Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me

Supposedly written by family and friends (wink wink) "Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me" was actually pretty funny. I certainly enjoyed it more than her last book "Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang". This was a collection of recollections of those closet to her, of pranks she had pulled on them and the fun times they've had. Much nicer than picking on Ted! It's the perfect sort of light summer fun at the beach type of book that I check out that never quite makes it to the ocean :)

Friday, May 27, 2011

Nineteen Minutes; The Onion Field; Every Day by the Sun; Bloody Valentines

I read Jodi Picoult's "Nineteen Minutes", which was great. Her books are so hard to read, though, physically exhausting. There were plenty of twists and turns I didn't see coming a mile away, which is typical of me. It reminded me of Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin", and I loved that one. Peter and Josie were friends when they were little, but as they enter high school Josie has made her way into the popular crowd while Peter is picked on and bullied on a daily basis. Josie does nothing to stop her new friends from hurting her old one. Peter shows up to school one day with a backpack full of guns and starts shooting, and their small town is rocked to the core. I really loved the way she painted Peter's parents, because of course our inclination is to blame the parents of these kids, but Peter's parents are wonderful and caring and seem to do everything nearly right, whereas Josie's mom really screws things up but Josie still turns out okay. Or sort of okay, at any rate.
I've been meaning to read Joseph Wambaugh's classic true crime "The Onion Field" forever and finally did. I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. His style was like Capote's in "In Cold Blood", where he blended fiction and nonfiction into a hybrid type of style. I prefer my true crime straight forward and factual, I don't need to know what the author "thought" the criminal was thinking when he committed his crimes. At any rate, it was a very sad story of how two police officers were kidnapped and one was murdered by a couple of petty thieving scumbags back in 1963. I'd like to see the movie now.
In "Every Day by the Sun" Dean Faulkner Wells reminisced about her uncle, William, who helped raise her after her father, Dean, was killed in an unfortunate plane crash four months before she was born. It was a lovely, moving story of William Faulkner as "Pappy", a man, a breadwinner, the family patriarch, as opposed to just William Faulkner the writer. I'm totally in the mood for some Faulkner now! I missed rereading "The Sound and the Fury" this Easter, so I may have to do that soon.
And Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods series takes an intermission in "Bloody Valentines", which is a short collection of short stories featuring the characters from her series. To be honest, her books are just too complicated for me, I can't keep track of what's going on and all the mythology behind the vampires, but this one wasn't too bad, since it was short bits.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Adrian Mole: the Cappaccino Years; Malled

Sue Townsend continues Adrian Mole's hilarious antics in "Cappuccino Years". The books are published differently here in the U.S. than they are in her native U.K., so I have no idea if I'm reading them in the right order (or if my library even has them all), but I think I'm okay since this one picks up a few years after the last one. Adrian is now 30, and separated from his wife. His parents are raising his three year old son, William, and he basically doesn't have a real, paying job or a home. His stint as a celebrity chef is comical, and then he discovers he has a son from a short lived affair with Sharon Bott as a teenager. Glenn is now twelve and wants to know his dad, so he comes to live with him in the house Adrian inherited from an older man he briefly befriended (taking care of the older man's cat was part of the deal). The book takes place in 1997, and boy did the pop culture references take me back!
I also finished Caitlyn Kelly's "Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail". I was sadly disappointed by this one. After working full time in retail myself for over 5 years, I was looking forward to hearing battle stories from the front lines and commiserating with a fellow retail warrior over ridiculously rude customers and a corporate office that couldn't care less about its employees. Kelly only worked for two years one day a week for five hours at her job, so it was never a "career". She whined throughout the whole book about how she was way too experienced for the job, based on her years of work as a journalist, the many languages she spoke, the exotic locales she had traveled to. She bragged about what a good employee she was, only calling out sick a few times and only being late five times. What the hell? I was late ONCE in five years due to car trouble. I think I called out sick a total of five times in five years. She talked about how badly her feet would hurt after her shift: I was on my feet five days a week, 8 hours a day, for years, and I couldn't wear sneakers like she could, I had to wear dress shoes. I could go on and on about how I suffered, but I won't :) This is such a great topic for a book, and done correctly it could be hilarious, like "Free for All" by Don Borchet. I was hoping for more personal stories and less critiquing of the system in general.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Idea Man

From an early age I had an unnatural obsession with Bill Gates and Microsoft. I don't know why--I didn't have a computer until I was well into my twenties. But as a teen I would read everything I could get my hands on about him, and thought he was a genius (opinion hasn't changed in twenty years :) I was so mad during the anti-trust suit, I couldn't believe the government was going after *my* beloved Microsoft over something as dumb as IE). Anyway, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, wrote "Idea Man", which was really great and I enjoyed it. If you're looking for dirt on my main man Bill, it's not here. Paul barely discussed Microsoft, after all, he left the company in 1983, before Windows. Having all that stock, however, allowed him to become fantastically wealthy at an early age and indulge his hobbies, like music and sports, as well become very philanthropic, giving away over $1 billion. Wowza. He seemed like a very laid back, nice guy and his book was very low key.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Crunch Time; Elizabeth I; Most Evil; Sweet Valley Saga: Patmans of Sweet Valley; Dead Reckoning

Diane Mott Davidson's caterer Goldy Schultz is back in "Crunch Time". I admit: I really couldn't get into this one. There was just too much going on, too many new characters I couldn't care about. That's a pattern with her, but I can't seem to stop reading them. I enjoy the recipes, I think. Even those disappointed me this time because throughout the whole book they kept talking about Navajo Tacos, but there wasn't a recipe for them in the back. Lame.
"Elizabeth I" by Margaret George was an excellent fictionalized account of Queen Elizabeth's later years, starting with the first Armada in 1588 and focused mainly on her complicated relationship with Robert Essex. I liked how she switched over to Elizabeth's cousin and Robert's mother, Lettice Knollys', point of view for perspective. It was very nicely done.
"Most Evil" by Steve Hodel had the retired LAPD detective pinning the 1940's Chicago Lipstick murders and the 1970's Zodiac killings on his father, Dr. George Hodel, who he believes killed the Black Dahlia. It was fascinating and compelling, if a bit of a stretch. I was willing to believe the Black Dahlia allegations in his first book, "Black Dahlia Avenger", but for his father to have been that much of a monster is really mind boggling. Anything's possible, I suppose. Creepy stuff.
"Sweet Valley Sage: The Patmans of Sweet Valley" by Francine Pascal was about the history of the Patman family, going back to the 1800s, and it was so awfully dumb but I read it anyway :)
And finally, Charlaine Harris's latest Sookie Stackhouse book "Dead Reckoning". It was a lot of fun if a bit challenging for poor Sookie. She was in danger every which way she turned, I felt sorry for her. It's got me in the mood for the next season of "True Blood", that's for sure!