High Five; Two for the Dough

Boy, have I been in a book slump lately. I've only read four books this month, and two were these Janet Evanovich rereads. I have all these wonderful books I've put on hold and gotten from work, and then had to renew (and renew again) because I just haven't had the motivation to read them. Eventually I'll snap out of it, but in the meantime this is all I've read lately. "High Five" finds Stephanie looking for her missing Uncle Fred. He was having an argument with his garbage company, and disappeared. Honestly, no one is really too sad he's gone, including his long-suffering wife, who is planning a cruise and buying new cars and furniture.

I hadn't read "Two for the Dough" in a long time, the only thing I remembered was that Stiva's funeral parlor burned down in the end. Stephanie is trying to find Kenny Mancuso, who skipped bail after shooting his friend in the knee. Mancuso is Joe Morelli's cousin, and she and Morelli form an uneasy partnership to try to catch Kenny. Meanwhile, Spiro Stiva hires Stephanie to find out what happened to a bunch of surplus caskets he bought from the government that went missing out of his storage locker.

I Loved Her in the Movies

I do so enjoy Robert Wagner's memoirs. This one was a tender love letter to all the actresses he's admired over the years and what made them special. He said in the beginning there would be no dirt, and there wasn't, but that was fine by me. It was a fun, quick read.

When Paris Sizzled

I was very excited when I heard about "When Paris Sizzled". Paris in the 1920s seems like *the* place to be, which is obviously why so many famous Americans ended up there. I was hoping for some good Faulkner stories, but alas, all he got was one sentence :( Hemingway and Fitzgerald were mentioned a lot, but it was more about Chanel and her set. It was still fun and interesting.

By the Numbers; Gunslinger

I wasn't crazy about the cover of Jen Lancaster's new book, "By the Numbers", but the story itself was great fun, probably the best fiction title she's written so far. Penny Sinclair is an actuary: she crunches numbers for an insurance company to figure out things like life expectancy and accidents. She's very good at her job, and she's worked hard so her kids can have a good life and never want for anything. She and her recently divorced husband, Chris, are putting together a wedding for their daughter, Kelsey, and once that's over Penny is selling their Queen Anne home and moving on with her life. She's very excited about her fresh start. Then Kelsey comes back from her honeymoon and moves back in, fighting with her new husband. Her other daughter, Jessica, took too many risks in New York, is broke, and now she needs a place to stay. And then Chris has an accident while zip lining with his new much younger girlfriend, who promptly dumps him and *he* needs a place to stay. Just when Penny thought she was finally going to get out, she gets pulled back in. It was so charming and funny and my God, her daughters were horrible. I would have drowned them.

Needing something good related to football in my life right now (ugh) I picked up Jeff Pearlman's new bio of the legendary Brett Favre. Pearlman wasn't out to write a fluff piece, he talks about all of Brett's shortcomings, how he was unfaithful to Deanna, how he drank too much and almost killed himself in that car wreck back in college. There was just something so magical about watching Brett play, when he was good, on fire, making the impossible throws into triple coverage and his receivers would still somehow manage to pop up with the ball for the touchdown. I mean, words can't describe it. I miss that so much, I miss watching him. There isn't anyone else who plays like Brett did. He's one of a kind. Of course he did stupid things (all those interceptions!) but he deserved to go out better than he did. I won't ever forgive Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson for forcing his hand about retirement and then not letting him come back and finish out his career as a Packer, like he should have. And if the Saints weren't a bunch of dirty players, then Brett could have gone on to a third Super Bowl and gotten his second ring like Peyton Manning did. I believe the Vikings could have done it, but the Saints set out to hurt him in that playoff game and by God, they did, it was painful to watch. Oh well. Brett's happy now, living the good life back home in Mississippi with his wife and girls and grandsons. I wish him a long and happy retirement.

One for the Money; Turbo Twenty-Three; The Lady in the Lake

Whenever I spend time at my parents' house, I tend to reread the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. Mostly because my mother has them all and I don't :) So I reread the first one, which I hadn't read in quite some time, so I actually didn't remember how it ended. It was written in 1994, which was fun, it's almost like reading a historical fiction novel at this point. Having to find pay phones to make calls. An answering machine with actual tape plays a big role.

Then I read her latest, "Turbo Twenty-Three". It was pretty good. Ranger has agreed to look into the security shortfalls at Bogart's ice cream factory. He needs Stephanie to go undercover and see if she can sniff out any bad characters. Bogart thinks his rival, Mo Morris, is deliberately sabotaging him. Ice cream and an overnight trip to Disney World with Ranger equals a win.

I wasn't sure if I'd read Raymond Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake" before or not. I read a lot of noir books as a teen: Chandler and Cain and Hammett. This one didn't seem familiar, but again, I've read "One for the Money" at least three times within the last twenty years and didn't remember it. If I read "Lady in the Lake" it was close to twenty-five years ago, and only once. At any rate, it was really good. PI Philip Marlowe is hired by Derace Kingsley, a wealthy businessman whose wife ran off. Kingsley is fine with that, he doesn't want her back, he just wants to make sure she's okay. Crystal was last seen at their vacation cabin up in Crestline. There are a lot of different leads to follow, and Marlowe finds himself looking at the death of a doctor's wife that may or may not have been murder and may or may not tie into the disappearance of Crystal Kingsley, when another dead body turns up drowned in the lake by the Kingsley's vacation home. There was a heck of a lot going on in this book, but it was interesting.

Sage's Eyes; A Life in Parts; Quarry in the Black

First off, some mindless fluff from V. C. Andrews. For some reason online somewhere it said that "Sage's Eyes" was related in some way to FITA. Why I believe anything I read on the internet is a mystery :) It had nothing to do with Flowers, but it was still pretty good. Sage's parents have never hidden the fact that she is adopted from her. They are super overprotective of her, and at sixteen Sage is feeling very stifled. It's hard for her to make friends since she can't go to parties or sleep over or even go shopping with a group of friends. A new boy named Summer Dante transfers to Sage's school, and all the girls are gaga over him, apparently he's gorgeous (not the way the author described, but that's just me). Summer likes Sage, though, and starts pushing her to break her parents' stringent rules to see him.

I remember seeing Bryan Cranston on the X-Files way back when, and I loved "Malcolm in the Middle". He was so funny on that. I was very surprised at him in "Breaking Bad". I thought he did a marvelous job and what a different character from Hal! His bio was a quick read, and interesting. He grew up in So Cal, the child of two actors. He however planned to be a police officer, he went to school to study criminal justice. After a cross country motorcycle trip with his older brother, however, he had an epiphany and decided he didn't want to spend his life doing something he didn't love so he decided to pursue acting. I think it was the right decision :)

And finally, a Quarry book by Max Allan Collins. I love the Quarry books, they're such fun. It's 1972, and Quarry is hired to take out an African American preacher who fancies himself the next Martin Luther King Jr. Quarry's boss assures him it's not political or racial, that the preacher is just a bad mad who deals drugs and cheats on his wife. Quarry goes to St. Louis and infiltrates the coalition to elect McGovern as the next president, meeting the preacher and his subordinates. Quarry quickly discovers another hit man who has been hired to take out the preacher as well, and wonders if he's being double-crossed in some way.

The Magnolia Story

I don't watch much reality TV, but I will admit a fondness for the house hunting/fixer upper shows. I especially love Chip and Joanna Gaines' show. They seem like such genuinely nice, down to earth, loving people and Chip is a riot. This was a fun book telling their story: how they met and fell in love and got married, how they started flipping houses together. It was a super quick read, but I enjoyed it.

Pistols for Two; The Athena Project; You Will Know Me

"Pistols for Two" was a fun, quick read, a collection of short Regency romances by Georgette Heyer. I really enjoyed them.

"The Athena Project" by Brad Thor is one that was recommended to me by a friend who read it and really liked it. He was looking for a romance recommendation for a Reader's Advisory class he's taking in library school, and I suggested Georgette Heyer. He ended up liking it, so to be fair I read this one. It was certainly very interesting, there was just a lot going on and I probably didn't get everything out of it that I should have. A group of beautiful, elite female agents are in search of a machine that uses Nazi technology to "fax" (there's really no better word for it) people and weapons from one spot to another. It's fallen into the wrong hands, and the women have to get it. Not something I would have ever picked up and read on my own, so it was a learning experience. It was pretty fast paced, the action moved quickly.

I got "You Will Know Me" on hold at work and looked at it and said "why did I put this on hold?" I had zero recollection of doing so, and after reading what it was about I was even more perplexed. It certainly didn't seem like something I'd normally read, but I must have read a good review or someone recommended it. At any rate, I gave it a shot. Katie and Eric Knox's lives revolve around their sixteen year old daughter Devon's elite gymnastics career. Devon is poised to potentially go to the Olympics when a scandal rocks the gym she trains at. Coach T's niece, Hailey, is accused of hitting her boyfriend after he dies in a hit and run, a witness comes forward saying he saw Hailey's car at the scene. Katie's not quite sure what to believe when both Eric and Devon start acting strangely and keeping secrets from her. It wasn't bad. I thought it was going to end differently than it did, so I was a bit disappointed.

Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac; Closed Casket

It took me awhile to get through this one. Not that it wasn't interesting, but it was...disjointed, I guess. It wasn't a cohesive story, just a collection of interviews various members of Fleetwood Mac have done over the years. There was quite a lot of repetition, I felt like maybe some different interviews could have been included to give a different bit of perspective on the band. I did like that he included an interview done about ten years ago with Peter Green, who left the band in the mid 1970s. It was interesting to hear how someone who used to be inside sees them from the outside.

I like what Sophie Hannah is doing with the character of Hercule Poirot. While I read all of Agatha Christie's Poirot mysteries, I never liked him as much as Miss Marple. I always felt that Poirot was over the top, almost a caricature of a person. Hannah has made him much more believable and toned him down some. This one was fun, even if I guessed (mostly) how it ended, something I could never do with Christie's originals.
Wealthy children's book writer Lady Playford calls a somewhat strange group of people to her estate in Ireland to announce she's changing her will. Instead of leaving her children each half, she's leaving everything to her sickly secretary, Joseph Scotcher. Scotcher isn't expected to live much longer, whereas Lady Playford is in the pink of health, so her dramatic announcement is met with puzzlement all around. Of course inviting Poirot and Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool suggests she's expecting a murder to take place, and it does, only not the one she's expecting.

Mike Hammer Casebook

I do so love Mike Hammer. This was a fun collection of short stories. Hammer seems to lend himself well to short stories, and Collins even said Spillane preferred writing novellas to full length novels. Most of them were pretty good but I enjoyed them all.

Born to Run; Whitefern; Small Great Things

I'm not a HUGE Bruce Springsteen fan, but I do like him, and my Challenger's favorite song is "Born to Run". She makes me listen to it whenever it comes on the radio. I enjoyed this one quite a lot, he has a wonderful writing style, descriptive without being wordy, which I imagine he's honed as a songwriter. I never really thought of him as a guitarist and songwriter before, but of course that's what he is. He talks about growing up poor in New Jersey and being inspired after seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan. He worked hard for a lot of years, pounding the bar scene, building up a fan base, before hitting the big time. I found it ironic that a lot of his earlier songs are about cars and yet he didn't learn to drive until his twenties. Lots of fun information and despite being so long, it was a very quick read. I was out in the backyard finishing it up, and as I was on the last page I heard a car drive by on the road behind the house blasting "Streets of Philadelphia", so that was a nice coincidence.

 I love reading trashy books on vacation, and when I found out that there was a sequel to V. C. Andrews' "My Sweet Audrina", I had to run out and get it. "Audrina" was one Andrews actually wrote herself before she passed away, so it holds a special place in my heart. This one wasn't quite as good, and it was terribly predictable, but it was still fun. Audrina is all grown up and her father passes away, leaving the majority share of his stockbroking company to her rather than her husband, Arden. Arden is incensed and demands Audrina sign over her share of the company to him so he can run it properly, but Audrina shows some spirit and holds him off. In the meantime, she hires an art tutor for her developmentally disabled younger sister, Sylvia. Audrina soon discovers the art teacher is molesting Sylvia and that she is pregnant. Since she and Arden have been having issues conceiving, Arden convinces her to pretend she's pregnant and they'll raise Sylvia's baby as their own.

And finally, Jodi Picoult's latest, "Small Great Things". I didn't love it, I found it predictable (or maybe I'm getting smarter and better at guessing...um, doubtful :) ). Usually she's able to make even the most unlikable characters somewhat likable, which is why her books are so amazing, you don't know who to root for because you can see everyone's side. Not this time. A couple of White Supremacists insist that an African American nurse named Ruth be prohibited from tending to their newborn son, and the hospital bows down to their demands. When the floor is short staffed Ruth is left alone watching the baby, who goes into distress. Defying orders, she tries to resuscitate him but he ends up dying anyway. The couple then decides to press charges against Ruth.
Look, assholes, you can't have it both ways. Either you want the woman to do her job or you don't.
Anyway, there's a trial and a lot of preaching about racism and it turns out the baby would probably have died anyway from health issues and then the twist which I figured out beforehand. It ended all too tidily. It wasn't a bad book, and I certainly agree that race is something that needs to be discussed more, but it wasn't the best thing she's ever written.

Sunshine Beach

I've read a few other books by Wendy Wax so I figured I'd give her latest a shot, not realizing it was part of a series. She did a nice job of explaining the backstory, so I didn't feel *too* lost, but I'm sort of sorry now that I read it out of order. I'd like to go back and read the first ones, but I already know what happens, so, we'll see. It was pretty good, I enjoyed it once I got all the characters straight. There was just so much going on. Avery, Nikki, Maddie, and her daughter Kyra rehab properties for a Lifetime series. I guess in the last book the women got so fed up with the way they network was treating them they quit on air. After a bit of time to regroup, they're looking for a new rehab project and trying to raise the funds to do it on their own so they won't need to sell their soul to another network. They seemed to have found the perfect project close to home: an old hotel owned by some acquaintances of theirs. It's been closed for thirty years and is a bad state of disrepair. There are a few obstacles, though, Renee and Annelise's father was murdered there in the 1950s, and Annelise has always hoped to get the case reopened so she's wanted to keep the hotel preserved while Renee has wanted to tear it down because it's a painful reminder of the worst time of her life. I was a bit skeptical that one of the characters would even still be alive: he was a former Nazi officer's handler (I told you there was a lot going on). I figured he'd probably be over 100, which didn't make a whole lot of sense but I was willing to overlook that detail. It was still fun.

The Wonder; All the Little Liars

I actually read Emma Donoghue's "The Wonder" a few weeks ago and forgot to write about it. I really enjoyed it, I had a hard time putting it down. I read a nonfiction book ages ago about the 19th century phenomenon known as the Fasting Girls (there were a few boys, too). Apparently it was a thing for a few years, where these teen girls would claim not to eat but to survive on air. Of course most were proven to be frauds. This one was about an Irish girl named Anna who claims she hasn't eaten anything in four months. Her little village is becoming a tourist destination where people from all over the world flock to see the miracle girl. Lib is a nurse from England, she is sent for to help keep a two week watch on Anna to make sure she's not sneaking in food. Lib figures it won't take her long to discover the hoax and then she'll be on her way. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.

It's been quite a few years since Charlaine Harris wrote an Aurora Teagarden mystery. I read a few of them back in the day, since Aurora is a librarian I felt obligated to. Although, honestly, reading Harris's description of her workday leads me to believe she's a page, since all she seems to do is shelve books. But I digress. In this one, Aurora is newly married to author Robin Caruso and is expecting her first baby. It was kind of difficult for me to read on a personal level, how happy and excited she was. Aurora's younger half-brother Phillip is living with her and Robin, and one day he and a group of five other teenagers vanish. One of the missing teens turns up dead. The FBI are called in and no one seems to be able to make heads nor tails out of the evidence, since it's all very conflicting. It was, too, I was super confused and honestly not all that invested in it, so I probably wasn't paying attention as well as I could have been. All in all I feel rather lukewarm about this book. At least it was a quick read, so I didn't invest too much time or effort in it.

Famous Nathan

I've never been to Coney Island, but I've heard of Nathan's Famous, the hot dog stand that's been there for a century now. It was a great story about how a poor, illiterate Jewish immigrant from Poland came to America and within a few days had a job at a luncheonette counter dishing up frankfurters. After a few years of scrimping and saving, Nathan Handwerker was able to buy a little space on Coney Island to sell his frankfurters. He and his wife, Ida, put in long hours and worked seven days a week to help Nathan's succeed, and succeed it did. Nathan was a stickler for detail, nothing escaped his exacting eye. I loved how he was able to pick up a bag of onion peels and tell by the weight if the person peeling them had taken off too much onion. It was a wonderful story that I wished had a happier ending: Nathan hoped his two sons, Murray and Sol, would be able to work together in the store but unfortunately personality clashes led to a falling out and Sol and Murray parted ways. Changing times led to Nathan's going public and the Nathan's of today only vaguely resembles the Nathan of yesteryear.

Best.State.Ever; Libertarians on the Prairie; Devil's Defender; All These Things That I've Done

Dave Barry is usually good for a laugh or two, and his latest, "Best.State.Ever", an ode to Florida, was one of his best that I've read in a long time. I laughed out loud through most of it and it actually made me want to visit the state of Florida, not something I've ever felt compelled to do before. He talked about quirky roadside attractions, he waxed poetic about Key West and the Everglades and Disney World. Even though there was a lot of snark, it was loving snark, if that makes sense.

I wasn't terribly impressed with Christine Woodside's "Libertarians on the Prairie". First of all, does anyone not know by now that Rose Wilder Lane had a huge hand in writing her mother's "Little House" books? I read "Ghost in the Little House" back when I was in my late teens, and that was a very, very long time ago. And of course not every single word of every single book was true! Even as a kid I knew that. It didn't spoil the books for me at all to find out that Rose wrote quite a bit of them and that they weren't 100% true. They're still wonderful stories I reread all the time and enjoy. I also found her argument that Rose deliberately left out or put in certain things to further her Libertarian beliefs rather thin. She gives as one example how they left out the fact that during the Long Winter, the Ingalls family had a couple living with them. Rose left them out of the story, Woodside claims, because they didn't embody the pioneer spirit of individualism that Rose wanted to promote. Honestly, I don't think having the couple in the book would have added any to the story, and Rose was a very canny author of both fiction and nonfiction. She would have realized that. Maybe she did leave them out for political reasons and maybe she didn't. At the end of the day I don't think it really matters. I feel sorry for people who read too much into books. Sometimes a story is just a story.

I also wasn't too fond of John Henry Browne's "Devil's Defender", but at least it was a very quick read (big font, 200 pages). He became a defense attorney and has defended some very bad people, like Ted Bundy, because he believes everyone is entitled to a good defense in court. I absolutely agree with him on that point. Where we differ is on the death penalty. He doesn't think it's right for the state to kill people, and I disagree. I mean, look at how long Charles Manson's been in prison living off the taxpayer's dime. And for what? He's a complete waste of a human being. I remember being so outraged when I found out that the state of California, us taxpayers, were paying to fix the Night Stalker's teeth. *I* needed braces, and my parents couldn't afford to pay for them, but this murdering piece of scum who was on death row got free orthodontic care whereas I had to wait until I had a job and could pay for my own damn teeth to get fixed. Not that I minded, I was proud of myself for paying for them on my own, but it really irritated me that he got his teeth fixed when he was just going to be put to death anyway. I mean, really, what's the point? He didn't show his victims any mercy, so why should we show him any? I don't know. It just angers me, and Browne's holier than thou attitude was grating.

And finally, a fun one! Matt Pinfield grew up loving music and learning everything he could about the bands he liked listening to. He DJ'ed in clubs and worked on college and local radio stations in New Jersey. He was always on the cutting edge, he had his ear to the ground and heard about breakthrough bands before they happened, so he was the first to play a lot of groups and ended up building a good rapport with a lot of them, since they could tell he wasn't full of shit when he interviewed them. He ended up working on MTV in the mid-nineties, which is of course how I knew him. I didn't care for 120 Minutes at first, but after awhile it grew on me, and I liked Matt, he seemed so much less annoying than a lot of VJs on MTV at the time. He was just like this cool, laid back normal guy you could see yourself hanging out with. He did some crazy things, and had issues with drugs and alcohol (I honestly never would have guessed, he always seemed sober on TV) but he seems to be in a good place right now. It was a fun book, nostalgic, and reminded me of how much fun it was to discover a new band for the first time and fall in love with their music. It's been a really long time since that happened for me. It's such a great feeling.

Three Years in Wonderland; Mississippi Noir; The Mannings

Back in the early 1950s, Walt Disney had a crazy idea to build an amusement park. No one really bought into his crazy scheme except for a Texas businessman named C. V. Wood, known as Woody. Woody was Disney's right hand man for years, helping design the park that would become Disneyland in Anaheim and getting much needed sponsorships when Disney ran short on funds. Woody was also instrumental in getting the land for the park, making some shady side deals in order to get it done. Miraculously the park opened on time (although not without a few issues) and Woody's days were numbered. Disney had his brother Roy fire him a few months later, and Woody went on to create other theme parks around the country, as well as Lake Havasu in Arizona. Woody's name has been pretty much erased from all official Disneyland history by the company, longtime employees who knew him refuse to discuss it. It was very interesting, and Pierce did a great job of researching.

I'm always a little leery of reading short story collections because I usually don't enjoy them, but this one appealed to me because of the Faulkner connection, so I read it and I actually really enjoyed it. Most of the stories were pretty decent, but there were a few that were really, really good.

I read Archie and Peyton's autobiography about a decade ago, but of course a lot has happened since then. Peyton's won two Super Bowls and retired, youngest brother Eli has also had his share of success in the NFL, winning two Super Bowls too. It's impossible to read this book and not feel sorry for Archie, although I'm sure he doesn't feel sorry for himself. To never once be on a team with a winning season--man, that's a heartbreaker. You gotta wonder what he could have done in the NFL if he'd been on a decent team like his sons were.

Eighty Million Eyes

A friend of mine recently read this 87th Precinct book, and because he knows how much I love Ed McBain he was asking me about it, and for the life of me I couldn't remember if I'd read it or not, it didn't sound at all familiar. I don't own it, and I couldn't find any record of having checked it out from the library (what, you don't keep all your library receipts so you know what you checked out back in in June of 1995? I can't be the only one who does that). But I didn't keep great records for a few years, so I might have borrowed it and don't have the receipt. Or maybe I never read it, it certainly didn't sound familiar. It was a good story: a popular TV personality drops dead while on the air. He was poisoned, a very specific, fast acting poison he would have had to ingest within just a few minutes of dying, only he was on camera and no one remembers him taking anything in that time frame. It's actually a cheerful thought that there are Ed McBain's out there that I haven't read yet, I hate it when a favorite author dies and I know I won't ever get to read anything new.

Dreamland; Rise the Dark; The Eternal Party

 First up, "Dreamland" by Sam Quinones. How did black tar heroin from a small town in Mexico become the drug of choice among middle and upper class white kids in the heartland of America? Such a thing seems impossible. Quinones deftly explains how the invention of a time release opiate known as Oxycontin in the mid-1990s changed how physicians prescribes opiates. Believing that the time release aspect would keep people from becoming addicted, doctors began prescribing Oxy in record amounts. Of course people became addicted, and because black tar heroin was cheaper, plus the drug dealers pushing it became adept at figuring out a delivery system, more and more people switched to heroin. It was shockingly scary to read.

Michael Koryta's latest was very good, taunt and suspenseful. Jay Baldwin's wife Sabrina is kidnapped, and Jay is contacted by a man named Eli Pate. Eli is described as a cross between Charles Manson and Nikola Tesla. Pate tells Jay if he cooperates and helps him bring down a massive power grid then Sabrina will be returned to him unharmed. Meanwhile, in Florida, Mark Novak is trying to find the man who murdered his wife two years earlier. Mark and Jay's stories intertwine in the Montana wilderness.

It doesn't feel like Larry Hagman has been gone that long, but it will be four years in November. Wow. I was such a fan, I loved "Dallas" (I got to take a trip to Texas in 2005 and visited the actual South Fork Ranch. It was awesome). I read his autobiography a few years back and enjoyed it. On his deathbed, his daughter Kristina recounts how he begged for forgiveness, only she couldn't figure out what he needed forgiveness for. She tells her story in this tribute to her dad, growing up with the always drunk and high Hagman who loved nothing more than to be the life of the party, the center of attention. While it's clear she loves her parents, she also made no excuses for their poor behavior that often put her and her brother at risk. It was a quick read that makes me want to go back and rewatch "Dallas" :)

Mademoiselle Chanel

I love Coco Chanel. I read a biography about her years and years ago, so I don't remember much about it. Gortner's fictionalized account of her life was well done, fun and interesting. What an amazing woman, she revolutionized women's fashion forever. She led a very inspirational life, working hard to achieve all she had, although to be fair she had help from male admirers. I'm a No. 5 girl, and if you don't know what that means I feel sorry for you :)

Wicked Boy; My Father, the Pornographer

I finished two books this weekend, neither of which was what I was expecting but they were both good. "Wicked Boy" by Kate Summerscale was about Robert Coombes, a thirteen year old boy who killed his mother back in 1895 while his father was away at sea. He and his younger brother, Nattie, lived with her corpse for 10 days in the heat of summer until the smell finally led neighbors to investigate. Robert was found guilty of his mother's murder but insane and sent to a mental hospital. He lived there for 17 years and was released in 1912. He moved to Australia and ended up serving with distinction during WWI. He returned to Australia and by all accounts led a quiet life, farming. He never married, but he did become a sort of guardian to a young neighbor boy whose stepfather beat him. I was expecting more of a true crime sort of aspect, which wasn't really there. It was still quite interesting and I enjoyed it.

Everything I read about Chris Offutt's book made it sound like he didn't know his father wrote pornography until after he died, so I was expecting more of a book about how Chris came to terms with learning such a big secret. However, it turns out he knew, he grew up knowing that his dad wrote porn. Andrew Offutt sounded like a highly unpleasant man: he was controlling and obnoxious, liked to drink and verbally abuse his four kids and his wife. He had legions of fans who loved his bondage porn, which Andrew turned out at a fantastic rate. It was all right, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped but it had interesting bits.

As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling

I grew up watching "The Twilight Zone", I loved that show. I looked forward to the marathons on Thanksgiving (I still do, actually, even though I usually watch football all day). Anne Serling, Rod's youngest daughter, paints a loving picture of her father who worked hard and played harder. He was a prolific writer, he always seemed to have some major project going. Hard to believe he was only 50 when he died. What a shame. I cried when she talked about how devastated she felt after his death. He was definitely one of the good ones.

Model Home

"Model Home" by Eric Puchner has been on my "to read" list for years, and I finally got around to it. I'm glad I did, it was a quick read and darkly humorous. Warren Ziller moved his family to Southern California from Wisconsin in the mid 1980s, and they're living above their means in a private, gated community. Warren has lost all their money in an investment scheme gone bad, and he's dreading telling his family. He finally does, and then a terrible accident nearly kills his oldest boy, Dustin. Dustin is left badly disfigured and in need of constant care, while the Zillers' home is destroyed. They move out to the desert into one of Warren's failed model homes by a toxic dump, and what was left of their family quickly unravels. Bad luck and bad choices seem to plague the Zillers no matter how hard they try. But there were glimmers of hope throughout that kept the book from being a complete downer.

Song of Rhiannon; Faulkner and Film; The Girls

"The Song of Rhiannon" is the third book in the Mabinogion series by Evangeline Walton. Manawydden, King Bran's brother and the last surviving child of Llyr, has no desire to return home and see his cousin on the throne, so he accepts Prince Pryderi's invitation to come home to Dyved with him. Once there he starts a romance with Pryderi's mother, Rhiannon. Pryderi and his wife Cigfa and Manawydden and Rhiannon live peaceably until one night a strange storm wipes out all of Dyved, leaving only the four of them living. They set out to find a new home, trying their hand at various occupations, having to leave town when they upset too many people. It had a happy ending, though, which was nice after the sadness of the second book.

"Faulkner and Film" mostly put me in the mood to read more Faulkner :) It was an interesting collection of essays from the 2010 Yoknapatawpha Conference, which is held annually in July. One day I'll get to go. At any rate, several of Faulkner's novels have been made into (mostly terrible) films, and he worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood for almost a decade. God, he was so brilliant. It's amazing to me that fifty some years after his death we still find things to discuss about his writing and his impact on culture.

And finally, "The Girls" by Emma Cline. There's been huge buzz about this book, Cline got a seven figure advance for her debut novel. So I was expecting brilliance. Instead what I got was...well, it wasn't bad. It was so *earnest*. I don't know how else to say it, she just seemed to be trying way too hard. And the similes! Oh my word, every sentence. "His mouth hung open like the trunk of a car". "Her hair was skanky like a hedgehog" (I'm paraphrasing, because I don't have the book right in front of me). She compared everything to *something*. After awhile I was just rolling my eyes.
The story itself was interesting enough: about a young girl who finds herself in a Manson like cult. Right off the bat, though, the protagonist claims that from the minute we're born, women are at a disadvantage merely by being women. That during the teenage years boys are busy learning how to be themselves while girls are busy learning how to be attractive to boys. She clearly doesn't like men (the main character, Evie, not Cline. I don't know how Cline feels about them). She talks about being leered at by older men when she was a teenager and being groped, touching inappropriately, and wearily explains that it's just the fate of being female, we all go through it. Um, no we don't. I've had some truly wonderful male friends, especially back when I was a teenager. So that definitely put me off. It was a bit disappointing. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been hyped up so much. Oh well.

Mother Can You Not?; Freedom: Three Sisters, Three Queens; Four to Score; Hard Eight

First up, a quick, laugh out loud read. Kate Siegel's mother is crazy. Quite literally. Luckily Kate has a good sense of humor about it, because I would be mortified. It reminded me of Justin Halperin's "Shit My Dad Says".

I enjoyed Jaycee's first book, "Stolen Life", and I was eager to hear about how she's been coping and adjusting to life after being held hostage by her kidnappers for 18 years. Jaycee is doing very well, enjoying life and having new experiences. She has developed a proclivity towards Starbucks, though, which makes me sad. Hopefully she'll get a Dunkin' near her soon and she can have better coffee :)

I always enjoy Philippa Gregory's books, and "Three Sisters, Three Queens" was no exception. It was written from Margaret Tudor's point of view. I honestly don't know much about Margaret, so it was fun. She starts off as a spoiled, whiny little brat who is constantly worried about outdoing her sister in law, Katherine of Aragon (whom she calls "Katherine of Arrogant" behind her back) and her little sister, Mary. At the age of thirteen, Margaret is married off to the much older King James of Scotland. Her father, King Henry VII, hopes the marriage will broker peace between the two warring kingdoms. James seems like a kind man who sincerely does want peace, but then when Henry VIII comes to power he struggles with his brother in law. While Henry is off warring against the French, James goes to defend his borders and, at Queen Katherine's command, is killed rather than taken prisoner.
I always knew that, but it never really occurred to me that James was Henry and Katherine's brother in law. That his wife, Margaret, was Henry's older sister. This book kind of rammed it home, how devastated Margaret was to lose her husband and how Scotland was left with a two year old boy King. Margaret does the best she can to hold the country together and keep the peace with her younger brother, but when she marries a second time, beneath her, for love, war breaks out in Scotland. Her second husband, Archibald Douglas, is not well liked by half of the population, and everyone's taking sides. Margaret and Archibald fight quite a lot, and he seems to have been married beforehand, rendering their marriage invalid. When Margaret seeks a divorce, her brother is outraged. Until, of course, he wants a divorce of his own.
Honestly, Margaret doesn't come off as very likable. She's constantly harping about how much better off her sisters are treated and respected and delights in their misery. I kind of didn't feel too sorry for her when bad things happened to her.

And a couple of fun Stephanie Plum rereads by Janet Evanovich (I needed something light for out by the pool). "Four to Score" finds Stephanie looking for waitress Maxine Norwicki after she steals her pig boyfriend Eddie's car (Eddie deserved everything he got in this book, by the way). Vinnie hires Joyce Barnhardt, Stephanie's arch-rival (the one she caught her husband cheating with back in the day) to go after Maxine because he feels Stephanie's not taking her job seriously. Sally Sweet, the transvestite, makes his first appearance in this one as a code cracker helping Steph decipher Maxine's coded messages to Eddie. When Stephanie's apartment is firebombed, she has to move in with Joe Morelli. A total hardship :)

"Hard Eight" has Stephanie in real danger. She's looking for a woman who disappeared with her daughter. The problem is, Evelyn is in the middle of a nasty divorce and her soon to be ex-husband, Steven, forced Evelyn to take out a custody bond and if she doesn't turn up with their daughter soon Evelyn's mom is going to lose her house. Steven is mixed up with a real nasty character named Abruzzi, who comes after Stephanie with both barrels, not believing she doesn't know where Evelyn is hiding Annie. Apparently Annie took something of his he wants back. I think three cars bit the dust in this one, and Stephanie comes home one day to find a dead man on her couch. Ranger is prominent in this one, so it was fun.