Letterman: the Last Giant of Late Night; There I Go Again; Streets of Laredo; The Day I Died

I loved David Letterman. I didn't really watch him on NBC, and was only vaguely aware of the whole mess they made when Carson retired (although I did read a great book about it later by Bill Carter called "The Late Shift"). My sister and I had a friendly rivalry: she preferred Leno, I liked Letterman, so I used to watch him on CBS when he first started his new show (we both agreed on how much we loved Conan O'Brien). I was enjoying this book, up until the very end, when, six pages before it ended, he claimed that Bob Dylan was Dave's last musical guest before he retired.
What?
What?!!
It was the FOO FIGHTERS. Singing "Everlong". Dave's favorite song, he said. It was an incredible, moving performance, and quite easy to remember, I might add, especially for someone who claimed to have exhaustively researched Letterman's life. Did no one fact check? No one reading the book before it went to press who said "wait, hold the phone, this is wrong"? No one?
Sad.
I hate when good books are ruined like that. I found myself questioning the whole rest of the book. If he could get something that fundamental wrong, what else wasn't right?

I, of course, know William Daniels from "Boy Meets World" and the brief reboot "Girl Meets World". I didn't realize he was the voice of KITT from "Knight Rider" until I saw this book and went oh yeah! I loved that show. Apparently Daniels has been in show business his entire life, he started out as a kid during the Great Depression doing radio shows with his sisters. I wanted to like this book, I really did, but he came across as curmudgeonly, which was disappointing. Maybe in real life he's friendlier and more personable, but it didn't come across in his writing.

I also reread "Streets of Laredo" by Larry McMurtry over the long holiday weekend. I've never liked this one much, since everyone's dead and Call doesn't really have anyone to humanize him like Gus did in "Lonesome Dove". But it's still good (even when McMurtry's not great, he's still better than most) and now I'm trying to decide if I should reread "Dead Man's Walk", since that's the only one I didn't get to. I made a good dent in my library books, so we'll see :)

I loved Rader-Day's last book, "Pretty Little Things", so I was super excited to see she had a new book out. I enjoyed it, just not as much as the last one. When the book starts we meet Anna Winger, a single mom to a thirteen year old boy, Joshua. Anna is a handwriting analyst, and the police in her new Indiana town are consulting her on a case involving the murder of a babysitter and the kidnapping of a two year old boy. Most of the town is skeptical of what Anna does, the rest are afraid of her. Anna herself is clearly hiding a big secret, she eludes to it throughout the first half of the book. She finally reveals (and it was pretty easy to guess) that she faked her own death when she was pregnant with Joshua because she feared for her life. She's been on the run ever since, never staying in one place too long. Joshua is starting to resent their nomadic lifestyle and is acting out, falling in with a bad crowd. It was nicely tied together in the end, and not in a cheesy sort of way, it seemed plausible.