The Man Who Sold America; Lone Star Noir; True Grit; Tudors for Dummies; I, Monster; Bringing Adam Home

"The Man Who Sold America" by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz was a great look at Albert Lasker, the father behind modern day advertising, and how advertising has changed in general over the last 100 years. Things that seem very common and ordinary to us today were first put into practice by Lasker, like free samples and coupons. It was well written and entertaining.
I read a book of short stories based in Texas called "Lone Star Noir", edited by Bobby and Johnny Byrd. I don't know why I persist in reading short story compilations, I almost never enjoy them. This one wasn't actually all that bad, there were a few good ones, like "Phelan's First Case" by Lisa Sandlin and "Montgomery Clift" by Sarah Cortez, but most of them were either boring and unforgettable or just plain bad.
Ever since I saw the Coen brother's fabulous remake of "True Grit" a few months ago I've been eager to read the book it was based on by Charles Portis. It was fantastic! I love Portis's writing style, it's very straightforward and no nonsense but very authentic. I really can't wait to read more of his work, although it looks like I'll have to buy them because my library only has one other. Oh well. We all know how much I *hate* buying books ;-)
"Tudors for Dummies" by David Loades and Mei Trow was a travesty of a book. It was riddled with outright exaggerations posing as facts, typos and continuity errors, and just plain terrible. I was outraged when they accused Queen Catherine of Aragon of contracting syphilis from a monk and called Katherine Howard "shrewd" and "clever". Just...wow. To say nothing of the fact that at one point they identified Elizabeth as Catherine's daughter instead of Anne's, and other such ridiculous mistakes. That's not hard to fact check, for heaven's sake. I was just disgusted that such errors made it into print, and in fact I was so angry I emailed Wiley, the publisher, to tell them exactly what I thought of their "editing". They told me the mistakes would be corrected in later editions. Um, sure. In the meantime now I'm loath to recommend other books in the Dummies series to library customers. Who knows how full of misinformation they are?
Tom Philbin's "I, Monster: Serial Killers in their own Chilling Words" was kind of a waste of time. He pulled interviews and letters from serial killers like Ted Bundy and Sam Berkowitz from other sources, like online (at one point he cited Wikipedia, although he spelled it wrong) or books. So there was no new information here and some of it I'd read before, of course, from stand alone books about each killer. It was just poorly put together and meant to generate a buck. Sad, really.
And finally, the haunting "Bringing Adam Home" by Lee Standiford with help from Joe Matthews. When Adam Walsh was kidnapped in 1981, Matthews was called in from Miami P.D. to help the Hollywood (FL) P.D. with the investigation, but was thwarted from doing any good by shoddy police work and egotistical cops. It's a damn shame what John and Reve Walsh went through, trying to find the maniac who murdered their little boy. This case has always stayed with me because I was six when the TV movie based on his kidnapping aired, and my mother made me watch it so I wouldn't be tempted to ever wander off from her while we were out shopping. The movie absolutely terrified me. I remember watching the America's Most Wanted episode that they did on Adam's kidnapping back in 1996, when the show was briefly canceled, and couldn't believe they still didn't know who killed little Adam, although it sounded like they had a pretty likely suspect, Ottis Toole. And indeed, that's who Matthews has finally determined was responsible, and after carefully combing through the case file and finally having the pictures of Toole's Cadillac developed that no one bothered with for nearly 30 years, he came up with enough evidence to name Toole. Too bad the worthless s.o.b. died back in 1996. At least we can take comfort in the fact that he's no doubt burning in the deepest pits of Hell, saved for child killers. Scum. But the poor Walshes. It's also a damn pity that cops can't get their stupid egos out of the way and try to do what's best for the victims. That's the really sad part of this book, I think.

Cleopatra; Antony and Cleopatra; Mockingjay; Mindfulness; Death and the Virgin Queen; Amaryllis in Blueberry

Stacy Schiff's biography about Cleopatra has been getting really great reviews and impressing everyone right and left. Everyone except for me, of course. Was there any doubt? :) I don't know why I didn't like it, other than to say I don't care for her writing style, it was just very dull and dry. I admire the research and work that went into the book: she was out to disprove rumors and present facts, and she did an admirable job. It was just boring. How do you make Cleopatra boring?
Adrian Goldsworthy's "Antony and Cleopatra" was better. I enjoyed hearing about Mark Antony's early life, which I don't think I've really read much about until now. I'd recommend this one over the Schiff book.
Finished the "Hunger Games" trilogy with Suzanne Collin's "Mockingjay". I'm still not sure how I feel about it, a week after finishing it. I just felt like Katniss must have felt--used. Used by everyone, whether for good or for evil, is still being used. I enjoyed the journey to get to the end, I just didn't like the end. If that makes sense. I fear it doesn't. Oh well, moving on.
"Mindfulness" by Ellen Langer was about how we walk through life on autopilot and don't really notice much, which is very true. How interesting it is when we actually open our eyes and notice things! It was very intriguing.
"Death and the Virgin Queen" was an excellent account of Amy Dudley's death by historian Chris Skidmore. He found the original coroner's report (which had been misfiled) and discovered that in addition to the broken neck she had two large gashes in her head, which would certainly be consistent with a nasty fall down a set of stone steps. But he also found a contemporary journal that confirms the conspiracy written in the anonymous "Dudley's Commonwealth", accusing the Queen's favorite of having his wife murdered so he would be free to marry Elizabeth. So did Robert Dudley arrange his wife's accident or was it really just an accident? I'm still divided, and like a good historian Skidmore merely repeats the facts without interjecting his own opinions. I really enjoyed this one. Four hundred years later and we still wonder about the truth. Fascinating stuff.
And finally, "Amaryllis in Blueberry" by Christina Meldrum. It's been compared to "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read many years ago and loved. This book, not so much. I found it pretentious and overly dramatic and just silly. It wasn't even an interesting story badly told, it was a rip off of an interesting story poorly told.