pinkcoded's reviews
17 reviews

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

god. what even is there to say… she writes such a sensitive subject matter in a way that you can tell comes straight from her own heart… it’s so good, and it’s clearly written based on her own experiences. the hardly even veiled at all references to her and carl bernstein’s failing marriage are tangible and they’re really what makes the book enjoyable. it’s so heartwarming and sweet, and it makes you feel so sad sometimes but it’s so full of love and heart…. it’s just a visceral book, and one that clearly was written from the heart.

Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA by David Wise

challenging dark informative mysterious tense fast-paced

3.75

i really liked it; it put a human perspective on a lot of the molehunt operations and actually went in depth on those involved in and affected by them… i really enjoyed their perspective on jim angleton, i always like knowing more about him. it did get me so riled up that sometimes i would get so overwhelmed with various emotions that i would start to feel physically ill but that’s because when i like something a lot that happens so. 

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbot

challenging dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

3.25

i had higher hopes, honestly. for a book about allen dulles, it really didn’t have much sense of direction.. I was kind of lost some of the time, but the information was very interesting, if slightly off topic sometimes. i liked all of the personal information they said about the various people in dulles’s inner circle, as well as some of the things he says about the oswalds’ and their friends’ connections, that was one of the few things that i found that hadn’t already been expanded on in another book. 

JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story by Jesse Kornbluth

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

i liked the way this one was written.. the lost diary of m was also a diary format, but this one felt more true to form. it was a fast read and served to fill the void in my heart after i’ve finished most of the books about mary meyer. i liked the portrayal of her—i wouldn’t say it was as vivid as in the lost diary, but it was good. it felt accurate. it was much more inwardly focused, especially on her relationship with jfk, which is probably exactly what one would expect from a book called “jfk and mary meyer: a love story”, but i had sort of hoped it would have focused more on her life, not playing a supporting role to jack kennedy. the phone calls, towards the end, with her husband, cord meyer, were probably the most interesting part, imo. there was one moment when he says “that’s my girl” to her about the reading she’s been doing on the kennedy assassination, and even in the simplistic format it’s written in, you can tell that was a sick thing to say. you know why she left him. and i think the book was good at that sort of subtle hints at her life. 

The Lost Diary of M by Paul Wolfe

emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

oh where to even start. i went into it a lot more doubting of it’s quality than i found myself feeling by the end of it. it’s a vivid portrait of mary pinchot as she lived and as she died. i think she’d be happy to know that’s how she was remembered… it was very clearly inspired by both nina burleigh’s a very private woman and peter janney’s mary’s mosaic, both of which i finished within a month before reading this book. the information i gleaned about mary from those books, still fresh in my mind, contributed well to my understanding of this one. it felt like a nice full circle ending to my inquest into mary pinchot meyer’s life. the book was incredibly powerful at times. it fell prey to being a romance book that was written by a man, hence the docking of 0.75 stars, but wolfe manages to comment intelligently on love, peace, sisterhood, the addiction to espionage that befell many company men, and the state of being a woman as a whole. it was profound. aside from the ending, which i felt was an odd portrayal of james jesus angleton as having been in love with mary pinchot ever since they met while she was roommates with his wife in college, it was a good book. i really enjoyed it, and i think it managed to capture the visceral essence of mary pinchot at the time before her death.

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

2.25

my main issue was how unkind he was to nina burleigh, whose book i read right before this. he disparaged her work as coming to many false conclusions, and then proceeded to cite her work often throughout the book… those were the only parts i really ever believed, because i believe women and not peter janney. his unique position as the eldest child of one of the men he alleges was involved in the cia assassination of mary pinchot and john kennedy gives his account simultaneously more and less credibility. on one hand, it sheds light on the inner workings and family dynamics of cia employees, but, on the other hand, the people he says are killing the leaders of the free world are men who used to take him fishing… he saw mary meyer naked once as a child, and it reportedly changed his life, which is something that is incredibly evident throughout the book. that, and the fact that i think he writes it like he expected to have died mysteriously by the time it was published. also—he calls james angleton “lady livia augustus in drag”, which is nothing, but it feels worth mentioning. 

A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer by Nina Burleigh

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

really informative book, but sometimes suffers just because of when it was published, i think. more information about cia actions has come out since the late 90s, which might have made the book more comprehensive. but it was still probably the most informative and unbiased account of mary pinchot’s life… peter janney’s doesn’t count because he saw her naked that one time, and i wanted to read this before i read his book. i found the descriptions of mary pinchot’s art particularly interesting, and the conclusions nina burleigh comes to about angleton and other cia officers are interesting, if slightly unrelated to the topic of the book at times…

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

3.75

this happened to me with my email pen pal michael dolzani

The Fall by Albert Camus

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

jesus christ this book was good. it’s all about the judge…

A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England by Michelle Higgs

informative slow-paced

3.0

i needed like a snappy social history introduction to the period and this served really well. it was a bit annoying that it kept jumping around from early 1800s all the way to the beginning of the 20th century but that’s fine they can’t be that specific in a 200 page book i guess.