Tag Archives: Reviews

A Year in Books/Day 77: Holidays on Ice

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  • Title: Holidays on Ice
  • Author: David Sedaris
  • Year Published: 1997/This Edition: 1998 (First Back Bay paperback edition)
  • Year Purchased: 2007-2008
  • Source: It was a gift from my Mom.
  • About: Only two words are necessary to draw you to this amazing little book: David Sedaris. If you don’t understand what that means, I assign you the following homework: Find one of his stories; even an excerpt will do (see below). Read it. Be converted. Come back here and thank me.
  • Motivation: Hello, it’s David Sedaris. Although I have a mad, fangirl’s love for his sister Amy, I’ll never turn down the chance to read his stories. Neither should you.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 50: “I recall mistaking her for a Trick-or-Treater! She wore, I remember, a skirt the size of a beer cozy, a short, furry jacket, and, on her face, enough rouge, eye shadow, and lipstick to paint our entire house, inside and out. She’s a very small person and I mistook her for a child. A child masquerading as a prostitute. I handed her a fistful of chocolate nougats, hoping that, like the other children, she would quickly move on to the next house.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 75: Madame Tussaud A Life in Wax

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  • Title: Madame Tussaud A Life in Wax
  • Author: Kate Berridge
  • Year Published: 2006 (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: A gift from my lovely Momma.
  • About: Even though an autobiography exists under her name, there is so much about Madame Tussaud’s life that has been lost to time. A lot of the information that remains is untrustworthy or muddled. This only adds to the burden carried by any biographer. Kate Berridge’s account is better than expected yet still suffers in spots from lack of original source material. Fortunately, she almost makes up for that deficiency by her unusual approach of treating her subject as a historian, instead of merely as an artisan-impresario. By the end of the book, she succeeds in making Madame Tussaud at least as life-like as her statues-not a small feat given the circumstances.
  • Motivation: History + Biography + Unusual Female Subject= an irresistible trio for me. My Mother knows this!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 21: “The waxworks were the ideal forum to cater for a phenomenal human interest in public figures that was distinct from respect for their work. In fact cultural achievement was not necessary at all to appear there: the admission requirement was to have attained sufficient public interest to guarantee a crowd; notoriety was as compelling as admiration. From the recently executed criminal to society beauties, Curtius guaranteed a close-up view of the most talked-about people of the day. As each person had their time in the spotlight of public interest, they would take their turn in his pantheon.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
    English: The wax statue of the creator of &quo...

     

A Year in Books/Day 74: ‘Tis Herself

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  • Title: ‘Tis Herself An Autobiography
  • Authors: Maureen O’Hara with John Nicoletti
  • Year Published: 2004 /This Edition: 2005 (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Barnes & Noble
  • About: The autobiography of Hollywood’s most famous Irishwoman was a long time coming. She was 84 at publication. Tucked inside amongst the expected (but interesting) stories of living and working with lots of larger-than-life stars are some stellar, little-known accomplishments that help to flesh out her legacy, leaping from legend to true trailblazer between covers. It’s worth a read for that alone (and the stunning photographs).
  • Motivation: Maureen O’Hara is one of my favourite actresses (and co-redhead). Her talent and ridiculously unattainable beauty graced so many of the movies I loved as a kid (and still do). I obsessively watched them over and over whenever they were on television (and still do). She injected her characters with intelligence, strength, spirit and wit-making her one of the best role models a girl (or grown woman, ahem) could ask for. I loved her then (and still do). Now go watch ‘The Quiet Man’.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 83: “I went downstairs and asked Wilmon to go get Will. He found him in a drunken stupor right where the lady had said he would be, at a whorehouse in a seedy part of the city. He’d apparently been there for days, bragging and shooting his mouth off. We had been married less than sixty days.”

    Maureen O'Hara in a screenshot from the traile...

    Maureen O'Hara-Image via Wikipediawhorehouse in a seedy part of the city. He'd apparently been there for days, bragging and shooting his mouth off. We had been married less than sixty days."

  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 73: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen

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  • Title: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen
  • Compiled by: Dominique Enright
  • Year Published: 2002 (Barnes & Noble, Inc. by arrangement with Michael O’Mara Books Limited)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Excerpts from her fiction and personal letters are featured in this slim but potent volume.
  • Motivation: Jane Austen! Quotes!
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 63: “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of the mouths of other people.” (Letter to Anna Austen, 28 September 1814)
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Jane Austen, Watercolour and pencil portrait b...

    One Witty Brit-Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 72: 1001 Pearls of Wisdom

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  • Title: 1001 Pearls of Wisdom Wisdom, wit and insight to enlighten and inspire
  • Author: David Ross
  • Year Published: 2006 (Duncan Baird Publishers Ltd)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: Unknown
  • About:  This is a thick little volume full of colourful illustrations and inspirational quotes that are divided into traditional self-help categories (the good life, finding fulfilment, lighting the dark).
  • Motivation: Quotes, quotes, quotes! Reading, compiling and dispensing quotes is one of my favourite pastimes (I know, I’m a bit obsessive). Although I have an extremely curious and roving mind, I love anything that gives me, however fleetingly, a sense of order.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 285: “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” (Benjamin Franklin)
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 71: Passionate Pilgrim

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  • Title: Passionate Pilgrim The Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed
  • Author: Antoinette May
  • Year Published: 1993/First paperback edition,1994 (Marlowe & Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2000/2001
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: This is one of those books whose front cover tag line lets you know exactly what you are in for: Heroine of Mexico, Pioneer Archaeologist, and Acclaimed Journalist. She certainly had one of those rollicking, magically adventurous lives that makes even the highest of achievers look like dull, stay-at-home types.
  • Motivation: See above. I was also sucked in by the fabulous photographs of her no-less fabulous exploits. I adore kick-ass ladies!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 82: “It took nearly ten minutes of spirited cranking before Alma’s car was galvanized into action. As it jolted down the road, the jungle closed in around them. Distance ceased to exist, as strangely contorted trees, towering plants, feathery ferns, and spongy fungus all crowded together. Then, the last corner turned and instead of another vista of unchanging forest, a clear straight road led for another mile or so to a sight of breathtaking grandeur. A great white pyramid towered high above the forest, capped by a temple. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by excited gasps, and then the crew were pummeling one another deliriously.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 70: Vamp The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara

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  • Title: Vamp The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara
  • Author: Eve Golden
  • Year Published: 1996 (Emprise Publishing, Inc.)
  • Year Published: 1996/1997
  • Source: A book club (I cannot remember which one)
  • About: Written forty years after Bara’s death, ‘Vamp’ was the first biography of film’s original bad girl superstar (who, incidentally, played her fair share of classic and/or good girl roles). It’s a well-balanced account of how publicity turned the comfortably middle class Ohioan into a seething, exotic sexpot. The manufactured stories about Goodman are truly a hoot! It also gives substance to the fact that Theda was actually a talented actress, something that has largely been lost to time and under the weight of her outlandish get-ups and the often naive or contrived plots of her films. Although her career proper lasted barely five years, it is rather melodramatic to call the natural slowing down of her fame a ‘fall’; considering the truly tragic fates that ensnared many of her contemporaries, her slide into prosperous and happy anonymity comes off as a blessing.
  • Motivation: I’m a silent movie junkie, as you well know by now. I’ve always had a fondness for the big-eyed Buckeye Vamp (psst, here’s a little secret: if we have a daughter, we plan on naming her Theda). Like Theda, I’m an Ohioan (albeit one from two hours North). I bought this book a full ten years before moving South to her hometown. Oddly enough, I live just a few minutes from the neighborhood she called home for her first twenty years!
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 47: “At least her ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ reviews provided some good news: it was a big hit, mostly due to curiosity about Theda. “Startling and remarkable,” according to one reviewer; another said of Theda and O’Neil, “their acting is splendidly realistic and emotionally powerful.” Being favorably compared to a stage diva like Nance O’Neil must have given Theda strength to continue filming.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    A photograph of Theda Bara.

    Ohio's Theda Bara-Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 69: On the Road

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  • Title: On the Road
  • Author: Jack Kerouac
  • Year Published: 1957 (The Viking Press)
  • Year Purchased: Unknown
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Do I really have to go into this? Sal, Dean, Marylou. You know the drill, right? In case you don’t, I’ll dedicate a few disjointed sentences to your enlightenment: Although not his best book, ‘On the Road’ is certainly Kerouac’s main claim to notoriety and immortality. It is a great gateway to his other work. Hell, even poor Kerouac is better than most and this is very, very far from being his worst. You’ll meet some of his Beat Generation friends on the pages. Since it captures a state-of-mind that most young Americans experience to one degree or another, it is a must read: exhilarating, chaotic, life affirming. If you haven’t read it yet, and want to, do so before the film is released. Please.
  • Motivation: I think most teenagers go through a Beat phase. This novel is usually the first thing they read. I was a little different-I devoured a few random biographies before taking the ritual plunge with ‘On the Road’. However, I didn’t truly appreciate any of it until a second go-round with the whole gang in my late twenties.
  • Times Read: 2-3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 180: “At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend’s father where he is no more.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8
    On the Road excerpt in the center of San Franc...

    Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 68: Are You Somebody

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  • Title: Are You Somebody The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman
  • Author: Nuala O’Faolain
  • Year Published: 1996 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2000
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Nuala O’Faolain could write. That seems like a simplistic assertion but it’s true: she could write, and she did so beautifully and well in five books. This was her first. She was 56 at publication, and everything she had learned in nearly 6 decades of  living was poured, eloquently and firmly, into this exquisite volume. This is what I would term a “quiet” memoir, not because of the contents but because of her unflinching yet lyrical voice: the battles and iniquities and joys of her life are recounted without hyperbole, bombast or dramatics. It’s lovely, moving, humorous, without pity: it’s straight-up what a memoir should be.
  • Motivation: The title and the jacket blurbs were a huge lure (unusual for me). The cover photo is alluring, the concept compelling.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 36: “I’m not ashamed of our fervours. But I am ashamed that twice I stole the gifts I gave to my heroine. I took Tweed talc or round soaps in tissue paper from other girls’ cubicles. I had to. I had no money. I didn’t take them for myself, just to give to her. I think that she may have known-and that the nuns knew and never came out with it. They knew I told lies. They knew I read under the blanket. They knew (this was nearly the end of me) that I smoked, perched in the window embrasure of a lavatory high up in the attics, listening at the cold glass to the noises of the town, like the great roars from the rallies for the IRA men-one of them was a local-who were killed on the Borders in 1956.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 67: Literary Feuds

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  • Title: Literary Feuds A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe
  • Author: Anthony Arthur
  • Year Published: 2002 (MJF Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005-2007
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: There are writers who spend their lives and careers building a literary community: where everyone is helpful and supportive of one another, where advice and camaraderie abound, where failures and successes are shared. Unfortunately, reality decrees that some people aren’t meant to get along. This same reality also dictates that some people are just jerks. I’ll leave you to decide how to categorize the titans covered in this book. At least wordsmiths lace their rancorous verbal wars with plenty of wit; unlike feuds involving reality “stars” or athletes, you’ll walk away from these encounters with all of your brain cells intact.

    Lewis-Sinclair-LOC

    Sinclair Lewis-Image via Wikipedia

  • Motivation: Writers. History. Obscure facts. Intellectuals fussin’ and fightin’. Bring it on.
  • Times Read:1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 75: “Fortunately, a revised picture of Lewis is now available from Dreiser’s biographer, Richard Lingeman. Written with sympathetic insight instead of disdain, Lingeman’s ‘Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street’ was published early in 2002; although it adds nothing to our understanding of the quarrel between the two writers beyond what Lingeman had already described in his earlier works about Dreiser, it should help Lewis toward the literary resurrection he deserves. At the least, Lewis should be placed side by side as a literary giant with Theodore Dreiser, the difficult man he admired so much, and from whom he got so little in return.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10