Cousin Kate

 

This was a really fun one. Heyer combined her own unique brand of Regency romance with some gothic horror in the vein of "Jane Eyre". My only complaint, and it's a minor one, was that it was a touch longer than it needed to be. 

Kate is a 24 year old orphan with no close relations. When she's released from her job as a governess, she returns to the London home of her former nurse, Sarah Nibb, to look for another position. She's not having much luck and ponders working in a dress shop as a seamstress, but Sarah won't hear of it and writes to her half-aunt Minerva, who's married to Sir Timothy Broome of Staplewood. Minerva had no idea she had a half-niece and immediately comes to London to take Kate home. 

Kate is overwhelmed by her aunt's generosity and happy enough at Staplewood, although she is a bit bored. Torquil, Minerva's fragile son, is a few years younger than her and seems much younger than his years, very immature and can be annoying. Philip, Torquil's cousin, comes to visit, and immediately sparks fly. Anyone who's read Heyer will recognize that the two of them are going to end up together (I guess that was a spoiler. Sorry!). 

Minerva has other plans, though. She wants Kate to marry Torquil. 

Kate, meanwhile, is experiencing some odd things at Staplewood. Screams in the night, strange men lurking in the garden, her door being locked from the outside. She starts to suspect all is not right (she's correct). 

I really enjoyed the horror element, mild as it was. It was a nice touch. 

I am Ozzy; Thursday Murder Club

I believe I warned you that there would be more Ozzy. 

This one was published in 2009, after the show ended, and in it he makes public his Parkinson's diagnosis. It was pretty thorough, covering his childhood in Birmingham, how he became part of Black Sabbath, his first marriage and kids, his drug and alcohol addictions, going solo and getting divorced, remarried, and having more kids with Sharon. His love for his career, his family, and his way too many pets (seriously, I love dogs as much as the next person, but 16 at a time is way too many) shined through. There were still more controversies to come for Ozzy at this point (which he covered in "Last Rites") but he was in a good place when this book came out. It was one of those rare books that I couldn't put down and just spent several hours getting through it on Saturday. 

A friend of mine mentioned how good the show is on Netflix, but because I'm weird like that I have to read the book first. (She told me I didn't need to, but, you know. Old habits and all). 

It was pretty good, if not a little convoluted. I loved the main characters though: a group of four retirees who live in a community called Coopers Chase. It used to be a nunnery, and when the last nun passed away the property was sold and homes were built next to the cemetery (that's important later). Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim used to have another member of their Thursday Murder Club group: former detective Penny. Penny is now in a coma, but when Penny was awake, she used to bring old cold case files to the group and they would try to solve them. Now a real murder has happened: Tony Curran, the "muscle" for Ian Ventham, who owns Coopers Chase and is looking to expand it by trying to buy a nearby farm as well as relocate the cemetery. 

I don't want to give away the ending, but the armchair detectives are all very charming and funny in their own ways.

 

 

False Colours

I love Georgette Heyer but I do not love this cover. Ick. 

At any rate, Heyer's Regency romances are so much fun. They sparkle. The only criticism I have (and it's a mild one) is the overuse of slang from that time period. I completely understand the young ones in their twenties flinging around slang, makes perfect sense. But when the sixty year old grannies are talking the same way it just rings a little false. I never heard any of my grandparents say "cool". They sounded like adults, not like me and my friends.

Kit and Evelyn are identical twins in their early twenties. Their father passed, leaving his title to the elder twin, Evelyn. Both boys dote on their loving but flighty mother, Lady Denville. Kit has been in Vienna for years when he gets a feeling that Evelyn in is some kind of trouble and returns home to London. His mother confirms Kit's suspicions: Evelyn has been expected back for a few days and they've had no word from him. Even worse is he's expected to show up to dinner to meet the family, including the formidable Grandmother, of a women he intends to marry, Cressy Stavely. It will be a scandal on both families if Evelyn doesn't attend, so Lady Denville begs Kit to take his place. Kit is reluctant to do so, certain the ruse will be discovered, but he does it anyway. The tangled web gets messier when Kit and Cressy find themselves falling for each other (Cressy, a smart girl, saw right through the scheme and knew it wasn't Evelyn).

So now Kit wants to marry his brother's intended, his brother returns in love with a woman he just met, and they're up to their eyes trying to figure out how to pay off their mother's considerable debts. It was a lot of fun and of course everything worked out in the end.  
 

Ordinary People

 

I have always been one of those people who doesn't dabble in something. If it grabs my interest, I devour it. I have to become an expert on it. Thus, another book about Ozzy Osbourne (there will be more, I'm just waiting for my holds to come in).

This one was written during their show on MTV, "The Osbournes" (which I watched over the weekend). Aimee expressed a lot of sadness over the show making her dad look like a buffoon, but I didn't really get that impression. Honestly, I felt sorry for the man. No one listened to him. He was also a bit difficult, refusing to do things and then doing them anyway. Sharon said he'd always been that way. Some people are like that. But the book was a nice companion to the show, mostly Ozzy and Sharon with the kids chiming in here and there. 

Last Rites

 

Rest in peace, Ozzy. His last years were so heartbreaking. 

My dad loved Ozzy. "Crazy Train" was his ringtone for years. He loved "The Osbournes" on MTV. I would watch it with him every once in awhile. I just remember asking him if he could understand a word Ozzy was saying because I sure couldn't. Ozzy reminds me of my dad in some ways, so it was fitting that I got to finish this book this time of year, since today marks the sixth anniversary of the day my dad died. Rest in peace too, old man. Hopefully you and Ozzy ended up in the same place and you're having a good time together.  

Ozzy was touring in 2018 when he got a bad staph infection in his hand and needed surgery. Then he got the flu. Then he fell one night while trying to get back in bed and reinjured his neck, the one he broke in a quad accident in 2003. The original surgeon made things worse, so instead of getting better, he kept getting worse and having to delay his tour. He didn't want to disappoint the fans, but he also couldn't move. 

Years went by and he still wasn't in any kind of shape to perform. He did manage to make it to the closing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in 2022, where he was able to stand on stage (leaning on a stick) and sing. You can see the pure joy in his face at performing. He was determined to give the Birmingham crowd one last show with his Black Sabbath band members and he did in July of this year, less than three weeks before he died. He couldn't stand, he could barely sing, but he did it. "Last Rites" chronicled that journey from being okay in 2018 to death's door 7 years later. It was sad but it was also inspiring to know that despite everything, all the pain he must have been in, that he was able to do it and say goodbye to his fans. He was genuinely overwhelmed by the love. He said he had no idea he was so well liked. 

Hopefully he was surrounded by love and peace his last few days.  

Picket Line; Mark Twain

 

Generally speaking, novellas and short stories are not my cup of tea. There have occasionally been exceptions to this. 

"Picket Line" was not one of them. 

It felt unfinished. Some things happened, but unfortunately it wasn't long enough for any real character development. Basically a group of melon pickers in Texas are striking, walking a picket line, demanding fair wages. A man named Chino comes to town looking for someone (I honestly wasn't clear who) and ends up working at the melon picking operation for a few days (not sure why). The cops come and hassle the picket line walkers. Then the kid on break from college, who was working on the farm, decides to leave.

The End.

At least it was short, so it wasn't a huge waste of time, but it was disappointing. 

The opposite of short and disappointing was Ron Chernow's very thorough biography of Mark Twain. 

Twain worked on his autobiography and decreed that it would not be published until 100 years after his death. In 2010, the autobiography was finally published in three massive volumes (which I own but have never read. A deep failing on my part, I freely admit). 

Twain, as most know, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and was a pilot on a riverboat. He married an heiress named Olivia (Livy) and they had four children: a boy and three girls. Their son died when he was just a baby. Twain was beset by financial hardships (mostly of his own making) his whole life, blowing through his own considerable earnings as well as his wife's inheritance. He had a terrible head for business and was forever signing things without reading them and then getting taken to the cleaners. He also had grand dreams and was convinced the next big idea he had was going to land him on Easy Street (I was honestly surprised he wasn't born in April, he reminded me a lot of my dad). 

As a result of their financial hardships the family traveled a lot through Europe rather than living in their Hartford home. Apparently it was cheaper that way. Twain ended up outliving all but one of his daughters. It was a fascinating story and I enjoyed it, I just wish it hadn't taken me four months to plow through it. 

Book of Sheen

 

I watched the Netflix documentary a few weeks ago (which was good). This book was honestly almost exactly the same. There were a few things in the documentary that weren't in the book, and a few things in the book that weren't in the documentary, but for the most part they were so similar I don't think I would have missed much if I'd skipped one. 

This was a hard one to read. While I survived (mostly) unscathed from my childhood, I definitely have some bad memories and one of those was when my father tried to tell me that the only person he hurt by doing drugs was himself. I told him nothing could be further from the truth, he hurt *all of us*. Everyone who cared about him. Drug addicts are inherently selfish human beings. They have to be (at least when they're doing drugs). Otherwise if they paused and had the wherewithal to realize how badly they were hurting their loved ones they might stop for a minute and think about it. I saw that a lot in Charlie. His dad was ready to throw himself bodily in front of anything that would hurt his son (and good for him). His wives, girlfriends, kids, brothers and sister, parents, and friends all watched helplessly as he threw away a life thousands of others would have dreamed to have. I'm glad he's sober now and I hope it sticks. I hope he's able to enjoy what's left of his life and have a good relationship with everyone who tried to help him. But most of all, I hope his story is a warning to others.