White Cat: Book One of the Curse Workers Trilogy by Holly Black

The first in a trilogy, this novel by the author of The Coldest Girl in Cold Town (yes, I'm still waiting for a sequel) and the Spiderwick Chronicles, concerns the life of Cassel, a teen from a family of "workers", a term that comes from 1920, when those who could wield curses by touch, whether it be luck, death, pain, emotion, memory manipulation, or the rarest of all, transformation, were outlawed and put in camps for years before the law could figure out what to with them.  Nowadays, people wear gloves and cursed stones to protect themselves.  Also, when one practices curse work, there is always "blowback".  In the case of a death worker, he may lose part of a finger.  Cassel's grandfather is a death worker, his elder brother, Phillip can cause physical harm, his brother Barron is a luck worker and law student, and his mother, who is in jail for using her emotion curses and con-artist skills to get money from a wealthy man.  His grandfather, and Phillip, work for the Zacharov mob family, of which there are six in America.  Cassel has no ability, to his chagrin, but he is an expert grifter, with a bookie business going on in his private school.

The book opens with him having a dream that causes him to sleepwalk onto the roof of his dorm.  When he wakes up, he is forced to ask for help to get down, the result being that now he is on suspension from school until he gets checked out by a doctor.  This isn't the first time he has sleepwalked, but it has been a long time.  The last time, he was thirteen and he woke up to find Lila, the daughter of Zacharov, whom he had a crush on, lying dead in front of him and him holding a bloody knife.  His brothers told him to forget it happened and that they'd take care of it.  But he is haunted by it and finds he has to lead a pretend life in order to be "normal" and fit in like everyone else at his school and he is scared to get close to any girl, because he fears he might kill her.

 The dream that led him onto the roof was of a cat, and when he goes to his empty, yet very cluttered home, with his grandfather to clean it, he finds cats in the backyard, and one, in particular, a white one, seems familiar.  He begins to dream of that cat and discovers that it is Lila, who tells him, that he is the only one who can un-curse her.  He also realizes that someone has obviously been altering his memories, since she is alive and he did not kill her.  He must find a transformation worker, but has no idea where to look.  He is a con-man being conned and he has no idea by whom.  He cannot trust his brothers or any of the rest of his family, since they work for the Zacharov family, and Phillip is best friends with Zacharov's nephew. 

With the help of his roommate Sam, an Asian-American student who wants to do special effects work in horror films and drives a hearse that runs on grease, and a girl who believes in the freedom of workers, named Daneca, he is able to keep Lila, the cat safe.  Cassel also takes the precaution of implanting protection stones from memory curses in his leg, just in case.  It turns out, that he has many lost memories that span most of his life, but they are blocked to him.  The people who have been playing with his memory have been using him for a worker ability he did not know he had and has one more mission planned for him. 

He must find a way to change Lila back into a human and stop an assassination.  This is an incredible book that looks at prejudices against workers, who turn to organized crime in order to get work  because of this and how the mind of one young man can be manipulated without his knowing it to do deplorable things, that even though he cannot remember them, he is finding it hard to cope with that knowledge.  With the help of his friends he will try to find his way to once more, con his way out of this situation and save himself and others.  The twist at the end is a real kicker and such a complete surprise it will leave you dying to get your hand on the next book in the series.

Quotes

It takes a lot of effort to pretend you’re something you’re not.

--Holly Black (White Cat p 9)

 

Once someone’s hurt you, it’s harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love.  But it doesn’t stop you from wanting them.  Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse.

--Holly Black (White Cat p  53)

 

Lie until even you believe it—that’s the real secret of lying.

--Holly Black (White Cat p 106)

 

All friendships are negotiations of power.

--Holly Black (White Cat p 91)

 

We are largely, who we remember ourselves to be.  That’s why habits are so hard to break.  If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.

--Holly Black (White Cat p 236)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/White-Cat-Curse-Workers-Book-ebook/dp/B003HC5EDQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499189264&sr=8-2&keywords=white+cat+holly+black

Rememberance: A Mediator Novel by Meg Cabot

                                                                                            

                                                           
Yes, this is the Meg Cabot who writes the Princess Diaries books. Now, let's put that in a box and set it to one side because she is a versatile writer who cannot be stuffed neatly in one box like we all like to do. She's also written the YA series Abandon about a young woman who becomes involved with the guy who looks after the Underworld (Still waiting patiently for the next book in that series, Ms. Cabot. It's been three years, though. Just saying.). She has an adult mystery series about a full-figured woman (The Heather Wells Series). There's also the adult series Insatiable about a woman who can tell by looking at you when you're going to die. She also has a tween series called Allie Finkle's Rules For Girls. And let's not forget the various single title YA books like Jinx about a girl with bad luck or her many adult romance books.

Now that that's out of the way, this book is the seventh book in the Mediator series. The first book, Shadowland, came out in 2000. The sixth book, Twilight (Heaven Sent) was published in 2004. I read these books about ten years ago, or so. It is a fabulous series and she wrapped it up all neatly with a very lovely bow, so I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that she was writing another book in the series that picks up about six years after the end of the series. This book, however, will be found in the adult section, which makes sense, as Suze Simon, is now an adult, and it gives Cabot a lot of freedom with the characters and the plot. If you haven't read the series, you will not be lost. You will, however, know some things that could taint your experience if you decide to go back and read the series (which you really should). Of course, the argument can be made that after watching the Star Wars Trilogy, you know a lot of what is going to happen to go into the Prequels (And no, I am not comparing her wonderful books to those movies, that were not, perhaps, what they could have been).  So, it's your decision.

Suze (Susannah) Simon is getting her Ph.D. in psychology so she can become a counselor. Jesse de Silva, her fiancee now, is a medical resident. She is hoping desperately that they will finally get married next year as she has been waiting a very long time for him and Jesse respects her way too much to sleep with her before marriage, much less live together. He's also Catholic. And died in 1850. So his views can be a bit old fashioned. When they both went off to college, he insisted on keeping in touch by letter. She's finally gotten him to use a phone now. She's not having much luck though, on dragging him completely into the 21st century. Suze is doing an unpaid internship at her old high school, Junipero Serra Mission Academy, where Father Dominic is still principal and still offering up advice and help.  The school is also a historical site, so they get tourists all the time and have a gift shop, which helps pay to keep the place open. Suze's mouth always did get her into trouble and now there are swear jars in the office, her apartment, and other places, as some are trying to get her to clean up a bit (The really, really bad swear words you will have to fill in with your imagination, as they do not appear on the page. And that is not a complaint about the book, by the way, I respect and admire Ms. Cabot for this choice.).  Like that is ever going to happen.

Suze's unofficial, other nonpaying jobs, is a mediator. A mediator is someone who can see the dead who haven't realized that it really is time to move on, even if she has to kick their butt to get them to do it. On rare occasions, the NCDP (non-compliant dead person) may just need you to get a message to someone so they can move on. Usually, it's much more complicated than that and the ghosts are not always nice. Jesse was a ghost that haunted the home her and her mother moved into when her widowed mother married Andy Ackerman (of the TV show "Handy Andy" fame). Andy had three teenage sons: Jake ("Dopey"), Brad ("Sleepy") and David ("Doc"). There was also Max the dog, who could sense ghosts when he wasn't busy chasing Spike the cat. Suze's mom and Andy have sold the house and moved to L.A. Jake is a successful pot shop businessman, Brad knocked up his girlfriend, Debbie (Suze's enemy) right after high school with triplets and works at her father's BMW lot, and David is at Harvard studying to be a lawyer. Suze gets along a lot better with Jake and Brad now than when they were teens (she and Doc always got along and he knows about her abilities and has helped her in the past).

While at work Suze gets an e-mail from the last person she ever wanted to hear from again: Paul Slater. Paul, it seems, now owns her old house, the house Jesse died in. This is when the first of many mistakes she is going to make, happen in this book. She calls Paul. It seems that his grandfather has died and left him everything, including the old Egyptian texts that he had. Both Paul and his grandfather were mediators. According to these texts, if you tear down the place that was once haunted, " a demon disturbed from its final resting place will unleash the wrath of eternal hell-fire upon all it encounters, cursing even those it once held dear with the rage of a thousand suns." and that "any human who attempts to resurrect a corpse will be the first to suffer its wrath when the demon inside it is woken." When you do something there is always a cost. This is apparently the cost. But, Paul, of course, will not tear down the house if Suze will have dinner with him and all that comes after it.  Paul was always a sleaze, especially on graduation night. Sometimes, though, he could be helpful. This, however, was not going to be one of those times. It seems he was still holding a grudge on losing out on her to Jesse. And Suze can't tell Jesse. She never told Jesse about what happened on graduation night for a reason. She'd like to keep him out of jail. He'd really lose it if he knew about this. She would just have to put Paul off until she could figure something out.

From one crisis to another. In walks Sister Ernestine with a teenage girl, Becca, and her not so friendly ghost companion clinging to her, nearly dragging her down. While Sister Ernestine went into the office to call Becca's stepmother, Suze gets a look at her bleeding arm.  The letters STU have been cut into it and Suze is pretty sure this is not the first time Becca has done this. The big question is, is the NCDP the cause of it, or is it something else? When she tries to tend to her wounds, she finds out just how powerful the little angelic ghost is, because she comes right after her, believing that she is trying to hurt Becca. After an "earthquake" (they have a lot of those at the school), Suze has a few moments to try to get some information out of Becca. It seems her mother lives in New York now after an "accident" and when Suze asks about the horse necklace she is fingering, she clams up. The NCDP, whose name is Lucia, was wearing a riding outfit and holding a stuffed horse. Becca's stepmother then shows up and turns out to be Kelly Prescott, Paul's old girlfriend from high school. Poor Becca.

Suze turns to her good friend CeeCee, an albino she met in high school who became a huge help to her with her awesome research skills. CeeCee now works at the local paper She's not too happy to be looking up the name of another dead person when she only has the first name and no real idea when or where the person died. CeeCee is amazing, but she can't perform miracles, but this is for a kid, so she's game. Suze goes home to her apartment, which is protected to the hilt against humans and ghosts alike. The pool, however, is not, and when she goes for a swim Lucia shows up attacks her. Jesse and Suze had a connection when he was a ghost that never really went away when he was brought back to life. He always seems to know when she's in trouble. Like now, which is a good thing, because he is there to pull her out of the water away from Lucia. Of course now Jesse wants to have her exorcised and sent to hell. He is a macho, old-fashioned guy who doesn't like anyone coming after the woman he loves, who can usually take care of herself.

Father Dominic has finally returned back from his conference full of apologies for not noticing Lucia in the first place. Father Dom, is also a mediator and at the beginning of each school year he looks over each child carefully for spirits. The mission is also blessed often to try to keep spirits out as well, not that this works all the time. Father Dom insists on going over to Becca's house to try to mediate the situation and Lucia sends him down the stairs breaking many bones and sending him to the ICU. Suze is able to convince Jesse not to hunt down Lucia and exorcise her when she shows him the article about her CeeCee was able to dig up, once Father Dom made the connection as to who she might be. Becca and Lucia Martinez were friends in first grade at Sacred Trinity when she died from a horrible horse riding "accident" (the horse was also put down).  Lucia is still protecting Becca from someone who could harm her from that time period. All they have to do is convince a really angry, confused ghost to stop trying to kill them because they are here to help both her and Becca and to somehow get Becca to talk about what happened to Lucia all those years ago. A piece of cake, right? Yeah, no.

On top of that Suze still has Paul to deal with and to try to keep Jesse from finding out about it, which isn't easy as he is rather perceptive. But Suze always thinks of something. Does it always work out the way it's supposed to? Of course not. Nothing in life ever does. But that's what makes it exciting. And terrifying. This is, of course, why Suze really needs those boots she was bidding for on-line. This book is filled with lots of surprises and old friends. I was beyond pleased with it. I was over the moon and into another galaxy. I was quite content with the series ending the way it had, but I so very glad to be given this gift.  Meg Cabot has really topped herself.

Note: I am rather embarrassed by this, but feel you should have a little fun at my expense. I was watching Jeopardy last week and the category was something like statues in state capital buildings. They showed a picture of a man holding a cross and said that this statue was in California and was a man who had just been canonized by Pope Francis for setting up missions. This was the day after I had complete this book and I'm looking at the statue wondering who it was, thinking that it wasn't St. Francis, who is pretty much the only person I could think of. A woman rang in and said Father Serra and my jaw dropped because it never occurred to me that Father Junipero Serra was an actual person. It's an unusual name, to my ears. A name only a creative mind could come up with. In my defense, one, though I am a history nut, my knowledge of the eighteenth century California history is pretty much non-existent, and two, I'm not Catholic. It turns out, Father Serra went up and down the coast building missions to convert the Native Americans, by force, if necessary (depending, of course on your viewpoint and which texts you read). Suze, by the way, is accused of chopping off the head of the Father Serra statue at the mission while in high school.

Note: I found out after I read this that there is an e-book short story that came out a month before this with the title "Proposal". Downloading now.

Quotes

When you’re a regular girl and a guy is horny for you, he invites you over to his house after school to watch videos. When you’re a mediator, he invites you over to study his grandfather’s ancient Egyptian funerary texts, so you can learn more about your calling.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 17)

I believe in facts. And the fact is,  I want to be with Jesse because he makes me feel like a better person than I suspect I actually am.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 23)

Even complete monsters can have one or two likable characteristics. Hitler liked dogs, for instance.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 23)

I was so stunned, I was temporarily unable to form a reply, even a four-letter one, which for me was unusual.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 24)

It’s completely humiliating that after nearly six years of post-secondary education, the only place in the entire state of California where I could find employment (and not even paying employment) is my former high school. But there are a few upsides. At least here I can tell when kids are lying to my face about the teachers.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 34)

This is why I needed a new pair of boots. You never knew when you were going to have to keep a ghost from using your computer to crush you (and a student) to death.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 44)

I’m certain when I die, if there actually is some kind of higher power sitting in final judgment of all our souls, mine’s going to take a really long time to read off all my sins, considering all the lying I’ve done, especially to people of the cloth.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 48)

“What did Sister mean by ‘the girls’? Do you have kids in this school?” “No, I don’t have kids in this school,” I stared at her, horrified. “Seriously, how old do you think I am?” “I don’t know. About thirty-sev-“ “Forget I asked. The kids are my brother Brad’s. Stepbrother’s, I mean.” Brad and I were actually the same age, but had always had vastly different tastes and attitudes. “He knocked up his girlfriend with triplets right after high school, and now their daughters are in kindergarten here. See what can happen if you don’t practice safe sex?”

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 50)

One of the things they’re always drumming into our heads in class is when in doubt, look to the patient’s home life, especially the mother. It always goes back to the mother. Thanks, Freud.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 52)

The professor had warned us in advance not to grow too attached to our rats. It doesn’t pay for clinical researchers to become emotionally attached to their lab animals, any more than it does for therapists or physicians to become emotionally attached to their patients. In order for the professional to best serve their client, they need to remain detached. And virtually every achievement in medical history owes its lifesaving advancements to animal testing. Eventually most lab rats end up getting dissected. But I only took the class because it was a requirement. I no more planned on getting into clinical research than I planned on becoming emotionally attached to my rat.  As soon as the final was over, I swapped out Romeo for a look-alike I’d found in a pet store. Rats are a lot cleaner and smarter than people give them credit for. Romeo and I have grown to share a genuine and totally unique personal bond. He’s paper trained, and likes to sleep on my shoulder while I watch TV. No way would I have left my little buddy in that lab for some PhD candidate to experiment on—possibly even kill—over the summer. Paul was right: I’m probably going to be world’s crappiest counselor.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 84)

Not that I believed for one minute that Jesse was going to sit still for a blessing—at least not without an explanation. He went to mass every Sunday, and on holy days of obligation, as well. If there was a demon living inside him, it was going to take one hell of a blessing to drive it out. I was probably going to have to come up with an imam, a rabbi, and a Wiccan high priestess in addition to Father Dom to get rid of this curse.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 92)

“Hey, kids,” I said brightly, reaching for my wallet. “Are you thirsty? Why don’t you go get a soda? I see some machines over there.” Shrieking with joy at the prospect of sugar, which they were not allowed at home, the girls snatched singles from my hand and tore from the reception area at top speed, nearly crashing into several people who were waiting to see the triage nurse. “Be sure to get lots of candy bars, too,” I called after them. “The kind that rot your teeth. And don’t talk to strangers. Look.” I turned back to Peggy, leaning in very close and lowering my voice so that only she could hear me. “I am not in the mood for this right now. You’re going to tell me where they’ve taken that priest, or I’m going to let those three unholy terrors you think are so cute get all hopped up on sugar, then turn them loose in your ER. I’m going to let them touch everything, and you do not want that, because guess what? They haven’t had any of their shots. Who knows what kind of weird diseases they’re carrying without even showing symptoms? Mumps. Polio.  Whooping cough. Measles. Did you know that measles is still one of the leading causes of death in children worldwide? That because it’s so infectious, nine out of ten people who haven’t been vaccinated against it who come into contact with someone who has it will catch it. Is that really what you want? All those vulnerable, unvaccinated babies in your maternity ward to come down with measles in a matter of hours?” Peggy’s eyes widened to their limits, and she scooted her wheeled chair away from me, “I’m…I’m …I’m…I’m going to go get my supervisor.” “You do that.” I said. “But remember, the longer you make me wait, the more contagions are festering on those little girls’ hands. I hope you have a vat load of antibacterial lotion nearby.”

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 141-2)

“Right,” I muttered. “Doctors. Everybody’s got a disorder.” “Counselors,” he shot back. “Everyone needs therapy.”

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 155)

“You’re the one who keeps insisting she’s an innocent child in pain.” “She is,” I said hastily. “I’m sure.” “You’d better hope so. Otherwise, if she murders Brad and Debbie in their sleep tonight, we’ll end up with custody of your nieces, since we’re their appointed legal guardians.” “Why do you think we’re here? Brad and Debbie don’t have life insurance. We can’t let them croak. We’ll have to put off having our own kids in order to be able to afford to raise theirs.”

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 178)

“David,” I said when I found my voice again, “That’s a great plan. Honestly. But it isn’t going to fly. Mediators can’t go popping back and forth through time without having to pay the consequences in the form of major loss of brain cells and cosmic tears in the universe.” Quoting Paul left a bad taste in my mouth. “That’s how this whole mess got started in the first place.” “Oh.” David sounded let down. “I hadn’t considered that.” “Yeah. And really, if time travel were that easy, don’t you think I’d be doing it all the time, trying to prevent plane crashes and Hitler and stuff?” Now he sounded shocked. “Of course not. That would be a complete violation of the grandfather paradox—“

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 207)

“And Jesse would never in a million years want to live there.” David’s voice went up several octaves. “Why not?” “Because our old house is where Jesse got M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D, remember?” The girls immediately began murmuring the letters of the word I’d just spelled, but fortunately got nowhere as it was too advanced for the kindergarten set. Plus reading at the academy was being taught by sight or “whole language” rather than phonetically, which meant most students were reading well below their grade level (an opinion I’d been told by Father Dom to please keep to myself).

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 207)

The second I said the name, her mouth twisted as if she’d just bit into the foulest tasting thing she’d ever had the misfortune to eat. I should have known. Even Sister Ernestine had a him. Maybe every single woman in the world has a him. Men, too. I’d had the misfortune of meeting Jesse’s him once.

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance p 234)

“Exactly. No parent who could afford Sacred Trinity would be caught dead in my car. Do you remember our names?” I could tell by the tilt of his head that he’d rolled his eyes. “Dr. and Mrs. Baracus. Am I supposed to be Greek?” “B.A. Baracus isn’t Greek. He’s a character from The A-Team, a television show, played by a man named Mr. T.” At Jesse’s disapproving expression, I said quickly, “Don’t worry, it’s a very old TV show, no one will remember it. Well, there was a movie, but I had to think of something fast. I didn’t expect  to get an appointment for a private tour on such short notice. But who cares? It worked, didn’t it?” “What if they decide to look up Dr. Baracus on the Internet?” “All they’ll find is that the word baracus means bad attitude. There’s a kind of poetic justice in that, don’t you think?” “Yes, considering I have in the trunk all the equipment I need to beat a confession out of the priest,” he said. “Everything Jake had in the house to subdue an intruder—“ I swiveled at him shocked. “Jesse, no! No one is beating a confession out of anybody. We’re on a fact-finding mission only.” “I think we could discover more facts more quickly if we handcuffed the priest to a radiator, then doused him with water, then shocked him several times with your stepbrother’s taser.” “I hate child killers, too, Jesse, but how about going for a more subtle approach that won’t get either of us charged with assault?” “Your attitude,” Jesse said, “really isn’t as bad as our name implies, Mrs. Baracus.” “I’m only asking that you think of our darling daughter, dear sweet little Penelope.” He shook his head. “No imaginary daughter of mine will be called Penelope.”  “You didn’t really put all that stuff in the trunk, did you?” I asked. “Of course. Along with Brad’s .22 Hornet.” At my disbelieving glance, he shrugged. “What was I supposed to do with it? He wanted to go raccoon hunting last night, remember? I had to hide it from him somewhere.” “So you brought it along today? Great. Just great, Jesse.” I eyed the armed guard who was checking each car before collecting their toll and then waving through the gate… “Do I have to remind you that you are not actually Dr. Baracus,” I asked Jesse, “but a medical student and former ghost, and one with forged identity papers?” “Actually,” he said, lowering his sunglasses and glancing at me, “I’m a medical resident, not a student. And why are you so suddenly concerned about my identity papers, Mrs. Baracus?” “I’m just wondering if driving with a rifle, handcuffs, and tasers in the trunk of a BMW that doesn’t even technically belong to you is such a good idea.” “Are you afraid I’ll be racially profiled on 17-Mile Drive? Nombre de Dios, Susannah.” Jesse clicked his tongue at me. “Have you so little faith in your fellow man?” I snorted. “Nothing I’ve heard lately about my fellow man has done much to restore it.” He grinned and slipped his glasses back into place. “I’ll have to work on that later. And anyway, I’m not Jesse de Silva, medical resident, anymore, but Dr. Baracus, wealthy plastic surgeon, father of Penelope, remember? They’d never check his trunk for implements of torture.”

-Meg Cabot (Remembrance P 241-3)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Remembrance-Mediator-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B00XHRR3EE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499188731&sr=8-1&keywords=remembrance+meg+cabot

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler

This is an usual book in that it is not really a memoir and not really a humor book. I'm just not really sure what it is. And maybe that's what Poehler wants. If you try to find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc...you won't find her. She pretty much has no on-line presence. In the book she explains this with a few stories of how she sent texts to the wrong people (One Christmas she was wrapping gifts with an assistant she was planning on firing and got up to text her then husband Will to let him know what she was doing and when she'd be home and happened to mention that she'd be firing this woman. She didn't send the text to Will, but to the woman, who did not say a word that night, but called later telling her that maybe they needed to talk.) and emails going to the wrong people or with pictures that had the wrong captions attached to them. She insists that if she cannot manage something that simple, being on-line would end up being a disaster. But maybe she is just keeping a tight control over her image and in this day and age where "celebrities" are everywhere taking pictures of their food and posting it and going on Twitter detailing every move they make, it's a relief to find someone who wants to keep her life to herself. It took me about a week and a half to read this book that is only 329 pages, which is rather odd for me and when I finished I thought that I had really enjoyed it and that it was really funny. I collect quotations and when I read a book I mark down the page number where a quotation is that I want to go back to. I had written quite a few. When I sat down to go back and look at them, they just weren't as funny as I had thought they were. I found that the book wasn't as good as I had originally thought it to be, perhaps because I had taken it in such small bites over a long period of time.  My book club was not fond of this book because they objected to the language and vulgarity that they believed she used for shock value. That sort of thing really does not bother me and I don't know that that is really why she wrote it that way.

That being said, I did enjoy the comedic parts put in that did not necessary have anything to do with anything. When she talks about having her first child, she puts in a "birth plan" that had me rolling in laughter it was so funny. I've always thought birth plans were so ridiculous as the birth of a child is one of the things in life that you cannot control and nothing is going to go according to any plan you could come up with. Here's a sample of hers: We have chosen to give birth  in a hospital because of the outstanding facilities it makes available to us. We would also like to deliver our baby in a hospital since we spent most of our twenties getting stoned and watching episodes of ER, and so we know that delivering a baby is the best way to cheer up an attractive but beleaguered doctor...Those we plan to have present at our birth include: Baby, Mother, Father, Grandparents, Lawyers, Agents, Lottery Winners, Lookie-Loos, Midwife, First Wife, Life Coach, Finnoula the Doula, Unexpected Ghosts, Bossy Astrologist, and the entire cast of Cheers...Speaking of music, we will arrive with our own. We plan on delivering our baby to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's The Wall while simultaneously watching The Wizard of Oz. If this kid works with us, we guarantee your mind will be blown! [Actually you are supposed to listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album.]...If drugs become necessary, we would like to go all in. We are talking epidural, helium, and roofies. The mother would like to ask one last time why no one is taking seriously her request for nitrous oxide...If delivery assistance is needed, we prefer "suction" over "forceps". If episiotomy is needed, we prefer "buttonhole" over "backstich". If cesarean is needed, please inform us early so we don't have to go through the above first...Thank you in advance for your support of our choices. We look forward to a wonderful birth. We are excited but mostly scared. Have you SEEN the mother? She is TINY! How is this going to WORK exactly? Please advise.

Instead of talking about her divorce to Will Arnett, she instead offers up a list of "divorce books" to read, which I really preferred reading anyway. The first one is I Want a Divorce! See You Tomorrow, which is for divorced couples with kids who have to find a way to deal which other on a constant basis for the rest of their lives.  The second one is Get Over It! (But Not Too Fast!) and deals with finding out who your real friends are and how to get yourself together. The third one is Divorce: Ten Ways To Not Catch It! and helps you handle the friends who go on and on about how they won't get divorced because they work so hard on their marriage and the divorce voyeur who wants to know every detail.  The fourth one is Hey, Lady, I Don't Want To Fuck Your Husband! and deals with attending weddings and events without a plus-one. The fifth one is God Is In The Details! and helps you navigate all the intimate details people want to know. My all time favorite is the sixth one, which is only one sentence long and is titled The Holidays Are Ruined!

She has an interesting chapter giving sex advice for both men and women. For the women: Try not to fake it, Stop being so goal oriented when it comes to sex, Keep your virginity for as long as you can, Don't have sex with people you don't want to have sex with (every time you see that person the first thing you will think is "I had sex with you."), Don't get undressed and start pointing out your flaws or apologizing for things you think are wrong with your body (Men don't notice or care. They are about to get laid!), Get better at dirty talk, Don't let your kids sleep in your bed, You have to have sex with your husband occasionally even though you are exhausted, Don't make fun of men, Stay away from pics and video, Laugh a lot and try new things with someone you love. For the men: We don't need it to last as long as you think. (Hurry up. We are so tired.), We don't want to remember your penis, You can't fall asleep right after (Remember, if you fall asleep we will stare at you and evaluate you. This is a very vulnerable time when we may decide we don't want to have sex with you again.), Keep it sexy, Cool it on the porn and jerking off, Be nice, tell your woman she is hot, never shame her, and never hurt her, Work on your dirty talk too, If you don't get an erection, we know it's usually not because of us, Stay away from orgies, Open and up and try new things with someone you love, and If you don't eat pussy, keep walking.

In one chapter, where she talks about her parents, she offers up what she learned from them and I have to say, they are words we can all live by. From her mom: Make sure he's grateful to be with you, Always have a messy purse, Guilt works, Monty Python is funny, Have fun dancing, Your female friends will outlast every man in your life, Love your kids and hope they do better than you did, You don't want to be the sexy mom, Memorize poems, A home-cooked meal isn't so important, Follow sports and leave the room if you're a jinx, Be careful. From her dad: Ask for what you want, Know how to shoot a free throw and field a ground ball, There are ways around things that aren't always legal, Keep trying, Never remember anyone's name, Girls can do anything boys can do, Street smarts are as important as book smarts, You can have a chaotic childhood and still provide a stable home, Tell everyone you meet what your daughter does until your daughter asks you to stop, Don't listen to experts, Everything in moderation.

As for her professional life, you do get a lot of detail on that, sort of. She explains how the Upright Citizens Brigade came about and some of the things they did and what they are up to now. She spends a short chapter on SNL which flows seamlessly from one brief moment to another, telling nice anecdotes that tell you nothing, really. She also goes into detail about how the show Parks and Recreation came about and it's struggles and then lists the main actors from it with a paragraph about the person and things like "favorite memory" and "funniest moment on show" with this person. Again, she does not delve too deeply. And don't expect to find Tina Fey. She's practically non-existent. This is her book, however, and her life, so she can reveal what she chooses to. But if you read carefully, you can catch glimpses of her between the lines. Also, when she talks about her two boys she seems to be quite open and honest and sweet.

That being said, there is one disturbing chapter that does not quite come across in a good way for her. When she was on SNL in 2008 she did a highly offensive skit involving a doll that was all twisted up because it was disabled. Amy was playing Dakota Fanning who the doll was appearing with her in a movie called Hurricane Mary.  Amy did not write the script and had rehearsed it once and was given the doll right before she went on stage. She ends up receiving a very irate letter from the wonderful actor Chris Cooper's wife, Marianne who had wrote the script for the movie Hurricane Mary about twins Alba and Anastasia Somoza who had cerebral palsy and their mother's fight to ensure they got an equal-opportunity education. The thing is she waited years before getting around to writing back to them and trying to make it right with Anastasia, who was watching that night, because she had a hard time fulling coming to terms that she had done anything wrong herself. Whether she knew it was about a real person or not, she knew the skit was about a disabled person. Of course, this was SNL, and how much actual say she had, or control over anything, is also something to think about. The more important point is that if you do the math, she reached out to Marianne to apologize around the same time this book was being considered to be written. If that's what it took to poke her in the butt and get her to do the right thing, then so be it.

She is also quite open about being insecure about her looks from an early age and in her business looks always matter. In her last chapter she talks about how her phone is trying to kill her. Most of the planet will probably agree with her on this when they read it. I have to laugh because I have a simple flip phone that can only text and call. That's all I need. Her solution is try to beat it at it's own game, since we can't destroy them. So her, Meredith Walker, Amy Miles, and others started up a web series called Smart Girls at the Party. It's a Charlie Rose type interview show that celebrates "the curious girl, the nonfamous, the everyday warrior."  And it ends with a spontaneous dance party, because dancing is important. Everything should end with spontaneous dancing, including this review. 

Dark Witch:Book One of the Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy by Nora Roberts

                                                                
Ok, Iona Shaunsee is perky.  And she says whatever is on her mind and says "I'm sorry" a lot.  She sells everything she owns to move to Ireland to find her cousins and hopefully a job and a new start to a life she might finely fit in.  She meets her cousins Branna and Conner who immediately take her in and find her a job working at a stable where Conner works as a falconer.  Branna owns a shop where she sells her potions, soaps, and candles.  These three are the descendants of the Dark Witch, Sorcha from the 13th century, who gave her power to her three children, each of whom had a familiar; a falcon, a horse, and dog.  She sends them off to try to destroy Calbhan, an evil sorcerer who wants the power for himself.  She manages to nearly destroy him, but she dies in the process.  Now her power lies with the three.  Iona might have power, but she doesn't know how to use it, so Branna is teaching her, because Calbhan is back and is after them. 

Branna gets Iona a job at the stables, which she loves, since she's been riding since she was a small child, and had a job teaching others to ride horses in America.  When she meets her boss Boyle, its love at first sight.  He comes thundering in on a horse, Alistair, that will become her familiar.  But, Boyle has never been in love, or a serious relationship and completely bungles the whole affair by saying that she put a spell on him. 

Meana, a great character who works in the stables as well, is friends with Branna and soon the three become fast sisters.  There is also Fin, Branna's old love who bears the mark of Calbhan, meaning he is his descendant, even though he intends to help them fight against him. 

I really loved this book, and yes, part of that was due to the fact that it takes place in Ireland, the home of my ancestors and some distant cousins of my own.  Iona, while perky, is a breath of fresh air.  There is no trying to fight her feelings for the guy that you find in other books.  Instead she just plows ahead and does as she pleases.  I can't wait to read the next book in this trilogy!

Link to Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Witch-Cousins-ODwyer-Roberts/dp/0425259854?ie=UTF8&keywords=dark%20witch&qid=1458826051&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

                                   

                          

Krakauer, acclaimed and best-selling author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, discovered that a long-time friend of his and his wife's and been raped twice, which had led to extreme self-destructive behavior, and eventually a stay in a hospital to overcome her alcohol dependency and to deal with her PTSD.  He then discovered that he also had other female friends and relatives who had also been raped at one time and remained silent.  Then news began to break about a small town of about 70,000 in Missoula, Montana (the second largest city in the state) and the abundance of rape occurring mostly by college students at the University of Montana, by a significant number of athletes, especially football players.  Krakauer focuses his study on the years between 2010 to 2012 upon female college students, which is not to say that those females who were not in school were not vulnerable, or that women were the only ones being raped.

The first victim's story this book tells about is of Allison Huguet.  Allison had been best friends with Beau Donaldson since she moved there during elementary school.  She thought of him as an older brother.  There was never anything sexual or romantic about their relationship.  She was attending a college in Oregon, but Beau had received a scholarship to attend the University of Montana and Allison was so proud of him.  While home on leave, her friend Keely Williams tells her there is a party with all the people they had gone to high school with and did she want to go.  Both were excited to see old friends.  There was some drinking, of course, and when it came time to go, Williams was in no condition to drive them home.  Beau invited them all to stay the night.  Allison, who is most comfortable on a couch went to sleep on the couch in the living room.  Williams had found a bed and tried to talk Allison into joining her, but Allison preferred to stay on the couch.  At some point she awoke to discover that Beau had taken off her pants and underwear and was penetrating her from behind, while she laid on her stomach.  She was terrified.  She knew that Beau vastly outweighed her and could snap her neck if he wanted to, so she waited until he finished and left, grabbing her phone, and holding up her broken jeans and running out of the house, while calling her mom at about 3am.  At this time, Beau begins to chase her down the street, while Allison's mother breaks many speeding laws to get to her daughter.  When she gets into her mother's vehicle, she bursts into tears and tells her mother what happened.  She then panics, because her friend Keely is still inside, so they go back, with Allison calling her to let her know they are picking her up.  Luckily, Allison's mother took her to a rape clinic, where a rape kit was done (and I say luckily, because if you want to charge someone of rape, a kit can be a valuable piece of evidence).

Allison talks Beau into coming over to her house a few days later, where she secretly records him admitting to what he had done and his agreement to get help with his substance and sexual abuse problems.  This would not be admissible in court, because both parties had not given consent to being recorded.  She still could not separate that her childhood friend had done this to her and she did not want to ruin his life, so she did not go to the police.  A year later, she is with some friends and they go to a local bar and hang-out where they see Beau and he looks over at her and begins laughing at her.  Suddenly she begins to realize who he really is and what he did to her.  She sees the first article in the paper in 2011 about a young woman gang raped by five members of the football team.  Everyone had been drinking.  The woman went into a bedroom to pass out.  When she woke up, one of the players wants her to perform fellatio on him, but she says no and tries to push him away.  Another one does the same thing.  Then another three turn her over and each rape her.  She is in and out of consciousness and is unable to provide perfect details.  The police told her if she had stayed unconscious the whole time, it would have been rape, but because she was awake for parts of the time it was not.  Two hours after the horrifying event, her friend takes her to the rape clinic, where her blood alcohol level is .215.  There is no way she was in any position to give consent.  When Allison read the article, she calls a cop she knew from high school when she was working on a school project.  They get two more confessions from Beau that he raped her.  The prosecutor does not want to go to trial and instead wants to plea bargain.  Beau's lawyer wants him to spend six months in a correctional facility and get treatment.  The prosecutor pushes for a thirty year sentence, twenty of which would be commuted (meaning with good behavior he could get out in two and a half years).  Allison is livid.  But the victim has no say in what the prosecutor decides to do.  As you will find out, the prosecutor can pretty much do what they want without impunity. 

While the University had some problems with dealing with rapes on campus, Dean Couture (who sadly retired in 2012 and whose replacement, a woman, does not seem to be as willing to help the victims), actually seems to do a good job getting the rapists out of the state.  The most the school can do is bar him from attending a school in that state or any of its functions.  The Dean investigates and comes to a decision.  If the accused wants to appeal that decision, he can go to the Vice President.  If he wants to appeal that decision, he can go to the school Court.  On one case, in which the prosecutor refused to follow through, even though there was blood evidence soaking her mattress, shorts, shirt, and underwear, as well as testimony from her roommate, and his roommate, because he had stolen her jeans.  They even had security video.  This prosecutor, Kirsten Pabst, who refused to prosecute, would appear as a witness for the accused during the school court session, even though she really should not have.  In 2012, when the Department of Justice announced its investigation, Pabst, who was deputy chief district attorney, and the one who prosecuted rape cases for the past six years, was found to only have prosecuted twelve cases out of the 144 cases the police had plenty of evidence on to go forward with.  This would include cases where the accused was videotaped pouring something into a woman's drink.  The drug was found in his place.  He also confessed.  Others would confess, or there would be plenty of other evidence, but Pabst would refuse to prosecute and even though she was, by law required to talk to the victim and give reasons for not going through with the case, she never did. 

The police were not perfect either.  Some of them were soothing, understanding, and telling the accused that he was not going to be charged, but that they had to talk to him.  Two of these detectives were women, which, quite frankly along with Pabst, makes me sick to my stomach that one woman could do that to another woman.  The police would also ask if the girl had a boyfriend.  If she did, she was less likely to believed, as it was seen that she had probably cheated on her boyfriend and did not want to admit it to him.  They also felt as though they were wasting energy on cases the prosecutor was not going to do anything about.

But these weren't the only women.  Many would come forward, including a woman who was sexually assaulted by Beau in 2008.  He locked her in her room and it was only her friends who managed to somehow get the door torn down, that saved her from being completely raped.

Researcher David Lisak, who has done much research on rape, has discovered that over 80% of women raped know their rapists.  The most targeted women were those age 16-24, with most of them being college students. Also, that only 20% of women raped will report it, with only a small amount of those receiving convictions.  He also discovered that these rapists, once they had gotten away with it once, would keep on doing it.  The average number of women who are believed to have been raped is around 25%, but it is a number that is largely seen as an underestimate.  The college men in his study would stake out the women they had chosen during the week (freshmen were especially vulnerable) and then make them feel special by inviting them to a great party.  They would promptly get them drunk and rape them, however, they never saw it as being rape and they did this numerous times.

An article in the online website Jezebel.com, they pointed out that while Missoula was now being considered the "rape capital of America" the author had discovered that other college cities with similar populations, had about the same number of reported rapes over the same period of time, which is 80 rapes over three years.  Sadly, the public is partly to blame.  In Missoula, a first or second division football team, the Grizzlies, had a rabid fan base that would rival Roll Tide, the Seminoles, Duke, UNC, etc...The town did not take kindly to these gods being seen as rapists.  It usually starts in high school.  The athlete makes a small mistake and someone, usually a coach, steps in and fixes it so the athlete faces no consequences.  Each act begins an escalation, with the athletes beginning to feel as though they are entitled to do anything they want without facing punishment.

The District Attorney's office was the only office to refuse to cooperate with the Department of Justice's investigation or to comply with their suggestions.  The college (plenty of colleges have a pathetic system of dealing with rape on campus and these include quite a few high profile ones such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, etc...) and police immediately cleaned up their act and submit themselves to investigations to make sure they are doing the right thing.  Eventually the DA's office would give in and comply, and quite honestly, not all of the lawyers there were evil, they just lacked the experience, guidance, or permission to prosecute these cases. 

Sadly, rape is the only crime where the victim is put on trial and whose rights are trampled on in favor of the accused.  If you call in a burglary to the police, they will rush over and take your statement and gather evidence.  They will believe you.  For some reason, rape victims have to prove over and over again that they are telling the truth.  If the newspaper had not broken the story, the Department of Justice would never have gotten involved and changes to this town would not have happen.  Yes, most of the town still believe these athletes are innocent and that the women just want to cause trouble.  Yes, sometimes a woman will come forward and say she was raped, but was not, as in the Baker case in California in 2002 and the infamous Duke lacrosse team case a few years ago.  However, the police excel at uncovering the true story in these cases, which only make up about 2-10% of reported rapes.  The way rape victims are treated by the police, court system, and the public, its no wonder more do not come forward.  The main reason many give is that they do not think they will be believed.  This needs to change.  Someone once said that the worst thing to happen to you is to be raped, because unlike murder, you survive it.  These women who know their rapist also face the fact that they now have trust issues with people they meet and trust issues with themselves for not seeing the rapist for who he really was.  The lives of too many women are being forever destroyed, while the one who did this to her is free to do it again to many others.  We need to look at rape as not the masked figure in the alleyway with a knife, but as the guy sitting next to you in class or the one you meet at a party, or even, as in Allison's case, your best friend.

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Missoula-Rape-Justice-System-College/dp/0804170568?ie=UTF8&keywords=misoula&qid=1458823095&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

The Dirt on Ninth Grave by Darynda Jones

                                                          
First of all, if you haven't read any of the books in this series, stop right now and go do that. You will really want to, as this is an amazing set of books. This is the ninth book in Jones' grim reaper series and when the eighth book ended on that serious cliff hanger, I was anxious to see what was going to happen. This was not what I expected. But it makes complete sense.

Janey Doerr woke up in an alley in Sleepy Hollow, New York with a severe case of amnesia, but a lot of people come forward to help her out with clothes and finding her a job at a cafe working for Dixie, where you the reader will find a lot of familiar faces, even if Janey does not. There's klutzy Cookie, a waitress who is engaged to Robert or Bobert as she calls him; Garrett Swopes, a regular whom she senses to be something like a cop; Ash, whom she can tell is not all human and is a total flirt; and of course, Reyes Farrow, someone she knows is not totally human, with a touch of evil around him, whom she is completely drawn to.

One of the first things Janey notices is that she can see ghosts and one of the first ghosts she can see is the thirteen-year-old gang-banger, Angel, who helps her out. Some of these ghosts, or souls if you will, seem to want something from her, but she doesn't want to get involved in what happened to them. She just wants to keep her head down and figure out what's going on with her life. For instance, she has a regular, Mr. Pettigrew, a former cop, who is being followed around by a dead stripper, who keeps talking to Janey. It seems that Mr. Pettigrew got her off the streets and when she died, he took over paying for her son's private school tuition in secret. Janey also sees that Mr. Pettigrew has a demon around his heart slumbering, but has no idea what to do about that.

Janey also learns about her other abilities, such as her knowledge of many languages and the ability to stop time and heal quickly and feel people's emotions and sense when they are lying. When one woman goes through her to move on and she sees the woman's whole life and feels her emotions as she does this, it completely freaks her out. But she still can't remember who she is. Even when Cookie slips up and calls her Charley, she does not recognize the name. Of course, that's not her true name.

Janey soon finds herself in trouble (no surprise if you've read the other books) when she finds out that the antiques store owner, Mr. Vandenberg, is in a great deal of trouble, as well as his family, who are being held hostage somewhere. There are foreign men in his store digging, it seems, into the dry cleaning store next door, which makes no sense. She goes to Bobert with this information, as he was a police officer back in New Mexico, and she knows if she goes to the cops they may not believe her, or if they do, they could go rushing in and get his whole family killed. Janey, of course, does not stop her involvement there, even though Bobert tells her to.

She also is trying to figure out what is going on with the waitress Erin and her babies, because she sees a dead woman when she looks at their pictures. Also, Erin has hated her since she got there. Janey thought it was because Erin would not be able to work extra shifts like she wanted to, but it turns out to be something much worse. She also has a bit of matchmaking to do for the busboy Lewis who thinks he is in love with the waitress Francie, who can't keep her eyes off Reyes, while the waitress Shayla, has been quietly waiting in the background for years.   And let's not forget the Headless Horseman. It is Sleepy Hollow after all.

Janey keeps getting the feeling that she lost something and that she must be a bad person if she can't remember her past. She just can't seem to remember who she is and it turns out that it is very important that she do so.  No one there wants to rush her into remembering as she has so much power now that who knows what she might do by accident if it all came back to her too suddenly. But her mind's refusal to remember will come with a cost.

I really enjoyed this unique approach to a story line. After what happened at the end of the last book, it makes total sense that this is what Charley would do. Sometimes things happen that are so horrible that we need to disappear for a while. She just happens to have the power to make it more real than the rest of us. She has such a big heart to go with that smart mouth of hers and both are constantly getting her into trouble. It's a good thing she has so many friends and family who care about her enough to drop everything to help her through this difficult time and be there for her.  She still has her boots and her endless supply of coffee and she's ready to kick some ass, which is a good thing, because I have a feeling there will a lot of kicking to do in the future.

Amazon link:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Dirt-Ninth-Grave-Davidson/dp/1250074487/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=083F476M267WXG84KJCG

It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History by Jennifer Wright

                        

This book contains a baker's dozen of a real doozy of breakups that will make yours seem sedate and normal by comparison. Think your ex gave you a bad turn, or that he/she's the worst person ever? They do not hold a candle to any of these nuts, sadists, and losers (For women, just keep telling yourself, "Hey, at least I was never one of Mailer's wives".)  When you put your heart out there, there is always a risk of getting it smashed into pieces.  And when that happens, we sometimes do some of the most stupid things like sending them e-mails we regret sending, or drunk dial them. For these people, those options were not available yet, so things sometimes took a ride on the crazy train. Sometimes this might be due to a lack of anything else to do. The author mentions several times that TV is not really such a bad thing as back then people (the rich ones) had too much time on their hands tended to wind up doing very weird things such as breed giants and have people dress up as chickens and pretend to lay eggs.

For those who have an image of ancient Rome being "civilized" will be in for a big surprise. This breakup story will be about Emperor Nero and Poppaea. Nero's mother was Agrippina the Younger, sister of Emperor Caligula and wife of Emperor Claudius (of the book and movie I, Claudius fame). Claudius was highly intelligent but managed to become Emperor by being seen as a fool, which is a good strategy for survival in ancient Rome.  He was seen as a pretty good ruler who expanded the empire and then in 54CE, Agrippina poisoned him, not once, but twice, at the same dinner (first with mushrooms and then either with the feather he used to induce vomiting, which I like to believe because that is much more devious, or by a bowl of gruel she gave him to settle his stomach).  In Rome, this was a rather normal thing. "The Roman punishment for patricide was to blindfold the offender...and toss him into a sack. An ape, a snake, a dog, and a rooster would also be put in the sack, and then it would be sewn up....then the bag would be thrown into a river...Even if you had some kind of Kumbaya moment where you were able to simultaneously charm an ape, a snake, a dog, and a rooster, you would drown anyway."  At the arena, gladiators weren't the only ones to die. Spectators could find themselves tossed to the animals for fun.  As the author of this book states: If the city-state had a motto, it would be ABSOLUTELY NO ONE HERE DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES. That is certainly true in this story.  Agrippina arranges for Nero to marry Octavia, Claudius's daughter in order to solidify his claim as Emperor. In 58 CE, Nero began a love affair with Poppaea Sabina who "possessed every virtue but goodness". She was also quite beautiful (it is said that she resembles the actress Christina Hendricks) and wealthy.

Poppaea had already been married twice. Her first husband, Rufrius Crispinus had been commander of Emperor Claudius's Praetorian Guard, whom Agrippina had banished, then he was later killed by Nero when he had reached the ripe old age of sixty-six years old. Otho, her second husband, was a close friend of Nero's and was likely her lover while she had been married. Nero married Poppaea off to Otho thinking that he would have no interest in her. Instead, he fell in love with her and Nero was not allowed into their house. Some say that Poppaea returned his feelings, while others say she was using Nero's jealousy to have Otho banished so that she would be free to marry Nero and become Empress. Nero, however, was still married to the very popular Octavia and Agrippina did not like Poppaea. Do you see more dead bodies in the future? You would be right. This is Rome, which Nero would eventually burn (But not play the fiddle while it happened, but sing instead. Not quite the same is it?) The person in this story you should feel sorry for is the slave Sporus, whom Nero castrated and changed his name to Sabina, married him, and had him dress up like Poppaea. At that time, homosexuality was frowned upon in Rome and castration was illegal, even for slaves (though you could purchase a eunuch from another country). Things pretty much go downhill for everyone at this point. Keep in mind, unlike poor Sporus, we can always leave a bad relationship that is terrible for us.

 The Borgia family, who lived in fifteenth-century Italy, really knew how to have fun. Pope Alexander VI (born Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia) was the party animal all men wish they could be. His sex parties at the papal palace were quite memorable and his children--Cesare, Lucrezia, Giovanni, and Gioffre--were in attendance. Their mother was the daughter of one of his mistresses. Lucrezia was an accomplished poet (Lord Byron would gush over her work), could read Greek and Latin, speak Italian, French, and Spanish at a time when women were pretty much never given an education. She also had great hair. At that time being Pope was more than what it is today. Then it meant you were the ruler of Rome, as Italy was not yet a country, but ruled by various people on certain pieces of land.  In June of 1493, Alexander married Lucrezia off to Giovanni Sforza, whose family was rather influential and ruled Milan.  Alexander insisted that the marriage is not consummated until November. This was not completely surprising as Lucrezia was thirteen at the time, which was considered a young bride at the time (Some noblewomen were married at that young age, but there was a criticism of the practice.)  Some say that the real reason was that Alexander was looking for a better match for his daughter, now that he was Pope and Lucrezia really didn't like Giovanni who had a violent temper and would take her to live way out in the country. Giovanni was also suspected of spying on the Borgias, who were a paranoid lot, but as they say, sometimes they really are out to get you. So in 1497, Cesare planned on poisoning him but Giovanni found out, perhaps by Lucrezia herself, or maybe by himself.

This is when they decided for him to agree to an annulment on the grounds that he was impotent, even though he had illegitimate children and his first wife had died in childbirth. While the Borgias were okay with lying, Giovanni was not. Which is when the mudslinging about family incest going on began. It got really ugly. Giovanni's family, trying to knock some sense into him about the seriousness of what he was doing, threatened to withdraw family protection, which would most certainly lead to his death, not that he wasn't headed in that direction in the first place. Lucrezia had retired to a convent to avoid the whole mess and supposedly had an affair with a Spanish messenger named Perotto that left her pregnant. These were the Borgias though, so nothing was going to stop the annulment. She was examined by judges and declared  "intacta". Giovanni attested to her virginity after being threatened that he prove his virility by having sex in front of the Borgia and Sforza family members. It takes a set of gold cojones to pull this off. Lucrezia had the baby, Giovanni, who had no mother listed, but Alexander first said he was Cesare's child then said it was his child, which just caused people to believe that the incest rumors were true, when they were likely just something Giovanni made up because he was ticked off at the situation he was in (like when you say crazy things during a divorce). Lucrezia later married a seventeen-year-old Neapolitan, Alfonso of Aragon, whom she actually did love.   The Pope gave Lucrezia governorship over Spoleto and Foligno, which she did a really good job of. They had one child, Rodrigo. After Alfonso was no longer politically useful, Cesare and Alexander killed him off.  Her third husband, Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara would be her last.  But her fist husband was the one that caused her the most trouble, in that way we are all familiar with. She spent the rest of her life trying to avoid running into him again because she was rather ashamed of the way she had treated him.

If you could choose a place in time to visit I suggest Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century (I suggest reading The Little Book by Selden Edwards for a taste).  "Vienna at the turn of the century was a liberated and bohemian place. Vienna then was what people from Iowa think Brooklyn is like today. (Brooklyn's not nearly that cool.)" A very beautiful and talented woman named Alma was married to the newly famous composer and director of the Vienna Court Opera, Gustav Mahler. Mahler told her she could not also be a composer because someone had to take care of the house. She came to resent him and his work and claimed that when he composed Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) in their home it caused the death of their daughter. While Mahler was away, she began having an affair with Walter Gropius, the architect who founded the Bauhaus School. This turned out to be a very good thing for her marriage. Gustav decided that she should pursue her career and she published five songs and three movements of Mahler's Incomplete Tenth Symphony are said to have been inspired by the affair and the reconciliation.  Things were really going great until Gustav just up and died on her less than a year later.

She then started dating the famous, and very odd, artist Oskar Kokoschka.  When he started out he was one of three people to be accepted into Vienna's Kunstgwerbeschule out of one hundred fifty-three applicants, where he immediately began creating corpse-like drawings of children. He also wrote a kid's book titled The Dreaming Youths that contained the poem: Little fish,/little fish red/with a triple-edged knife I'll cut you dead,/then with my fingers I'll tear you in two,/put an end to the silent circling you do.  This freaked out a lot of people, though he and the artist Gustav Klimt (Whom Alma had also had an affair with. If you were famous and in Vienna at that time, you slept with Alma. Otherwise, you weren't worth knowing.) became friends. In 1909 after graduating he took a sensible teaching job, which is where he met Alma.  At a dinner party (where he asked her to marry him after knowing her only three hours) she asked Oskar to paint her portrait. He said he painted her as the new Mona Lisa. Alma pointed out that she looked more like Lucrezia Borgia. That would not matter because Oskar would paint lots of paintings of her, the most famous being Bride of the Wind.   Oskar soon became obsessively jealous and acting crazy.  His mother was threatening to kill her if she saw Oskar again. Then there were Oskar's odd sexual tastes. The fact that he liked to wear her nightgowns didn't bother her too much. But when she would refuse to hit him during sex, he started talking about the most horrific images of a murder he was envisaging in his mind. When Oskar went off to fight in World War I, Alma went back to Walter Gropius, whom she married in 1915.

Some will say that Oskar's odd behavior was due to the head injury he received during the war, but really, he was a bit off his rocker, to begin with. On July 22, 1918, he wrote to a doll maker to inquire about making him a doll. He basically had the doll maker create a doll that kinda looked like Alma. The thing is, he did not keep this sex doll a secret like a normal person would. They went everywhere together: carriage rides, dinner parties at friends' houses (who acted like this was perfectly normal), the opera. He even hired a maid for the doll, who felt sorry for him and had sex with him. Oskar was made a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and yes, they knew about the doll. Everyone knew about the doll. Alma, meanwhile, would have an affair with novelist Franz Werfel, who wrote The Song of Bernadette, and oddly enough stayed with him until she died. Oskar, well, Oskar would have a different ending to his life. One he probably did not expect.

Norman Mailer somehow managed to convince six women to marry him.  Mailer is the author of such works as Armies of the Night, The Naked and the Dead, and The Executioner's Song. He won two Pulitzers and is adored by the intelligentsia. He was also known to hail police cars as though they were taxis and to beat up a sailor who supposedly questioned the heterosexuality of his dog. In 1960 he decided to run for mayor of New York City with a plan to reduce inner-city crime by hosting jousting matches. At his kick-off party, George Plimpton hosted it and lots of literary folks were there. Mailer's second wife, Adele Morales, a painter, said things started off normally. As Mailer grew drunker, fighting started. Mailer, it seemed was also on drugs at the time. Then Mailer started bragging about how he was the greatest writer to ever live, which is when Adele told him he was "no Dostoevsky" and dared him to come at her, shouting, "Aja toro, aja, come on you little faggot, where's your cojones, did your ugly whore of a mistress cut them off, you son of a bitch." Mailer responded by grabbing a penknife and stabbing her in the heart and then in the back. As she lay on the ground bleeding, someone tried to help her. Mailer told him, "Get away from her. Let the bitch die."

Adele eventually made it to the hospital where she told the doctors that she slipped on some glass, which the doctors didn't buy for a second and she ended up telling them the whole story.  She still insisted that they "were perfectly happy together."  Mailer showed up at the hospital in the morning claiming he had stabbed her to save her from cancer.  Then he left to go appear on Mike Wallace to announce that he was running on the "Existential ticket".  Adele decided not to press charges. The question then arose of whether Mailer should be institutionalized. After a psychological assessment, the magistrate Reuben Levy believed that he "could not distinguish fiction from reality" and sent him to Bellevue for observation. The medical examiner claimed he was having "an acute paranoid breakdown...and is both homicidal and suicidal. His admission to a hospital is urgently advised."  Everyone seemed concerned about what would happen to Mailer. Adele, from that point forward, was forgotten.  Because Mailer was Mailer, it seems as though he and his writing were more important than a woman and her life. And it falls on us as a society who let that happen. Oh, and Mailer, he pleaded guilty to an assault charge and walked on a suspended sentence, because, you know, he had to finish writing his sequel to An American Tragedy by Dreiser.

I could keep going on and on, but I will leave you to discover the rest of these stories for yourself, such as the amazing Eleanor of Aquitaine (who tried to take over the throne from her husband when he took a mistress) and Henry II, Henry the VIII and both Anne Boleyn and her cousin Catherine Howard and how each dealt with their breakups in drastically different fashions, Anna Ivanovna, who would rule Russia after her uncle Peter the Great (who refused to let her marry again after her husband died two months after their marriage) and was pretty determined to make everyone miserable. She hated love and marriage and despised Catholics and gets her wish to have her sadistic dream come true, Timothy Dexter, the luckiest guy to ever live, who claimed his living wife was a ghost, Charlotte Lamb and Lord Byron, where Charlotte becomes rather obsessed with a man, her former lover, who has ladies fall at his feet every day and sends him clippings of her pubic hair, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, where Effie marries a man that when he sees her on their wedding night refuses to have sex with her because her body horrifies him, poor Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Edith Wharton and Morton Fullerton, the only man she ever had sex with, and Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor.

Jennifer Wright is an excellent and witty writer who really knows her stuff. She's like your best friend who shows up with a pint of ice cream and a pint of the alcoholic beverage of choice to sit on the couch with a box of Kleenex and slip in a weepy movie (maybe something from the BBC) to watch with you. She has guy friends too, so don't feel left out fellas, she'd be there for you too. The way she writes is just like she is delivering the best gossip. The best thing is, is that it is all true. Every unbelievable bit of it. After reading this book you will feel so much better about every breakup you have ever had because they really cannot be worse than these. Trust me. I've had my heart broken thousands of times and nothing comes close to these poor creatures (well, some of them do deserve it). So curl up and enjoy. Ice cream and alcohol are optional.

Note: There are lots of pictures (paintings) of the people involved (including the doll), but not one of Mailer, who does not deserve any more attention than he has already gotten.

Quotes:

I know there are people who handle romantic disappointment by talking calmly to their therapists, taking time to grieve quietly, and reemerging grateful for what they have learned. Sometimes I pretend to be one of those people, but in reality I am someone who handles breakups by taking Klonopin, sleeping for sixteen hours at a time, and writing long, honest, heartfelt e-mails to my ex. And then some texts to make sure my messages arrived. I have also been known to listlessly dump a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream into a pan to see if it will bake into a giant cookie rather than going to the store for more cookies. It will, by the way, so that’s not really embarrassing so much as it is a fun baking tip.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 1-2)

Evolutionary biologists found that people experiencing heartbreak have brain scans that mirror those of cocaine addicts in withdrawal. We do not handle breakups well. Humans are unbelievably resilient creatures in the face of most of the world’s horrors. We are brave in battle, heroic in the face of disease, and really just terrific on the whole until someone breaks up with us. And then we absolutely implode.

-Jennifer Wright (I Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 2-3) 

Honestly, I’m such a jerk about breakups. Even when things have gone wrong for completely understandable reasons and it’s clear that we’re incompatible, after someone breaks up with me, on some level I still want to think that it is because they have fundamental personality defects that make them unlovable or unable to love. Your ex is, as likely as not, not really a narcissist or a sociopath or emotionally disturbed or any of the other accusations that you’ve come up with to make yourself feel better about the relationship being over. Those are often just things we tell ourselves because feeling angry is more satisfying than feeling sad.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 71)

I think you can find a partner who is absolutely untouched, or you can find a partner who has bedroom skills, but you can’t have both. You pick. (I would 100 percent choose the sex-stuff option, but I am not a sixteenth-century ruler of England).-Jennifer Wright on Henry the VIII’s marriage to Catherine Howard (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 74)

It’s always important to point out—as Julian Barnes does in England, England—that the past wasn’t just a giant costume party. People did not behave the same in the Middle Ages as they do today, no matter how trendy movie directors try to make that life seem. (Sixteenth-century aristocrats swore all the time and listened to the Sex Pistols! No, they did not. They mostly listened to the Ramones and some Blondie.) Concerns were fundamentally different than they are today. No one said their main life goal was “to be happy” of find “work-life balance”. Instead, simply surviving was a very real, daily concern for many people. Then there were the questions of how to live honorably and how to get into heaven when you die.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 79)

I know I’ve said this before, but it is such a good thing we have television. Anyone who complains about people spending too much time watching reality shows and playing video games does not know what people with spare time got up to in a world without mindless amusements to keep them occupied. They made giants dress up as babies for their entertainment, that’s what they did.
-Jennifer Wright on Peter the Great of Russia (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 86)

I choose to believe that sometimes historians make up sad lies for no reason, because just as Anna hated marriage, historians hate happy stories that tie everything together with a fun ending.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 95)

Pacts with the devil have been made many times. There is no other way to explain the popularity of the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 100)

He attempted to give a speech in French to an English-speaking audience without knowing how to speak French himself. He seemed to think that the entire French language was maybe just a series of primitive hand gestures.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 101)

The book [A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Lord Timothy Dexter, First in the East, First in the West, and the Greatest Philosopher in the Western World] details Timothy’s life in his own somewhat incoherent way. It was written entirely without punctuation. When it was pointed out that the greatest philosopher in the Western world would probably use at least some punctuation (since it was, thank God, no longer the sixteenth century), in the second edition (there were ultimately eight printings) Dexter added a page of punctuation at the end, so readers could insert the marks wherever they liked or, as he claimed, “I put in A Nuf here and they may pepper and salt it as they please.”

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 104-5)

Unless you are King Henry VIII, there may not be a way to get a real sense of “closure” about a relationship.
-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 110)

I’m convinced that anyone who has never written stupid post-breakup letters to an ex-lover either is not fully human or has never actually experienced a bad breakup. We have all written or texted or e-mailed our former lovers something we regret. Sometimes correspondence revolves around an exchange of items. If your ex left her iphone behind as she fled, for instance, it would be polite to pack it up, maybe with a note that reads, “Here’s your iphone, you bloodsucking succubus.” Obviously, you should not write exactly that. If your ex is male, you should substitute incubus for succubus.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 111)

You really shouldn’t kick people when they’re down, and you definitely shouldn’t kick them when they are down, prostrate and sobbing at your feet.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 120)

Another fun tidbit (no pun intended): his second wife demanded an annulment after finding “malformation of the parts of generation, frigidity and impotence.” The biggest mystery is what is meant when people say their significant historical other was genitally malformed. Do you think he had a microphallus? I do. But we’ll never know. It’s going to be a mystery forever. In the future, if you accuse someone of being malformed in their genitals, please take pictures for historians.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 152)

He has ruined my life, so I can’t help loving him—it is the only thing to do.

-Oscar Wilde quoted in Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 160)

Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, not only was a genuine literary genius but had the added distinction of not being a whiny brat. He was a brave champion against humorlessness, bullies, ugliness, and bad wallpaper. All the important stuff. But then, Wilde had a remarkable ability to see the world as he wanted it to be, filled with beautiful, imaginative, funny, loving people. I think that is the way everyone reading this book would like to see the world. And I am sorry that he was disappointed.
-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 162)

What’s perpetually surprising to me is that a lively, emotionally complex woman who stole someone’s fiancé for fun, hung out in harems seemingly unperturbed, and wrote The Age of Innocence—one of the most heartbreaking romances of all time (read it right now if you haven’t!)—would have only one orgasm in her life with a man who left her immediately afterward.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 166-7)

However, there was supposedly a history of what we would now better understand as clinical manic depression in his family. His father “just wouldn’t get out of bed” and committed himself to psychiatric care. Teddy was also an alcoholic, which may have been a result of or contributed to his intense unhappiness. At the time, he was thought to suffer from melancholia (depression). Edith and her family might not have noticed that at first because during the Victorian era if you weren’t somewhat melancholy, you were just a moron. Sorry.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 169)

It hurts if someone you believe you love, whom you’ve slept with, won’t have contact with you afterwards. It does; I don’t care what era we’re in. What’s more, she had absolutely no one else she could talk to, given that the belief that good women didn’t discuss such matters was completely ingrained in her. It’s likely the only person she felt she could talk about sex with was the person with whom she’d had sex, who was not returning her letters. I cannot imagine a much more frustrating situation, especially for someone, who, as she said, usually had a very strong personality.
-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 176-7)Your very happiness, you see, depends on how long. How long?...You have been silent for months and more than anything this is what you want to say: We were dating my whole life. And I don’t mean symbolically, as in I keep going for the same type of guy and this is a pattern that needs exploring. Like paisley. I was born, and he was born, and we fell in love. And now I just have a memory that won’t quit and some choice words for Carly Simon. Instead you just round up by a month and leave it at that.

-Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number quoted in Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 177-8)

But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

-Edith Wharton (“The Fulness of Life”)

Sometimes it seems as if men who are even a little bit intelligent and “literary” are able to get away with more than human beings should be allowed to get away with. If a female celebrity gets a weird tattoo or haircut or makes the ill-advised decision to turn forty-five, people decide she’s crazy, which, as Tina Fey says, is how people describe women they don’t want to sleep with anymore.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 196)

Male writers, especially male writers during the 1960s, somehow tricked people into thinking that they were demigods because they had an understanding of language. Because they had a grasp on words, which (and I am stealing this from playwright Alan Bennett) they always pronounced in a way that sounded peculiarly Welsh. Language and words are important, and so are syllables and even punctuation (as we learned from Timothy Dexter). But being a very good writer is not going to cure Alzheimer’s.

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 207)

I think—and this is a sense I get from personal interaction—that women ought to apologize for their behavior in relationships a lot less and men should apologize a lot more.  When my female friends’ relationships end, we go out for a drink, and about halfway through the evening their brains seem to be taken over  by some sort of crazed-lunatic hallucinatory virus that causes them to say something like “The problem—the real reason I’m unlovable, basically—is that I can’t bake. Because his ex was a really great baker, so I have to take cooking classes tomorrow, while simultaneously losing ten pounds because I’m fat, fat, fat  and disgusting.” Meanwhile, men often seem to externalize the blame for relationships ending. Whenever one of my male friends has a breakup, we go out for a drink, and at some point he will say, genuinely outraged, “How could she do that to me? I was so good to her!” And I could say, “Well, you refused to return her calls for a solid week, and there was that one time you slept with someone else. Remember that? And we agreed ‘that didn’t count’?” But I just nod and listen, because this venting is healing and could make him feel better. It is not for me to say, “Your reaction exemplifies something interesting to me about how people of different genders behave.”

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly:13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 209-10)

Burton once referred to Taylor as his “eternal one-night stand”, which has a ring of truth to it, insofar as one-night stands are filled with passion, and also some amount of terror that the other person might turn out to be a serial killer. Everyone feels that way about one-night stands, right?

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 212)

Not every relationship that ends imparts a life lesson that makes us better people. You don’t always “learn something”. Relationships aren’t fortune cookies; they don’t always contain a cool little message for you to carry around after they’re done. Nor do they necessarily leave us better—more confident, more skilled, more interesting—than we were before the relationship ran its course….Still, love does move us in profound and real ways. It may not always take us to a better place, but the act of loving forces our lives into motion. Giving in to love means that your life will change….Loving and forming relationships with people rarely allows us to keep our lives exactly the same. Loving is powerful because it is the opposite of stasis….When people say that they’re “just hanging out” or “keeping things real casual”, I always think, Oh, you coward. Of, course, they’re right to be afraid because, as we have seen, you condemn yourself to a safe but static life. And that’s not enough. On their deathbeds, no one says, “Wow, what I regret most is making so many emotional connections with people.” We want to be moved. We crave it….If you had your heart broken because you tried to love, well, then you’re brave, too. You rejected keeping your life the way it was. You abandoned the comfort of stillness. You set off into uncharted territory. That’s very worthy of respect. If the love ended badly, that’s OK. We live longer now than most of the people in this book, and you’re likely not in danger of being beheaded anytime soon. You will have more chances. The world is full of many openhearted people and many opportunities. That may be impossible to think about when you’re heartbroken, because heartbreak is awful, but if you took a chance  on love in the first place, you are a courageous soul. There will be a time when you go out and are brave again. Until then, take comfort. And as Caroline Lamb wrote, “Peace to the broken hearts.”

-Jennifer Wright (It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History p 226-8)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ended-Badly-Thirteen-Breakups-History-ebook/dp/B00W1E132M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486387321&sr=1-1&keywords=it+ended+badly