![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaPainting landing/stairwell, landing, and throwback to my bedroom respectively (I'm forever catching up on age-old reviews). Schillace, author of Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher, seems pretty great actually! Dig the morbid/nerd vibe, which is very in line with my nonfiction reading; I should probably check out more of her work. This only makes me more convinced that the "biographies of 'great' men are insufferable" curse is just that: a curse, and on account of the "great" men, not the biographers.
Title: Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties
Author: Dianne Lake, Deborah Herman
Narrator: Dianne Lake
Published: HarperAudio, 2017
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 403,135
Text Number: 1519
Read Because: more true crime while painting, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Lake isn't a strong writer (even with the aid of a ghostwriter) or audio reader, so on a sentence-level this is often clunky. Unfortunately this also informs Lake's retrospective view, how she characterizes her teenage self and, particularly, the parallels and foreshadowing she finds in her narrative: a surprisingly clear picture of a deeply messy situation. Nonetheless her story is compelling, and her unique insight into Manson and the Family as a member/victim is exactly what I look for on the memoir/first-person account side of true crime. I wish I liked this more, but I still appreciate it.
Title: Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul
Author: Brandy Schillace
Narrator: Jean Ann Douglass
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2021
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 403,455
Text Number: 1520
Read Because: mentioned in Head Transplants and the Non-Existence of the Soul by Jacob Geller, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An adequate, relatively balanced, relatively big-picture biography of Dr. Robert White and his research into brain transplants—how this interacted with the nascent animal rights movement; the scientific progress born of his work, work which was often incredibly far-fetched. Unfortunately, it's decreed somewhere that all memoirs and biographies about "great" men must be insufferable, and this is no exception. The pulpy, macabre leanings aren't enough to outweigh White's tiresome personality, and I was grateful to see this done.
Title: The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer
Author: Liza Rodman, Jennifer Jordan
Narrator: Andi Arndt, Aida Reluzco
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 404,795
Text Number: 1523
Read Because: more true crime on audio while painting, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When she was young, the author's absent mother occasionally left her in the care of Tony Costa, later revealed to be the Cape Cod Killer. I appreciate what bystander and acquaintance views contribute to our knowledge of serial killers, particularly as they appear in daily life. So I like this for its premise; unfortunately, the cuts between Costa's biography and the life of an abused but otherwise unremarkable girl fall out of sync later in the book, when Costa's trial begins and the narratives no longer intersect. Furthermore, the Costa sections are narrated from his PoV but paced around information as it became known to the public, which creates a traditional suspense structure that marginalizes some of the earlier victims. This is very readable, as memoirs often are; it's also adequate as my first dive into Costa. But it's not wholly successful.
Title: Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties
Author: Dianne Lake, Deborah Herman
Narrator: Dianne Lake
Published: HarperAudio, 2017
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 403,135
Text Number: 1519
Read Because: more true crime while painting, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Lake isn't a strong writer (even with the aid of a ghostwriter) or audio reader, so on a sentence-level this is often clunky. Unfortunately this also informs Lake's retrospective view, how she characterizes her teenage self and, particularly, the parallels and foreshadowing she finds in her narrative: a surprisingly clear picture of a deeply messy situation. Nonetheless her story is compelling, and her unique insight into Manson and the Family as a member/victim is exactly what I look for on the memoir/first-person account side of true crime. I wish I liked this more, but I still appreciate it.
Title: Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul
Author: Brandy Schillace
Narrator: Jean Ann Douglass
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2021
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 403,455
Text Number: 1520
Read Because: mentioned in Head Transplants and the Non-Existence of the Soul by Jacob Geller, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An adequate, relatively balanced, relatively big-picture biography of Dr. Robert White and his research into brain transplants—how this interacted with the nascent animal rights movement; the scientific progress born of his work, work which was often incredibly far-fetched. Unfortunately, it's decreed somewhere that all memoirs and biographies about "great" men must be insufferable, and this is no exception. The pulpy, macabre leanings aren't enough to outweigh White's tiresome personality, and I was grateful to see this done.
Title: The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer
Author: Liza Rodman, Jennifer Jordan
Narrator: Andi Arndt, Aida Reluzco
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 404,795
Text Number: 1523
Read Because: more true crime on audio while painting, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When she was young, the author's absent mother occasionally left her in the care of Tony Costa, later revealed to be the Cape Cod Killer. I appreciate what bystander and acquaintance views contribute to our knowledge of serial killers, particularly as they appear in daily life. So I like this for its premise; unfortunately, the cuts between Costa's biography and the life of an abused but otherwise unremarkable girl fall out of sync later in the book, when Costa's trial begins and the narratives no longer intersect. Furthermore, the Costa sections are narrated from his PoV but paced around information as it became known to the public, which creates a traditional suspense structure that marginalizes some of the earlier victims. This is very readable, as memoirs often are; it's also adequate as my first dive into Costa. But it's not wholly successful.
