It’s February 1st! I completed three books this month and started another two. I’m hoping I can finish four books this month. In the meantime, here are the three books I read this month:
1. Settle for More by Megyn Kelly. After seeing “Bombshell,” I decided to take a closer look at Megyn Kelly’s story. I had remembered her from her role as a reporter during the 2016 election and her involvement in the Roger Ailes scandal, and I wanted to know a bit more about her. “Settle for More” is her memoir of her life from her childhood up to 2016. Turns out, there’s more to her than a blonde former Fox News Correspondent. This is a woman who came from a middle class New York family, encountered bullying from her peers all the way through her life, and, I was shocked to see this, started out as a lawyer. She had wanted to go into journalism from the get-go, but wound up as a workaholic attorney for one of the top law firms in Chicago. One fateful guitar group class led her to someone who worked for the local news station, and from there she transitioned into becoming a correspondent (who initially tried out for CNN). A lot of people think of her as a dim-witted Republican nightmare, but she says in her book that she’s never felt fully aligned to either of the larger popular political parties. Fair enough.
Her show on Fox News had some of the highest ratings for the network, but I’ll admit, her transition to NBC wasn’t great, and didn’t last long. That said, I have a smidgen of a bone to pick with her being fired: she defended a “Real Housewife” for dressing up as Diana Ross for Halloween, and was then terminated for her comments. But the Real Housewife, who actually DID the costume (the controversy came from using blackface), is still on the payroll. Make it make sense, fellas.
Here’s a few quotes I liked from her book:
“If you force a woman to choose between her work and her child, and she has any choice at all, she will choose her child. And then you will lose her, and all the money you’ve spent training her, which you will then have to spend again on a new person, when the cycle will likely continue unless you hire all men or postmenopausal women, which happens to be illegal.”
“Being tested by different viewpoints in my life, being sometimes offended or occasionally hurt, or even targeted, is a big part of what prepared me for the challenges I’ve faced in my career—especially this past year. I had done the grueling sit-ups and my core was strong. I could withstand some gut punches.”
“That’s the bedrock of the First Amendment—the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it’s more speech.”
As well, her book title comes from this Doctor Phil quote: “The only difference between you and someone you envy is, you settled for less.”
Damn, that hits.
2. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson. After seeing Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk on this subject, I jumped at the chance to read this book. In this book, Jon Ronson meets with Scientologists, psychiatrists, and some “real life” psychopaths to determine what, or who, really defines a psychopath. In his book, he details taking a psychopath-spotting course, including the twenty-or-so qualifiers of a psychopath as a sort of quiz, in which if you score above a 25 (I believe that was the number) you’re a psychopath. He mentions that if you, the reader, are nervous or scared of being a psychopath, you aren’t one. That was a relief, although I took the quiz and scored a 13. Some of the psychopaths had a reasonable explanation to some of their symptoms (one of them is “delusions of grandeur,” to which he responded “Well, you’ve gotta believe in you!”). A lot of the psychopaths interviewed were current or former successful executives, those whose ability to empathize with the little guy probably, to them, would have slowed down their own success. That said, it’s not a crime to be a jerk, so those guys get some semblance of a pass. The few others that were literal criminals who committed acts of violence, well, they’re in jail (or avoiding their home country for fear of being put in jail). This was a truly fascinating read!
A few good quotes:
“You have to feel sorry for psychopaths, right? If it’s all because of their amygdalae? If it’s not their fault?” “Why should we feel sorry for them?” he replied. “They don’t give a shit about us.”
“If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there’s not much left except the will to win.”
“There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.”
3. Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow. This one was especially hard to read. It was actually a book I read with Audible, so I won’t have any quotes for it (I chiefly listened while driving to and from work). It detailed the process of investigating and exposing the treachery and horror of Harvey Weinstein. It was a really infuriating read, as Ronan detailed this pattern of Harvey’s team of secret agents and PR mavens “catching” a story about a victim of his and then “killing” it. This person and his army of lawyers and PR specialists buried every opportunity for the truth to come out with phone calls, threats, harassment, and the destruction of careers. It was especially hard to hear Ronan go to NBC News with interviews, recordings, and witnesses, only for NBC executives to squash the story, citing that the evidence didn’t meet their standards (THEY HAD AUDIO OF HARVEY WEINSTEIN ADMITTING IT. WHAT. DO. YOU. MEAN.). It was even harder to hear that because there was never any written reports of Matt Lauer’s harassment incidents, the story that led to his termination was the first tangible evidence even though it was apparently an open secret within the network. NBC was the company that paved the way for so many women in television, and it broke my heart to see that even now some executives ignored the obvious abuse of women in the name of money. I still think NBC is one of the greatest companies in the world, despite a few terrible, shameful choices. I still want to lead the company, and clearly, they would benefit from having even more women leaders. I humbly volunteer.
I’m hoping that this month’s reads will be a little bit lighter. I’m still not sure what I’m going to read, as the two books I started were a book about clearing your mind and finding inner peace, and a book that is considered one of the first to truly discuss modern feminist issues. Sounds great! Not super happy, though. We shall see!