It's Friday and It's Book Blog Hop Day!
Welcome to my blog, come in and check it out! Hope you like what you see - if you do, please follow me!
Here is the info on the Book Blog Hop -
Jennifer at Crazy For Books (www.crazy-for-books.com) is the host, and you can find her information and the McLinky to join in at her blog!
About the Hop: (From Jennifer)
This is a weekly event, hosted here, where book bloggers and readers can connect to find new blogs to read. It's a great way to network with other bloggers and make new friends! Every day I seem to find another book blog that I start following. In the spirit of the Friday Follow, I thought it would be cool to do a Book Blogger Hop to give us all bookies a chance to connect and find new blogs that we may be missing out on! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs that they may not know existed!
HAPPY READING EVERYONE!!!
Book Review of the Day - Oprah by Kitty Kelley
She’s a household name, and one of the wealthiest and most influential women in the world. But what do we really know about Oprah Winfrey?
Famed biographer Kitty Kelley has dived into history and background of the famous talk-show host, and reveals her finds and observations in her new book, “Oprah: A Biography.”
At 524 pages, 48 of which are reference notes and citations, this book is no leisurely afternoon read, but Kelley, with her journalistic background, has put together a book that is too fascinating to put down at times.
Because Winfrey refused to have anything to do with the writing of this book (citing that because Kelley had written a controversial book on a member of her “family,” Jackie Kennedy Onassis), Kelley was left to examine the thousands upon thousands of articles as well as hundreds of interviews with family, friends, classmates and co-workers to compile one of the most comprehensive biographies on Winfrey to date.
From her childhood bouncing back and forth between parents from Milwaukee to Nashville, to her turbulent teenaged years, to her first jobs in the television industry to her present day status as a cultural icon, Kelley paints Winfrey as a stubborn, strong-willed woman who knew what she wanted from life at a fairly early age, and surrounded herself with friends and colleagues who would help her get what she wanted, even if it meant stepping on or over them to get it.
All through the book are tidbits of little known information, such as Winfrey’s supposed fling with entertainment journalist/musician John Tesh. There are also well known facts, such as her close relationship with her best friend Gayle King, and her romantic relationship with the mysterious Stedman Graham.
Perhaps the most unflattering is the information gathered from Winfrey’s own family – her mother, father, half-sister, and aunt – there isn’t much love-loss between them and their famous relative. But it was surprising to learn that Oprah had tendency to exaggerate the truth when it was helpful to her – such as claimed she was abandoned by her mother at birth and raised by her grandmother in Mississippi when in fact her mother was there until Oprah was four and a half years old, and left only to find a better job in the North so she could raise her children better.
Now, it helps to bear in mind that there are two sides to every story, and since Winfrey didn’t participate in writing of this book, it relates events as Ms. Kelley perceived them from the information and interviews she had on hand. Perhaps this will motivate Oprah Winfrey to publish the infamous autobiography that she penned several years ago and withdrew from publication before the first page was printed.
