Recently Read

As usual,  skip it if you wanna.

1.  The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano.  Okay, first off, I never would have picked this up if I had known it was a "romance".  Second of all, this book, about a woman in the witness protection program, had a preposterous plot, an obnoxious heroine, and was poorly written.  Third of all, according to the back cover of the paperback, The New York Times Book Review called it "Something Special".  The only way in HELL that happened is if the reviewer was the author's dad.  'Nuff  said.

2. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos.  Man, those Latin authors.  I get it that their characters are supposed to be larger than life!  and fascinating!  and exuberant! and they experience things more deeeeeeeply than non-Latinos!  All I can think when I'm reading is "These people are all batsh*t crazy."  Guess it's just me.

3.  Movie Review!  "Girl Model" is a documentary about a fashion model recruiter (a former model herself) who is recruiting young Russian girls to model in Japan.  Pretty damn depressing.

4.  Mermaids on the Moon by Elizabeth Stuckey French - I think I'm going to come up with some shorthand for badly-written books.  Instead of TL;DR (too long; didn't read), as in blog posts, I'm going to label them TS;DF, for "too stupid; didn't finish".  Mermaids on the Moon?  TS;DF.

5.  Movie Review!  "Les Miserables", the 1998 one with Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, and Clare Danes, NOT  the one that came out last year, because Netflix has a twisted sense of humor.  Thanks, Netflix!  ANYway, THIS version of Les Mis is non-musical and pretty good.  I never thought much of Clare Danes, but I will say she had a couple of scenes where it was obvious that she's got some acting chops.  On the other hand, I found  Uma Thurman's death scene unintentionally pretty funny.  Sorry, Uma.  Liam was Liam, and the whole thing was pretty good.

6.  True Sisters by Sandra Dallas.  Novel about Mormons in the 1850s heading for Utah.  Spoiler alert:  The vast majority of characters either dies or loses important body parts.  Man, I usually like Sanda Dallas' novels, but this one was pretty grim.

7.  Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts - I had never read this author before, and now I know why.  A reviewer on Amazon said it best:

"Her books are all copies of each other, with different character names and settings. They all follow a predictable pattern: a hurt, emotionally abused heroine goes back to her hometown or some other place to solve a mystery or murder from her past. She meets a gorgeous, oh-so-wonderful man who falls in love with her within two days (even though she treats him terribly). She acts like she wants nothing to do with him until two pages before the book ends. She then declares she is madly in love with him and cannot survive without him *snort* and they live happily ever after. Oh yeah, while they're "falling in love" (and by the way, Robert's love scenes are terrible; I usually end up laughing at the absurdity of most of them), they come with inane clues and try to solve the mystery/murder but the suspect always end up being someone who makes no sense at all. "

Yep. 

8.  The Quilter's Homecoming by Jennifer Chiaverini - Novel about a woman and her husband who move to California in the 1920s - A light, quick read.  I'll probably read more of her stuff.

9.  Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille - Memoir of a woman who lived alone in the Adironacks.  Interesting, if a little preachy toward the end.


How about you?  Read (or watched) anything good lately?