The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man; Touching from a Distance

 

I'm a big fan of Paul Newman's movies. As a person...maybe not so much. No, I'm kidding. He did a lot of good in the world through charity. He just made some bad decisions and hurt people, but at least he was honest about it, unlike some people (cough, cough, Eric Clapton, cough). 

Paul led a very interesting life. He married young and had three children with his first wife, Jackie, at least one of which was conceived after he'd begun his affair with Joanne Woodward. After Jackie and Paul divorced, he and Joanne married and had three more kids together. He acted in and directed a bunch of movies and then in his later years started racing cars and put out the Newman's Own line of food products with the profits going to his various charities. Apparently the book was culled from interviews done with Paul and people close to him while they were still alive, in the late 80s and early 90s, but then Paul pulled the plug on the whole thing. It's too bad, I would have liked to have heard his perspective on his later years. 

I'm not quite sure what to say about "Touching from a Distance". I'm not a *huge* Joy Division fan (although I do love "Love Will Tear Us Apart"). Written by Deborah Curtis, Ian's wife, it was super short, just barely over 100 pages. Ian and Deborah met in their teens and started dating. Right away, there were giant red flags. Ian was dictating what she could and couldn't wear, forbade her to wear makeup, cut her off from all her friends. I'm literally screaming at her to RUN! Of course she didn't, she got engaged to him. Her parents threw them a party and he got super jealous when she danced with her uncle. And then to make things worse, after they got married they were dead broke and Deborah decided she wanted a baby, so they had one.

Good grief. 

Ian was diagnosed with epilepsy and suffered seizures frequently while the doctors adjusted his medication. Apparently some of his bandmates and friends blamed the medication for his suicide, but he talked his whole life about dying before he was out of his early twenties, so it sounds like it was more than the medicine. He might have been suffering from something much worse than epilepsy. It was a sad story about two very sad people and their terrible decisions. 

These Old Shades

I wanted something light and fluffy (I'm currently slogging through a 1,000 page book about Abraham Lincoln. It's good, but boy is it slow), and Heyer always fits that bill nicely. This was one of her earlier ones. It was pretty good, although I will admit I didn't like it as much as some of her others. 

The Duke of Avon is playing the long game when it comes to taking revenge on his old nemesis, Comte de Saint-Vire. He spies a young man on the streets of Paris who looks suspiciously like the Comte, and immediately buys him from his older brother in the hopes that his hunch was right. It was--and the story takes a lot of amusing twists and turns before arriving at the inevitable Heyer happy ending. It's a hard book to summarize without spoiling a lot. 
 

Sister to Sister

I loved "Wife After Wife", Hayfield's book about King Henry VIII (modernized and set in present day), so I was excited to hear she wrote a sequel about Elizabeth and Mary.

It was pretty good. Not what I was expecting. Maria and Eliza clash early on about how to run Rose Corp. after their father, Harry, is forced to retire, but Maria exits the company early on, leaving Eliza to rule the roost by herself. The book was more about Eliza and her friends, Will and Kit, and her love interest, Rob. She has a hard time trying to figure out how to run a successful company and still make time for the other people in her life. There were definitely some clever bits but I thought she really could have done with less Kit and Will and more family drama. Still, all in all, I enjoyed it. 
 

Babysitter

 

Joyce Carol Oates's books are sometimes hit or miss, but this one was pretty good. Set in Detroit in the late 1970s, there is a serial killer the press has dubbed "Babysitter", killing kids. Hannah isn't worried about her own two small children, though. She lives in a wealthy suburb and has a nanny. Things like that don't happen to people like *her*. 

However, Hannah does start to have an affair with a man she only knows by his initials, Y.K. Y.K. and Babysitter are all tied together, but I don't want to spoil how. Hannah was one of those people who does insanely stupid things, knows she's doing insanely stupid things, and keeps on doing them anyway, so I could totally relate :)

The Island

 

"The Island" by Adrian McKinty was really good, I enjoyed it. 

A widower with two teenagers, Tom, recently married a much younger woman named Heather. Tom is a surgeon and he's been asked to speak at a conference in Australia, so he, Heather, Olivia, and Owen decide to make it a vacation. While they're out sightseeing one day they run across a man who tells them about a private island where they can see koalas and other native animals in the wild. The kids, of course, are dying to go but the man warns them that the family that owns the island doesn't like trespassers and demands a large amount of money to take them over on the ferry. Tom finally gives in to the kids and away they go. I don't want to give too much away, but suffice it to say they really shouldn't have done that. Their excursion turns into a test of survival.  

Freezing Cold Takes

 

A fun, quick football related book. Segal looks back on the history of "hot" takes in football and exposes some of the more ridiculous (in hindsight) ones. Ryan Leaf is probably the best known of all of the failures. He was so hyped and turned out to be a complete dud. Of course many predicted that Green Bay was making a huge mistake with Brett Favre and again with Aaron Rodgers (obviously both quarterbacks worked out pretty well). Tom Brady was not well thought of and many in New England were dismayed when the Patriots picked him in the draft, since they had a terrific franchise quarterback with Drew Bledsoe. You get the idea 😃

The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough; The Reivers

 

So I watched the new Netflix series about Jeffrey Dahmer last week. I had forgotten how disgusting and gross his crimes were. Evan Peters did a terrific job of playing Dahmer, he was so creepy. This was the only book my library owned about him (I have two others myself, one was written by a childhood friend called "My Friend Dahmer" and the other one tried unsuccessfully to make the case that Dahmer killed little Adam Walsh, called "Dahmer's Dirty Little Secret"). It was written while he was still alive, so it was a bit startling to read about Dahmer in the present tense. It honestly felt pretty slapdash, like she just cranked it out to cash in on the case while it was still hot. I've requested Dahmer's father's book from another library, so I'm curious to hear his side of things. 

And, to the surprise of no one, after reading the biography on William Faulkner last week, I had to reread one of my favorites, "The Reivers". His last book, and one of his funniest, too. It takes place in 1905. Lucius Priest is the oldest son of Maury Priest, and grandson to "the Boss". The Boss owns one of the few automobiles in town and his employee, Boon, drives it for him. Lucius's other grandfather passes away, and his mom, dad, and grandparents head out of town for the funeral. Boon takes advantage of the Boss being away to take the car to a trip to Memphis, and Lucius tags along. They both know it's wrong to steal the car, even though they fully intend to bring it back, but the temptation is such that they can't help themselves. On the road to Memphis they find out one of Maury's employees at the livery stable, Ned, has stowed away in the back of the car. The three make their way to Miss Reba's house in Memphis, so Boon can visit with his special lady friend, Miss Corrie (in case you couldn't tell, Miss Reba's is a whorehouse). Ned ends up trading the car for a racehorse that won't actually run a race and coming up with a wild scheme to win a race and not only keep the horse but get the Boss's automobile back too. Lucius (who's 11, I think I should mention that) and Boon have no choice but to go along with Ned's crazy scheme. All sorts of hijinks ensue. Too much fun, it had me laughing out loud. God, Faulkner was such a national treasure.