I'm going to start with the heavier hitters: The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Crazy
I'm not a financial type, and I don't follow traders. Yet the Zeroes was a page-turner for me because Randall is a great story teller. He weaves together the rise and fall of the stock market during the last decade, with the rise and fall of his company. His observations are keen (and to keep his memory straight, he went through thousands of his emails from that time period, and interviewed sources as well). For financial types, there's a lot of name dropping and juicy tidibits which will mean more to them than it does to me. But in reading the book, I learned a lot about what happened in the last decade financially, and what it's like starting a business -particularly a magazine. Even to the mass public, it's a great read. Check out the excerpt of the book in Vanity Fair, where Randall makes a deal with the devil, er...artist Peter Max (I didn't like his art before, and I like it even less now). You'll see that his writing is beautiful and it's funny too.
After the Zeroes, I read Escape
.
Carolyn was born into the FLDS (as one of its 10,000 or so members) and married her husband Merrill Jessop when she was 18. Her husband was then 50 and she was his fourth wife. He fathered 50 kids with five women. The book follows Carolyn's life, highlighting the power struggles between the sister-wives (as they're called - some actually are blood sisters), the kids and the husband. It doesn't sound like a fun way to live. The women's power in the house is based on how many kids they have, and who is having more sex. She notes all kinds of abuse - from other wives hitting the kids, to the husband withholding food from them, to him physically and mentally hurting them. At the time of the book, most of the women weren't allowed much outside education (over time, public schools were shunned) and the women didn't usually have a way of earning or keeping their money. That made them extremely dependent on their husband, and on the prophet who could decide on a whim (or a "vision") to take them out of the family and give them to someone else. The women were very much at the mercy of their husbands, who owned them like property and were their conduit to eternal salvation.
Carolyn managed to escape at the age of 35, with her 8 kids (one of whom went back to Colorado City when she turned 18). After she escaped, many in the family, including Merrill, moved to the Texas ranch, and her husband became the de-facto leader. This book was a page-turner, and you can't help but feel badly for the women and kids there. Carolyn landed on her feet - albeit with a lot of therapy and struggles - financial and emotional, and she was the first FLDS woman to get full custody of her kids after leaving. I just found out she released a follow-up, Triumph, Life After the Cult
And now for the not-so-heavy hitters. Disneyworld has been a big theme around here, as I'm feeling like a traitor planning a trip to Florida instead of Anaheim. It's a first - and the level of complication in planning is 10 fold or more over going to Disneyland. What have I read? The Unofficial Guide Walt Disneyworld
Find Frisco Kids on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment