High Five; Two for the Dough

Boy, have I been in a book slump lately. I've only read four books this month, and two were these Janet Evanovich rereads. I have all these wonderful books I've put on hold and gotten from work, and then had to renew (and renew again) because I just haven't had the motivation to read them. Eventually I'll snap out of it, but in the meantime this is all I've read lately. "High Five" finds Stephanie looking for her missing Uncle Fred. He was having an argument with his garbage company, and disappeared. Honestly, no one is really too sad he's gone, including his long-suffering wife, who is planning a cruise and buying new cars and furniture.

I hadn't read "Two for the Dough" in a long time, the only thing I remembered was that Stiva's funeral parlor burned down in the end. Stephanie is trying to find Kenny Mancuso, who skipped bail after shooting his friend in the knee. Mancuso is Joe Morelli's cousin, and she and Morelli form an uneasy partnership to try to catch Kenny. Meanwhile, Spiro Stiva hires Stephanie to find out what happened to a bunch of surplus caskets he bought from the government that went missing out of his storage locker.

I Loved Her in the Movies

I do so enjoy Robert Wagner's memoirs. This one was a tender love letter to all the actresses he's admired over the years and what made them special. He said in the beginning there would be no dirt, and there wasn't, but that was fine by me. It was a fun, quick read.

When Paris Sizzled

I was very excited when I heard about "When Paris Sizzled". Paris in the 1920s seems like *the* place to be, which is obviously why so many famous Americans ended up there. I was hoping for some good Faulkner stories, but alas, all he got was one sentence :( Hemingway and Fitzgerald were mentioned a lot, but it was more about Chanel and her set. It was still fun and interesting.

By the Numbers; Gunslinger

I wasn't crazy about the cover of Jen Lancaster's new book, "By the Numbers", but the story itself was great fun, probably the best fiction title she's written so far. Penny Sinclair is an actuary: she crunches numbers for an insurance company to figure out things like life expectancy and accidents. She's very good at her job, and she's worked hard so her kids can have a good life and never want for anything. She and her recently divorced husband, Chris, are putting together a wedding for their daughter, Kelsey, and once that's over Penny is selling their Queen Anne home and moving on with her life. She's very excited about her fresh start. Then Kelsey comes back from her honeymoon and moves back in, fighting with her new husband. Her other daughter, Jessica, took too many risks in New York, is broke, and now she needs a place to stay. And then Chris has an accident while zip lining with his new much younger girlfriend, who promptly dumps him and *he* needs a place to stay. Just when Penny thought she was finally going to get out, she gets pulled back in. It was so charming and funny and my God, her daughters were horrible. I would have drowned them.

Needing something good related to football in my life right now (ugh) I picked up Jeff Pearlman's new bio of the legendary Brett Favre. Pearlman wasn't out to write a fluff piece, he talks about all of Brett's shortcomings, how he was unfaithful to Deanna, how he drank too much and almost killed himself in that car wreck back in college. There was just something so magical about watching Brett play, when he was good, on fire, making the impossible throws into triple coverage and his receivers would still somehow manage to pop up with the ball for the touchdown. I mean, words can't describe it. I miss that so much, I miss watching him. There isn't anyone else who plays like Brett did. He's one of a kind. Of course he did stupid things (all those interceptions!) but he deserved to go out better than he did. I won't ever forgive Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson for forcing his hand about retirement and then not letting him come back and finish out his career as a Packer, like he should have. And if the Saints weren't a bunch of dirty players, then Brett could have gone on to a third Super Bowl and gotten his second ring like Peyton Manning did. I believe the Vikings could have done it, but the Saints set out to hurt him in that playoff game and by God, they did, it was painful to watch. Oh well. Brett's happy now, living the good life back home in Mississippi with his wife and girls and grandsons. I wish him a long and happy retirement.

One for the Money; Turbo Twenty-Three; The Lady in the Lake

Whenever I spend time at my parents' house, I tend to reread the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. Mostly because my mother has them all and I don't :) So I reread the first one, which I hadn't read in quite some time, so I actually didn't remember how it ended. It was written in 1994, which was fun, it's almost like reading a historical fiction novel at this point. Having to find pay phones to make calls. An answering machine with actual tape plays a big role.

Then I read her latest, "Turbo Twenty-Three". It was pretty good. Ranger has agreed to look into the security shortfalls at Bogart's ice cream factory. He needs Stephanie to go undercover and see if she can sniff out any bad characters. Bogart thinks his rival, Mo Morris, is deliberately sabotaging him. Ice cream and an overnight trip to Disney World with Ranger equals a win.

I wasn't sure if I'd read Raymond Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake" before or not. I read a lot of noir books as a teen: Chandler and Cain and Hammett. This one didn't seem familiar, but again, I've read "One for the Money" at least three times within the last twenty years and didn't remember it. If I read "Lady in the Lake" it was close to twenty-five years ago, and only once. At any rate, it was really good. PI Philip Marlowe is hired by Derace Kingsley, a wealthy businessman whose wife ran off. Kingsley is fine with that, he doesn't want her back, he just wants to make sure she's okay. Crystal was last seen at their vacation cabin up in Crestline. There are a lot of different leads to follow, and Marlowe finds himself looking at the death of a doctor's wife that may or may not have been murder and may or may not tie into the disappearance of Crystal Kingsley, when another dead body turns up drowned in the lake by the Kingsley's vacation home. There was a heck of a lot going on in this book, but it was interesting.

Sage's Eyes; A Life in Parts; Quarry in the Black

First off, some mindless fluff from V. C. Andrews. For some reason online somewhere it said that "Sage's Eyes" was related in some way to FITA. Why I believe anything I read on the internet is a mystery :) It had nothing to do with Flowers, but it was still pretty good. Sage's parents have never hidden the fact that she is adopted from her. They are super overprotective of her, and at sixteen Sage is feeling very stifled. It's hard for her to make friends since she can't go to parties or sleep over or even go shopping with a group of friends. A new boy named Summer Dante transfers to Sage's school, and all the girls are gaga over him, apparently he's gorgeous (not the way the author described, but that's just me). Summer likes Sage, though, and starts pushing her to break her parents' stringent rules to see him.

I remember seeing Bryan Cranston on the X-Files way back when, and I loved "Malcolm in the Middle". He was so funny on that. I was very surprised at him in "Breaking Bad". I thought he did a marvelous job and what a different character from Hal! His bio was a quick read, and interesting. He grew up in So Cal, the child of two actors. He however planned to be a police officer, he went to school to study criminal justice. After a cross country motorcycle trip with his older brother, however, he had an epiphany and decided he didn't want to spend his life doing something he didn't love so he decided to pursue acting. I think it was the right decision :)

And finally, a Quarry book by Max Allan Collins. I love the Quarry books, they're such fun. It's 1972, and Quarry is hired to take out an African American preacher who fancies himself the next Martin Luther King Jr. Quarry's boss assures him it's not political or racial, that the preacher is just a bad mad who deals drugs and cheats on his wife. Quarry goes to St. Louis and infiltrates the coalition to elect McGovern as the next president, meeting the preacher and his subordinates. Quarry quickly discovers another hit man who has been hired to take out the preacher as well, and wonders if he's being double-crossed in some way.

The Magnolia Story

I don't watch much reality TV, but I will admit a fondness for the house hunting/fixer upper shows. I especially love Chip and Joanna Gaines' show. They seem like such genuinely nice, down to earth, loving people and Chip is a riot. This was a fun book telling their story: how they met and fell in love and got married, how they started flipping houses together. It was a super quick read, but I enjoyed it.