My Favorite Books as an Amazon Reviewer

Of all the review books I read as a reviewer on Amazon, these were the best. Keep in mind the ones I selected to read were always biographies or histories.

“Finding Chandra” by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz. A real in-depth look at the disappearance and murder of Washington intern Chandra Levy, and how it was the biggest news ever…until 9/11 happened in the middle of the investigation, and how the D.C. police really did a poor job of finding her body.

“I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59” by Douglas Edwards. This is about the birth of the Google search engine and how the company grew, and it has so much interesting and great material on efficiency and getting organized, and working with different people. I quote from it often at job interviews, but no one has ever been impressed by or hired me on the basis of the Google philosophy on how to get things done.

”A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage” by Sally Ryder Brady. This is about a high society couple that have a great marriage except for certain things, and after the husband dies, she finds out he had this other life where he was gay that she knew nothing about. Something like that. I wrote a very detailed and studied review because I was so taken by this story, and it’s lost forever now, probably one of the better things I ever wrote as far as book reviews. And now I can’t really remember the story, except that it completely engulfed me at the time.

“Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales” by Ali Wentworth. She’s an actress that is now married to George Stephanopoulos, and although it's a slight and silly book, she’s very, very honest and open and kind of frank and vulgar about trying to make it as an actress and her courtship with George.

“Getting Real” by Gretchen Carlson. A typical biography of how she became Miss America and then got into journalism, especially interesting to me as she worked at a television station in my hometown and I knew some of the people she writes about and what she left out of her story.

“Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis” by Abigail Santamaria. A really odd story about a fan stalker woman who actually bagged her prey, an odd, famous-writer, committed bachelor in another country, and then died a drawn-out death, with her husband and his brother completely devoted to her and devastated by her loss. They made a movie out of it with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger called “Shadowlands.”

“It’s Not Yet Dark” by Simon Fitzmaurice. I read this because my mother-in-law had ALS and I had a morbid fascination with how the disease starts and what it feels like to be trapped inside your body, since it was awkward to talk to her about it, and in the last year when it was really bad, she didn’t talk much at all. Fitzmaurice’s wife also wrote a book from her perspective that didn’t help as much since it was mostly about escaping from her reality.

“Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times” by John Perry Barlow. He really lived a fascinating life actually being with all the music and political people I grew up reading about, and he had some great perspectives about the meaning of life and how to cope. One of the review copies I saved. He passed away right before the book came out.