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. 

PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson by Anna Pasternak. Who was she, anyway? What's the big deal? I've heard about her all my life and yet I only know the bare bones of her story. 

I recently read a biography of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy which focused on what happens when a beloved man marries a woman the public doesn't approve of and I hear echoes here. Not to mention those other high-profile divorcees, Meghan Markle and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Then there's the bride the whole world approved of but who ended up miserable: Diana. 

But the woman who encouraged me to finally buckle down and read about Wallis was Elizabeth Taylor. They were friends, in part because Wallis was sympathetic to Taylor during her high-profile extramarital affair with Richard Burton. Liz was very loyal and continued to visit and correspond with the Duchess till the end of Wallis' life.

 
2. What did you recently finish reading?  Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. This is a re-read for me. If I hadn't lived through their saga, I don't know if I would have believed it. The jewels, the furs, the yachts! The gala premieres and the Oscar nominations! Everything was so over the top, including the public's appetite for more, more, more about them.

 

Before everyone had cameras on their phones, paparazzi were especially pernicious and the two women they honed their skills on were Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy. Their reign of terror reached its apex with the death of Princess Diana. One of the things I enjoyed about this book was how Taylor dealt with them. While Jackie got a court order to protect her privacy and Diana tried to manipulate them but failed, Liz just kinda sort rolled with it. Famous since the age of 12, she viewed the intrusion as an unfortunate part of her job. There's a bedrock sanity to Elizabeth despite the ridiculous excesses of her life and I admired her.

Also, Taylor and Burton were magic on film. That often gets lost and I also appreciated hearing about how classics like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Anne of the Thousand Days came to be.

 
3. What will you read next? I don't know.