Me and Patsy Kickin' Up Dust

I love Loretta Lynn. I love Patsy Cline, too. She was a favorite of my grandma's. When I went to Nashville back in February (it feels like a million years ago), I went to the Patsy Cline museum, which is on the second floor of the Johnny Cash museum (you know I went there, too). I got to see furniture and clothes, records, handwritten letters. It was lovely, and so was this book. Loretta and Patsy were good friends, the kind of girlfriends to each other that I wish I had, and Loretta still misses her, even all these years later. She had some fun stories to tell.

Tombstone

I actually enjoyed the book about Tombstone I read a few weeks ago, "Ride the Devil's Herd", a little bit better than this one. I liked Clavin's writing style when I read his book about Dodge City a few years ago, but this one wasn't as entertaining. I still enjoyed it, and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read the other one first. It was basically the same material: the Earps were the only ones brave enough to take on the cowboys that were terrorizing the region. I've never been to Tombstone, but it's on the list. Someday!

The Queen's Secret

I read "The Queen's Secret" in tandem with "The Splendid and the Vile", and while both books took place during the same time period and talked about the same events, they could not have been more different.
I wanted to like this book. Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) and WWII? Great! Now, I don't mind a bit of creative license with historical fiction. It is, after all, fiction, not fact. But the "secrets" she gave Elizabeth were so utterly ridiculous. She teased all through the book about the big secret with Bertie's older brother, David, who abdicated the throne for Wallis Simpson. By the time she *finally* got around to telling us what it was, I no longer cared because I'd already guessed and it was ridiculous anyway. She was also extremely repetitive. I really wonder where the editor was to say: "hey, you don't need to repeat this exact same thing 6 times". If you were even slightly paying attention, you got it. It's a shame, because it had potential to be a really great story, but it was just poorly told. 

The Splendid and the Vile

Oh wow. What an awesome book. I truly don't know how Londoners survived a year of German attacks almost every night. Air raid sirens, no water or power or phones for days on end, food shortages, no heat, bombs falling, people dying right and left and not feeling like there would ever be an end in sight. I can't begin to fathom the depths of despair of not feeling safe in your own home. And one man, an amazing man, a lion of a man, Winston Churchill, determined to show not just Germany but the world that Britain would never surrender. Larson did an excellent job of building tension, so even though we all know how the war ended, it was still engaging. This is hands down one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

Of Mice and Minestrone; Peach Clobbered

"Of Mice and Minestrone" was a short (really short, about 150 pages with big font, it took me all of an hour to read it) collection of early Hap and Leonard stories. A few were just Hap, Leonard didn't even appear. The title story is about a teenage Hap trying to rescue a battered wife from her abusive husband and learning how no good deed goes unpunished. "Sparring Partner" was probably the best one: Hap and Leonard go to help train a boxer that an acquaintance of Leonard's wants to put in the ring. I really enjoyed the recipes at the end, too, even though I can't eat any of them since I'm vegan. They were funny, though ("beat those eggs like they owe you money"). I would totally read a cookbook Lansdale wrote. My only complaint was how he kept repeating how strange it was for Hap and Leonard to be friends. Like, every other paragraph, it felt like. Yes, we know. We got it. Let's move on. Still, a fun way to spend a lunch hour.

"Peach Clobbered" was one I put on hold last year right when it came out, and it took so long for our book vendor to fill the order that we had a bunch of patrons on hold so I decided I would take my name off the list and wait until the demand died down (I'm compassionate like that). It was pretty cute, I liked it. Nina is recently divorced and has moved to the tiny town of Cymbeline, Georgia, which has a Shakespeare theme (I wish this place really existed, I would so visit). She bought a beautiful historical Queen Anne home and is working on converting it to a B&B. Unfortunately, Harry Westcott, the former owner's great grand nephew, thinks that he should be the rightful owner because his great aunt promised to revise her will and leave it to him, only she died before she got the chance. He's pestering Nina, and then the Mayor asks her to take in some nuns who were kicked out of their convent by a ruthless developer name Greg Bainbridge. Turns out the whole town has reasons to hate Bainbridge, he's a real slimeball. So when Bainbridge is stabbed to death while wearing Harry's penguin suit (it's a long backstory), the sheriff has plenty of suspects. Gerard did a good job of planting red herrings, I wasn't quite sure who was innocent.

Katheryn Howard: the Scandalous Queen; The Second Home

I have to admit, I was disappointed with the fifth book in Weir's series about Henry VIII's wives. It felt flimsy and full of cliches. Katheryn was supposedly not well educated, Weir makes the point time and time (and time) again about how hard reading and writing were for her, yet in her interior thoughts she uses sophisticated language that just rang false with me. She also didn't delve into Lady Rochford (Thomas Boleyn's widow, who accused him and Anne of adultery and incest and got them both killed) at all, just had her skulking about like a weirdo. Katheryn wondered time and time (and time) again why Jane was being so nice and helping her carry on her affair with Culpepper, but never took it farther. I know the girl wasn't too bright, but come on, really? She was that dumb? At least it was a quick read, so I didn't waste too much time on it.

I got an ARC of this book a few months ago and read it, and then forgot to blog about it when it was published earlier in June. I didn't care for it, either. It sounded like a good premise: Ann and Poppy and their parents spend every summer at their Cape Cod home. After Michael's mother dies, their family adopts him and he comes along to the Cape. The first summer is pretty good. Then during the second summer, Ann gets a job babysitting for a wealthy family. The slimeball husband/father rapes her and she ends up pregnant. He then manipulates Michael into taking the blame and running away. Fast forward fifteen years, and Ann and Poppy's parents have died without a will, and Ann is determined Michael not know about the house, since he's an heir.
These kinds of books bug me sometimes. Where everything could have been avoided if the two main characters had talked to each other. Why did both Michael and Ann believe what the slimeball said? Neither one of them confronted the other, they just believed his insane lies and ran with them. It just felt really false to me. They were friends, and they turn on each other because of some guy they don't even know?

The Last Book on the Left; The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

There's a podcast I've never listed to called the Last Podcast on the Left (which of course is a pun on the classic horror film "Last House on the Left"), which looks at killers. I don't know how people have time to listen to so many podcasts. Friends are always recommending them to me. I don't have time to listen. Seriously. But if I did listen to any, this one would probably be right up there for me. The three hosts got together and compiled a kind of "greatest" serial killers of all time book. It was pretty good. I was familiar with all of them except for one: Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento. I was surprised I had never heard of him. At any rate, it was a fun(ish) book (I feel guilty saying that, since it is after all about disgusting, vile monsters doing terrible things to innocent people). Some of their remarks were a little lame, but all in all it was a good introduction to some of the worst killers of all time.

And, coincidentally enough, "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" mentioned Richard Chase several times, too.
Spooky.
I love Grady Hendrix. He's so much fun. This book takes place mostly in the early '90s in Alabama. Five proper southern ladies have a book club where they get together and read true crime and other such "trash". James Harris moves into the neighborhood, and Patricia is immediately suspicious of him. Coming out in the daylight makes him sick and weak, and he has a bag of cash but no ID, so he needs her help opening a bank account. When children start killing themselves after acting oddly for a few weeks, Patricia convinces the rest of the ladies in her book club that he's a drug dealer. Unfortunately, that doesn't end well for them: when their husbands get wind that they're planning on taking their suspicions to the police, they intervene and put a stop to it, blaming the books they read on their "craziness". Fast forward three years later, and everyone's in business with Harris, and Patricia doubts her own sanity. It was really good with some truly disgusting scenes that really grossed me out. That's pretty hard to do.

The Red Lotus

Chris Bohjalian's books are usually pretty good, and I liked this one. It was a bit creepy, being about a possible pandemic, since it was published before COVID-19. I also learned way, way more about rats than I ever wanted to.
Alexis and her boyfriend, Austin, are on a bicycling trip in Vietnam when Austin disappears. His broken, battered body is discovered a day or two later, a victim of a hit and run.
Very tragic. Case closed.
No, of course not. Alexis, who is an ER doctor, noticed a weird puncture wound on Austin's hand, even though the bicycle gloves he was wearing had no corresponding holes or tears. So the wound occurred *before* the accident that killed him. Throw in the fact that Austin lied about his father and uncle's involvement in the Vietnam war, and everything starts to look a little bit suspicious. It was definitely a page turner.