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? Muzzled by David Rosenfelt. A boating accident in the usually lazy waters off New Jersey was ruled a triple homicide. It got extensive press coverage and Andy Carpenter was aware of the case. Which is why he was startled when one of the victims shows up at his animal rescue, looking for his dog. Andy's not used to reuniting pets and dead people.

 

I enjoy these books because Andy is sports loving smartass with a heart of gold. He may have an imaginative and talented legal mind but he displays what I feel is an admirable lack of physical courage. Most of all, he loves dogs.

 

I just hope this book is a bit more straightforward than others in the series have been. Lately Andy has been sucked into complex cases revolving around drug cartels and international assassination plots. While I'm sure these things do happen, I'm aware that most crimes (murder, included) are much more mundane affairs, more domestic in nature. I'd be so happy if this case ends up being about about garden variety lust and greed. 

2. What did you recently finish reading? The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington's Most Private First Lady by Heath Hardage Lee. Oh, this book! I am glad I read it because I learned a great deal about Pat Nixon, but I would be reluctant to recommend it. Heath Hardage Lee is a good storyteller, but she is not careful about letting us know which are her opinions and which are Mrs. Nixon's.

Throughout the book there are comparisons of how Pat and Jackie Kennedy performed their roles as Senate wife and First Lady. Pat always comes out better. The author ignores that Jackie was pregnant five times during her 10-year marriage. As a Senate wife, she suffered first a miscarriage and then a still birth, she was pregnant during the Presidential campaign with JFK Jr., who was born five weeks prematurely via emergency C-section, and she gave birth to a baby boy as First Lady. You may not have heard much about John and Caroline's baby brother because he lived only two days. As a historian, Ms. Hardage Lee knew all this. She just glossed over all that blood and pain and heartache to present Pat Nixon as the better political wife who kept a busier schedule yet never enjoyed Jackie's fawning, glowing press.

Now I wonder, was Pat Nixon consumed with Jackie jealousy, or was this rivalry something created by Hardage Lee? And don't you think Jackie would have preferred Pat's easier pregnancies and healthy babies to positive press clippings?

Similarly, Hardage Lee downplays Nixon's role in Watergate. The President is portrayed as a swell guy who trusted the wrong people. That is simply not true. I wonder, did Pat Nixon feel that way, or did she come to the uncomfortable conclusion the rest of the nation and historians have? 

Pat Nixon suffered her first stroke after the world watched her leave the White House in disgrace. She was 64 years old and had been a heavy smoker for nearly 50 years. Yet Hardage Lee blames the stroke on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for portraying her as a recluse who liked her bourbon in their book The Final Days. Apparently a skit on SNL based on the book disturbed her, too. After all she'd been through, I find it hard to believe this was all that shocking to her. Over the next 20 years she would go on to battle oral cancer, emphysema and lung cancer. I'm sorry The Final Days upset her, but I think we can assume tobacco and the stress of being the only First Lady to lose her home to looming impeachment were more detrimental to her health.

So while the book is filled with a lot of wonderful and new-to-me information that gave me a more dimensional portrait of a First Lady I grew up with, the context is screwy and I'm not sure I would recommend it to someone who doesn't understand our history between 1950 and 1980. 

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