Bookish Life of Nina Hill; Beneath the Attic

I really wanted to like this one. It sounded right up my alley: introvert Nina works in a cute indie bookstore and has a core group of friends she plays trivia with. They compete at bars on trivia nights, and Nina starts noticing Tom, a player on another team. After a few false starts, they start dating. But Nina also finds out she's named in the will of the father she never knew, and also has a bunch of relatives she's never met who aren't any too happy to have her taking a chunk out of the inheritance pie. Nina feels overwhelmed, like her life is spinning out of control. The story itself was all right, if not really contrived and totally predictable, but her tone killed me. It was entirely too cutesy (she described the neighborhood Nina lives in on page 2 as being "hella cute" and I knew I should have closed the book then and there. I was not wrong). Adults don't talk like that, unless they're being ironic. It made me feel old and out of touch and unhappy with my own pathetic life, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. Where are the books about nice introvert girls who never end up with a man because all she meets are commitment phobic assholes? I'd read that.
Anyway. Moving on.

"Beneath the Attic" was atrociously awful. Just...ugh. Corrine Dixon is a 16 year old flirt who thinks she's wise beyond her years and can tangle with a grown man and come out ahead. Wrong. So very wrong. She meets Garland Foxworth at a party and they are instantly attracted to each other. Corrine visits an elderly relative who lives near Foxworth Hall and ends up being raped by Garland and falls pregnant (I'm not spoiling anything: it's on the dust jacket, not to mention it was totally predictable). The book ended on the eve of their rushed wedding.
Okay, let's break this down. As an avid reader of the original "Flowers in the Attic" series, anyone who has read and paid the *slightest* bit of attention to "Garden of Shadows" knows Garland was a NICE guy. MALCOLM was the jerk who was obsessed with his mother and liked to force himself on women. It was like the author (whoever is churning this trash out now, I don't think it's still Andrew Neiderman) was merging Malcolm and Garland into the same person. It would have been so much better to see how Garland was truly in love with Corrine and spoiled her and how she treated him like garbage and finally left him when Malcolm was five. You know, like how V.C. ANDREWS wrote it. I'm mad, in case you couldn't tell :) It's not like these books have been great lately, but still. Come on. This was just terrible.

Phantom Prince; Drive Thru Dreams

Elizabeth Kendall, who is actually Elizabeth Kloepfer, first published her account of her life with serial killer Ted Bundy in the early 1980s. Apparently she is updating it, with the book slated to come out next year. She told a compelling story of falling in love with the charming Bundy and how she ended up coming to discover he was actually a very bad man. It was interesting to hear her side of their relationship.

I was disappointed with "Drive Thru Dreams". A couple of my coworkers read it and raved about it, but I thought it was just okay. Chandler gives a brief overview of fast food restaurants as a whole and how they started and their impact on so many different aspects of modern society. I very, very rarely eat fast food (I'm vegan, so my options are pretty limited, although it is nice that more places are offering meat alternatives), but I can understand the appeal. I remember when I was a kid my Dad tried to convince his parents that we could eat at fast food places for less money than it cost to buy food and prepare it at home. Even as a kid I knew that was ridiculous, but he gave it a good shot.

For the Love of Books; Bright Lights, Big City

"For the Love of Books" was such a fun, quick read, just little snippets of book history neatly packaged up. 

I've been meaning to read "Bright Lights, Big City" forever, it always appears on those lists of books for Gen Xers to read (along with Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland, two authors I also enjoy). This one was pretty good, it was very short and went quick. It was also written in the second person, and I don't think I've read an adult book written in the second person before, so that was interesting. The unnamed protagonist spends his days drudging along in a fact checking section of a magazine and his nights snorting cocaine and drinking with his friend. It was written in the 1980s, but it really didn't feel dated (unless you count the lack of cell phones). 

Rosie Result; American Predator

The third Rosie and Don Tillman book was pretty good, it made me laugh. Don and Rosie have moved back to Australia with their ten year old son Hudson, so Rosie can have the chance at her dream job. Hudson is a lot like Don and is having trouble fitting in at school. Don decides to make it his mission to help Hudson, with hilarious results.

I have to admit, I was disappointed with "American Predator". I wanted to like it, and it got better, but I almost didn't finish it. Israel Keyes was arrested and charged with murdering a young woman in Alaska. During the course of his interrogation, the police and FBI discovered he may have killed more. How many more is impossible to say. Keyes had very specific demands: he wanted to be executed as quickly as possible, and he wanted his name kept out of the press, mostly for his daughter's sake. They were able to keep his name out of the ongoing investigations into some of the murders they thought he might have committed, but they took too long to execute him: he committed suicide. He stopped talking to investigators, leaving a lot of questions unanswered. There isn't a lot of information about him: his parents had him and his siblings off the grid and lived a nomadic life. He was a very creepy guy, though.

Rusty Puppy; Jack Rabbit Smile; God'll Cut You Down; Lost Gutenberg; The Stranger Beside Me

I finished up the last two book length Hap and Leonard stories while I was on vacation last week. "Rusty Puppy" was about a young black woman who was being harassed by the police. Her brother took exception to how they treated her, and then he turned up dead. It was pretty sad but it had a good ending.

I wasn't as impressed with "Jack Rabbit Smile", unfortunately. Hap and Leonard are hired by a couple of white supremacists to track down their missing relative.
So, let me pause here to say: when you own your own business (I know Hap and Leonard don't own it, but Hap's wife Brett does), shouldn't you be able to decide which cases you will take on? Leonard, being black, should have been able to say "no thanks". And why on Earth would two white supremacists even *want* a black man working for them? Clearly Lansdale wanted to make a point (and a good one), but it felt really contrived.
The ending was really, really sad, too.

Speaking of white supremacists, I enjoyed this true crime from first time Australian author and documentary filmmaker Safran. He has an interesting self-deprecating writing style. While filming a documentary on race, he traveled to Mississippi and inserted himself into a white supremacists' annual banquet for white high school athletes. He traveled back home to Australia, and a couple of years later he learned the man (of course I use the word "man" loosely) had been murdered by a young black man. Safran traveled back to Mississippi in hopes of witnessing the young man's trial and writing about it. It was very fascinating to see an American issue through the eyes of an Australian, and Safran frankly admitted he wanted the case to be all about race, but it was much more nuanced than that. 

"The Lost Gutenberg" made me cry. Estelle Doheny, widow of wealthy oilman Edward Doheny, spent decades carefully curating a priceless collection of books, paintings, and autographs. The jewel of her collection was a Gutenberg Bible, purchased after many years of trying in 1950 for over $100,000. Estelle was a devout Catholic, and when she passed away she left her collection to a seminary for research, along with a wealthy trust to care for and maintain the collection. Proving once again that I am right in hating organized religion, the literal minute the church was able to legally sell the items in her collection they did, breaking up the beautiful library and netting close to $40 million in profits (most of which is still unaccounted for, naturally). Her beautiful, nearly flawless Gutenberg was sold to Japan, where it now sits locked in a vault in a university, and even qualified scholars aren't allowed to see it. It's the exact opposite of what Estelle wanted, and it's heartbreaking. Before the collection was sold, the librarian in charge did allow it to be scientifically examined, and discovered many interesting things about the ink and paper Gutenberg used, so at least there was that.

And finally, I read "The Stranger Beside Me" by Ann Rule many years ago, and decided to read it again after watching the Ted Bundy tapes on Netflix. I've tried reading other books by Rule, and none are quite as good as this one. Ann was friends with Ted Bundy, worked with him at a Crisis Call Center in Washington state. They kept in touch over the years, and Ann was horrified when he was arrested for kidnapping in Colorado. Ted assured her he was innocent, then broke out of jail and escaped, not once but twice. The second time he made it all the way to Florida, where he murdered several young woman and was arrested and put on trial, sentenced to death. He was electrocuted in 1989. I've read other books about Ted Bundy, but this one really is the best.

Devil Red; Honky Tonk Samurai

So I went back to read the books I missed in the Hap and Leonard series in between "Vanilla Ride" and "The Elephant of Surprise". In "Devil Red", Hap and Leonard are now working as private investigators for their friend Marvin. A wealthy older woman wants someone to look into the cold case murder of her grandson. Hap and Leonard start poking around and find a clan of people who think they're vampires, really sadistic people. There's a pair of deadly assassins behind the whole thing who are known as Devil Red. Vanilla makes an appearance and helps Hap get revenge on some folks. It was pretty good.

"Honky Tonk Samurai" finds Hap and Leonard hired by a feisty old lady (lots of feisty old ladies in Lansdale's books) to find out what happened to her granddaughter, who disappeared five years earlier. Hap and Leonard discover she was working for a car lot that is a front for a high end prostitution ring. Of course with Hap and Leonard it's never that simple: a family of inbred assassins is featured, Vanilla makes another appearance, as does Jim Bob Luke.

This Storm; The Elephant of Surprise

I wish I could succinctly and beautifully sum up the genius that is James Ellroy, but I can't. The sequel to "Perfida" picks up where it left off: New Year's 1942. L.A. is gripped by war fever. There's all the usual Ellroy tropes: police corruptions and cover-ups, scandals, and unsolved murders with a few more things thrown in: hunt for stolen gold, war profiteering, and arson. It was gritty and dark and lots of fun.

I heard Lansdale was coming out with a new Hap and Leonard book a few months ago and put it on hold, even though there were four others I haven't read yet since "Vanilla Ride". I thought "no problem, I'll whip through those four before the new one comes in".
I, of course, did not. It's not really necessary to read these in order, but I think it helps, since they build on each other.
Hap and Leonard are driving home when they get caught in a bad storm. They rescue a young woman who is out in the middle of the road. Bad guys are after her and tried to cut out her tongue. As soon as they get her loaded in the car, the bad guys show up. They manage to escape and take her to the hospital, where the bad guys show up, kill the cop protecting her, and have a shoot out with Hap and Leonard. They take her to a police station. Safe, right? Well, it's Hap and Leonard, so...no. It was pretty good, I enjoyed it.