"Sex with Kings," "A Viet Cong Memoir," "Counting Coup"

Title: “Sex with Kings”
Author: Eleanor Herman
My take: For me it was a slow starter, but in the end it’s a fun, light read.
Spoiler-free synopsis: Not much to say – Short snippets of history of the women behind the men on the thrones, and no, it’s not their wives.

Title: “A Viet Cong Memoir”
Author: Truong Nhu Tang
My take: Intense and engaging. Really worth a read.
Spoiler-free synopsis: A look into the other side of the Vietnam war and the events leading up to it, as well as its effect on an individual.

Title: “Counting Coup”
Author: Larry Colton
My take: My favorite of the three, a conversationally-written tale which I found really hard to put down.
Spoiler-free synopsis: The true story of a high schooler’s journey through her senior season – and the social pressures opposing her.



“Sex with Kings”
It’s a book about… royal mistresses, as the title implies. It’s sort of hard to explain this book, since it’s not really story-driven. Or rather, the stories are all short, and there’s no real connection one to the next.

That’s not to say there’s no organization. There is – each of the “chapters” is designed around a particular topic, from the wealth (or lack thereof) that various mistresses could amass to the array of reactions these women’s husbands had. If you’re paying attention to the names, you can start to piece together bigger pictures of the lives these women led. Or, if you’re not looking to put that much thought into it, the individual stories tend to be pretty entertaining in their own rights.

This book’s good for some light reading. Its gossipy and irreverent and styled as though the author knew all of these things personally instead of just doing extensive research. The non-linear style was a bit offputting for me at first, and it took me a while to get into the book, but once I got used to it the book was actually fairly entertaining.

“A Viet Cong Memoir”
Another historical-style book, but more linear, more serious and for me at least, more educational. Whereas “Sex with Kings” felt at all times like it was telling me not to take it seriously, this book’s tone was so understated and personal that it felt a little like someone sitting across from you and explaining things person-to-person.

Also, let’s be honest. The Vietnamese experience leading up to the war wasn’t something schools really teach in America. It’s like in the back of our minds, we knew there was another side, but that side didn’t matter because America KICKS ASS. I sort of wish this book were required reading in high school.

While I found the whole thing fascinating, my favorite part was the beginning. I always knew there was a lot about the war I didn’t know or understand, but in reading the opening chapters of this book, I realized how little about Vietnam society in general I knew, what led to the break, what the people of the country were faced with - a system of racism and inequality within their own society, the growth of a charismatic leader, and how people saw opportunity for a better life.

Really, I recommend this book highly. It was recommended to me when I asked for historical books which were also good reads, and it delivered. It’s plain-spoken and engaging.

“Counting Coup”
“Counting Coup” was a little bit different – a personal history story, but not about someone involved in a major world event. Rather, it’s about a high school girl, a member of the Crow nation, who’s an outstanding basketball player. The author rolls into town, sees her playing pickup basketball on a scrub lot and shortly thereafter decides to forego the story he’d come to write and instead write about her senior season.

Doesn’t sound terribly exciting, does it? But the story’s narrative style is even smoother and more intimate than the previous two books. The basic premise might be small, but the issues are much larger. Hardin High School, where the main protagonist is on Crow Agency, a place where Indians and white people live in… no, not harmony, not even balance, but a kind of symbiosis which is clearly better to one side than to the other. Crow culture is often shown as being considered lazy, dishonest and harmful, but equal pain is taken to show no one’s really paying that much attention to some of the nuance – or how much of what’s left of their culture is what they’ve been *allowed* to keep.

Sharon’s struggles are presented in unfolding layers – a broken family; a social history of alcoholism, limited education and young, unhealthy relationships; and a wider world which has already written her off. She can outperform her white teammates and not get half the notice from the outside world. While the girl she was vying with for top spot on the team is getting scholarships and nods to all-state, Sharon is constantly being forgotten.

The end of the story is sort of… well, I don’t know. It’s hopeful, in a way, but certainly not happy. It’s not a story of magically overcoming the world, but of taking the problems a little at a time. I really did like it – couldn’t put it down – but the ending left me feeling sort of empty. A good sort of empty though, if that makes sense. I felt like it was a book worth reading.