And There Was Light

 

"And There Was Light" by Jon Meacham was an excellent look at Abraham Lincoln and how he evolved over his four years in the White House. 

Lincoln was a long shot to even get the nomination in 1860. Everyone thought that it would go to William Seward. But the newly formed Republican party was made up of a mashup of former parties: Whigs, Know Nothings, etc., and there was a strong anti-Seward faction. As a result, Lincoln emerged as a more moderate candidate with the best chance of beating the Democrats in the election. He was adamant that he didn't want to outlaw slavery in the South, he just didn't want to extend it to the newly added territories, whereas a lot of the other candidates were very much in favor of doing away with it. He won and the South still voted to secede from the Union. During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln changed his mind about slaves and emancipated them. It was heartbreaking that he was assassinated at such a crucial moment in our history. What was even worse was how many people were gleeful about it and celebrated, saying he got what he deserved. History has shown he was in fact a great leader and a decent and kind man, who, like all of us, had his flaws but nevertheless did more good than harm and always tried to do the best thing. 

Going Rogue

 

Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum book was pretty good. Steph comes into the office one morning and is shocked that Connie isn't there. Connie is *always* there. And it looks like the inventory room, where they keep the items people put up as collateral for bail, has been ransacked. Then the office gets a strange phone call from a man claiming to have something of Vinnie's and he wants his item back. Vinnie is (unfortunately) in Atlantic City and dismisses the call as a crank when Stephanie calls him, but she's worried the caller kidnapped Connie and is holding her for ransom. She enlists Ranger's help, since the kidnapper warned her not to go to the police. 

The usual stuff happened: Ranger loans Stephanie a Porsche after her car gets blown up, which gets destroyed by Morelli's crazy grandma, Bella; Lula goes nuts buying new office furniture on Vinnie's card; Grandma Mazur makes Stephanie take her to a couple of viewings, all the usual antics. Stephanie treads on dangerous ground with Ranger, which felt sort of wrong since she's technically with Morelli. Marry him or don't, it doesn't matter to me, but don't fool around with Ranger on the side. That's just not cool. I think Joe would be amenable to marriage if she suggested it. But what do I know? :)

A Father's Story

 

Ever since I watched the Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer a few months ago, I've been trying to get ahold of this book. Jeffrey's father, Lionel, tries to figure out how he missed all the warning signs that his son was developing into an evil monster. Jeff started out as a normal kid, despite his mother's difficult pregnancy. Joyce Dahmer took a lot of medication to treat her crippling anxiety. It wasn't until Jeff needed hernia surgery at a young age that Lionel noticed some changes in his formerly happy little boy. He became shy and withdrawn. Lionel was disappointed with Jeff's apathetic approach to life and his drinking. He tried to encourage him, paying for college, which led nowhere. Jeff eventually joined the Army, but was discharged for alcoholism. He drifted to Miami for a time, then called home, broke and asking for money. Lionel and his new wife, Sheri, sent him a plane ticket. Lionel encouraged him to get a job, which he did, but again, he put no effort into anything. Lionel blamed his drinking. When Jeff was arrested for molesting a boy, Lionel asked the judge to keep him in jail longer so he could get the treatment he needed for his alcoholism, but the judge released him anyway. Jeff lived off and on with his grandmother until he moved into the apartment where he killed all those young men. Lionel's horror and anguish at how his son could have done such terrible things was gut wrenching. I can't even imagine what it was like for anyone involved in that case. Such a horrible tragedy that no one stopped Dahmer before it was too late for all those poor victims. 

Dead Until Dark

 

So I started rewatching "True Blood" a few weeks ago and naturally decided I needed to reread the books. Book one: "Dead Until Dark". It's pretty funny. We meet Sookie, a telepathic waitress from Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie is somewhat of a social pariah in her town because of her telepathy--even though most people don't know about it, they know she's odd and keep their distance from her. Dating has been hard for Sookie, since she knows what disgusting things the men are thinking. That is, until she meets her first vampire: Bill Compton. With the invention of synthetic blood, vampires have made themselves known to humans and some, like Bill, are trying to mainstream and live among them, surviving on TruBlood. Sookie is thrilled when she discovers she can't read Bill's mind and the two start dating. Meanwhile, women who like to consort with vampires (known as "fangbangers") are turning up dead, covered in bite marks. Bill is a suspect, but so is Sookie's older brother, Jason, who slept with all the dead women. It was fun, even if it didn't have enough of Eric. But then again, neither did the show. Alexander Skarsgard is a treasure. 

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man; Touching from a Distance

 

I'm a big fan of Paul Newman's movies. As a person...maybe not so much. No, I'm kidding. He did a lot of good in the world through charity. He just made some bad decisions and hurt people, but at least he was honest about it, unlike some people (cough, cough, Eric Clapton, cough). 

Paul led a very interesting life. He married young and had three children with his first wife, Jackie, at least one of which was conceived after he'd begun his affair with Joanne Woodward. After Jackie and Paul divorced, he and Joanne married and had three more kids together. He acted in and directed a bunch of movies and then in his later years started racing cars and put out the Newman's Own line of food products with the profits going to his various charities. Apparently the book was culled from interviews done with Paul and people close to him while they were still alive, in the late 80s and early 90s, but then Paul pulled the plug on the whole thing. It's too bad, I would have liked to have heard his perspective on his later years. 

I'm not quite sure what to say about "Touching from a Distance". I'm not a *huge* Joy Division fan (although I do love "Love Will Tear Us Apart"). Written by Deborah Curtis, Ian's wife, it was super short, just barely over 100 pages. Ian and Deborah met in their teens and started dating. Right away, there were giant red flags. Ian was dictating what she could and couldn't wear, forbade her to wear makeup, cut her off from all her friends. I'm literally screaming at her to RUN! Of course she didn't, she got engaged to him. Her parents threw them a party and he got super jealous when she danced with her uncle. And then to make things worse, after they got married they were dead broke and Deborah decided she wanted a baby, so they had one.

Good grief. 

Ian was diagnosed with epilepsy and suffered seizures frequently while the doctors adjusted his medication. Apparently some of his bandmates and friends blamed the medication for his suicide, but he talked his whole life about dying before he was out of his early twenties, so it sounds like it was more than the medicine. He might have been suffering from something much worse than epilepsy. It was a sad story about two very sad people and their terrible decisions. 

These Old Shades

I wanted something light and fluffy (I'm currently slogging through a 1,000 page book about Abraham Lincoln. It's good, but boy is it slow), and Heyer always fits that bill nicely. This was one of her earlier ones. It was pretty good, although I will admit I didn't like it as much as some of her others. 

The Duke of Avon is playing the long game when it comes to taking revenge on his old nemesis, Comte de Saint-Vire. He spies a young man on the streets of Paris who looks suspiciously like the Comte, and immediately buys him from his older brother in the hopes that his hunch was right. It was--and the story takes a lot of amusing twists and turns before arriving at the inevitable Heyer happy ending. It's a hard book to summarize without spoiling a lot. 
 

Sister to Sister

I loved "Wife After Wife", Hayfield's book about King Henry VIII (modernized and set in present day), so I was excited to hear she wrote a sequel about Elizabeth and Mary.

It was pretty good. Not what I was expecting. Maria and Eliza clash early on about how to run Rose Corp. after their father, Harry, is forced to retire, but Maria exits the company early on, leaving Eliza to rule the roost by herself. The book was more about Eliza and her friends, Will and Kit, and her love interest, Rob. She has a hard time trying to figure out how to run a successful company and still make time for the other people in her life. There were definitely some clever bits but I thought she really could have done with less Kit and Will and more family drama. Still, all in all, I enjoyed it. 
 

Babysitter

 

Joyce Carol Oates's books are sometimes hit or miss, but this one was pretty good. Set in Detroit in the late 1970s, there is a serial killer the press has dubbed "Babysitter", killing kids. Hannah isn't worried about her own two small children, though. She lives in a wealthy suburb and has a nanny. Things like that don't happen to people like *her*. 

However, Hannah does start to have an affair with a man she only knows by his initials, Y.K. Y.K. and Babysitter are all tied together, but I don't want to spoil how. Hannah was one of those people who does insanely stupid things, knows she's doing insanely stupid things, and keeps on doing them anyway, so I could totally relate :)

The Island

 

"The Island" by Adrian McKinty was really good, I enjoyed it. 

A widower with two teenagers, Tom, recently married a much younger woman named Heather. Tom is a surgeon and he's been asked to speak at a conference in Australia, so he, Heather, Olivia, and Owen decide to make it a vacation. While they're out sightseeing one day they run across a man who tells them about a private island where they can see koalas and other native animals in the wild. The kids, of course, are dying to go but the man warns them that the family that owns the island doesn't like trespassers and demands a large amount of money to take them over on the ferry. Tom finally gives in to the kids and away they go. I don't want to give too much away, but suffice it to say they really shouldn't have done that. Their excursion turns into a test of survival.  

Freezing Cold Takes

 

A fun, quick football related book. Segal looks back on the history of "hot" takes in football and exposes some of the more ridiculous (in hindsight) ones. Ryan Leaf is probably the best known of all of the failures. He was so hyped and turned out to be a complete dud. Of course many predicted that Green Bay was making a huge mistake with Brett Favre and again with Aaron Rodgers (obviously both quarterbacks worked out pretty well). Tom Brady was not well thought of and many in New England were dismayed when the Patriots picked him in the draft, since they had a terrific franchise quarterback with Drew Bledsoe. You get the idea 😃

The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough; The Reivers

 

So I watched the new Netflix series about Jeffrey Dahmer last week. I had forgotten how disgusting and gross his crimes were. Evan Peters did a terrific job of playing Dahmer, he was so creepy. This was the only book my library owned about him (I have two others myself, one was written by a childhood friend called "My Friend Dahmer" and the other one tried unsuccessfully to make the case that Dahmer killed little Adam Walsh, called "Dahmer's Dirty Little Secret"). It was written while he was still alive, so it was a bit startling to read about Dahmer in the present tense. It honestly felt pretty slapdash, like she just cranked it out to cash in on the case while it was still hot. I've requested Dahmer's father's book from another library, so I'm curious to hear his side of things. 

And, to the surprise of no one, after reading the biography on William Faulkner last week, I had to reread one of my favorites, "The Reivers". His last book, and one of his funniest, too. It takes place in 1905. Lucius Priest is the oldest son of Maury Priest, and grandson to "the Boss". The Boss owns one of the few automobiles in town and his employee, Boon, drives it for him. Lucius's other grandfather passes away, and his mom, dad, and grandparents head out of town for the funeral. Boon takes advantage of the Boss being away to take the car to a trip to Memphis, and Lucius tags along. They both know it's wrong to steal the car, even though they fully intend to bring it back, but the temptation is such that they can't help themselves. On the road to Memphis they find out one of Maury's employees at the livery stable, Ned, has stowed away in the back of the car. The three make their way to Miss Reba's house in Memphis, so Boon can visit with his special lady friend, Miss Corrie (in case you couldn't tell, Miss Reba's is a whorehouse). Ned ends up trading the car for a racehorse that won't actually run a race and coming up with a wild scheme to win a race and not only keep the horse but get the Boss's automobile back too. Lucius (who's 11, I think I should mention that) and Boon have no choice but to go along with Ned's crazy scheme. All sorts of hijinks ensue. Too much fun, it had me laughing out loud. God, Faulkner was such a national treasure. 

Life of William Faulkner: The Past is Never Dead

 

The anniversary of the day William Faulkner was born just passed (September 25). I just finished this newer biography about him. It was really interesting, I enjoyed it. It's Volume 1 (I didn't realize that when I bought it, so now I have to go buy the second volume. Oh no! I hate buying books 😉). Rollyson dug deep into each of Faulkner's books, so it was like a combination biography/literary study. Such a fascinating man! Now I'm really in the mood to re-read some of my favorites, but I know I shouldn't. 

Blood on the Moon

So this is the first book about Detective Lloyd Hopkins. It starts out with him as a cadet during the Watts Riots. Fast forward twenty years and Hopkins is a legendary detective who is given a lot of autonomy. His wife is leaving him because he keeps talking about his work in graphic detail to his impressionable young daughters. Hopkins insists he does it to make them aware of the dangers in the world. 

Innocent young women are being brutally butchered, and Hopkins is convinced L.A. has a serial killer on the loose but the higher ups think he's finally lost his last marble. He goes rogue and of course he was right but a lot of people got hurt in the process. 
 

Because the Night

 

It's no secret I love James Ellroy. A lot. I liked this one, but it was different from his other books. He didn't use any of the fun noir slang, but it was set in the mid-80s, not the 50s or 60s, so I suppose that played into it. 

Detective Lloyd Hopkins is assigned a grisly triple homicide in a liquor store when he finds out a hero cop named Jack Herzog. He is able to link the two together and his investigation takes him on some crazy twists and turns throughout L.A. 

Zero Gravity; Witness; Double Down

 

I feel like I've been reading quite a lot over the last few weeks, I just haven't *finished* anything. So this weekend I changed that!

First up was "Zero Gravity", a collection of funny essays that Woody Allen has penned over the last decade or so. Always very clever and witty. I ended up watching "Annie Hall" again the other night. Hopefully I can find "Play it Again, Sam" on one of my 1,000,000 streaming services I pay for. That one was always my favorite :)

I feel like I've been reading "Witness" forever, but it's really only been a few weeks. In the mid-1920s, Whittaker Chambers joined the Communist Party. He was disillusioned with the American Dream after WWI and thought the Communists had the answers. He became part of an underground "apparatus", meeting with people who worked in the American government and committing espionage. About a decade later, when WWII started, Chambers became disgusted with the Communists taking Hitler's side and left the Party, no easy feat. He and his family feared for their lives and went on the run. They eventually ended up at a little farm in Maryland. He was called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee and named names, including Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official. Hiss ended up being found guilty of perjury but not before he and the Communists tried to drag Chambers through the mud. It was a startling book, to imagine how many had infiltrated high levels of our government. Chambers was a brave man to come forward and risk everything in order to do the right thing. 

And finally, "Double Down" by Max Allan Collins, two excellent Nolan stories. The first one, "Fly Paper", is about a would-be D. B. Cooper who highjacks a plane. Too bad Nolan is on it. 

The second one, "Hush Money", was about a young man returning from Vietnam and being paid to kill a Mafia member. It gets bloody really fast and Nolan has to figure a way to get revenge without getting killed. 

A Thousand Steps

 

I really enjoyed T. Jefferson Parker's "A Thousand Steps". Set in Laguna Beach in the late 1960s, Matt is struggling to survive. His mom is stoned all the time and can barely afford rent, let alone enough food to keep a growing 16 year boy fed. Matt has a paper route and relies on scraps from restaurants and the food pantry to survive. When his older sister, Jasmine, goes missing, Matt launches an intense search for her. A few nights after she disappeared, Matt watches a man kidnap her and throw her in a van. The cops aren't impressed with his story and think that he's probably on drugs. Matt is determined to find his sister on his own. 

I loved the nostalgia factor, trying to imagine Laguna in the 60s, when a kid like Matt could still fish in the ocean and catch enough to supplement his meager diet. I wasn't around during that time, but I think Parker really nailed the unrest and unease and uncertainly that gripped the country during the Vietnam War. 

Truly, Madly

 

Gosh, this one was so sad. I had no idea Vivien Leigh was so ill. 

In an age when mental illness was not as well understood, Leigh was most likely bipolar or schizophrenic. Medication was spotty at best. She had violent outbursts, breaks with reality, hallucinations, the whole nine yards. 

Vivien and Larry were both married to other people when they met and fell in love. They left their respective partners and married, and were married for 25 years before breaking up. They reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton--so in love and yet unable to live together. She was abusive to Larry and they both cheated with other people. She eventually got to the point where she couldn't work anymore. She died very young, just 53, of tuberculosis. Larry lived another 20 years, remarried, and had three more kids. He had a lot of health problems, too. It was just a tragic story all the way around. 

Just Like Mother

 

I was disappointed by "Just Like Mother". I borrowed it because the reviews seemed pretty decent: a horror story about a cult. Sounds pretty good. 

It was not. 

Maeve's thirty-three and her life is falling apart. She lost her job, she's having to sublet her apartment and move in with her friend, Ryan. Ryan wants a real relationship but Maeve is just in it for the sex. 

Then Andrea comes back into her life. Andrea and Maeve grew up in a cult called the Mother Collective. As the name suggests, it was a group of women who used men to get pregnant and then discarded them (i.e. killing them and burying their bodies in the yard). They also "discarded" any boys they gave birth to in a similar fashion (except for one, and it was never really explained why they kept him around, which bugged me). The cult is broken up and Maeve is adopted and loses track of Andrea until they reconnect after uploading their DNA to a genealogy site.

While Maeve's life is in shambles, Andrea is seemingly on top of the world. She has a great husband, a wonderful best friend, and a thriving business called NewLife. NewLife makes highly realistic robotic dolls to help people prepare for motherhood, or helps women who have lost a child deal with the grief of that (I'm not sure having a robot doll that looked like my dead baby would help, but hey, what do I know?). Andrea seems like a savior to Maeve, inviting her to live in her home and help with her company. 

I can't say too much more without giving away the plot (such as it was), but it was boring and predictable and the ending was just terrible. No one was likeable, Maeve was dumb as a post, and the pacing was off. The first 2/3 of the book were slow and then the last bit felt rushed. I honestly shouldn't have forced myself to finish it, it was a waste of time. 

California Tiki

 

This was a quick, fun book about the rise of Tiki culture in the U.S. after WW2. It was especially prevalent here in California. Having a bamboo bar at home with tiki mugs and tiki torches made you the coolest cat around. Mai Tais, Trader Vic's, Don the Beachcomber--all these things that came from this movement, which was about escaping to a mythical island paradise. Tiki culture spawned music and movies (Beach Blanket Bingo, anyone?). 

Tiki started to fall out of favor as the baby boomers started growing up and eschewing the things their parents' generation loved. The rise of the free love and hippie movement clashed with the laid back surf/island style of Tiki, but now everything old is new again and Tiki has returned as a fun, retro lifestyle. I have friends who collect tiki merchandise. I went to Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber before they closed, they were fun and kitschy. And hey, who doesn't love a great Mai Tai? 😀

The House Across the Lake; Razzmatazz

 

"The House Across the Lake" by Riley Sager was pretty good. 

Casey Fletcher's life has been spiraling out of control ever since her husband, Len, drowned at their summer home at Lake Greene. When she gets fired from her acting job for showing up drunk, her mother packs her off to the lake to sober up. It doesn't work--one of Casey's neighbors brings her alcohol, so Casey spends her days drinking into oblivion. One day she notices a body floating out in the middle of the lake and takes her boat out and rescues Katherine, a former model who is now married to a tech wizard. They just bought a house on the lake. Casey also meets another new neighbor: Boone, who's doing some handyman work on one of the houses while the occupants are at their winter home. 

Casey meets Katherine's husband Tom, and right away she senses all is not right in their marriage. Katherine seems afraid of Tom, and the fact that she's a strong swimmer and almost drowned seems suspicious, especially when Katherine tells her that her whole body just seemed to stop working in the middle of the lake. When she passes out again while they're enjoying a glass of wine, Casey decides to keep an eye on Katherine and Tom's house. She has Len's birding binoculars, and she spends her days drinking and spying on her neighbors. Totally healthy behavior.

As usual, there were a lot of twists and red herrings. I smugly thought I had it figured out about 2/3 of the way through, but I was very wrong. 

I like the first book, "Noir", quite a bit, so I was looking forward to this follow up. It was okay but not great. Sammy and Stilton (the Cheese, but don't call her that to her face) are still seeing each other. There's a new head of Vice in town named Dunne and he's cracking down on the drag queen and lesbian bars in town. A couple of folks get murdered and the police don't seem interested in solving the case so Sammy steps in. 

There was an involved backstory with Moo Shoes uncle Ho and how he came over from China. Some of the side characters got more developed. 

I don't know, it just seemed a bit forced whereas "Noir" didn't. 

The Rodchenkov Affair; If You See Her; Everyone Thought We Were Crazy

Well, July is off to a promising start! Thank you, three day weekend.

First up, "The Rodchenkov Affair", about the major Russian doping scandal. Rodchenkov ran the anti-doping drug lab in Moscow that certified athletes were drug free for major sporting events. He also put together and ran the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics anti-doping lab. He was very proud of how Russia's athletes were able to win so many victories all while being clean.

Of course, the major reason they were clean was that he was faking their results. Swapping out dirty specimens for clean ones. "Losing" dirty samples before they could be retested. He was on the verge of getting caught when he bailed and fled to the U.S. and gave up his story for asylum. 

So...is he a good guy? I'm not 100% sure I would paint him as such. He certainly does, but he has a different perspective. Leaving Russia and his family behind was brave, but did he bring down the doping empire? Or did someone else in Russia just pick up his mantle?  

I have to admit, I was disappointed with Ania Ahlborn's "If You See Her". I read "The Devil Crept In" and "Brother", and loved both of them. This one was just meh. 

In 1999, Jesse and Casey witnessed their friend Reed commit suicide by hanging himself in a creepy abandoned farm house. Now Jesse is grown up, married with a baby boy, teaching at the local high school when Casey asks him to go with him back to the house. Casey has a successful podcast where he visits haunted places. Jesse reluctantly goes and is horrified when Casey commits suicide the same way Reed did.

Now Jesse feels like he's losing his mind. He's trying to write a book and suffering from insomnia. He loses control at school and almost beats up a student. He's drinking again. His wife flees, taking their son. All Jesse can think about is the house and the possessed girl he dreamed up...or did he? Was she real? At any rate, there were a lot of spelling and grammar errors and the ending was lame. It's too bad. Hopefully she just had a one off, I'm still looking forward to reading her other books. 

"Everyone Thought We Were Crazy" was not exactly what I was expecting when I checked it out from work, but it was interesting. In the late 1950s, Dennis Hopper, an up and coming star in Hollywood, met and fell in love with old Hollywood royalty, Brooke Hayward. Brooke was barely in her twenties and already had two sons with her ex-husband. They married (much to her wealthy father's chagrin) and had a daughter, Marin. 

During the 1960's Los Angeles, Dennis and Brooke were the "It" couple. Everything they did was arty and fun and ground breaking. Their house had a revolving door, everyone was welcome. They were invited to all the fun parties, not just with celebrities their own age but old Hollywood, like David O. Selznick, too. 

All good things must come to an end, though, and their marriage burned out with Dennis's increasing drug use that fed his paranoia and anger. 

 

Survive the Night

 

I put off reading Sager's latest because I didn't love "Home Before Dark", and a friend at work told me this one wasn't great, either. I really liked it, though. 

Charlie is still in a fog after her best friend and roommate, Maddy, was murdered a few months earlier. Charlie's parents died in a car crash four years ago and ever since Charlie's had hallucinations. She slips into what she refers to as "movies" in her mind and she can't tell what's real and what's fake. She saw Maddy talking to the man who most likely killed her but she doesn't know if the man she saw was real or made up. She's made the painful decision to leave college and her boyfriend, Robbie, and go back home to Ohio. The only problem is she needs a ride since she hasn't driven since her parents died. 

She meets Josh at the rideshare board. He's headed to Ohio too and offers to take her. Robbie isn't thrilled with her catching a ride with a complete stranger, but Charlie insists she'll be careful and call him from the road. They even come up with a code system if she's in trouble (the book takes place in 1991, so before cell phones were a thing). 

Their ride starts off uneventfully but quickly turns weird. Josh is clearly not who he claimed to be but Charlie isn't sure if she can trust what her mind is telling her. It was full of twists and turns and of course red herrings. I was trying really hard to see if I could figure out the ending before I got there but I had no clue. 

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures

 

I saw a short documentary on Netflix about Louis Le Prince a few months ago, and this book just came out, so that was good timing!

Le Prince devoted most of his adult life to inventing a camera that could capture motion and project it. He had high hopes for his invention, telling his children it would change the world. He imagined people from all over being able to see what other countries and exotic animals looked like. He also thought it would be great to capture loved ones before they died. Le Prince did everything right as far as filing patents, but his lawyers changed something on one of them without letting him know because the patent office wouldn't approve it. 

Le Prince's oldest son, Adolphe, was in Europe helping his father with his camera when they shot what is considered the oldest motion picture in existence in October of 1888: Adolphe, Le Prince's in-laws, and a family friend moving around a garden. The timing was fortuitous: Le Prince's mother in law would pass away just a few weeks later, thereby firmly cementing the date of the film. 

Adolphe went back to New York to his mother and siblings. Le Prince continued to refine his machine. In September of 1890 he went to Dijon to visit his brother Albert. He supposedly got on a train to Paris, but he never arrived. It took weeks before anyone realized Le Prince was missing, and by that time the trail had grown cold. His body was never found. 

Here's where it gets even worse: because he wasn't officially dead and couldn't be declared dead until he'd been missing for 7 years, his family could do nothing to enforce his patents since they were in his name only. His family watched by in horror as Thomas Edison took all the credit for "inventing" motion pictures and made a fortune off of it. There was nothing they could do: even once they had Le Prince declared dead, Edison was too rich and too powerful. Adolphe ended up committing suicide because he felt like he had failed his father. 

His family believed Edison had something to do with Le Prince's mysterious disappearance, but Fischer actually had a really plausible theory. I don't want to spoil it, but it makes more sense that thinking Edison did away with his rival. That wasn't really Edison's modus operandi--he sued rivals and bankrupted them or bought them out. Edison did not come across as a very nice man in this book, and I'm sure he probably wasn't, but I'm also pretty sure he didn't have anyone killed. What happened to the Le Prince family was heartbreaking. I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserved as the real inventor of the motion picture camera. 

Hometown Victory

 

I'm a sucker for these types of feel good high school football stories. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it. 

Keanon Lowe grew up in Portland, Oregon. His mom raised him and his siblings pretty much on her own. His dad was an alcoholic and popped in and out of his life. His mom worked her butt off to send Keanon to a private school so he could play football. He ended up getting a scholarship and played for the Ducks. I realized that I probably saw him play UCLA at some point, since I had tickets and went to the home games for years (I always hated the Ducks, since they usually walloped the snot out of my Bruins). After college he went on to coach in the NFL and was with the 49ers when his best friend died of a drug overdose after taking too many painkillers following a football injury. Lowe returned home to Oregon to figure out what to do next and ended up taking a job as the head coach of a dismal high school football team, the Parkrose Broncos. The school never really had a decent football team and no one expected much of Coach Lowe and his players, but he managed to turn the team around and teach the kids at his school the importance of hard work and respect for the game as well as each other. In May of 2019 he was working as a security guard during the offseason at the school and disarmed a student with a gun. He saw the kid was hurting and just held him, telling him he cared about him. I'm glad it worked out for him and hopefully the student was able to get the help he needs. 

Victoria the Queen

 

While I know quite a bit about certain time periods in history, I really didn't know much about Queen Victoria, other than the fact that her husband died fairly young and she seemed to live in mourning for the rest of her life. 

Victoria became queen when her father and uncles all died, leaving her next in line. She was just 18 years old. She had a strong personality, though, and soon proved she was up for the difficult task. She married her cousin Albert and they went on to have 9 children. Albert died twenty years after they married in 1861, and Victoria went on to live until 1901. She seemed to underestimate herself, thinking she wasn't as capable or ruling as Albert had been, but she seemed to have done a good job. It was a really interesting account of her life and reign. 

The Children on the Hill

 

This book started out decent enough and then about 2/3 of the way through there was a terrific, terrifying twist I didn't see coming and I got super excited for the ending, which fell completely flat.

I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say too much about that aspect of it. Vi and Eric live in Vermont with their grandmother, Helen Hildreth, who runs a mental hospital known as "The Inn". Vi and Eric's parents were killed in a car crash. They lead an interesting but solitary life. Gran homeschools them and they're not allowed to play with the other kids in town. Gran thinks they aren't appropriate playmates for her exceptionally bright grandchildren. Vi and Eric have a lot of fun, though. They both have great imaginations and spend time putting together a book on how to kill monsters. Then one day Gran brings home a girl she calls Iris and tells them to treat her like a sister. Iris doesn't talk at first but eventually she comes around and the kids all play together. 

The story switches back and forth between when the kids were young, in the late 1970s, and Lizzy in 2019. Lizzy is a professional blogger and monster hunter. She goes around the country, wherever there's been a reported sighting of some supernatural creature, like Bigfoot, to interview witnesses. But really, she's looking for her long lost sister. She thinks she's been kidnapping girls for the last 20 years. 

I would be shouting from the rooftops about how awesome this book was if the ending had been different. It was okay, but damn, it could have been great. 

Woman, Eating; The Ravaged

 

I think I've read more in the last three days than I have in three months. I was on jury duty so I had a lot of breaks and got through these two books plus almost finished a third and got halfway through a fourth!

I didn't particularly care for "Woman, Eating". I don't know why. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't my thing. Lydia is a vampire, her mother is also a vampire (her father was human, but he died before Lydia was born) and turned Lydia shortly after she was born because she was dying. Lydia is now in her early twenties and appears normal. She can go out in the sun if she wears lots of sunscreen. She just can't eat normal food but she really wants to. A lot of the book talked about the different foods she wished she could try and how she had to eat this disgusting dried pig's blood she found online. She was slowly starving because she couldn't find enough blood to sustain herself. Honestly it just made me really hungry. 

"The Ravaged" by Norman Reedus was more up my alley. Reedus plays Daryl on "The Walking Dead" (played? Is it still on the air? I stopped watching years ago). This book told the stories of three people who were each going through something similar but their lives never intersected. Hunter, who is a mechanic, finds out his dad passed away in a "mysterious" house fire out in California. He and two of his buddies, Nugget and Itch, hop on their motorcycles and head out for a cross country drive, making some friends and enemies along the way. Hunter also uncovers some family secrets. Jack is in South America. He's a successful and wealthy businessman who lost his family: his daughter committed suicide, his wife died, his mother died, and he and his son are estranged because his son didn't live up to Jack's ideals. Jack is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He has some interesting adventures, including being kidnapped twice. And then there's Anne. She has abusive parents and terrible siblings, so she and her best friend, Trot, hop a train and head out of town, looking for a brighter future. They hook up with some other teenagers who ride the rails. It was a fun read, Hunter's story kind of left itself open to a sequel but I'm not sure about Jack and Anne. 

In a Sunburned Country

 

I love Bill Bryson's books. They're always so funny and clever. 

I have always wanted to visit Australia (among a million other places, like Havana). There are, of course, a couple of things that give me pause: the cost, the time, the gigantic and deadly spiders. Bryson tackles all of these issues and more but makes a really good case for getting over it and coming to the happiest country on Earth (I know it isn't really but it seems like it is). 

And I'm obsessed with Silverchair right now. Has absolutely nothing to do with Bryson's book, but they're from Australia, so it's (marginally) relevant.  

Wing-Walkers

 

This one wasn't bad, but it wasn't one of those books that will stick with me. Even if William Faulkner was a main character (which is exactly why I read it).

The story alternates between Zeno and Della, who are barnstormers, and Bill Faulkner. After WWI, pilots came back home and bought cheap planes and flew around the countryside, taking ordinary folks up for quick rides. Some of them had wing-walkers: brave people who would walk along the wings and dangle from various parts of the plane, dazzling everyone watching below. Zeno is the pilot and Della is the wing-walker. They're accompanied by their Scotty, Sark. Zeno is content to keep flying around and passing the hat in the communities they entertain, but Della dreams of going to Hollywood and flying for the movies.

William Faulkner and his brothers all became pilots. Bill, by all accounts, was not great at it but his youngest brother Dean had a real affinity for it. Bill's early years as a writer are tough but he eventually starts to gain some fame after his third book, "The Sound and the Fury". He's inspired to write a book about barnstormers after attending the opening of the new airport in New Orleans (and meeting the fictional Zeno and Della). The result is "Pylon". 

Bill's brother Dean dies in a plane crash, in the plane Bill gifted to him, leaving behind a pregnant wife. Bill felt guilty about Dean's death and blamed himself. He cared for his niece, Dean (named after her dead father) until he died. Zeno and Della's parts sort of dragged along but Bill's sections were quite good. 

Crown & Sceptre

 

My American software doesn't like how I spell "Sceptre" 😊

"Crown and Sceptre" was an overview of the British Monarchy from William the Conqueror to present day. Most of the very early kings just got a page or two, not much information about them, I would imagine. It was good to learn more about some of the time periods I didn't know very much about. I'm good with the Plantagenets (obviously) and the Tudors, but after them I'm spotty until I get to Queen Victoria. I knew a little about Cromwell and the Stuarts but not much. It was well written and she was fair to Richard III, which is all I ask. 

Angel & Spike: Vol. One

 

So this collected issues 9-12 (I think) of the newish Angel and Spike series (why it was called volume one is a mystery). I was a little lost, since the story doesn't seem to follow canon at all. Angel has returned from Hell to find Gunn and Fred with Spike. He does not like that but they ask Angel to please give Spike a chance, as he's trying to make amends. Yeah, Angel, stop being a dick. 

No sign or mention of Cordelia, Lorne, or Wesley, which was a bummer. Meanwhile, Detective Kate Lockley is trying to help a street kid named Dre when he gets bitten by some weird creature who looks like a man but is clearly dead. A woman shows up at the hospital and says she knows someone who can help Dre and gives Kate Angel's business card.

Kate and Angel have never met in this alternate reality, so she's reluctant to call him but she has no one else to turn to. Kate seems to get infected with something and Fred has to sacrifice herself to save everyone and I don't know what the heck all was going on. Angel and Spike never ended up in a car together like the cover shows, which was disappointing. I was hoping for a Vegas road trip.   

Call Me a Cab

 

This one was really fun, I enjoyed it. Back in 1977, Donald Westlake decided to try his hand at writing a suspense story without any crime in it. The result was "Call Me a Cab". 

Taxi cab driver Tom Fletcher picks up Katherine Scott on her way to the airport. Katherine is flying out to L.A. to give her boyfriend, Barry, her final answer as to whether or not she'll marry him. She's kept the poor guy on the hook for two years, dilly dallying. (Barry is literally a saint). She's wavering in the cab, telling Tom she doesn't know what to do and then she asks him what it would cost her to have him drive her out to California so she can have more time to think about it (because two years isn't enough, I guess). Tom thinks she's joking, but she's not. After getting the okay from his boss (his father) and packing a bag, Tom and Katherine are off to Los Angeles.

Their cross country drive is lots of fun. They run into some characters. The story was very suspenseful. Will she say yes or no to Barry? Are the two of them falling for each other? The ending was kind of perfect. I had a hard time putting it down. 

Murder of Mary Russell

 

I was really into the Mary Russell series by Laurie King a little while back, I enjoyed the first one but then the subsequent ones got progressively worse and I stopped reading them. I decided to go back and give some of the later ones a chance. I figured I didn't necessarily need to read them in order. 

Spoilers ahead: Mary does not (thankfully) die. She is home alone one day when a man shows up, claiming to be Mrs. Hudson's illegitimate son. The bulk of the book is Mrs. Hudson's backstory, and maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much, it was really fun! Mrs. Hudson's mother died when she was about 10, leaving behind Clarissa (which was her name then), her younger sister, Alicia, and her drunkard criminal husband, James. James fled to Australia before Clarissa was born to escape the Bishop, a man he owed money to back in London. Clarissa's mother followed him and while she was alive, things were good, but after she died everything fell apart. Clarissa discovered she had a talent for acting and mimicking accents, a talent her shady father soon put to use running con jobs with him. The two of them became very adept criminals and when Clarissa is of age, they return to London (leaving Alicia in Australia) to score a really big prize. 

Things are going well until Clarissa falls in love and ends up pregnant. The man deserts her and she's left to try to muddle through on her own. She meets a young Sherlock Holmes, who agrees to give her a second chance on the condition that she will give the baby to her sister to raise and they'll never speak of her criminal past again. 

Fast forward almost fifty years and Clara (as Sherlock has rechristened her) finds out her sister has passed away. Her son, Samuel, discovers the truth in his mother's old letters and comes to find his birth mother. Oh, and the fortune that James Hudson apparently hid that's never been found. He's convinced Clara knows where it is. 

Clanlands: Almanac

 

I hate to say anything bad about "Outlander" or anyone involved in the show, but man, was this just a cash grab. Seriously. If you watched "Men In Kilts", this was basically just a print version of the show with a few extra bits of history added in. As I was reading it I kept thinking "I watched this on the show, what the heck?". 

And not even any pictures to make it worth my while. Blah. 

Havana: a Subtropical Delirium

 

I've always wanted to visit Cuba and particularly Havana. I blame "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights", which I caught on TV the other day and was kind of shocked at how bad it was. I remember it being so much better. At any rate, it made me say "I want to read a book about Havana". And here we are. 

The problem is that I want to visit pre-Revolutionary Havana, the Havana of Batista, not Castro. So unless someone invents a time machine, it won't happen. 

Kurlansky is very much in favor of Castro's Havana. He doesn't have anything good to say about Batista and Cuba before Castro. Of course he never saw Cuba back then, so there's that. He probably didn't watch "Havana Nights", either. 

All in all it was interesting. It really does sound like a fascinating country, full of warm and friendly people. Since I can't visit (well, I can, if I want to jump through all the hoops, which I kind of don't) I'll enjoy reading books and looking at pictures of the beautiful architecture and eating at Cuban restaurants. 

Hell's Half-Acre

 

The Bender case has intrigued me for a long time, ever since I heard the rumor that Laura Ingalls Wilder's father, Charles (or, as I think of him, "Pa"), supposedly had a hand in killing the family after the community learned of their crimes. That has been disproven, sadly. I like to think of Pa and the rest of the men in town engaging in a little well deserved frontier justice.

The Benders lived in Kansas, not far from Independence. They had a cabin and travelers would stop for a meal, provisions, and a place to sleep. The daughter, Kate Bender, was apparently quite pretty and men would deliberately go by the Benders' cabin just to get a glance at her. 

Unfortunately, in addition to being pretty, she was also deadly. No one was quite sure of how the members of the family were related to each other. There was an older couple everyone assumed were the parents, and a younger couple everyone assumed were brother and sister, but maybe Kate was married to John Jr. The "parents" spoke very little English, only German, and were not friendly. 

Travelers started disappearing and the last place they were seen was the Bender cabin. The area started getting a bad reputation as a place to avoid. A widower and his infant daughter were headed back to Iowa after the death of his wife and disappeared, prompting a family friend and popular local doctor named William York to go looking for them. York too disappeared. York came from a prominent family: his brother Alexander was a senator and his other older brother Ed was a Colonel. A search party was organized. After Colonel York confronted the Benders, they denied any knowledge of William's whereabouts but soon after fled their cabin. The men dug up the cellar and discovered the bodies of at least ten people, including the poor widower and his baby daughter and William York. A massive search for the Benders was undertaken, and they were tracked to Texas and New Mexico, but despite large rewards for information they were never caught. 

It was an interesting book and I think Jonusas did a good job with the scant details she was able to dig up. It's a shame there wasn't a more conclusive ending to their story, but that's the way it goes. 

When a Killer Calls

 

I didn't care much for Douglas' last book so I was glad I enjoyed this one. Everyone's entitled to a bad day.

I shouldn't say "enjoyed". I didn't enjoy it. It was very sad. But it was well written. 

In 1985, high school senior Shari Smith was abducted from the end of her driveway when she stopped to get the mail. Her killer made several calls to her family, basically torturing them. He had Shari write them a letter titled "Last Will and Testament". In the letter she begs her family not to hold hate in their hearts and to hang onto how much she loved them. It was absolutely heartbreaking. The killer finally revealed the location of Shari's body, ending all hope that she was still alive. Two weeks after he kidnapped Shari, he snatched a nine year old little girl named Debra May out of her own front yard where she was playing with her little brother. The killer called the Smith family, specifically Shari's older sister Dawn, to let her know where to find Debra May's body. The FBI speculated that it was because Debra May's family didn't have a phone in their house, but also because the killer was fixated on Dawn. 

Luckily this sick son of a bitch was caught and convicted of these two heinous crimes. He was a prime suspect in a few others, but law enforcement couldn't get anything out of him. In court this dirtbag professed his love for Dawn and proposed to her three times. I can't even begin to imagine how Dawn held it together, listening to this garbage heap who raped and murdered her beloved baby sister profess his love for her. She's a stronger woman than I am because I would have had to be physically restrained from going after him to put his eyes out. 

At any rate, they executed him and good riddance. 

The Nineties

 

I've never read one of Klosterman's books. The covers are always interesting. I had that phone :) Since the 90s was the decade I was a teenager/young twenty year old, I was curious to see what he had to say about it.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't a nostalgic look back at the decade, it was a more sociological critique. He talked about how people have a hard time not applying the social mores they hold now to times in the past, something I've frequently found very frustrating. I try not to do it and to remind people I'm talking to that yes, we feel that way now but we didn't then. People by and large have very short memories, I've found. I think I'm coming off a bit more pretentious than I mean to. I just have a really good memory plus I've always kept a journal, which I enjoy going back and rereading, so things that happened decades ago seem very fresh in my mind. 

All in all it was okay. I disagreed with him on some things (Kurt's murder, OJ Simpson being guilty) but I've come to expect I'm in the minority on these issues, so I try not to get upset any more. Mostly what I took away from this book is how much I miss my clear landline phone. 

Woman Beyond the Attic

 

I was trying to describe "Flowers in the Attic" to a coworker who had never read it, and I told her it was my gateway drug. V.C. Andrews was my bridge between Babysitters Club and Trixie Belden to authors like Stephen King and William Faulkner. My sister and I devoured the Flowers and Heaven series. I read Dawn but didn't love it, and I gave up on Ruby. 

V.C. Andrews was always a bit of a mystery. By the time I started reading her books, she had been dead for several years. Pre-internet days I wasn't able to find out much about her. Neiderman (who has been her ghostwriter since she passed away in 1986) admits that she was very reclusive, hated giving interviews, and basically lied a lot about things she didn't want to talk about like her age and her health issues. As a result, this "biography" was very short, about 150 pages. It was pretty repetitive. I was disappointed. I was hoping for more. He included an unfinished book Andrews had started (I was shocked he didn't finish it at some point over the last 30 years) which was not really interesting. It felt like, if Andrews had lived longer and had a chance to write more, she would have kept treading over the same tired ground. It's unfortunate, considering how groundbreaking Flowers was. She just couldn't seem to move on from those themes.  

Quarry's Blood

 

I really enjoy Max Allan Collins' Quarry books. This is supposedly the last one. We'll see!

Quarry, the contract killer, has been happily retired for decades, married and living a quiet life churning out "fiction" based on his kills. Unfortunately after his wife passes away, Quarry discovers he's a target: someone is trying to kill him. And the list of possible suspects is pretty long, considering all the people he's taken out over the years. 

It was a fun, quick read, even if it was a little unrealistic that a man in his 70s could still fight (and win) against men half his age. I supposed it's not entirely out of the realm of possibilities. At any rate, if it was Quarry's last tale it ended on a high note. 

Universal Studios Monsters

I love horror movies, the cheesier and the gorier the better. When we were kids my sister and I used to walk to a video store (remember those?) near our house. It was an independent one, not a big chain, and they had a whole wall of horror movies. We used to check out a different one every day. I honestly haven't seen a lot of the Universal Studios early horror films with Dracula, Frankenstein, or the Mummy, so this book was a good introduction. He talked about the actors, makeup artists, directors, and writers who helped bring these creatures to the big screen. It had lots of great photos. It was entertaining and now I'm on a quest to see Bela Lugosi as Dracula :)
 

The Continental Op; Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama

 

I so rarely enjoy books of short stories, especially by the same author. This was an exception. Which is sort of ironic, because I'm not really a huge fan of Hammett's full length novels. I should be: they're noir and set in California in a fascinating time period and have all that lovely P.I. slang, but I just don't. I read "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man", and thought they were okay, not great. And I have no desire to reread them. 

This book was different. The short story format really seems to work well for Hammett's writing style. The detective's name is never revealed but he works for San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. One of the stories was particularly good: "The House on Turk Street". I really enjoyed the twists in that one, and it was nice he tied it up later in "The Girl with Silver Eyes". 

Sigh. 

I wanted to love this book, I truly did, because I *love* Bob Odenkirk on "Better Call Saul" and "Breaking Bad". I actually prefer "Saul" to "Breaking Bad", an opinion I know is in the minority (at least in my family). But I think he's such a terrific actor who did a great job of making a not terribly sympathetic character one you want to root for. It's a talent for sure (and yes, I know the writers have a lot to do with it, but if a lesser actor were playing the role all the best writing in the world wouldn't make a damn bit of difference). 

So it breaks my heart to say it wasn't that great. Odenkirk had a long career before Saul Goodman and I've seen nothing from those early years. He went into a lot of detail about a show he did with David Cross on HBO called "Mr. Show" and, since I haven't seen a minute of it, it went totally over my head. For super hardcore Odenkirk fans who have seen a lot of his work this book would probably be more interesting. I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm for it.