Okay, a bunch of these are from that time period where I couldn't get Blogger to work on my computer. Here we go!
"Psycho USA" by Harold Schechter was a fun collection of little remembered killers. Why is it that some crime stick in our collective consciousness and yet others, equally horrific, are forgotten? Interesting question that I don't know the answer to. Schechter does his best to bring them back to mind. Some truly terrible things in this one.
"As I Remember" by Lillian Gilbreth was a sweet memoir about raising 11 children. She was a kind, humble lady who gave all the credit for her professional success in life to her late husband. I wish this world had more Gilbreths and less reality show trash.
"Fables Vol. 17" by Bill Willingham is his latest in the continuing saga of our storybook friends. Now that North Wind is dead, having taken out the Dark Man, it looks like one of Snow White and Bigby's cubs will have to take his place. A newly slim Ms. Pratt is planning her revenge on the fables as they prepare to move back to Manhattan. I was kind of ambivalent about this one: I think he's taken the series as far as he can and it's sort of time to move on.
"Cascade" by Maryanne O'Hara was a great book that takes places during the Great Depression. Dez married Asa because her father was dying and they were losing their home. She was desperate, and had no where to go and no one to turn to. A few months after the wedding, her father is dead and Dez is stuck married to a man who, while nice enough, wants a family and she doesn't. Dez is an artist, and dreams of going to New York. She feels trapped in Cascade, with only her fellow artist friend Jacob to ease the boredom. Meanwhile, it looks like their town will be destroyed in order to build a reservoir for Boston. Dez takes advantage of the situation and creates a series of postcards celebrating small town life that are picked up by a national magazine. Seizing her chance, Dez moves to New York to work for the magazine full time, after making sure her father's beloved playhouse will be moved to another location before the town of Cascade is flooded. There was a neat twist at the end that I didn't see coming.
"Cold Dish" by Craig Johnson is his first Walt Longmire book. I've been watching the show, mainly because the actor who plays Walt looks like Brett Favre :) The show is actually pretty good, but the book was awful. Johnson writes like you're in his head and starts off in the middle of a thought or a sentence, leaving me to wonder if I missed a page or a paragraph. Very frustrating. And the ending in this one was just ridiculous.
Okay, new ones! "Most Talkative" by Andy Cohen was pretty fun, it was light and breezy. Andy works for Bravo and is responsible for some of the most banal reality shows on TV. I don't watch any of them, but I still enjoyed reading how he developed them and puts the shows together.
"Divergent" by Veronica Roth is the first in a YA dystopian series. I liked it. Beatrice is part of a faction called Abnegation: they are selfless. On Choosing Day, her test results are inconclusive: she is Divergent, and could go into several different factions equally well. She chooses Dauntless because she thinks they are brave, and goes through the brutal initiation process. She makes some friends and a boyfriend, but when her mom comes to visit her she asks Tris (as she's now known) to seek out her older brother, Caleb, who joined Erudite, and ask him to investigate the serum that's used during the tests. Tris soon discovers a plot being hatched by the Erudite leaders to wrest control away from the Abnegation by making the Dauntless their soldiers using drugs and simulation. The book ends with a full on war going down. I'm curious to see where this is headed.
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