The Radleys

I'm currently working on an inventory of our fiction collection at work, which is great fun because as I'm looking at each and every book I'm finding many I'd like to read that I might otherwise have been unaware of, missing them when they were new, like "The Radleys" by Matt Haig. The cover caught my eye, and I read the synopsis, and promptly checked it out. It was very good, I enjoyed it. The Radleys are a seemingly normal family, but it turns out they're actually abstaining vampires. Their children, Rowan and Clara, don't even know they're vampires, and wonder why they are so much paler and weaker than the other kids at school, why they suffer from headaches and nausea. When Clara is attacked by a pushy boy, she lashes out and accidentally kills him. Peter calls his older brother Will to help out. Will is a practicing vampire and a powerful one, above the law, in a way. It was a fun take on vampires.

The Man Without a Shadow; Choose Your Own Misery: the Office Adventure

I really enjoy Joyce Carol Oates. I honestly don't know how the woman sleeps, as much as she writes and teaches and lectures. She's just amazing. "The Man Without a Shadow" was so sad. Eli Hoopes contracted amnesia in 1964 and became a subject of a research project Margot Sharpe was lucky enough to be in on from the beginning. Thirty years of testing Mr. Hoopes goes by and Margot refuses to give him up, or to let go of her fantasy of the two of them marrying and having a life together. She's convinced herself that he really *does* remember her, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Every time she leaves the room for a minute and then returns, she has to introduce herself to him all over again. Oates goes into Hoopes point of view, how strange and unsettling his life must be. There were just two things that bothered me: one was that she never really explained what happened with his cousin Gretchen, and two that she referred to a young man in the late 1920/early 1930s as having an Elvis Presley pompadour. Other than that, it was quite good.

Who didn't love those Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid? I had one that wasn't part of the series, but it was written in the same fashion, about a girl named Angie who had to decide between electives in high school, between two different boyfriends, etc., etc. I read the hell out of that book, even though no matter what you made Angie choose, it always turned out well for her in the end (I think I still have it, tucked away somewhere. I'll have to hunt for it). This book was kind of the opposite: it starts with you waking up late for work and hungover. You go to call in sick but the secretary reminds you it's your last sick day. From there on no matter what decision you make, everything ends badly. It was pretty funny if a bit repetitive, but it was still fun.

Spell of Winter; Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince; Sherlock Chronicles; Almost Interesting

So my unabashed love of V.C. Andrews is no secret, and I read online somewhere that Helen Dunmore's "A Spell of Winter" was inspired by or similar to "Flowers in the Attic", so I immediately put it on my to read list and finally got around to it (unrelated note: I weeded my own personal book collection this weekend, getting rid of over 100 books I'd either read and didn't care for or ones I knew I'd never touch, so now all the ones I *really* want to read are glaringly obvious). Catherine and Rob are siblings growing up rather isolated in a fading English country estate before World War I. Their father is dead, their mother abandoned them, and they only have their trusty maid Kate and their grandfather, so they form a bond and are...unnaturally...close. Catherine gets pregnant (oops) but Kate is able to help her take care of things, and Rob never even knows. He and Kate run off to Canada, leaving Cathy to shift for herself with her aging grandfather. It was interesting, but the prose was a bit too flowery for my taste.

It's amazing to me that there's anything left to write about Elizabeth I, but books keep coming out and I keep reading them. It was an interesting take: Hilton discusses Elizabeth in terms of her feminine versus her masculine (princely) side. How in order to be queen and a diplomat she had to think of herself as a man, almost, and how that affected her relationships with other women and with men like Dudley. She also discusses the symbolism and meaning behind some of her portraits, clothes, and jewelry. All in all interesting.

I am a big Sherlock Holmes fan from way back. As a kid, my grandparents got me (and my sister, who didn't read, so technically just me :) ) a set of leatherbound classics, and among them were "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Doyle, along with "Study in Scarlet" and "Hound of the Baskervilles". I read those books over and over as a young teen, enamored of the intelligent Mr. Holmes. I literally cried the first time I read "The Final Problem". The internet wasn't prevalent back then (or at least we couldn't afford it) so I had no idea that Doyle brought him back until I went to the bookstore one day and saw a book titled something like "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and opened it up to discover he wasn't dead! I have several books that I've danced with glee upon acquiring, and this was one of them. I'm a big fan of the BBC version of the show (and I actually like "Elementary" on CBS, I was originally skeptical of a female Dr. Watson but it's really a good show and Lucy Liu does an amazing job. Plus I want her entire wardrobe). I enjoy the homage they pay to the original Doyle stories and how cleverly they work everything in. This book was a wonderful behind the scenes look, full of tidbits and pictures. I spent all day Saturday rewatching the show :)

For the few brief years I watched Saturday Night Live (we didn't get cable until 1994, so I didn't have the option of watching something better) David Spade was one of my favorite cast members. His Hollywood Minute never failed to crack me up. I enjoyed his memoir, which was quick and funny. He doesn't take himself seriously and he has lots of fun stories about his days at SNL and how the got there and Chris Farley. Ironically enough, I don't think I've seen a single movie he's been in.

The Lost Tudor Princess; Who Gets the Drumstick?; Richard III; Did You Ever Have a Family

I was actually disappointed with Alison Weir's latest, "The Lost Tudor Princess". Normally her nonfiction reads like fiction and is very engaging, but this one was a slog. The longwinded descriptions of the garments that Henry VIII gave his niece didn't really help much, although I understood she was trying to tie in the clothing she owned in order to identify portraits, but it would have been so much easier to say: "the sitter in this painting is wearing a dress that matches the fabric Henry gave Margaret in 1544" or whatever. At any rate, the subject matter was definitely interesting: Henry VIII's niece by his older sister, Margaret Tudor, Margaret Douglas, was born and lived in England, married Scottish nobility, and had eight children. Six of them died young but two of the boys grew to adulthood and married, one having a son, James, who became king of Scotland as James the VI and king of England as James I, and her other son fathered Arbella, who had a strong claim to the British throne as well. It's a shame it wasn't more enjoyable.

As a kid I loved the movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours" (the original with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, not the travesty of a remake). I never knew the mother, Helen Beardsley, wrote a book but once I found out she did I had to read it. It was very sweet and a bit sappy, but a nice, quick read. The original movie didn't stray too far from the book, although apparently (at least according to Helen) all the kids were for their parents marrying, no one protested like in the film, and they moved into Frank's house, which they renovated and added onto. If you don't know the story, it's about a Navy widow with eight children who meets and falls in love with a Navy widower with ten kids. They marry and have two more kids together. It reminds me, of course, of the lovely Gilbreth family of "Cheaper by the Dozen".

David Horspool's "Richard III" was very even and unbiased. He took a fair look at the known facts about Richard III and laid them out for the reader to decide how to interpret them. It was very good, I enjoyed it, although he could have made it a bit easier on the reader by translating the original documents from their native spelling. Those were difficult to decipher and broke up the natural flow of the book to all of a sudden be confronted with a nearly foreign language. I greatly admire those scholars who spend so much time trying to read the handwriting of those letters and documents and figure them out. Lord knows I couldn't do it.

I had high expectations for Bill Clegg's "Did You Ever Have a Family". I read so many book reviews for work, and the buzz around this book before it was published was astronomical. I was expecting something quite magnificent. What I got was...well, a decent story, and I liked it, but I think I would have liked it more if I hadn't been aware of all the hype. On the morning of their wedding, Lolly and Will are killed in a house fire, along with Lolly's father and Lolly's mother's boyfriend, Luke. Lolly's mother June is the only survivor of the family and after the funeral she takes off. The book is not really about her journey, she ends up in a hotel on the West Coast, but more about the lives of the people around her and how they all end up intersected. It was a nice message about how even when we think we're alone we really aren't, but other than that I didn't get much out of it.

Pride and Prejudice; Beatrice and Benedick

I went to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it put me in the mood to reread "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, which I did, and also thoroughly enjoyed :)

I picked up Marina Fiorato's "Beatrice and Benedick" because of the cover (spoiler alert: sometimes I *do* choose books by their cover. Shhh, don't tell anyone). I read that it was about Shakespeare's sparring lovers from the play "Much Ado About Nothing", which I've read and enjoyed, so I was looking forward to this one. It was quite good, I really liked it. Beatrice and Benedick have wonderful repartee, much like Darcy and Elizabeth in "P&P", and reading the two back to back was very fun. She did a beautiful job with the characters and the setting, it just dragged in the middle when Beatrice and Benedick were separated.

When Somebody Kills You; Guest Room

I do so enjoy these Rat Pack mysteries by Robert J. Randisi. The latest one has Eddie G. worried about an open contract on his life: it's bringing all sorts of amateur hit men out of the woodwork, taking shots at him. So when Frank asks Eddie if he could help out his friend Judy Garland, Eddie takes advantage of the timing to get out of Las Vegas. He and Jerry head to L.A. and meet with Judy, who's afraid someone is stalking her. Between the people trying to kill Eddie and the people trying to kill Judy, it's kind of amazing Eddie and Jerry make it as relatively unscathed as they do. It was a quick, fun read.

The opposite of quick and fun was Chris Bohjalian's latest, "Guest Room". Richard, trying to be a nice big brother, allows his brother Phillip's bachelor party to take place in his home. He expected strippers, but what he didn't expect was for the girls to kill the bodyguards who came with them and take off in their car. Stunned, Richard soon learns the girls were Russian sex slaves, kidnapped and brought to America against their will. His wife and job aren't terribly happy with the events that took place that night in the family home. The book cuts between Richard and Alexandra, one of the girls who escaped. She tells her heartbreaking story of how she was taken from her grandmother and held against her will. It was good, just very sad.