Today was day one of a very busy blogging week. I have so many things that need to be done over the next few days that I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. But I am choosing to look at this as a blogging challenge which will add a heightened sense of drama to the project.
Today's book - The description on the back of the book gives away the entire book, one of my literary pet peeves, but I figure an autobiography is pretty self explanatory.
After two days of letting someone else pick my blogging books, I decided that kick off Monday by reading my favorite genre: autobiography. I can only step outside of my reading box for so long before I need to retreat back to the sweet comfort of my favorites. But, I did decide to step outside of the box just a little bit by reading a book about someone that I don't know very much about. Reading an autobiography of someone I know a lot about can be interesting, and comforting, but sometimes I prefer not knowing exactly what's going to happen next.
I have mixed feelings about today's book - and I do realize I'm becoming a bit of a broken record with that expression, I seem to be torn about a lot of books that I read lately. I found the story of Rosemary Clooney's life interesting (and I learned a lot about her, for instance, I originally thought she had no kids but it turns out she has five), but I wasn't crazy about the writing style. So I would only recommend this book to someone who is a huge fan of either Rosemary Clooney or old movies.
Fun facts:
- Frank Sinatra weight almost 13 pounds when he was born, and had to be delivered using forceps, which is why his face was scarred. - I had several thoughts after reading that: 1. That was definitely more information than I ever wanted to know about Frank and 2. I hope that Frank gave his mother really, really good Mother's Day presents, because she clearly deserved it.
- When Rosemary appeared in White Christmas, she was paid by the week and not by the picture, as its done today. She was paid $5,000 a week. - Which naturally begs the question, What's to stop an actor in that situation from screwing up all of their lines in order to prolong the movie?
- Rosemary hated hats. - It's really stretching things to include this in the "fun facts" category, but I am still reeling from reading about that little tidbit. Being lucky enough to live in a time period where people wore hats all the time and then hating them? It's unimaginable. It's blasphemy. It's horrifying.
- When Rosemary and Duke Ellington recorded a duet, the country was so segregated that they weren't even allowed to be photographed on the cover together. Instead, Rosemary was photographed looking at a picture of Duke. - I'll have to remember to whip out that not-so-fun-fact the next time someone is spouting drivel about how life was so much better back in "the good old days."
