The Woman in Me

 

This book was a departure for me. While I love biographies, I'm not a super big fan of Britney Spears. I have nothing against her, but my musical tastes tend to run more toward grunge and classic rock. 

Britney was obviously used by a lot of people. During her very controversial conservatorship, when she was supposedly so ill she couldn't even decided what to eat and when to sleep, she was recording new music, performing on stage, and acting. For thirteen very long years her father dictated her every waking move. She was spied on. She felt powerless. She said she did it all so she could continue to see her children. Any backtalk, any rebelliousness, and they would threaten to take her kids away and never let her see them again. 

Her writing style was pretty unsophisticated, but her story was pretty heartbreaking. Obviously you have to take it with a grain of salt. I think there were times when she was being a little less than 100% honest. That's okay, it's not my business if she wants to gloss over things that make her feel bad about herself. I hope she's able to pull herself together and be happy. I wish that for everyone out there. 

Argylle

 

I saw a commercial for the movie they made last year based on this book and thought it looked interesting. I was right, it was a fun read. I did not, however, see the film, and it's my understanding that the film bears no resemblance to the book. 

Aubrey Argylle lives in Thailand, where he works as a tour guide. His parents were drug dealers who were killed rather horrifically. Argylle grew up thinking his parents were in the export business. He only found out about their real profession after they died. 

Argylle is recruited by the CIA and goes through training with their top spymaster, Frances. A Russian billionaire, hoping to become the next President, promises his people that he is going to find the Amber Room, which disappeared during WWII and has never been found. I've always been intrigued by the Amber Room, so that was a fun aspect. 

I don't want to spoil too much, so I won't get into any more of the details. I don't normally read this genre (spy novels), so I don't know how it would stack up next to say, James Bond, but I enjoyed the story and the characters. 

The Whole Truth and Nothing But

 

So, do you want to hear a really long and maybe boring story as to why I read this book? Of course you do!

I love "Perry Mason", both the books and the original TV show (although I did enjoy the recent HBO series, but it wasn't what I was hoping for). I love Paul Drake in the books and of course, Bill Hopper did an excellent job playing him on the show. Bill Hopper is Hedda Hopper's only son. She was DeWolf Hopper's fifth wife and he was quite a bit older than her (Bill was born in 1915 and he had an older half-brother through his dad who was born in the 1880s so...). DeWolf died while Bill was fairly young. Hedda was an actor, as was DeWolf, and Bill became an actor to make his mother happy. She described him in her book as shy, reaching his final height of 6'4" at the age of 15. Bill also refused all help from his actor turned Hollywood gossip mother, so she never wrote about him in her columns. 

I read an interview with Bill online in which he said while he loved his mother he wished she wouldn't pry into people's personal lives so much. And that is why I read this book. Curiosity. Although, to be fair, I'm sure that's why I read most books. 

At any rate. Bill was not wrong about his mother. Hedda had a very high opinion of herself. According to her, she was best friends with everyone in Hollywood from James Dean to Elizabeth Taylor to John Wayne and gave them invaluable advice on their careers. Everyone was terrified of her saying something negative about them so they fawned over her and invited her to their parties and gave her expensive gifts. 

Now, you would think this kind of thing would be annoying to read, but I had to admit, I kind of enjoyed it. You know she's utterly ridiculous, but it was funny all the same. The woman knew how to tell a story.  

The Princes in the Tower

 

I am so incredibly grateful for people like Philippa Langley. Thanks to her tenacity and hard work, we've found and reburied Richard III with dignity, something I never thought I would see. And for the last 8 years, she's been working with teams of researchers all over the world to find documentation to show that Edward, Prince of Wales, and Richard, Duke of York, the two young sons of King Edward IV, were not murdered by Richard III. She's found some very interesting documents, especially in the Netherlands, that tends to point to the two so-called pretenders were actually Edward and Richard. The evil usurper, Henry Tudor, did everything he could to villainize Richard, destroying as many original documents as he could that pointed to the fact that he was lawfully crowned. He also did the same with any evidence that the boys were taken out of England for their own safety. 

Henry really put himself in a bind when he overturned the bastardization of Edward IV's children with Elizabeth Woodville in order to marry Edward's eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Doing that made her a lawful Princess again, but it also made her younger brothers lawful Princes with a better claim to the throne than he ever had. No contemporary surviving evidence from the time before Henry took the throne suggests Richard had his nephews murdered, it was only after Tudor came along that the rumors started. Many people who knew the boys as children attested to them being the real deal and Henry suppressed it. By 1499, both the boys were most likely dead, killed as pretenders. 

History is often rewritten by the victors, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Tudor dynasty, where everything possible was done to erase the good works of Richard III and the legitimacy of those young men. I love to imagine a world in which Henry did not defeat Richard at Bosworth and the world was never subjected to Henry VIII. I would at least love to see Richard's good name cleared and Langley is doing her best to get us there. This was a terrific start. I can't wait to see what else she and her teams are able to uncover.  

The Genius of Israel

 

Israel is such a fascinating country. Senor and Singer take an in-depth look at what makes Israel so unique and resilient. 

Israel, despite all of its internal and external strife, consistently ranks as one of the happiest nations in the world. Everyone is required to do some sort of military service, men and women alike, which helps them learn leadership skills. The authors talked about how the military worked to integrate autistic individuals into service, playing to their strengths, because in Israel it's an embarrassment *not* to serve. 

Israel also has a young society that has a higher than average birthrate. One of the reasons for this is businesses encourage mothers to bring their young children to work with them. They have an amazing system in place to encourage women not only to rise to the top of their professions, but to do so while raising a family. 

Israel is home to a rapidly growing number of tech companies and start ups. It's really impressive how global companies will allow their Israeli employees to stay and work in Israel rather than forcing them to move closer to their headquarters. Israelis who move elsewhere tend to move back because of how much they miss their homeland. One person interviewed for the book moved his three small children from Palo Alto back to Israel because he wanted his children to experience the history of living there. He said Israel was like no where else in the world. A very ringing endorsement indeed. 

Murder Crossed Her Mind; Nettle & Bone

 

The fourth Pentecost & Parker book ended on a cliffhanger, but I have to wait for book five. Boo 😖

A defense attorney named Witsun asks the duo to look into the disappearance of Vera Bodine. Vera's had a fairly interesting life and has an eidetic memory, meaning she literally remembers everything she's ever seen or read. Parker and Pentecost discover Vera worked for the FBI during WWII and helped uncover a Nazi spy ring. Poor Will finds Vera's body in a trunk in her apartment. Not missing, but murdered. 

A whole bunch of suspects and too many clues (Vera was a hoarder, so her apartment was crammed floor to ceiling) made for an interesting mystery with a satisfying conclusion and of course a whopper of a cliffhanger. These books are so much fun. I really enjoy them. 

I really loved this book and I wasn't expecting to. It's fantasy, but not super far out there fantasy that gets overly complicated. 

Marra is a princess in a minor harbor kingdom that is sandwiched between two more powerful kingdoms. Her father marries his oldest daughter off to the prince in the North, and tragically she dies. The second daughter, Kania, goes to wed the prince. Marra joins a convent, since the prince does not want her to marry and potentially have sons that would challenge his right to the harbor kingdom's throne. 

Marra discovers the prince has been beating and abusing her sister and decides she wants to kill him. She goes to visit a dust-wife, who gives her three impossible tasks. Marra is able to complete them, so the dust-wife agrees to go with her to the North to help her in her quest. Along the way they rescue a disgraced knight at the Goblin Market and pick up Marra's fairy godmother. 

It was so well written and entertaining. I would love a sequel!

The Amish Wife

 

Thirty years ago, Olsen investigated the sad case of Little Boy Blue, a little boy who was found dead in a field on Christmas Eve in 1984 in Nebraska. It took two years and an article in Reader's Digest about the unknown child for him to be identified as Danny Stutzman, son of Eli and Ida. 

Ida died in a barn fire in 1977 when Danny was just a baby. She and Eli were Amish. Eli left, taking Danny with him, and moved around a lot. When Olsen started investigating Danny's death, he realized there were a lot of questions about Ida's demise as well. Supposedly (according to Eli, not the most reliable narrator) she woke him up at midnight when she saw the fire through the window. She was already fully dressed in her traditional Amish dress, which includes straight or safety pins, not buttons or zippers. She went outside before him. He told her to go to the nearest neighbor who had a phone and call for help, she asked if she could save some things out of the milk house first and he said all right. That's where her body was found. Eli said she must have had a heart attack due to a weak heart. There are some problems with this: her childhood doctor said her heart was fine and the coroner's autopsy report was doctored. Olsen wrote "Abandoned Prayers" about it in the 90s (I've never read it), but the case always bothered him, so he decided to revisit it, despite most of the main players being dead. Eli died by suicide in 2007. 

It was very sad. All he had was rumors and gossip. The Amish don't believe in talking bad about anyone, so no one would come out and say they thought Eli killed Ida and Danny, they just hinted and pointed him to other people who might talk. There was no satisfying conclusion to it, like many things in life.