Friday's Child

I adore Georgette Heyer. This one was so much fun. Young Viscount Sheringham fancies himself in love with the great Beauty (always a capital B), Isabella, but when he proposes, she rebuffs him. Sheringham, otherwise known as "Sherry", is in debt from gambling and won't get control of his fortune until he turns twenty-five or marries. Not willing to wait, he decides to elope with a young orphan girl who is related to his neighbors. Little Hero is young, barely out of the schoolroom, but a sweet girl and has had a crush on Sherry her whole life. Faced with the prospect of being sent off to be a governess, eloping with Sherry seems like a fairy tale. Her family is glad to be shut of her, although Sherry's mother is horrified when she finds out and goes around claiming Hero is ruining Sherry's life.
Married life doesn't change the young Viscount at all, he continues to carry on as if he were still a wild bachelor, which is fine with Hero. He can do no wrong in her eyes. But she continually gets into scrapes because she's not sure how to behave, and it's very vexing for Sherry to have to keep bailing her out. Finally, she commits a terrible breach of protocol and Sherry threatens to send her to the country to live with his mother for awhile so she can learn how to be a proper lady. Hero is horrified at the idea of being separated from him and living with a woman she knows hates her, so she runs off to some of Sherry's close friends, begging for help.
Sherry's friends are all rather fond of "Kitten", and one of them arranges for her to go stay with his grandmother in Bath. They all decide to keep this from Sherry, as a way of teaching him a lesson. They think he really does love his wife more than he realizes, he just needs to know it. And of course as soon as Sherry realizes Hero has run off he is distraught and tears apart London, looking for her. It had the most lovely happy ending and was quite sweet.

Spinster

"Spinster" by Kate Bolick wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be. Part memoir, part nonfiction of other women, Kate has basically spent her whole life in relationships. She's always dating, has a very active social life, has lived with boyfriends. She just never felt like she could get married, and wondered if something was wrong with her. She admired history's great spinsters (and spinsterish women who married), and has decided to make a life of her own. Well...good for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be single (although I would argue she really hasn't ever been without a boyfriend, or at least dates), but some people are single not by choice or because we want to be, but because life is unfair and it sucks. Me, bitter? No, not in the slightest :)

Live Right and Find Happiness

Dave Barry is usually pretty good for a laugh, and I got a few chuckles out of this one, a loose collection of not really related essays. I really enjoyed his chapter on his visit to Russia, and his letter to his grandson.

A Matter of Conviction

Awhile back I visited this cool used book store fairly close to where I live, and found two old Evan Hunter paperbacks I had never seen before. I finally got around to reading one of them: "A Matter of Conviction". It was one of his early books. Assistant D.A. Hank Bell is assigned a case, prosecuting three young men who stabbed and killed another young man, who happened to be blind and Puerto Rican (it's the 1950s). The three boys who stabbed him are white and belong to a rival gang. As a further twist, the mother of one of the killers is Bell's old girlfriend, who wrote him a Dear John letter when he was off fighting in WW2. It had a lot of typical McBain elements to it, and it was a quick, engrossing read.

Day Shift; Howard the Duck Omnibus

Charlaine Harris's sequel to "Midnight Crossroad", "Day Shift", was light and quick, one of those books you can read while distracted and still get enough of it to understand. Manfred, the physic, is giving a reading to a client when she dies. Her crazy son accuses Manfred of stealing his mother's jewels. The residents of Midnight come up with some plans to help clear Manfred's name. Quinn, the weretiger from Harris's Sookie books, makes an appearance, as does telepath Barry. I'm sure there will be more in this series, as she hinted to many residents' secrets.

The "Howard the Duck" omnibus was great fun. I especially liked the earlier ones. The series completely went off the rails, but I enjoyed it. Howard is a talking duck with arms instead of wings who fell through a time hole and ended up on Earth. Cleveland, to be exact. He does the best he can to get along in this strange world, but he keeps running into villains and victims. This book is also a great example of why I love libraries. It sells for $99 dollars, so it's not a book I would ever buy for myself, but I'm glad my library owns it and I got to read it.

Born to Drum

Tony Barrell's "Born to Drum" was great fun, I really enjoyed it. Even the somewhat more technical parts about drumming (I have zero musical abilities, I took piano lessons for years and can't play to save my life) were interesting. I've always had a thing for musicians, and I was surprised to find not everyone feels the same way. But he looked at why drummers tend to be a certain type of person and delved into what compels someone to become a drummer in the first place. He has a great sense of humor, too. Excellent all the way around.

Maplecroft; The Devil is Here in These Hills

I tried reading a book by Cherie Priest before, a Steampunk book called "Boneshaker", and I couldn't get into it. I thought I'd give her another try, since she's writing about a subject near and dear to my heart: Lizzie Borden. I finished this one, but I didn't really like it. It was very bizarre, I think the premise was something like Lizzie killed her parents because they were turning into sea monsters and she and her sister were researching it and they found some interesting specimens that Emma sent to a scientist and it ended up turning him into a raving, murdering lunatic who comes to Fall River to kill them. It was just very...odd.

After watching "Justified", I was eager to learn more about coal miners, so I picked up James Green's "The Devil is Here in These Hills", about West Virginia coal miners' struggle for freedom and equality. It was really quite moving, if a bit confusing. There were so many names of people I'd never heard of it was hard to keep everything straight. I still got something out of it, though, I think, about how these hardworking men were fighting against the company and the government at the same time. It's a rough life for sure.

Wilderness of Ruin; Stevie Nicks; Kill Me, Darling

I had high hopes for Roseanne Montillo's "Wilderness of Ruin". It sounded like it might be similar to Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City". I think that was her intention, it just didn't really gel. She took the story of convicted child killer Jesse Pomeroy, who at the age of 14 tortured and murdered several younger children, and tried to connect it to the Great Boston Fire with some of Herman Melville's life thrown in for good measure. The transitions were jarring and didn't make sense, and there wasn't much about Pomeroy at all. "Fiend" by Harold Schechter is a much better book about this young killer.

I really enjoyed Zoe Howe's biography of Stevie Nicks. Howe has a great, quirky sense of humor she incorporates into the story, which made Stevie's already interesting and incredible life even more fun to read about. It was softly done, a real love letter, but that was fine by me because I prefer not to hear anything nasty about Ms. Nicks. I do adore her. I've only seen her perform live about a dozen times now :)

Some of Max Allan Collins' Mickey Spillane Hammer books have been better than others. "Kill Me, Darling" was one of the really good ones. Velda has left Mike, who has spent the last four months she's been gone living in a bottle. Pat convinces Mike to crawl out of in when he tells him that Velda's shacked up with some nasty gangster type named Quinn down in Miami. Since Velda's old undercover boss was recently murdered, Pat and Mike think Velda was doing him a favor and investigating this guy, and now she might very well be in danger but too deep in to get out. Mike sobers up and heads down to Florida to rescue Velda. It was fun, and the descriptions of Miami in the 1950s were great.

Girl in a Band

Kim Gordon is awesome. "Girl in a Band" is a great book detailing her frustrations of being a female in the very male dominated world of rock n' roll. She also had some nice, tender memories of Kurt Cobain, which I always enjoy reading about. She is angry about Thurston's betrayal and breaking up her family, understandably and righteously so, and I'm glad she didn't try to play it off and be meek about it, the rage is authentic and her heartbreak is real. She's led a very unconventional life, and it was interesting.