Book Pick: Watch Me

The best thing about listening to this memoir as an audiobook is the mesmerizing, beautiful voice of Anjelica herself as she weaves the stories of her many loves, her beginnings of modeling and then acting and her life from young adulthood into mature age. Her voice quavers in the parts of tragedy and loss, is quiet in the parts of fear and pain and is exuberant in triumph.

Listening to her stories made me want to watch her films that I hadn't seen and revisit the ones I had. It made me want to look up old photos of her and bask in her cool 80's elegance.

Her stories of love and heartbreak gave me a feeling of power and resilience that I have needed after a hard year of my own disappointments.

Anjelica must have either kept really good journals and diaries or saved all of her old notes and calendars because her ability to remember details of people, places and events is nothing short of spectacular. This memoir reads like a name-dropping of who's who in Hollywood and art for at least 3 decades.

But the quality I loved most about Ms. Huston is her resolve. It could have been easy for her to get lost among the massive personalities she was surrounded by, particularly the larger-than-life men in her life. To her benefit and ours, she kept herself solid and became the woman we all came to admire. She continues to carry herself with the stoic grace, formidable beauty and exemplary intelligence that is often only seen in old Hollywood. To call her an multi-national treasure is too simple.

And I realized just after I finished the memoir that it picks up the story right where her first book ends. I wondered why "Watch Me" begins with Angelica at age 21 in Los Angeles instead of Ireland or London. Now I know. So now I'm off to the next, and earlier, adventures of Anjelica's youth. Hold my calls.....

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