end of this book, when he settles into relationships with both his mother Elsie and daughter Jennifer, he finally seemed happy. 

Which is not to say I enjoyed this book. It tells his story chronologically and, I'm assuming, accurately. But Mr. Elliot seems positively obsessed with proving Grant's homosexuality. And yet he doesn't. Probably because Grant was (again I'm assuming) a bisexual who really did love three wives and had many more relationships with women than with men. Definitely because Grant accepted his sexuality and was less interested with labeling himself than Elliot is with labeling him.

And even after 448 pages, the Reel Cary Grant has a greater hold on me than the Real Cary Grant. Audrey Hepburn still speaks for me:
 

3.  What will you read next? I've got a couple baseball biographies here -- one about Gehrig, the other about Ruth. I don't know which one I'll choose to take me into spring training.