Madness Under the Royal Palms

"Madness Under the Royal Palms" by Laurence Leamer looked at the noxious underbelly of the Palm Beach scene, where no one can ever be too rich, young, or thin. It was basically three hundred pages of dishy gossip by a wanna be insider who, while condemning the hypocrisy of the system, can't help but project the image of wanting to be part of it. You can tell that as much as he's repulsed by it, he is equally fascinated, and he made me interested in it as well. Not quite as good as "The Big Rich", but then the Texas big rich don't take themselves as seriously as their Florida counterparts.

Plum Spooky

Normally I'm not a big fan of Janet Evanovich's between the numbers Stephanie Plum books (and lately not such a big fan of the numbers one, either. I think Eleven was the last one I really liked, but I digress), but this one was fairly decent. For starters, it was longer than most of the other ones and while Joe and Ranger weren't major players, they did show up more than they usually do. Diesel also didn't seem as supernaturally weird as he usually is, so that was a refreshing change of pace. Stephanie is stuck babysitting a monkey named Carl who likes to play handheld video games while she and Diesel are chasing down his cousin, Wulf, who happens to be in cahoots with one of Steph's FTAs. They are planning on taking over the world by controlling the weather or some such nonsense, who even knows? I just read them to laugh over Steph's predicaments, including squirrels taking over her Jeep, transporting stolen rockets in Uncle Sandor's Buick, and getting in several food fights with an FTA. Not one of the best, but not too bad, either.

Big Rich; My Horizontal Life

"The Big Rich" by Bryan Burrough looked at the four men who epitomized the idea of Texas rich--the extravagances and excesses that led to such books as Edna Ferber's "Giant" (which I highly recommend). This is the Texas I fell in love with all those years ago. This is also the story of a Texas that unfortunately no longer exists (otherwise I'd be there right now instead of here). It was a lot of fun reading about how over the top these guys were (at one point, one of the Hunts owned something like 25% of the world's silver!).
"My Horizontal Life" by Chelsea Handler is her first book, and like "Are You There Vodka, It's Me, Chelsea", was absolutely hilarious. She reminds me of a female Tucker Max. It's hard for me to even pick which one of her stories was my favorite, they were all so good.

The Direputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Shelly recommended this one to me, and it was really great! E. Lockhart creates an interesting prep school world where Frankie, a very bright girl, feels left out of her boyfriend's secret all male society and masterminds a brilliant takeover. This is the girl I wanted to be when I was her age! It was clever and fun, and while I probably won't ever read it again, if I were 17 I would.

Frostbite; Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; How Football Explains America

"Frostbite" by Richelle Mead is her second Vampire Academy book, and Rose gets her first kill. It was pretty good, I enjoyed the fluff. I'll probably read it again some day.
"Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford has been getting some really good buzz on the blogs I read, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Like other books that everyone else has raved about, I didn't like it. It was banal, just completely predictable and even the characters were hollow and two dimensional. It ticked me off right from page two, which takes place in 1986, and there's discussion of online support groups. I was like, wait, hold the phone...1986? What editor didn't catch that? Seriously, my intelligence felt insulted. I know it's a silly little thing, but stuff like that often kills a book for me. I won't ever read it again.
"How Football Explains America" by Sal Paolantonio was an interesting mix of philosophy and history. He tried to explain how certain events in history correspond with how football was evolving, and why football is America's sport. While some of his arguments were a bit of a stretch, it was still a fun book on the history of the game with some American history thrown in. He pulled together some clever strands of football DNA to show how practically everyone in the sport is related to someone else in the sport somehow. I enjoyed it, but I probably won't ever read it again.