The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen

 Hello my lovely readers!

This was another library book....and this was another disappointment. Man, I'm really hitting out on all my library reads. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of college professors, the boys were best friends and keen competitors, and, when they both got into Yale University, seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite.

Michael blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. But all wasn’t as it seemed. One day, Jonathan received the Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Michael was still in the hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School, and still battling delusions when he decided to trade his halfway house for the top law school in the country. He not only managed to graduate, but after his extraordinary story was featured in The New York Times , sold a memoir for a large sum. Ron Howard bought film rights, completing the dream for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie. But then Michael, in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, stabbed Carrie to death with a kitchen knife and became a front-page story of an entirely different sort.

The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's brilliant and heartbreaking account of an American tragedy. It is a story about the bonds of family, friendship, and community; the promise of intellectual achievement; and the lure of utopian solutions.

The Survivors of the Clotilda by Hannah Durkin

Hello my lovely readers!

Oh boy, was this book a doozy. It wasn't about the subject, per se, but the question of should an author's race matter when writing about Black history, because I had some major issues with this book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history.

In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile—an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston—to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend—a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.

An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic past.

What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall

 Hello my lovely readers!

This was an audiobook exclusive. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft—writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island.

But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar…and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary.

As Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer’s crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest.

I Don't Think They Heard Me: Suicide Notes and Letters by the Renowned and Infamous by Brian Whitney

Hello my lovely readers!

This book came across my my "similar books" when I was about to purchase a separate book on death/dying. The topic seemed right up my alley, so I decided to give it a shot. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Sometimes people are ready to leave.

When they do, many write down their last thoughts in an attempt to gain understanding, revenge, or sympathy.

Others simply want to explain their actions.

What follows is a collection of suicide notes and letters written by authors, actors, artists, musicians, athletes, and murderers. Written by Aaron Hernandez, Jerry Kasinski, Hunter S, Thompson, Virginia Woolf, Kurt Cobain, O.J. Simpson, Charles Whitman, Sid Vicious, Ernest Hemingway, Jim Jones and many more.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting

Hello my lovely readers! Oh, this book and its controversy...let's get into it. 

SYNOPSIS
Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student. Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure. Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire.

199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die by Loren Rhoads

Hello my lovely readers! Two of my interests are combined into one book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

More than 3.5 million tourists flock to Paris's Père Lachaise cemetery each year. They are lured there, and to many cemeteries around the world, by a combination of natural beauty, ornate tombstones and crypts, notable residents, vivid history, and even wildlife. Many also visit Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting, or graveside in Oaxaca, Mexico to witness Day of the Dead fiestas. Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery has gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees that is one of the most popular draws of the city.

199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die features these unforgettable cemeteries, along with 196 more, seen in more than 300 photographs. In this bucket list of travel musts, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history and features that make each destination unique. Throughout will be profiles of famous people buried there, striking memorials by noted artists, and unusual elements, such as the hand carved wood grave markers in the Merry Cemetery in Romania.

Dinner with the President by Alex Prud'homme

Hello my lovely readers!

I am really surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The American presidents have been hosts to some of the most significant moments in our history over meals at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And during such occasions, our commanders-in-chief have understood the value of breaking bread with both friends and foes—Thomas Jefferson’s nation-building receptions in the new capital Washington, D.C.; Ulysses S. Grant’s state dinner for the king of Hawaii; Booker T. Washington’s groundbreaking supper with Teddy Roosevelt; Richard Nixon’s practiced use of chopsticks to pry open China; Jimmy Carter’s détente between Israel and Egypt at Camp David.

Here, Alex Prud’homme invites readers into the White House kitchen to reveal the sometimes curious tastes of twenty-six of America’s most influential presidents, how their meals were prepared and by whom, and the ways in which their food policies affected people around the world. As each president grew into his distinguished role, his personal tastes evolved White House menus over time—from simple eggs and black coffee for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and celebratory turtle soup after, to squirrel stew for Dwight Eisenhower, jelly beans and enchiladas for Ronald Reagan, and arugula for Barack Obama. What our leaders say about food touches on everything from our nation’s shifting diet and local politics to global trade, science, religion, war, class, gender, race, and so much more.