Marie Brenner’s Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found

Venice: Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo. Just out, this is the first translation (from Venetian, not Italian) of the great diarist who made Samuel Pepys look silly by writing 58 volumes. Best discovery so far: He seems to be the first person in recorded history to say (on June 5, 1525, in opposition to a proposal that the age requirement be raised for election to the Quarantia Criminal) "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." The passage: "… I said that if something is not broken, it need not be fixed … The council understood immediately that I was telling the truth. I then concluded that this change should not be made, recapitulating what I had said. Holding everyone’s attention, I gave an admirable speech." Here, here, Marin!

Loved Marie Brenner’s Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found; James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning; Steven Saylor’s The Triumph of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome; and Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. Adam Davies has a delightful novel coming out in August called Mine all Mine which I think is quite brilliant — with prejudice — he is my stepson. I am currently engrossed in two books: Stephen Carter’s Palace Council and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

Definitely Marie Brenner’s Apples and Oranges. Plus White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters and Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.

Oh, by all means our friend Marie Brenner’s astounding personal memoir Apples and Oranges. But I also have to include Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America, which is recent history with a difference. So many pertinent revelations here by Burton Hersh about the FBI director, his friend Joe Kennedy and his enemies, the Kennedy sons. Marie’s book is from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. And Burton’s is Basic Books.

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The most powerful book I’ve read (well, am READING) this summer is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. It is beautifully written and always surprising. Hypnotic in the rendering of the character of Edgar and his instinctual connection to dogs. It is an intimate novel yet great in scope with a mystery at its heart. A totally compelling, heart-wrenching read by a gifted first time novelist. Extremely sensitively observed.

wOw wants me to write pieces with pictures no less and I am also supposed to send answers to questions that invade my life and reveal themselves everywhere, in the popcorn, in the salad, in my telephone bills. I used to read myself to sleep nights but since wOw I go to sleep pondering answers to what will happen to Hillary now, for God’s sake — and now what do I think about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction — and what will happen if my granddaughter wears a nose ring to school — and what did happen to good old Bill Clinton for heaven’s sake — and are there really angels and is Tom Cruise one — and on and on. I know I have read books because I have piles of them next to my bed and all have corners turned down but obviously none of them got to my psyche. Next year.