The Tudors; Tudor Conspiracy; Piercing; House of Leaves; Poppet; Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald; Driven; Mrs. Poe

Boy am I behind! Let's get crackin'...

 A lot of Tudor books lately. "The Tudors" by Peter Ackroyd was pretty good. It was mostly about Henry VIII, but that's to be expected. He hit the high points of all of their reigns.

"Tudor Conspiracy" by C. W. Gortner was interesting fiction about the plot to take down Queen Mary and replace her with Elizabeth. Brendan Prescott serves both the queen and Elizabeth, helping Mary discover others who are out to get her without implicating Elizabeth. A daunting task, to be sure.

"Piercing" by Ryu Murakami was disturbing and twisted, so I thoroughly enjoyed it :) New father Kawashima Masayuki (I hope I spelled that right, I can't read my own handwriting) has fantasies about stabbing his baby daughter with an ice  pick. Rather than give in to such sick ideas, he hired a prostitute to stab instead. But he gets more than he bargained for when Chiaki shows up. Chiaki is severely damaged in her own way and their showdown was gruesome and tense.

I read a great interview a few months ago with Stephen King and his family, and they mentioned how much they all liked Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves", so I had to read it. It was complex and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. It's one of those books that has to sink in, I think. It was several stories all intertwined in one: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript in an apartment of dead man about a house that had a never ending hallway. There were many books and papers written about the Navidson family's strange house, and the old blind man, Zampano, was collecting and writing about. Reading the manuscript and all the other research he has compiled makes Johnny go insane. At least, it seems that way. The structure of the book was really interesting: there were footnotes and parts printed upside down, sideways, backwards. It was definitely one of those books that you have to work for and can't read with one eye while doing something else, which is what I tend to do a lot.

"Poppet" by Mo Hayder was another excellent chilling suspense. Man can this woman write! Residents in an mental home are all suffering from the same delusion: that there is a ghost called The Maud who is hurting them, killing them off one by one. Is it a delusion, though, or is someone really torturing these poor confused people? AJ is trying to find out if there's a connection between The Maud and a recently released patient who murdered his parents when he was a kid named Isaac who has a taste for making little dolls, or poppets, using pieces of people. Fun stuff!

I liked Therese Anne Fowler's "Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" more than I thought I would. Full disclaimer: I don't like F. Scott Fitzgerald. To be fair, I've only read "The Great Gatsby", but I had to read it three times as an undergrad and I *hated* it. When the movie came out earlier this year my sister wanted to read the book and asked me about it and I told her I would rather light myself on fire than read that drivel again. I really would. That being said, I find his wife fascinating, and I thought Fowler did a good job of bringing Zelda to life. Everything they did was on such an over the top scale, I'm sure it was exhausting. No wonder her mind broke down.

Donald Driver is one of Green Bay's all time best receivers. In "Driven",  he talks about how he got to the top through hard work and the love of his family, and how wonderful it was to play with Brett. He has respect for certain people that I can't abide because of the way they treated the great number 4, but hey, he doesn't want to make enemies. I have no such qualms :)

"Mrs. Poe" by Lynn Cullen was a fictionalized account of how Edgar Allan Poe and poet Frances Osgood's affair may have gone, if indeed they did have an affair (it's debatable). I enjoyed it, it was kind of dark and spooky, like Poe himself. 

William Shakespeare's Star Wars

I finished Ian Doescher's clever mash up "William Shakespeare's Star Wars", a few weeks after seeing the first Star Wars movie for the first time. I really enjoyed this one, he very ingeniously incorporated many elements from Shakespeare into the Star Wars story. I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I enjoy most of the mash ups I read. "Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies" remains a favorite, but this one is right up there. Nicely done!

Boleyn Deceit; Allegiant; Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets

A few weeks ago I read an advanced reader copy of Laura Andersen's second book in her trilogy "The Boleyn Deceit". I didn't care too much for the first one, "Boleyn King", but I liked this one more. William is determined to marry Minuette, just as Minuette is determined to follow her heart and marry Dominic. Wildly speculating here, but it seems like she's going to kill William off and have Elizabeth step in to reign, just like how it happened in real life. I was hoping for a little bit more reimagining, but all in all it wasn't bad.

"Allegiant" by Veronica Roth is the last of the Divergent trilogy. I enjoyed it, although it did get a bit complex for me at times. I might not have been paying the *best* attention to it. I tend to multitask a lot while reading, which I probably shouldn't do. But anyway, I thought the ending was great, a total gut punch I wasn't expecting but I liked because it seemed realistic and it surprised me.

David Simon's "Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets" was hands down one of the best true crime books I have ever read. Simon spent the year of 1988 with the detectives of the Baltimore Homicide unit, and he chronicles their trials and tribulations with trying to solve seemingly unsolvable murders. Oh man it was a tough read but very brilliant. I'm dying to read his next book "Corner".

The Kennedy Chronicles; Book of Hollywood Extravagance; The Bride Wore Size 12; Coreyography; Johnny Cash: the Life

If I could ever live someone else's life for a day, it would be former MTV VJ Kennedy. In her book "The Kennedy Chronicles", she talks about how she had the most awesome job in the world. I loved watching "Alternative Nation", and I'm jealous as hell that she made out with Dave Navarro and Trent Reznor. My 16 year old self is super pissed :) Her book was funny and nostalgic. I miss good music.

"Book of Hollywood Extravagance" by James Robert Parish was a fun collection of short tales about Hollywood excess, from multiple marriages to fortunes squandered. It was interesting.

"The Bride Wore Size 12" by Meg Cabot is her latest Heather Wells mystery. Heather and Cooper are getting married in a month, her long estranged mother shows up on her doorstep wanting to make amends, her boss is pregnant, there's a prince living in Fischer Hall so security's been tightened, and a RA dies after attending a wild party thrown by the prince. Heather is a bit overwhelmed by everything, to say the least, but she is determined to solve the crime and concentrate on her wedding.

"Coreyography" by Corey Feldman was just heartbreaking. What he and Corey Haim went through in Hollywood...so sad. The drugs, the pedophiles. He has nice things to say about Michael Jackson, which makes me happy. I just feel so bad for him and Corey. It was heartbreaking in one other way, too: St. Martin's Press obviously decided not to waste money on a proofreader. The whole book was littered with spelling and grammar errors, the most egregious was misspelling Stephen King's name on p. 215. Good grief. I tried not to let that detract from his heart felt storytelling but man, it was tough.

And finally, I read an advanced reader copy of Robert Hilburn's "Johnny Cash: the Life" and wept like a baby. What an amazing, powerful story. Hilburn does an excellent job of telling it like it is. It's a must read for any Johnny Cash fan. I hope someday to find love like Johnny and June had. What an amazing life.

Hark! A Vagrant; The Girl; Ludwig Conspiracy; White Princess; Obituary Writer; King's Grave; Whole

"Hark! A Vagrant" by Kate Beaton was a fun collection of hilarious and snarky comics based on historical figures. It was sarcastic and witty, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

When she was 13, Samantha Geimer was raped by noted film director Roman Polanski. Ever since, she has dreaded hearing about Polanski in the news because then the whole sordid story comes out all over again. In "The Girl" she tells her side of it, and why she wishes it would all just go away. She doesn't think Polanski should be persecuted and pursued any longer, in fact, back when it happened she thought the judge was being overly punitive. I can understand where she's coming from, and I can understand the justice system wanting to punish the guilty. When you start drawing lines in the sand as to what is a really awful crime and what's not so bad, things get ugly and contentious real quick. It was honest and forthright.

Oliver Potzsch steps away from his historical hangman's daughter series to write a contemporary mystery. "The Ludwig Conspiracy" finds bookseller Steven Lukas unhappily and most unwillingly drawn into a murder mystery when a mysterious stranger leaves a book at his shop and then is murdered the next day. Thugs are after the book, and Steven is going to protect it until he finds out what is going on. It was clever and interesting and I enjoyed it. Boy can this guy write!

"White Princess" by Phillipa Gregory is about Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII's mother. Gregory and I have the same view when it comes to Richard III, so I enjoyed this fictionalized account of Elizabeth struggling after Richard's death, forced into marrying Henry VII.

"Obituary Writer" by Ann Hood was a good quick read. It was sweet and sad. Claire cheats on her husband because she is bored with her suburban existence.  Forty years earlier in San Francisco, Vivien is devastated when her lover, David, goes missing after the big earthquake in 1906. She ends up becoming famous for her beautifully written obituaries and spends the next 13 years searching for David, mourning him, and putting her own happiness on hold. How Claire and Vivien's stories intertwine is predictable but still enjoyable.

"The King's Grave" by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones is an interesting look at how Richard III's body was found last year. Like Langley, I hope this discovery will lead to a reexamining of his much maligned life.

"Whole" by T. Colin Campbell is his follow up to "The China Study". It was pretty technical and a lot over my head at times, but it was worth the slog through it. Campbell discusses the importance of looking at humans as a whole and not parts, and how nutrition is so vital in the form of whole foods rather than supplements and pills. He's fighting the good fight, that's for sure. Keep it up, sir.

First Love; Difficult Men

"First Love" by Joyce Carol Oates was a regrettably forgettable novella about a young girl being sexually abused by her uncle. I was in the mood for some gothic-y horror after reading the Susan Hill novella, but this wasn't really what I was after.

"Difficult Men" by Brett Martin was a fun look at the so-called "third golden age of television", starting with the "Sopranos" in the late 1990s, that spawned such great shows like "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", and "The Wire". It was interesting to see the different writing styles of the different creators of these shows and how they came into being.

The Woman in Black; Strider; Doctor Sleep; Monster High; The Silver Star; Cast of Killers

"The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill is a creepy, gothic-y novella about a young lawyer who goes to a remote house that is only accessible when the tide is low to settle the estate of an elderly client who passes away with no kin. The house is haunted by the ghost of a woman whose little boy was killed in an accident there years earlier. Every time the woman shows up, a child in the town dies. It was pretty spooky and I enjoyed it, it was very Poe-esque (I'm just making up words left and right today!).

As I kid I loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" by Beverly Clearly. I was reading online a few weeks ago about some forgotten childhood favorites, and one of the people commenting on the story mentioned how they loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" and the sequel and I went WUT? There's a sequel?? I found out that "Strider" is the sequel, featuring Leigh and his mom and his dad, and his new dog. What can I say, it was very nostalgic and I'm glad I found out about it and got to read it.

When Stephen King is good he's good. And then there are times when he is phenomenal, ass-kickingly great, and "Doctor Sleep" was one of those times. Danny Torrance from "The Shining" is all grown up, battling alcoholism. Drinking allows him to tamp down the shine. He ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he gets himself together, quits drinking, and becomes a beloved member of the local hospice's team, where he is known as Doctor Sleep for his ability to help the dying pass on. About 30 miles away, a little girl named Abra is born, and her parents figure out pretty quickly that she's special. Dan Torrance could tell them: she has the shining. Abra is actually able to communicate with Dan, so he knows about her long before he meets her in person. Unfortunately, Dan isn't the only one taking notice of little Abra. There is a group of people who feed off special people like Abra who call themselves the True Knot. Once they figure out how powerful Abra is, they come after her. It was really incredible and I got a kick out of how he incorporated Charlie Manx from Joe's book "NOS4A2". Very clever :)

After finishing the Lying Game series, I was looking for something new and fluffy. I read "Monster High" by Lisi Harrison. It was cute, but I won't be in a rush to read the rest. In a town in Oregon, a group of teenagers disguise themselves so they can go to school with the "normies": there's Frankie, who is Frankenstein's Monster's granddaughter; Cleo, descended from Egyptian mummies; Jackson, the grandson of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, etc., etc. Frankie argues to reveal their true nature to the world, believing the normies will be willing to accept them for who they really are, but the rest of the monsters (or RADs, as they refer to themselves) disagree. One of the things that really struck me about this book was how confident and secure with herself Frankie is until she's told otherwise. It makes me feel sad for teenage girls (and grown women) who have their fragile confidence stripped away so easily sometimes.

"The Silver Star" by Jeannette Walls was really good. Sad, but good. In 1970 Liz and Bean are pretty self-sufficient. Their mother runs off and leaves them to fend for themselves quite a bit. But when their mom has a major meltdown and disappears, and the authorities come snooping around, Liz and Bean decide they'd better go to their mother's ancestral home in Virginia and stay with their Uncle Tinsley until their mom is up to taking care of them again. Uncle Tinsley takes them in and the girls start adapting to small town life. They get jobs with a man named Jerry Maddox, who got their uncle kicked out of his own factory. Bean doesn't like working for Maddox and soon quits, but Liz is determined to earn her own way. When she confronts Maddox about taking money he owes her, he assaults her and tried to rape her. Uncle Tinsley doesn't want to make a scene by going to the authorities, but Bean talks Liz into reporting Maddox and the whole mess goes to trial. There was a good message about bullying and I loved the ending.

And finally, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's "Cast of Killers". Mr. Kirkpatrick set out originally to write a biography about legendary director King Vidor. While going through Vidor's papers, he discovered Vidor was investigating the murder of William Desmond Taylor, another Hollywood actor, back in the 1920s. Vidor believes he solves the forty year old mystery, but doesn't publish his findings while he's still alive because too many others who were alive would be hurt. By the 80s, when Kirkpatrick published this book, there was no such worries and he reveals Vidor's findings. It was an interesting look at how Hollywood worked in the 1920s, and how the studios literally controlled everything.