True Confessions...

Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Evidence (proof positive?) that I’m not a truly liberated reader: I’ll preface this review by stating that I read this book as part of a study of the romance genre. It’s professional development, and it’s good for you!

Yet I find, every time I read a romance novel, that I actually like them more than I care to admit. And this one, I liked even more than the usual. Here’s what made it stand out:
Of course, it features a strong woman and a strong man, and they despise each other from the get-go. Naturally. The thing that stood out for me is that the woman here is the down-on-her-luck widow of a crooked televangelist and mother of a timid young boy. On the face of it, it’s not the stuff romances are made of. Rachel’s desperate for work so she can earn money to take care of her son, and when she returns to the small southern town where she and her ex-husband resided (in the hopes of finding the fortune he left behind), she meets Gabe, a surly (but gorgeous) man who is attempting to revamp an old drive-in theater. She connives her way into a job, assisting him with the renovation. And sparks fly…

One other surprisingly delightful element of this novel is the rich and engaging cast of secondary characters. These folks are warm, realistically flawed, and—my gold standard: likeable.
This would explain why I found myself, more than once, standing and reading this book, truly intending to set it down—and completely incapable of doing so. Yes, I’ll be reading more of the books in the Chicago Stars series Ms. Phillips has created. And yes, you’ve just witnessed the newly-hatched addiction of a brand new romance reader.

Booking Through Thursday: A Second First Time?

Booking Through Thursday asks: What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?

Oh, this is too easy. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Hands-down, my favorite to re-read. True confession: When my sister told me she was reading it to my nephew, I felt 99% ecstatic and 1% jealous that he was hearing the story for the first time.

“It’s So Easy”* (Buddy Holly Reading Spree, Book 2)

Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly by John Goldrosen and John Beecher

This book is a must-see, if only for the pictures: there’s a photo on nearly every page. Since I always am photo-hungry when reading nonfiction, I was well pleased by this book. One thing I noticed: this book doesn’t cover anything too personal, and it certainly doesn’t address anything that would put Buddy Holly in a bad light. If you’re looking for hagiography, this just may be your best bet.

Nonetheless, the authors interviewed many of the insiders from back in the day, so the text is sprinkled with wonderful anecdotes. This book also satisfies my reference librarian geek-out need for additional resources: there are appendices that list all known recordings by Buddy Holly, all recordings featuring vocals or solo instrumentals by Buddy Holly, all recordings by other artists featuring Buddy Holly as an instrumentalist or backing vocalist, and all tour dates and locations (many of them in Iowa!) I love this stuff!

*I grew up hearing Linda Rondstadt’s cover of this song, which I confess I never liked. However, the Buddy Holly & the Crickets original is fantastic! The way he sings the word “doggone” reinforces my view that this word is grossly underused and should be brought back into common parlance. I’m doing my part in the cause: Please see: "I Read It Against My Will" and "Booking Through Thursday: The Numbers Game."

“Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (Buddy Holly Reading Spree, Book 1)

Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman

This is the first Buddy Holly biography I read, and I found it to be quite addictive. I very much liked the brief descriptions the author provides of each of the hit songs, which inspired me to listen to them with “new ears.” I’m particularly clueless about things like percussion arrangements, so I learned things from this book.

And through a quote from Buddy’s older brother Larry Holley, Philip Norman reveals the wonderful charisma of the skinny boy from Lubbock. At a local “battle of the bands,” Larry saw Buddy take the stage:

“There’d been a lot of real good-looking singers up on that stage and when it was Buddy’s turn to come on, all these kids started laughing at him and yellin’ out things at him, like ‘Ol’ Turkeyneck.’ I was starting to get real aggravated about it all. But Buddy came from the side to the center in one movement without seeming to move his feet at all, and hit his guitar, and that whole crowd went hog-wild.” (pp. 63-64)

I’m convinced that a huge part of Buddy Holly’s appeal is the mismatch between his spectacled, rather geeky, appearance and the groundbreaking rock music he created. It’s a classic underdog success story, and who doesn’t love that?

Also, since the author is British, he provides an interesting perspective, particularly since Buddy Holly’s music initially was hotter in England than in America. One thing I didn’t adore: While, from everything I’ve read, I don’t think Norman Petty (Buddy Holly & the Crickets’ manager) was fair in his dealings with the band, I think it’s a bit snarky for the author to refer to Petty as “Clovis Man” (after the discovery near Clovis, NM, of artifacts created by people in prehistoric times). A small quibble in a fine book about Buddy Holly that gives a good overview of his life.

A Thing for Buddy Holly

This year is the 50th anniversary of the much-too-early death of Buddy Holly (at the tender age of 22), and I’m having a mini-obsession. Being from Iowa, I grew up knowing that the plane carrying Buddy, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) crashed in a cornfield near Clear Lake. I’ve always felt bad about that—that the crash took place in my home state. And as a person who swears by the safety of small planes, it’s disturbing that such a crash took place at all. I grew up hearing bits of stories—myths, I believe I would call them—about an alleged gunshot having been fired in the airplane, and I’m glad some of the books about Buddy Holly address that question. (And, I believe, debunk it.) With so much of the talk focused on his death, I was eager to learn more about his life and his music.

The thing that happened when I began reading the first Buddy Holly book is that I found that I needed to check out a CD of his music to hear the songs I didn’t know so well: such as “Rave On" and “Not Fade Away.” And then I found a 2-CD set that contained even more songs, and the fantabulous Buddy Holly Memorial Collection (3 CDs in that bad boy, including the devastatingly beautiful undubbed versions of some of the apartment recordings made shortly before his death). And then my friend—right there in the middle of book club when I confessed my Buddy Holly crush—produced her boxed set of The Complete Buddy Holly. (I hang with a very good crowd.)

And—yes, it gets even better—I also tracked down a very fine documentary produced by Sir Paul McCartney himself: The Real Buddy Holly Story, which contains live footage of Buddy Holly & the Crickets!!

And—no surprise here, I suppose—somewhere along the line, I just plain fell in love with Buddy Holly.


Here’s the first installment of my Buddy Holly reading spree.

A Fender Bender Can Be a Good Thing

Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton

A romantic comedy that is also a cozy story of families with young children. Though at times, the cozy factor is threatened by all kinds of nasty real life troubles—making this the sort of story I enjoy, with the good and the bad all mixed up together (with a strong chance at a happy ending).

Mina works in an insurance company call center, and one day she receives a call from a quite embarrassed man named Peter, a professor who damaged his car while dodging a cat. As sometimes happens in this world, they hit it off immediately—but the situation is unusual because it is an insurance phone call, rather than a social conversation. So both return to their very busy lives—Mina to her role as single mother to Sal, an elementary school girl who could read through an “alien invasion” (I understand that girl), and sister/landlord to her troubled teenaged sister Jess; and Peter to his life as the widowed father of twin girls, Cassie and Kim. Thank goodness Peter’s accident-prone in that vehicle—because after the second insurance call to Mina, she notes his home phone number and they begin a series of phone conversations about their lives, children, and the difficulties they encountered. And thankfully some of these difficulties eventually bring them together to meet, part, and then meet again—for good, one hopes.

As a person who reads for characters, this book was a feast: the protagonists seem immediately real, and I feel like I could jump right into a conversation with even the secondary characters—which is a sign that they were well-drawn, realistic, and likeable. One more appealing factor to this American reader: this is an unabashedly British book, which is something I adore. We think the U.S. and the U.K. are so similar, but when I read words like “pedal bin” and “spacehopper,” I realize: not so. A delightful escape into the lives of some very amiable people.

Thanks to the author for offering and providing a copy of the book--very kind.

I Am a Female Reader

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Perhaps (probably?) because I am a woman, I find that the prose of Ian Fleming leaves me cold. The reason I read this book is that it was our book club selection for the month. I confess that otherwise, I would never have attempted it. But when a friend selected it for the book club, I was glad, because it would coerce me into reading something I would otherwise not have read. For good reason, as it turns out. I think 007 is pretty horrid as a character; I would not like to know him. So hanging out with him throughout 181 pages was a prescription for pain.

Also, this book is full of three things I don’t enjoy: detailed action scenes (yawn), lots of French phrases (pretension!), and descriptions of card games/gambling (another big yawn, because I’m happily clueless about that topic).

One thing I did like: the page numbers appear as “002,” “010,” etc. That I liked. How’s that for damning with faint praise? I’ll leave this one on the shelves for the fellas.

LBJ (again)

A Very Human President by Jack Valenti

A view of Lyndon Baines Johnson from one of his key advisors. Valenti was there in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated, and he accompanied Johnson to Washington, D.C. that evening. Johnson invited Valenti and some other advisors to stay at the Elms (the Johnsons’ Washington residence) that night, and Valenti didn’t leave Washington, D.C. until April 1966, when he resigned his position as special assistant to the president. This book was published in 1975, a couple of years after Johnson’s death. Still, Valenti was very protective about his former boss’s legacy; for example, he addresses the rift between Johnson and Robert Kennedy, but his explanation is a bit pat.

This book is full of LBJ tales, most of which are larger than life—no surprise there. I love the story of Johnson calling Truman, to get some support from a man who had been in his shoes. Valenti confesses to listening to the conversation on the other line a little longer than was necessary, and I just loved the humanness of that moment. And he writes that the phone conversation with Truman was like a tonic for Johnson.

Valenti also included a section specifically about the press, which was much more interesting than I would have expected. He describes how journalists would become vexed by Johnson’s unwillingness to reveal his schedule until the last moment, and how that gradually undermined the president’s credibility.

The section about Vietnam surprised me, too—because when I read it, it seemed that escalating the conflict was inevitable. Valenti says that most of the advisors at the time were still “Kennedy men,” and he makes the argument that even if Kennedy had lived, the U.S. still would have sent more and more troops to southeast Asia. (Again, I wondered if Valenti presented the situation in this way to protect Johnson’s legacy. I am a skeptic. And I don’t think we’ll ever wholly understand how that whole situation went so wrong.)

Valenti was a lovely writer. This book is easy to read, and it contains some delightful turns of phrase. Interestingly, though, the most memorable line comes from a letter written to Valenti by David Halberstam. Referring to Lyndon Johnson, Halberstam writes, “He reeks of human juices.” Amen.