Kate's Point of View

When I was growing up, my parents would only let me watch unsupervised television if it was a kids show on Nickelodeon or a re-run Nick at Nite. So even though I was born a year after it went off the air, I grew up with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (Also with Donna Reed, My Three Sons, The Patty Duke Show, Mr. Ed…) When I watch television, it’s almost always for enjoyment and escape. I’m not typically trying to place the show in the context of television history. Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong has given me a new perspective on many of the old Tv shows I used to watch.This book didn’t change my memory of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as a sweet sitcom / drama. It did add more depth. Now I appreciate it for the strides it made towards showing women in the workplace. Women being single in their thirties. Discussing birth control on television. And so much more.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong did a great job in pulling together this book. It reads a little more “history book” than I was expecting and took my a while to really get into, but the amount of information she relays is impressive and the fun facts she scatters throughout the book are ones I will wow my friends with for sure.

A few weeks ago I was out of town for work and eating alone at a restaurant, reading this book. The waiter, being nice, asked what I was reading. “Ohmigod! When I’m with my friends we’re always accusing each other of being a Mary or a Rhoda! My friend is turning 50 and what do you get a fifty-year-old who doesn’t need anything? Please write down the name of that book so I can get it for him.”

Thirty-five years off the air and still relevant.

I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

I reviewed A Place at the Table: A Novel, by Susan Rebecca White, for Nudge.

Although I often tire of books with alternating narrators, I appreciate a well-crafted novel with intertwining storylines. There are plenty of books like this, but too many share a frustrating feature: unlikeable characters. It might sound like a petty issue, but why would I bother reading about someone I don’t like? Author Susan Rebecca White circumvented this by creating an ensemble cast of completely enjoyable characters for A Place at the Table: A Novel.We meet Alice as a child living in the south and see racism through her eyes when she discusses having to enter stores through a back entrance to buy cast-off items and when she and her brother come across the body of someone who has been lynched. When we see her again, much later in her life, she’s living in New York City enjoying some prestige for being the founding chef of Café Andrews.

Read my complete review of A Place at the Table on Nudge.

 

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.