My July book reviews on 101.9 ChaiFM

Howzit.

So today I was interviewed by the lovely Niki Seberini on the ChaiFM Books Show.

My review choices were eclectic: one kiddie book, one non-fiction moms' handbook, one behind-the-scenes, one memoir and one crime fiction novel.

And of the five, I loved two and liked three.

Here they come...

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Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood (Scotty Bowers)

Disclaimer: I have developed, recently, quite a passion for salacious non-fiction; among them, the memoirs of porn stars, pick-up artists, weirdo rock stars and dysfunctional politicians. This review refers to the book that started it all.

This is the juicy, filthy memoir of a Hollywood ‘fixer’. Scotty Bowers, now 88, was a Marine paratrooper, petrol pump attendant and bartender who carved a bizarre niche for himself during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

For six decades he claims to have arranged or participated in the sordid trysts of some of the biggest names: Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Edith Piaf, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Tennessee Williams, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, J Edgar Hoover and even the Duke of Windsor and ‘Wally’.

Although fascinating, Full Service isn’t an easy book to read, for several reasons.

Chief among them is the reader’s growing skepticism about the book's veracity, especially because almost so many of the celebs Bowers mentions are long dead and unable to refute his accounts of their peccadilloes. (Interestingly, Gore Vidal, who is apparently an old friend, vouches for Bowers’ authenticity on the cover.)

The prose is also what we call ‘purple’: so extravagant or flowery as to draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sexually suggestive beyond the requirements of its context.

This could be why critics have been skeptical. “This is offensive gibberish,” said The Daily Mail. “If you take it as a novel, however, rather than non-fiction, it is weirdly impressive.” Yes, there’s another way to look at the book, which reads like a historical document – the Kinsey report, if you will, on the sex lives of the rich and famous. (Bowers claims to have helped Alfred Kinsey research his famous book.)

The only endearing aspect of Full Service is the author’s astonishing tolerance for the weirdness of human passions. Nothing shocks him. He will describe some outrageous preference; then say how charming the person was who held it.

If you're looking for a morality tale where Bowers eventually realises the error of his ways, this isn’t it (Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love like a Porn Star is – read that instead). But if you're looking for an unvarnished account of the shenanigans of 1950s Hollywood – and you like a good trashy read – Full Service will enthrall you.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za 

How to Get Quoted in the Media (Damaria Senne)

I seldom agree to review e-books. 

First, I’m skeptical of writers who opt not to publish ‘real’ books.

Second, they’re so often the province of people who aren’t experts and should not have published anything at all, except maybe a long-ish blog post.

But I am pleased that I ignored my own biases and read this little gem. And by little, I mean little. It’s an easy, quick, interesting read, at 38 pages.

Here’s more:

1.     This topic is ideal for e-publishing. In fact, I’d be less skeptical about e-publishing in general if more e-books were like this: short, clear, inexpensive and accessible to those outside of the industry.

2.     How to get quoted in the media does what the title suggests: it gives businesses, brands and organisations insights into how to get, and then maintain, media coverage.

3.     It’s intelligently structured, with short sections that speak to specific issues, like preparing for interviews in person and on TV, radio, email, etc.

4.     It covers some critical and often-overlooked ground, like ensuring that you have, or can present, a ‘So What?’, i.e. a real benefit to the market, the population, the industry, etc. (If you can’t, don’t send the release. It’ll annoy the editor, who’ll mark your email address as Junk for next time.)

5.     I appreciate the emphasis that there should always be various versions of a release, differently slanted for different audiences and journalists.

6.     About half-way through, I was getting itchy at the absence of a mention of free media monitoring services, like Google Alerts, and…there it was!

I have only two (small) reservations about How to get quoted in the media:

1.     I’d have liked to see a short section on when to out-source press release and communique writing to the relevant professionals, and when doing so is unnecessary.

2.     There are a few typos in the text, and a couple of formatting inconsistencies. Now, in a print book, this would be unacceptable, but in an e-book (especially one in its early iterations) it’s easily fixable. Having said that, I’d have liked to see a more gimlet editorial eye from authors who themselves are communicators.

My closing advice? Get a copy. It’s a must-read for anyone with a business, brand or cause that requires media exposure.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Rhoda Janzen)

I love books about cults. The more polygamous marriages, multiple children, bizarre religious practices and outlandish views, the better. I also love novels set in the Amish community, the Mormon community and the Quaker community because, as a Jew, I find insights into little-known or oft-misunderstood religions fascinating.

It’s strange, then, that in my literary travels, I’d never come across Mennonites.

They’re a devout but very friendly and unusually tolerant (of non-Mennonites, that is) sect of Christian Anabaptist denomination, with their origins in German and Dutch-speaking central Europe. It’s from the Mennonites that the Amish broke away in the 17th century because the former were ‘too liberal’. I mean, have you ever?

But this little write-up makes them sound very boring, when they’re quite divine. The book in question, Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, reveals the eccentricities, naiveties and family foibles with which the author is faced when she moves back home after having been abandoned by her suddenly-gay husband.

Her people welcome her back with open arms and weird advice, like “Why not date your first cousin? He owns a tractor!” This, from Janzen’s mother. Her father is a theologian and doyen of the community, so Janzen grew up in a traditional household. Most things were banned, she explains, like "Drinking, dancing, smoking, sex outside of marriage, sex inside of marriage, gambling, playing cards, foul language like the word 'fool', Ouija boards, slumber parties, divorce, Prada…”

Written with self-effacing, delicious humour – and tackling universal issues like faith, love and family, Mennonite is both moving and absolutely hilarious. I adored it. 

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

My May radio reviews on 101.9 ChaiFM

So May was my Non-Fiction Period. Like Picasso's Blue.

But smaller.

For some reason, I couldn't seem to pick up anything that wasn't a memoir, a behind-the-scenes or a biography.

And I loved every minute of it.

So my third book review show on ChaiFM was dedicated to three non-fiction delights:

• Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
• How to Get Quoted in the Media by Damaria Seine
• Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood by Scotty Bowers, Lionel Friedberg

Having lapped up non-fiction-ish May, I made a list of some biographical want-to-reads:

• Growing Up Amish (Ira Wagler)
• Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (J Randy Taraborrelli)
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (Marilyn Manson)
• The Game (Neil Strauss): read it, loved it, couldn't stop thinking about it

Look out for a coming summary of June's reviews, and listen in on Tuesdays from 11-11.30am.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Your Sensory Baby (Megan Faure)

Available at all good bookstores and from Penguin Books South Africa. 

So, like all new moms, I have a copy of Baby Sense. 

I’ve read some of it. Like most moms-to-be, I intended to read all of it, but then my baby arrived and my reading ground to a screeching halt. And like several moms, I’m convinced that Baby Sense is part utter genius and part stuff that I’m simply too lazy to try. (Eep! Honesty!)

I do know which page the Jungle Juice recipe is on, though, like everyone else. So that's something. But it was with no small measure of trepidation that I opened Megan Faure’s new book, aimed at helping moms to achieve ‘happy days and peaceful nights’: Your Sensory Baby. Was I ready?

Yup. My trepidation was largely unwarranted.

Before I get into that, however, let me first say that Your Sensory Baby is not a sequel. Not a part II. It’s a whole new book. (It’s not like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which gets re-vamped and re-written every few years, with the necessary updates and a preggie in increasingly modern attire on the cover.)

So if you’ve read one, or several of Megan Faure’s superb books in the past, you should read this one too. And if you’ve never read one of her books, start here.

The first three chapters of the book are about, you guessed it, senses, and how these influence your new baby’s feelings, sleep and development. You’re also taught to use ‘gentle and flexible’ routines to soothe and feed the little creature. 

They're largely simple and straightforward, mind you, but if they feel like hard work, select the ones that don't... (That's what I've done. Or, am trying to do. Or, will do.)

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are about translating your baby’s behaviour into meaningful signals, about getting your own personality to work for you, and about baby’s potential for development, and from Chapter 7, you’ll encounter age-banded sections – your premature baby, your newborn, your baby at two to six weeks, your baby at six weeks to four months, and so on – that hold answers, tips, techniques and testimonials relating to particular periods in your mommyhood. I really like this element...

So, my take? This book is fantastic.

It’s beautifully presented, easy to read through in detail or to scan with a screaming kid swinging from your neck, and full of useful, user-friendly, simple-to-apply advice you can use immediately, wherever in the parenting game you are. 

Its advice is all-encompassing, and whether you choose to use all of it, some of it or tiny bits of it, depending on the kind of parent you want to be, there's something for you.

I have only one criticism and here it is: the book divides babies into ‘social butterfly’, ‘settled’, ‘slow to warm up’ and ‘sensitive’, and it’s not that easy to tell which one your child is until they’re four months or older. This means that a fair bit of the good value in the book, because it’s linked to the four ‘types’, can’t really be accessed til later. By which time habits have formed – for mommy and baby…

But on the whole, this is a must-read if you’re that sort of mom. You know, the one who has, and reads, most of the must-read mommy/baby/parenting books. Or, the one who wants to.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za