books update

Just finished Cheat & Charmer, by Elizabeth Frank. Apparently she won a Pulitzer for a previous biography, but this novel was not good at all. It's set in Hollywood during the McCarthy era & describes one woman's troubles after she testifies. Her philandering asshole of a husband is a successful screenwriter/director/producer, & she doesn't want to get him blacklisted, so she testifies, naming her sister & some other people as ex-Communists. Lots of trouble ensues. Some of the story is actually not bad, it's just the writing & the author's sense of reality that bothers me. I was constantly confused about whether Frank was describing the present or events that had happened before, & the main character's stutter was really annoying & distracting. Also, I know it was the 1950s, but I have trouble believing that every single husband in the world considered it indispensable, almost his god-given right, to have girls on the side. & the characters act so improbably that it's hard to stay in the story. This was 550 pages' worth of timewasting.

On a brighter note, my new author crush is Philippa Gregory, for her historical novels about Tudor England. I've read The Other Boleyn Girl, The Queen's Fool & The Virgin's Lover this month. They're fantastic! I've always loved reading English history, especially biographies of Henry VIII & Elizabeth I & Alison Weir's books, & these are detailed views of what may have happened. I get so drawn into the books that I can't even put them down until they're done. Good thing I read really fast (~500 pages each).

Eric Hansen is wonderful. I read The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer & Orchid Fever and I can't wait to read more of his work. He's got a great sense of humor & his subjects are certainly off the beaten path. Val McDermid is wonderful as well - she's a British crime novelist & tends to write about serial killers, whom are endlessly fascinating to me. Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis was a very thoughtful examination of what ancient philosophies & religions have said about happiness, compared to today's scientific findings.

Oh, you thought this would be another post about dating & partying? I'm trying to be a less superficial woman this year. :)