"Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered" by Dianne Hales (2014)

A slow-burning and quite beautiful double biography that discusses lives of both Leonardo da Vinci and Lisa Gherardini, along the way we are treated with a colourful tapestry of renaissance Florence with its cast of thousands and countless intriguing anecdotes of how life used to be back than. Reader must put aside any prejudices or opinions - its wrong to judge 16th century by modern standards and what nowadays we might consider wrong was totally accepted once. For example, like most of Florence ladies, Gherardini was constantly, perpetually pregnant and at the age of twenty four she was married eight years, with five children - high mortality of children meant that perhaps only half of them survived the childhood. Than there is this story about women often entering a covent if they didn't have a suitable dowry - without dowry, nobody would take them - two of her own sisters AND her oldest daughter entered a convent (at the age of twelve) and were basically buried alive for the rest of their lives, only because family could not get appropriate finances. (It seems dowry was only important for aristocrats who were carefully managing their lands and properties, a baker's daughter would marry for love.) Than there is Leonardo himself, who was never legitimately recognised by his father and as a "bastard" was not able to to attend university or to pursue professions such as medicine and law - he was forced to create himself and pursued a lifelong self education. 

At first, reader might wonder do we have any proper, documented informations about Gherardini but there are surprisingly many of them and Dianne Hales delightfully share her excitement in doing research in modern-day Italy, following the footsteps of both mysterious lady and her painter. We are introduced to the whole family clan and its many intricate branches, everything placed in its proper historical background, weddings, wars and all:

"Sometimes hours, sometimes days, weeks, or even months after the exchange of vows came the triumphal procession, the ductio ad domum or domumductio (leading [of a woman] home) from her parents’ to her husband’s residence, a bride’s moment of public glory. Since the marriage was not yet complete, Lisa did not have to wear a matron’s cloak (mantello) but could show off her wedding apparel to the entire town.

The festivities would have continued at the del Giocondo home, with a guest list extending beyond the immediate families to various kin groups. Everyone dressed as beautifully as possible as a way to “far onore” or contribute honor to the event. The wedding feast may have featured expensive treats, such as spiced veal, roast kid, peacocks’ tongues, and sweetmeats. Honeyed almonds were popular confections for the guests, with musicians, singers, and jugglers entertaining well into the evening.

The eating, dancing, toasting, and singing might have seemed to go on forever yet passed as quickly as a flash of summer lightning. As the bride, Lisa, imbued with the special authority of a queen for a day, could have invited young men and women to dance as couples. In the old Tuscan wedding ritual, her mother would have placed a baby boy in her arms as a harbinger of future sons and slipped a gold coin in her shoe for prosperity. Outside, a few young men may have lingered to shout and sing in a raucous mattinata, a tradition whenever an older man “stole” a young girl for his bride. Some coins tossed through the window for drinks would have persuaded them to leave." 

There is literary a cast of hundreds, including both notorious families of Borgia and Medici, Niccolò Machiavelli, various kings of France, young Raphael and Michelangelo who at thirty earned more money than Leonardo did in his lifetime. The rivalry between them was explained in a chapter dealing in their proposed (but never materialised) joined work, "The Battle of Anghiari" - in 2018 I have seen the exhibition about it in the Teylers Museum. 

Towards the end, I got a sudden epiphany about Leonardo's work - most of the things he created during his lifetime were celebrated but falling apart (for example, "The Last Supper" was peeling even during his lifetime). His motto was that art survives, where the real life beauty fades. It is very possible that the commissioned portrait of Gherardini (that he never ever even delivered) was something he kept on doing for years, out of his own pleasure and beautifying it with details and new ideas until it no longer resembled real life person. In the last chapters we learn about several copies around the world (none of them convinces me) and the fate of real painting that travelled far wider than either the artist or its subject ever did. 

"Full Service" by Scotty Bowers (2012)

The full title is "Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars" and this is exactly what it promises - memoirs of a ex-marine who worked on a gas station in Hollywood and provided discreet services to the whole world, including some of the biggest names in the movie industry. At the time of the publishing, Bowers himself was well in his 90s and most of his acquaintances were long gone so it probably felt safe to open this Pandora's box because after all, who's going to complain about dirt on post-war Hollywood. And to be honest, at this point it's not a secret anymore that many of the celebrities lived double life, with studio's tactful approval, as long as they kept it far from media. Even thought many of his spicy stories seems like exaggeration (after all, who can either prove or disprove what xyz liked in the bedroom?) it must be noted that Bowers knows in a tiny detail a lot about celebrities houses, the interiors, roads, what cars they drove, etc. And yes, he is prominently mention in research by Alfred Kinsey  so it appears he was around at the time - its up to a reader to decide how much of this is true. 

There were two slight objections that kept on nagging me and I just couldn't shake it off:

- Bowers claims everything happened spontaneously simply because he was a good looking ex marine and was working on the gas station, when Hollywood producers and such would request his sexual services. One thing led to another and before you know it, he was connecting clients with available soldiers/sailors/girls - but he insist this was all for the sake of fun and he never ever took any money for this. In fact, he was just making everybody happy and making a world a better place. 

Than he proceeds to describe how for the next several decades he was extremely busy doing this while at the same time he was working as a bartender all around private parties in Hollywood. I don't want to sound cynical or nitpicking but please, investing so much time to do what is basically pimping and claiming it was not for money ... it just doesn't sound true. 

- Bowers obviously loved sex and affectionately describes every single occasion, where, how, with whom and how many people were involved. This made me stop a little bit and wonder was there not anything else in his life important remembering - he casually mentions wife and daughter, than goes back to orgies with celebrities - not to be too fussy, but what kind of person memorises zillion sexual encounters in a detail? Even as we read this, everything eventually blurs into a exhausting list of conquests - so much that a halfway trough I put it down and left to simmer for a while, unsure is this really worth continuing. 

My problem with this book was that it felt as a one-trick-pony. Once you get over the introduction and initial thrill of "dirty secrets", the gimmick wears off and its just never ending list of erotic encounters where author brags about celebrities that he encountered - almost like Zelig, he is everywhere, behind Hepburn, Beatles, King Kong and Bugs Bunny. I might have enjoyed it better if I read it as a teenager, when I loved these kind of dirty memoirs - now I am already middle aged and see things differently. Yes, we got it, it was difficult and complicated for those people to find dates and keep it hidden, but as a book it soon became repetitive. And I totally skipped the chapter about Charles Laughton, I simply didn't want to keep this in my head. 

"Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!" by Liza Minnelli, Josh Getlin and Heidi Evans (2026)

After a long & heavy battle with Walter Scott, I promised myself something light, fluffy and entertaining - and I had a perfect book in mind. I devoured this celebrity autobiography with the greatest pleasure in just a few days, nothing like previous book about medieval England and merry men from Sherwood forrest. Guess what, give me Walter Scott anytime - yes, it was sometimes a struggle but it was a beautiful creation worth repeated reading and it actually transported me in a different place and time. I was thinking this morning that this particular memoirs could have been something else entirely if Minnelli wrote it a decade or two ago, while she was still relatively strong in body and mind. At this moment, she is 80 and very frail, so naturally her focus is on a slow but inevitable decline. And we read about it a lot. Basically the first part of the book is climb upwards and second part is descent. Take it as you want. 

Years ago I read somewhere a description of Minnelli as a "loose cannon" and this had stayed with me since than. We all known and loved her since early 1970s when she at only 26, she won Oscar for her immortal role of quirky and lovable fräulein Sally Bowles - ever since, she was a famous for being famous, forever haunted by paparazzi and often photographed hanging around with other celebrities, though it would be hard to remember when was the last time she actually did something memorable. True, she did the best she could to escape gigantic shadows of her parents and created the individual stage persona for herself - kind of modern day version of her mother (who was a star of musicals and crowd magnet in live performances) - but she might had come along a little bit too late: during the 1960s people were turning to rock music and Minnelli was a throwback to completely different, earlier era of glitzy Las Vegas shows. While Streisand (who had similar background in the night clubs and musicals) eventually managed a smooth crossover to mainstream pop, Minnelli actually never had a hit single or successful movie after that 1972 masterpiece "Cabaret". 

So the first part of the book describes Minnelli's upbringing in Hollywood hills - kind of what people probably expect from her, memories of celebrities visitors, uncle this and uncle that, struggles with notoriously famous mother (who traumatised her for life, although Minnelli continues to write about her lovingly) and climb towards 1972 Oscar. Than something else emerges - the fact that movie industry didn't know what to do with her. Apparently the role like Sally Bowles happens only once in a lifetime. Notoriety and fame guaranteed that she will always have sold-out live performances in her concerts and musicals but both movie and music career basically quietly fizzled away. It's actually quite amazing to think that Minnelli continued performing for decades, even though she never had a hit record or another hit movie. Sporadic flash like silly 1981 comedy "Arthur" or 1989 out-of-the-blue collaboration with synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys just proved that she was a wonderfully gifted, old-fashioned performer who never found another place to shine. 

I was always impressed with her powerful alto. I remember even as just a teenager, swooning over her early, pre-Cabaret recordings where she would recorded something like "On A Slow Boat To China" or "Stormy Weather" and honest to God I thought she was far, far better singer than her mother (I still do). So I continued enjoying her music and watching her dancing & singing in musicals was always a joy. But I understood that there was a big divide between her and regular big music stars who were selling chart-ruling hits - hers was a world of American Songbook and these things go in and out of fashion. When a surprising number of pop stars eventually turned to Songbook repertoire, Minnelli (who should have been by far the most obvious choice for this) was too busy with personal problems to actually pay attention to recordings. It is a miracle that her career continued as long as it did. 

The second part of the book is, sadly, perpetual fight with addictions, hospitals, rehab clinics and so on. It gets maddening and repetitive to the point that it unbalances the book - however, it is her story and her life. I can't comment on this since I don't hop around Hollywood parties with A list celebrities non stop, like she does. There must have been a lot of sycophants, enablers and whatnot around these people and its surely not a healthy environment, specially if someone is trying to stop drinking - luckily, she found a true friendship and support in Michael Feinstein and it seems they both love and support each other. The book was bittersweet - wonderful when things were happening, sad when they were not. It feels light and breezy but there were occasional reflections and insights that suggested Minnelli understands herself all too well. It takes a special kind of person to decide to give her whole life to a make-believe world. I love Liza. 

"A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides" by Gisèle Pelicot (2026)

 

After suffering some doubts about Raymond Chandler who was obviously a brilliant writer but completely sidetracked by his own witticisms to actually focus on a story, I needed a break and something that would make reading a pleasure and not a task. A random visit to a local bookshop unearthed this recently published book and suddenly I knew what my next book will be. I did ask myself am I perhaps just carried away with sensationalism, after all its about very well publicised court case that raised a lot of questions, still I wanted to read it and was pleasantly surprised. 

As everyone by now probably knows, Gisèle Pelicot was an ordinary, elderly French lady quietely minding her own business and slowly approaching retirement, when her husband Dominique was caught by a security guard filming under three women’s skirts, his phone and computer were seized by police and suddenly his whole secret, double life of a rapist came to the surface. It turned out that for ten years, he was secretly drugging his wife and inviting strangers from the internet to rape her. All this time Gisèle was totally unaware of this, believing her husband loves and supports her, while suffering from strange memory loss and blackouts that she worried were potentially Alzheimer (medical tests assured her nothing was wrong with her). What was specifically hard to take and to understand was that she had lived all this time with a monster who was so close to her and whom she completely trusted - he also took pictures of their daughter sleeping and shared it online.

Chapters dealing with the discovery of crimes and subsequent court case are combined with chapters explaining the family background of both Gisèle and her husband. While at first I thought this will be boring, the background chapters proved to be actually very interesting because it is trough them that Gisèle tries to make sense of their behaviour as a individuals and a couple: she lost her mother at a very young age and always found comfort in a relationship, while her husband comes from the family bruised by violence and had with time unwittingly turned into a copy of his own manipulative and aggressive father. 

The writing was surprisingly clear-eyed and not scandalous or salacious at all - whatever was happening while she was drugged, Gisèle herself was not aware of it and had no memory of it. She also refused (until the very last moment during the court case) to watch the taped videos, so her story is more about herself trying to come to terms with decade long abuse than the details of it, it is clear she needed to process this and understand the psychological manipulation that led to this. There were perhaps just one or two things that bothered me along the way: her constant attempts to understand and somehow humanise her monster husband (almost like she cannot give up on memories of previously happy family life) and behaviour of her daughter who comes across as handful and too self-absorbed to actually be of any help during the court case. The whole moment when Gisèle decides not to hide inside the locked court but to open the doors to journalists and TV cameras and expose the rest of sniggering rapists was brilliant and kept me reading deep into the night. Contrary to what I expected, the book actually has an artistic merit. 

"I still need to believe in love. I received it intensely and too briefly from my parents, and for a long time I believed that it protected me from everything. I even believed that I knew how to give it. I now know that it comes from a deep wound within me that makes me vulnerable. But I accept that fragility, that risk, still. To fight the emptiness, I need to love." 

"How to Be a Victorian" by Ruth Goodman (2013)

 

I ADORE Ruth Goodman ever since I first glimpsed her in BBC documentaries about living on various "historic farms" by BBC. In fact, I might even be a bit of Ruth Goodman groupie, I would always watch anything with her, with greatest interest and pleasure. However, it turned out that so far I have actually never read any of the books she wrote and as 2026 is the year where I decided to read only authors I have never read before, this was a perfect choice. It might sound strange that I decided to read this while lying next to a swimming pool in Maspalomas, but hey, nothing better than to read about other people's suffering to enjoy and appreciate one's own life.

Goodman was everything I expected and than some. She did beautiful work on researching how majority of ordinary people lived back in the day - not just aristocrats and kings who are always mentioned and described, but ordinary people from all levels of class. "How to Be a Victorian" follows 24 hours in lives of Victorians - from getting up, getting dressed, breakfast, how did they travel to work, what exactly did they eat trough the day, what did they do in their free time, etc. It was packed with wonderfully crazy details and informations, for example how undertakers often sold hair stolen from corpses, babies were given opium so mothers could leave them at home and go to work, how the original idea behind public swimming pools was actually something else completely, the details about personal hygiene (brushing hair twice a day was perfectly fine and preferred to hair washing) and much, much more. And of course, heartbreaking accounts of small children going to work, something that would absolutely not be tolerated today. 

"My research has given me tremendous sympathy and admiration for those who somehow, despite dire circumstances, battled through. People such as Tony Widger, who quietly worked away in his kitchen in his underwear at dawn, carefully preparing a cup of tea and a biscuit for him and his wife to have in bed before they embarked upon their exhausting day’s industry of fishing and housework respectively. Or Hannah Cullwick, who was required to complete two hours of work before preparing her employer’s breakfast, and then her own. And not to forget six-year-old William Arnold, who stood alone in a field in January from dawn until dusk scaring crows, without even a bite to eat until he walked home after dark. All these people, ordinary in so many ways, seem to me heroic in their endurance, fortitude, love and commitment to their families."

"Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop" by Bob Stanley (2022)

 

A rare and beautiful thing, this voluminous book was captivating from the first to the last page - even though I was busy with it for a month, not once I wanted to skip the page; it kept me engaged to the very end and than I went back once more to re-read about Jake Thackray. I have read in the past books focused on specific genres, however this is the very first time that I have encountered book that covers almost the whole century of recorded popular music - in all its disguises, be it vaudeville, blackface, blues, crooners, swing, rock, Broadway, you name it. It sounds very ambitious and it is - it is also brimming with interesting perception, conclusions, sardonic wit and opinions. "Let's Do It" works as a kind of prequel to author's "Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop" but while it starts with the very dawn of recorded popular music, it goes much further than the rise of rock - it covers popular music all the way to the early 1970s and explains what were the seismic changes at that point.

   

Stanley is not only a brilliant writer but also a musician - it is because he is musician, that he has this unique perspective of what is the heartbeat of popular music (as accepted by masses, as opposite to critically acclaimed but unloved cult names) and as a listener, he really unearths rare gems that only nerds like me appreciate: he claims that one of Streisand's best recordings was rare 1966 single "Our Corner of the Night"  which is totally fascinating as its anomaly from her better known work (and never released or either album or compilations). He is also very funny, as for example in this particular paragraph: "No singer was more indicative of America's new-found effervescence than the insatiable Sophie Tucker, who emerged in 1912, aged twenty-six, as ˜The Last of the Red Hot Mamas, though no one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered."

What struck me as the most interesting conclusion after reading such a massive survey of almost a century of popular music is how transitory everything is - recorded music is simply a recorded document of particular moment in time. And just like every moment, it has its value and than it goes away, mostly to be forgotten. No matter how big or popular certain songs or artists are in their time, eventually the new listeners will find new favourites and their own idols: a perfect example is Bing Crosby who was once a massive pop superstar and is almost completely forgotten now. Name every artist you find important and immortal - this book will show you that its all about perspective and as the time passes, new generations will not give a damn about your immortals. A case in point: musician and poet Rod McKuen : "He may be almost forgotten now, but until Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, McKuen’s album The Sea was the Warner Brothers group’s best-selling LP of all time. That catalogue included every album by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis on Reprise, not to mention those by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. McKuen was huge, and now his music is forgotten."  It seems to me this eventually happens to everybody, to metamorphose from current hit to oldies and than slowly to grandparents music. Re-evaluation and clever marketing (like in case of obscure blues artist Robert Johnson who became celebrated posthumously) might bring some names back into the spotlight, but generally speaking everybody has a moment in the sun and than it goes away, we are drops in the ocean, to be forgotten along with our pop stars. 

"The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria" by Annie Gray (2017)

 

I was familiar with Annie Gray thanks to her work with "English Heritage" youtube channel and her wonderful enthusiasm about historical cooking recipes, but I was not aware that she was also book author, until I stumbled upon Podcast "Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society" where one whole episode was all about this particular book - this was not possible to resist so here I am.

The book is great fun, as it follows various stages of Victoria's life trough the food that was prepared and served for her. It is full of wonderful details and you can tell that Gray gets giddy with excitement as she explains that even at that time it was not uncommon that guests would steal the plates and cutlery (from Buckingham Palace, imagine that!) as a souvenirs. Tons of behind-the-scene informations and thankfully, Gray decided not to bother with history - there are enough biographies about Queen Victoria - her focus is exclusively a insider look into Queen's household, chefs, staff, cooking recipes, etc. Somewhere halfway trough, I suddenly got exhausted from all this cornucopia of research, but it says more about my lack of attention than about brilliant work of Annie Gray. 

"Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth" by Avi Loeb (2021)

 

Just in case if it was not clear already, I have a passion and curiosity about extraterrestrial life - basically my youtube history show totally random selection of videos about UFO, Tina Turner and historical cooking recipes. And if I am chilling after midnight on youtube, you can bet it will be one of these subjects. During one of such evenings, I have seen (and heard) Harvard professor Avi Loeb who struck me as an interesting man and his book stayed somewhere in the corner of my mind until eventually I decided to dive into it completely. 

As expected, the book "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth" was absolutely up my alley and I enjoyed it very much - Loeb is an intelligent, humble man who is still excited about the science and loves discussions and possibilities - although he is academic, he tries his best not to be dry and to explain everything easily. I must admit that I skipped some things because I was so engrossed in his theories that just couldn't wait to get to the interesting parts. (Perhaps I should go back and re-read it again with more patience). Loeb is tickled with unexplained presence of something we called Oumuamua that came out of our Solar System and continued tumbling into interstellar space - so far nobody really has explanation, except that science tend to call it probably some weird asteroid - Loeb theorises that it might have been artificial object designed by some other civilisation and builds the book about the ideas of possibilities of extraterrestrial life, other life forms and such. He even mentions panspermia, the possibility that our species arrived from Mars (or some other place) and what struck me as very interesting was his idea that the path of Oumuamua was not random but possibly programmed to avoid any research of its origin:

"The hypothesis that intelligent extraterrestrials designed ‘Oumuamua to be at LSR raises the obvious question: Why would they bother? I can imagine any number of reasons. Perhaps they wanted to set up the interstellar equivalent of a stop sign. Or maybe it was more like a lighthouse—or, more simply, a signpost or navigation marker. A vast network of such buoys could act as a communication grid. Or it could be used as a trip wire, an alert system triggered when one of them was knocked out of LSR. In that spirit, perhaps its creators wanted to disguise its—and their—spatial origins. Putting an object at LSR effectively camouflages who put it there. Why? Because math and a little knowledge of an object’s trajectory is sufficient to trace that object’s origins back to a launchpad; doing that is one of the primary purposes of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Consider as well that any intelligence with a grasp of math and a good map of the universe could trace back to Earth any of the interstellar ships we’ve launched from our planet’s surface."

"Out of His Head: The Sound of Phil Spector" by Richard Williams (1972)

I bought this original 1972 paperback simply because I liked the ancient owner of the second-hand bookshop and even brought him some food from a fresh market nearby - he must be in his 80s and this place is his universe, loved everything about it. Than it turned out that the book itself actually excellent! Obviously this is from 1972 and this is the best thing about it - later books about Spector focus too much about scandals and the descent into the madness, but this little book is all about the music and the best thing about it might be that it was written while Spector was still working - it is a close look at the music industry circa 1972, with recently disbanded Beatles working closely with Spector and at that point he was still not completely manic, but respected producer instead.

One interesting thing that Williams notes is how before Spector, producers were really in the background - while he was preceded by some important names like John Hammond, George Goldner and Sam Phillips, it was Spector who marketed his records like the latest, newest product by Phil Spector - to my knowledge, nobody else did it before and surprisingly (from our perspective) the main artists were almost unimportant, it was all about Spector himself. Williams also covers every important aspect of Spector recorded output up to that point and how Beatles connection helped to bring him back to the forefront of music industry - for a while he seemed invincible but as we know, it will not stay like that. 

"Country: The Twisted Roots Of Rock 'n' Roll" by Nick Tosches (1977)

If you are looking for a concise, comprehensive history of country music, look elsewhere: Nick Tosches is way too idiosyncratic & original to stick to any subject for too long. Basically he is a music lover who also happens to write and his writing is mostly delightfully random - he goes where his muse leads him, never mind the chronology, subjects or logic. While 1984 book "Unsung Heroes Of Rock 'n' Roll" is a genuine masterpiece, this one, published in 1977 is unfortunately not as brilliant - it feels as almost general rehearsal for things to come - but dear reader, even a unpolished Tosches is still towering above other, mediocre authors. Its just pity that this particular book is not quintessential as the other one. 

While the title promises this will be a book about country music, this is merely an idea and from here Tosches goes on, musing about the earliest influences, Appalachian songs, Scottish murder ballads and so on - then he gets inspired and writes whole chapter about obscure vaudeville singers in a blackface or early rockers like Jerry Lee Lewis - mostly he rambles about lesser known musicians who have left almost no trace and never ever discusses Nashville, Grand Ole Opry or anything you would expect from this book - he mentions Jonny Cash only to laugh at his teetotalism and says "There are several offensively pious men in country music. Johnny Cash and his God are a particularly tedious act. The strongest drink Cash serves at his parties is nonalcoholic fruit punch."  In other words, read if you are already familiar with the author but don't expect something that this book is not. It is a collection of random essays, connected with the IDEA of country music but not exclusively about it. 

"Not long ago, in March of 1996, as I toiled without thanks or recompense on these many well-punctuated paragraphs to make for you, my friend, a reliquary finely wrought so to befit the rare remains of arcane knowledge held within, a most extraordinary letter came to me from the Midwestern land. 

“Dear Mr. Tosches,” it began. “Hello my name is Paul Dandy and I am a 16 year old musicologist and historian with my studies focused on the great Emmett Miller. I have been researching Miller for about 6V2 years . . .” Of course, I responded to the young master posthaste, and in turn heard from him again. “Dear Mr. Nick,” he opened, more familiarly this time. “Its a thrill to know I have found someone (finally!) who understands how important Emmett really is, and its good to know that someone actually cares about trying to preserve and learn about his music and his life!”

I like to think that this young man speaks for his generation; and hearing the voice of this generation—oh, how it swells—I am gratified and I am humbled. Indeed, how dare I grumble of toil without thanks, toil without recompense! My hope is renewed, not only in the future of Miller studies, but in the future of America as well. Youth, I salute you. I place upon your shoulders the mantle of this mission, in your hands its fate. May your journey to Fort Hill Cemetery be golden-bowered and fruitful; may Lue Wanna and her Savage Dancers love you as they have loved no other; and may the ghost of Joe Tarto smile down upon you. Go now, and seek closure." 

"Cher: The Memoir, Part 1" by Cher (2024)

Initially I noticed with some cynicism how this memoirs came hot on the heels of Streisand's own autobiography - but than found out that both ladies have been preparing their story for a long time, so it just looks like coincidence. This has to do more with publishers than subjects themselves. Another thing is, this is not the first time Cher publishes her memoirs: back in 1998 there was a slim volume titled "The First Time" where each chapter talked about certain anecdotes from her life - a bit disappointing and reserved glance at life that must have been much more substantial. This two-volume autobiography is much, much more detailed and definitely involved some ghost writers as lady herself confirms that she is a lifelong dyslexic - still, it has her recognisable style and speech, though probably edited and cleaned up. 

The start of the book, that deals with her childhood and upbringing is a bit long-winded (I just couldn't remember who is who in a large, dysfunctional family full of strong women and inconsequential lovers, husbands and partners who drift in and out of the story) and although it obviously means a lot to her, it kind of drags for casual readers like me. But once she meets Sonny Bono, the book just explodes and everything starts happening - early days as back up singer on Phil Spector classics, chart topping success with "I Got You Babe", jet setting life of the 1960s, casual name dropping (Bob Dylan, Mama Cass and Joni Mitchell come in and out of the story), TV show that cemented their fame but ultimately destroyed their private life and the early attempts to break into acting - the book ends just when Cher for the first time gets a nerve to move to New York and seriously give acting a try.  

I enjoyed the book a lot - was planning to leave it for 2025 but one day got stuck at work as my replacement did not show up and had to continue extra shift trough the night until the morning, so while waiting there, I started reading it and it was in many ways even more interesting than Streisand. While Streisand's achievements were more spectacular, her book is somehow too exhausting, detailed and humourless - she still clings to the old grudges and remembers who discouraged her decades ago. Cher does not dwell on that - she casually mentions some incidents where auditions almost went all wrong but owns her decisions. What I got from these memoirs is how subjective the whole notion of success is - what appeared as a glamorous life of a wealthy TV superstar (who also happened to have big hits as a music artist) was genuinely less achievement for Cher herself, who noted what her friends and contemporaries were doing at the same time - Copolla with his "Godfather", Carole King, James Taylor and Stevie Wonder were at the peak of their powers and while Cher's own TV show had eclipsed even "The Wonderful World of Disney" which no one has been able to do earlier, the TV comedienne personae did not really bring her respect. I expect the validation will come in the next volume, where she finally turns to acting - though I must note that simple fact that she always took great care of her looks, somehow overshadowed everything else. No wonder that the first time people actually paid attention to her acting happened when she appeared on a screen without make-up in "Silkwood" - the glitzy, Bob Mackie dressed showbiz image is simply too strong and it might be the one thing people will remember about her.