Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

"Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List" by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan was their second collaboration, after "Nick and Norah" but before "Lily and Dash". I enjoyed it, but not as much as the other two. Naomi and Ely have grown up together in NYC, best friends since childhood, always a pair. Naomi loves fantasizing about their future wedding and lives together. Too bad Ely is gay. Naomi *knows* this, she just prefers fantasy to reality. But when she and Ely have a big falling out, it seems like their friendship is doomed to come to an end. I think the thing that kept me from liking this book more was Naomi. She's described as being absolutely gorgeous and thin, men falling all over her, etc., so when it comes to feeling sorry for her I find myself hard-pressed to have much sympathy. I know, I know: even beautiful, lucky, rich, thin people have problems. I just find it hard to care :)

The Paris Wife

"The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain follows the story of Hadley, who was Ernest Hemingway's first wife. I don't like Hemingway, I've always found his work rather boring and he seemed like kind of an ass. Even though this book is fiction, he doesn't come across looking any better here. I'm sure he was just an ass. Like Woody Allen's brilliant film "Midnight in Paris", McLain captures the time and place that was Paris in the 1920s, when artists and writers from America converged and made it their own. It's fun to imagine what it must have been like to live there during that time. It was an enjoyable read, and went surprisingly quickly, because it's not a light, fluffy type of book at all.

77 Shadow Street; Cleopatra's Moon; Every Little Crook and Nanny

Dean Koontz's latest, "77 Shadow Street", was a strange tale about a building that travels forward in time, its inhabitants are murdered, and then the building returns to its rightful place in history. This happens every 38 years. Yeah...I didn't really understand it. Very strange.
"Cleopatra's Moon" by Vicky Shecter was a very good YA novel about Cleopatra's daughter and what happens to her in Rome after Caesar's nephew Octavius takes her and her brothers prisoner after defeating Egypt in war. Shecter did a lovely job capturing the time period.
"Every Little Crook and Nanny" by Evan Hunter was a zany little romp about a dumb kidnapper who takes a mobster's son. Luckily the mobster, Carmine, is in Italy, so the Nanny figures she can get the kid back with the help of some of Carmine's mob buddies before Carmine comes home and finds out what happened. Hilarity ensues when everything that can go wrong does, the mobsters are a bunch of bumbling idiots, but it made me laugh and the ending was fun. I could easily see this as being a Woody Allen type of comedy on film.

Servants of Twilight; Then Again; The List

I was in the mood for a good Dean Koontz reread, so I chose "Servants of Twilight". One day while leaving the mall (South Coast Plaza shout out, whoo hoo!) Christine and her six year old son, Joey, are accosted by a crazy old woman who fixates on Joey and declares that he's the Antichrist and must die. Christine goes to the police when it looks like an intruder is stalking about their property later that night, but they don't take her seriously until her dog shows up decapitated the next morning. It's amazing how quickly the old woman, Grace, and her followers, the Church of Twilight, are able to make life hell for Christine, who has to hire a private detective and go on the run to escape the escalating threat. It was fast paced and thrilling, one of my favorite old Koontz stories.
"Then Again" by Diane Keaton was an enjoyable read. I'm jealous of Diane--she dated Woody Allen back when he was funny and cool, and became friends with Larry McMurtry and spent time cruising in his Cadillac, discussing the meaning of life while searching for used books. If only I'd been born thirty years earlier, I could have been her. Oh, well, probably not :) I just found it amazing that she doesn't think she's pretty because I definitely think she is. I loved her in "Annie Hall", still one of my all time favorite movies. I loved her style and her flair, she just seemed like such a fun person.
"The List" by Martin Fletcher had me in tears the entire time I was reading it. It was very good but very, very tough to read, emotionally exhausting. Set in London immediately after WW2, Jewish refugees are finding it difficult to find a place to call "home". No one wants them around, they have no money and no prospects of finding work, and every day seems to bring more bad news as the complete horrors of the concentration camps and everyone who died are brought to light. Georg and Edith are expecting a baby, in a precarious existence in England, threatened by the townspeople of being evicted to make room for the homecoming British soldiers. They are frantically searching for their family members and just trying to survive. So heartbreaking.

Blood Relatives; the Marriage Plot

Another 87th Precinct reread, "Blood Relatives" by Ed McBain takes place in the mid-1970s. Patricia stumbles into the precinct one rainy night, cut up and covered in blood. She has just witnessed her cousin, Muriel, being brutally stabbed and barely escaped with her life. The police go on a manhunt, trying to find the man Patricia described. Days pass with no leads, until Patricia shows up calmly at the police station and announces that her brother, Andrew, killed Muriel and she was lying to protect him. When Carella finds Muriel's diary, he discovers she and Andrew were secretly having an affair, but she wanted to end things and he didn't and got violent. Andrew is looking guiltier by the minute, but there's a neat twist to the end. At least, I think it's neat.
"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides was very good (even if I have no idea how to pronounce his last name!). It takes place in the early 1980s. Madeline and Mitchell are graduating from college and have very different perspectives on what their adult lives will be like. Mitchell, sad over Madeline's rejection, takes off on an extended trip to Europe and India, hoping to find meaning in life. Madeline gets back together with her mentally ill boyfriend, Leonard, and tries desperately to save him from himself. It sort of reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis, only not nearly as bleak and depressing. Maybe it was just the time period, or the whole "coming of age" subject matter. Either way, Eugenides made it quite interesting and enjoyable.

Hark!; Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

So of course after reading Evan Hunter's (a.k.a. Ed McBain) memoir "Let's Talk", I knew I was going to start rereading some great classic 87th Precinct series books, and I started off with "Hark!", number 54, next to the last, and a great Deaf Man story. I think if McBain had lived and gotten to write more in the series we would have seen more of the Deaf Man.
"Dash and Lily's Book of Dares" by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan was fantastic. I wish I was 16 again just so I could recreate this book, although of course it wouldn't turn out the same for me. Lily leaves a red notebook with a literary scavenger hunt in a bookstore. Dash finds it, completes the hunt, and leaves a clue for Lily to lead her on a hunt of his devising. It was clever and charming, seeing how they get to know each other through a notebook passed back and forth through friends and relatives. Meeting in real life for the first time doesn't go so well, but luckily they get a second chance. Ah, sweet without being ridiculous. It's a fine line to walk.

Let's Talk; You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

Ah, Evan Hunter. Or, Ed McBain. He died in 2005 of cancer, after having his larynx removed. "Let's Talk" was his memoir of finding out he had cancer and his operation, and learning to live without a voice. It was published just two months before he died, and was so bittersweet, since he's so hopeful in the book. He said he wanted to live another 15 years, until he was 93. I wish he would have made it. I still miss the 87th precinct novels something fierce. Rest in peace, sir.
Celia Rivenbark is a humorist. I've always wanted to read one of her books because they have very funny titles, like "You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl". It was funny enough, and I enjoyed it, but I don't like political humor. I'm not amused being made to feel as if I'm sitting in the DNC.

Explosive Eighteen; Crank; Sybil Exposed; Outlander; Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind; Three Maids for a Crown; Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret

Janet Evanovich's latest "Explosive Eighteen", was pretty good, but not as good as 17. She starts out with Stephanie returning from her vacation in Hawaii, where everyone thinks she got married. Stephanie won't talk about what happened out there, but on the impromptu plane ride home she met a man who slipped a mysterious photo in her bag and then didn't make it back on the plane after their layover in L.A. Once she returns to Jersey, she finds out the man was killed in L.A., for the photo, which she threw out when she got home. All of a sudden everyone wants the picture and she's bombarded with people trying to get it from her one way or another.
"Crank" by Ellen Hopkins was about a young girl named Kristina who gets hooked on meth after spending a few weeks with her dad, who was not the best influence he could have been. Kristina keeps getting high once she gets back home to her mom and stepdad, and hooks up with a new crowd. She falls deeper and deeper into the monster that is crank until it threatens to consume her. Very believable, well written, and moving.
"Sybil Exposed" by Debbie Nathan told the true story behind the Sybil scam. I read "Sybil" by Flora Rheta Schreiber years ago as a young adult, about a woman with 16 different personalities, and I had a bit of trouble believing it. Turns out I was right to be skeptical: the whole thing was a lie. Sybil didn't really suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, although the doctor treating her really believed she did and pushed her to accept the diagnosis. When Schreiber came in to write the book she discovered none of the "facts" were really verifiable and ended up making a lot of the book up out of whole cloth. It's sad that people who need mental help end up being manipulated by others, and vice versa.
Diana Gabaldon's first book in her massive Outlander series, "The Outlander" was very long but I enjoyed it. I wanted to read it because of the historical fiction plotline: the book is set in 1700s Scotland. Claire and her husband, Frank, are visiting Scotland after World War 2, researching Frank's family tree, when Claire falls down a wormhole in time and ends up 200 years in the past. It's dangerous times in Scotland, at war with the English, and for her own safety Claire marries a Highlander laird, James Fraser. They are in constant danger, nearly killed numerous times, captured and kidnapped and god knows what all else. There was a bit too much graphic sex for my taste, but I enjoyed the historical aspects and learning more about Scotland.
"Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind" by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr. was a fascinating biography about how the bestselling novel became a cultural icon. They briefly told about Mitchell's decade long struggle to bring the novel to life, then how once it was published it exploded, far beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, ended up having to devote quite a bit of time to protecting her interests, both here in the U.S. and abroad due to silly copyright laws back in the 30s. They both end up looking kind of foolish about the foreign rights, especially during and after World War 2, when Europe was in utter turmoil and they're pestering publishers for her royalties. Don't get me wrong: it was her money and she earned it, but damn, a little compassion for what these people were going through would have been nice. The last part of the book examined the dismal sequel by Alexandra Ripley, "Scarlett", and the much better "Rhett Butler's People" by Donald McCaig. 75 years after its initial publication, "Gone With the Wind" is still going strong.
And that concluded books for 2011, with my total at 180. I hoped to break 200, but alas, life got in the way.
2012 is off to a good start, though. I finished "Three Maids for a Crown" by Ella March Chase yesterday morning. It was incredibly moving, it made me cry, even though I know it's only fiction. Chase tells the story of the ill fated Grey sisters in turn: Jane, queen for only 9 days before being executed by Queen Mary, Katherine, imprisoned for marrying and having a child because of Queen Elizabeth's paranoia and scorn, and Mary, dwarfed and deformed, she manages to find true love only to have Elizabeth yank her apart from her husband and imprison them both, too, until Thomas's death, when she lets Mary free. Of course by that time all of poor Mary's family is dead so she has no where to go. So needlessly tragic.
And I read a book my sister got me for Christmas that I've been dying to read since I found out about it "Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret" by Arthur Jay Harris. Harris is convinced the Hollywood Police in Florida had it wrong when they announced in 2008 that Ottis Toole kidnapped and killed Adam Walsh. There is documented evidence that Jeffrey Dahmer, noted Wisconsin cannibal, lived in Florida not far from where Walsh was abducted during the time period he was murdered. Dahmer did like to cut off heads, something Toole wasn't noted for. Many witnesses to Adam's abduction noticed a blue van at the Sears around the time Adam was taken, a blue van like the one Dahmer had access to through his job at a sub shop. It's hard to know, so long afterwards, what to believe. The simple fact remains that a little boy was brutally and senselessly murdered and that someone didn't suffer for it like they should have. Since both Dahmer and Toole are dead we will probably never know the truth. I thought Lee Standiford did an excellent job making the case for Toole's guilt in his book "Bringing Adam Home", but Harris does a good job of showing how Dahmer could have done it, too.