Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

Pat believes he has been in the "bad place", or the mental hospital, for only a few months but actually it's been more like four years.  He believes that he and his wife, Nikki are separated and having an apart time but that that will change soon as he is a changed man from what he was before. He is now fit and reading books to make himself more literate for his English teacher wife and give themselves something to talk about together and with her friends who used to put him down for not knowing much about literature.

Pat's mom comes and gets him out of the mental hospital on the condition that he goes and sees a therapist and lives with his parents.  His new therapist is Dr. Cliff Patel and he's pretty cool in that he doesn't try to tell him to give up on getting Nikki back like his therapist in the hospital.  He's also an Eagles fanatic which the two bond over. While in his waiting room he hears a song by Kenny G and he freaks out. Kenny G is his nemesis and the song "Songbird" is evil to him.  He will sometimes see him at night in bed and will bang his head against the wall to try to get him to go away.

His old childhood friend Ronnie who had written to him while he was in the hospital stops by the house to see how's he's doing and to invite him over to dinner at his house with his wife Veronica and their young daughter.  He and Nikki used to make fun of them, but Pat finds himself accepting the invitation.  When he arrives he finds that someone else has been invited to the dinner: an older woman named Tiffany who is Veronica's sister and who is widowed and going through a rough time. She has just lost her job for her bad behavior and is seeing a therapist for her depression.  Dinner is a stilted affair and when Pat walks Tiffany back to her parent's place where she lives in a trailer out back she tells him he can have sex with her if he wants and he tells her he is married and she says she is too. They both end up crying in each other's arms and go their separate ways.

Life with Pat's dad is difficult as he is a difficult man to be with. He is not an open man. He only seems to show up when there's an Eagles game on the television.  And even then his mood depends on how well the Eagles are playing.  His brother Jake bought season tickets for Pat who once had them before he went into the hospital so the two of them and a friend of Jake's go to the home games.  The Eagles winning or losing is important in this book because when the Eagles win his dad is in a better mood and more talkative--not by much, but a little bit.  And things are easier on his long-suffering unappreciated mother when they win.

Tiffany has been following him around when he goes running and makes a proposition for him that will change his life.  If he will do something for her she will do something really big for him that could be a game changer in the apart time being over. But he can't tell anyone about it. Not even his therapist.  Will he do it?  Will what happened to put Pat in the hospital happen again?  This is a fascinating book that shows inside the mind of someone who is mentally ill and trying to put the broken pieces back together.  He knows that he wasn't a good husband to his wife Nikki but wants to change and be a better person.  But as a reader, we suspect that that boat has sailed, but there is Tiffany, another broken soul who is deserving of love too so you kinda root for the two of them to get together.  I really loved this book that shows what we do for love and how it effects us and everything we do.  Even if you've seen the movie the book is very much worth reading.  I highly recommend reading this book.     

Quotes

After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now—because Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with.

-Mathew Quick (The Silver Linings Playbook p 34)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Linings-Playbook-Novel-ebook/dp/B001ANSSDC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1532948772&sr=8-2&keywords=silver+linings+playbook

Ms. Marvel Vol 3: Crushed by G. Willow Wilson (Writer), Elmo Bondoc (Artist), Takeshi Miyazawa (Artist), Ian Herring (Colorist), VC's Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

In the last comic, Kamala was after the Inventor with the help of Wolverine. The Inventor was using kids to power his weapons.  They are able to shut down the Inventor. Wolverine tells Medusa the Queen of the Inhumans about how Kamala got her powers during a terrigin mist and Medusa sends Lockjaw to watch over Kamala since she won't come to the Inhuman's land to be protected.  She does agree to visit in order to train and learn best how to use her powers.  The last issue hinted that Loki would be in this issue and he is--briefly. Causing mischief as usual during a Valentine's Day dance.

When friends of her parents who have recently moved back to New Jersey come for a visit with their very eligible son, Kamara is dreading the visit from the perfect Kamran who is likely going to be a bore.  Then he mentions he loves battlecraft her favorite game and loves to watch Bollywood movies just like she does and she is smitten.

Kilowatt, new Inhuman shows up wrecking havoc on the streets and Kamala must stop her as Ms. Marvel. When they are fighting Kilowatt tells her of someone other than Medusa who is providing for the Inhumans and that she should think about joining.  Kamran sees her changing from Ms. Marvel back to Kamala and tells her his secret--he is an Inhuman too. Poor Bruno, her best friend who has the biggest crush on her, is devastated by this turn of events.  But he's there for her when she gets in trouble and needs his help.  This book also contained a S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 comic that features Ms. Marvel and Jemma Simmons and Phil Coulson that is really cool.  This book leaves some pretty big questions unanswered.  I liked this one better than the first two and look forward to seeing what direction it is going toward.  I recommend this book. 

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ms-Marvel-Vol-Crushed-ebook/dp/B00WUNKR4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532692302&sr=8-1&keywords=ms+marvel+vol+3

Scot Free: The Lighter Side of the Dark Underbelly of the California Dream by Catriona McPherson

Lexy Campbell was swept off her feet back in Scotland and packed her bags and headed to Cuento, California to marry dentist Bran Lancer. She had a successful therapy practice in Scotland and was in the process of getting her license to practice in America when she caught him in bed with his ex-wife.  She packs her bags and moves out to Reno to get a divorce started then checks into a hotel in Cuento while she sees to her one client a couple of eighty-something-year-olds who were wanting to end the marriage amicably.  They had one more meeting to sign the divorce papers but neither one showed up and instead Lexy is asked to come into the police station to answer questions for the police because the man, Clovis "Boom Boom" Bombaro the fireworks king was found dead with a firecracker shoved up his rear that had gone off.

Mrs. Visalia Bombaro is the number one suspect even though she was having her tire changed by the fire department at the time. The police believe a timer was used on the firecracker that was removed later and that someone was working with her.  At first, they think that someone was her but security cameras place her in the building the entire time in question.  Clovis had been planning to run off with Barbara and the police believe that Visalia killed him in a fit of jealousy.

Not having a car, Lexy walks to the Last Ditch Motel and rents a room from the smartass owner Noleen.  She awakens in the morning to Todd in brief Hello Kitty pajamas asking her if he can stay in her room and if she'd take care of the spider in his shower.  She agrees and he uses her phone to call his husband Roger.  She finds out from Roger that Todd sees bugs that aren't there and that they've moved from their nice house to steadily worse hotels until they arrived at the Last Ditch.  They are both doctors and when Roger hears that Lexy is a therapist he wants her to work on Todd but he will have none of that.  He isn't the only one that has problems. Kathi the housekeeper has OCD and her and Todd enable each other in their disorders.  But soon real bugs begin to arrive at the hotel in swarms in certain rooms.

Meanwhile, Visalia's niece Sparky has arrived before anyone could tell her that her uncle was dead and worse she married a Dolshikov. They run fireworks on the east coast the way that the Bombaros ran them on the west coast. Before he died, Clovis was going to go after them for entering Texas, which he felt was the West and invading his territory.  Now with Clovis conveniently out of the way they seem to be ready to take over the Bombaro company and own all the fireworks.

Visalia tells Lexy that her and Clovis had reconciled and were going to Sicily to live out their years in the town their mothers were from.  Which gives Barbara a motive. She says she was waiting at the airport but no one can confirm that. Visalia believes the old Sicilian family the Poggios killed Clovis because they were coming back to Sicily and threatening the ownership of the family farm.  Lexy thinks this is ridiculous and refuses to tell Mike the female detective running the case.  Lexy is playing detective which ticks off Mike but not as much as when she analyzes her in a bad way.

This is a crazy mystery with kooky characters and so many plot twists you'll get whiplash.  I really loved Todd. He was such fun to read about.  I have to admit I didn't figure it out.  This is not the greatest book in the world to read. It's not meant to be.  It's a really good beach read. Something light and fluffy that won't strain your brain too much unless you are obsessed with trying to figure out who did it.  I wasn't. I just went with the flow of the insanity of this book and enjoyed the ride.   I recommend this book.       

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Scot-Free-Last-Ditch-Mystery-ebook/dp/B071VXZD1H/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532527050&sr=8-1&keywords=scot+free+by+catriona+mcpherson

Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Star by David Hepworth

If someone is going to write a book deciding who is a rock star or what a rock star moment is they should have the credentials to back it up. So I'm going to give you the writer's bona fides. Hepworth is a music journalist, writer, and publishing industry analyst who presented the definitive rock program Whistle Test and anchored the coverage of Live Aid in 1985. He has won numerous awards for writing and he is currently a radio columnist and a media correspondent for The Guardian.  He believes that the age of the rock star is over. That it lasted from 1955-1994. In this book, he goes year by year and takes an event from that year, perhaps a personal event from a rock star's life or maybe an event in rock history that changed things.  Here is a sampling of the years from the book.

September 14, 1955: Rampart Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. Little Richard was the first rock star. He was born a very unusual child with a deformed leg that he compensated for by taking small mincing steps that got him called a faggot, sissy, punk, and freak.  He got his start touring with a snake oil salesman and then performed with a minstrel show who introduced him as Princess Lavonne and he played in a dress.  He picked up the idea for his pompadour from a man named Esquerita and his makeup from Billy Wright though he would always say that people stole from him.  When he got his record deal no one expected much. The song "Maybellene" by Chuck Berry's first song was playing on the jukeboxes. Producer Bumps Blackwell was up for doing something similar.  They recorded "Kansas City" and "Directly From My Heart to You" but they just didn't seem to have it. They went to the local bar for a break and Little Richard sat down at the piano and began belting out the dirty song "Tutti Frutti".  In the original version, it went "Tutti Frutti, good booty. If it's greasy, it makes it so easy."  They brought the song back to the studio and Little Richard sang it to Dorothy LaBostrie with his back turned to her and she didn't want the job but Blackwell convinced her to do it for her children she was trying to support with the little money she was making waitressing.  The song reached number two on the R&B charts and number 17 on the main pop charts which wasn't as high as the white Pat Boone version but it had reached around the world and set it on fire.  He would go on and record further records with Blackwell such as "Lucille", "Long Tall Sally", "Keep a Knockin'", "Good Golly Miss Molly", and "The Girl Can't Help It''.  The way he looked and the way he acted put him on another plane altogether and with his string of hits, it made him a bona fide star and the first rock star.

September 26, 1965: Aarhus, Denmark. The Who were in Aarhus on a Scandinavian tour.  That night there had been crowd trouble and they had only been on stage for a few minutes when the crowd started throwing stuff at the stage and they had to head back to the dressing room and the hoses had to be turned on the crowd because they had gotten so out of control.  Pissed off, they, as usual, turned on each other.  The band had been formed by Roger Daltry with the mercurial Pete Townshend, the inscrutable, thick-skinned John Entwistle, and the indestructible Keith Moon. Townshend and Moon liked to provoke a reaction. Once Townshend shoved a five-pound note in front of a friend who was broke and when he didn't take it tore it up in pieces. Moon, who had mental health issues, beat up his mother who bought him a drum kit for him to take his aggressions out on.  That night, though he didn't have his drums with him to bang away at and he and Daltry went at it when Daltry got pissed off at the band's use of speed and how it made the band act and flushed Moon's supply down the toilet.  In retaliation Moon came at Daltry who punched him. Security had to pull them apart. After they played their second gig that night one thing was for certain: Daltry had to go.  The manager of The Who for two weeks thought about how to reshuffle the band and fix it but could come up with no solution other than to let Daltry back in so he explained to the band that they had something together as a unit no matter how they felt about each other and Townshend and Moon couldn't stand each other and often came to blows.  Daltry agreed to let the drug issue go and the band agreed to take him back. They realized that no matter how they felt about each other the band was more important. Later that year they would release their breakthrough album My Generation with the title song that would become their anthem. "My Generation" was inspired by when Townshend had a hearse outside his flat which offended the traditional residents of his neighborhood and was towed away by authorities.  It was said that the Queen Mother didn't like seeing the hearse because it reminded her of the funeral of her late husband.  He quickly wrote a song with its hostage-to-fortune line about hoping to die before getting old.  This song would make them rock stars and put them in rock history books.

May 16, 1971: New York City. On August 23, 1970, Lou Reed's parents drove into New York City to pick him up and take him home after he was kicked out of The Velvet Underground a band that was created by Andy Warhol. A band that he had written all the songs for but had taken none of the credit for.  Underground was the operative word as they never broke out and had a hit.  And Lou Reed desperately wanted to have a hit song.  He had been writing songs for years trying to get a hit song with no success.  And moving back home to his parents was a huge embarrassment and set back as in those days no one moved back in with their parents.  He was twenty-nine and he still hadn't hit it big and was thinking he never would and had given up on the rock star dream.  He took a job as a typist in his father's accounting office and wrote odd and badly in need of an editor poetry for publications.  As a teen, his anger issues had surfaced and his parents had sent him to have electric shock treatment. This didn't work as his anger issues continued to hound him his whole life.  David Bowie had come to New York City from England and while there had gone to see one of his favorite bands The Velvet Underground and enthused over Lou Reed to the lead singer Doug Yule who had to inform him that he wasn' t Lou Reed and that Reed wasn't in the band anymore.  Reed recorded a little paired down song called "Walk on the Wild Side" about Warhol's Factory and on May 16, 1971, played it for Richard and Lisa Robinson. She was a journalist and friend of the stars and he was an A & R man for RCA records.  This was a typical night when people in the music business would gather around and listen to Reed hold court and pontificate and play some of his songs.  Robinson suggested that he give recording another go with this song at RCA where David Bowie had just signed a huge contract and was a big fan.  He might even be able to get him artistic control and be able to record it in London where he wanted to record it.  Over the summer Reed set out to claim credit for The Velvet Underground songs that he wrote.  RCA threw a party for both Lou Reed and David Bowie and Bowie let Lou Reed take the limelight that night as he felt it his due.  With "Walk on the Wild Side" Lou Reed would finally have the hit he so desired and put him in rock star history.

July 4, 1976: Tampa Florida. In 1970 Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac the band he helped found and went to become a gravedigger wanting nothing more to do with the band or any of the money from the band. This wasn't a problem for years because the band was in debt. Then when Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and John McVie add Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and put out their first album Fleetwood Mac it outsold any album from the Warner Brothers catalog and caused their back albums to sell meaning that Green got a check from the band. He took a shotgun and went to his accountant and threatened him. This earned him a ticket to the mental hospital.  Mick, Christine, and John would form the rhythm section and they would put down the beat to a certain extent and then wait for the lyrics to come forth to finish it.  The problem with this is that usually the lyrics were about the people in the room and no one wanted to share what they were writing. Stevie and Lindsey had made a deal to never date the lead singer of a band, but when they formed a duo they got involved. When they joined Fleetwood Mac too much time spent in the studio meant that they really didn't want to go home to each other at night and they ended up breaking up. Christine had married John to make her dying mother happy and broke up with him as soon as she could.  She began dating the lighting man.  John began dating Linda Ronstadt.  Mick's marriage to George Harrison's sister-in-law was falling apart.  They were doing a huge amount of coke and drinking during the creation of Rumours and it ended up costing them almost a year to get it done with all the retakes.  Nicks would arrive every day in a fresh outfit as though she were going on stage in a theater and brought along her pet poodle.  She wrote "Dreams" in fifteen minutes. In Fleetwood Mac "the talent was evenly distributed" but "the member who cast the greatest spell and catalyzed the other four was Stevie Nicks."  She was always in danger of being overlooked because she didn't play an instrument.  On stage, she "played" a tambourine that was taped up so as not to be heard, but it left her free to be the main attraction on the stage something she took seriously.  "She had the Bambi eyes, Cupid's bow lips, Farrah Fawcett hair, and flawless skin of the girl you would never dare ask to the prom. At a distance, she was a blur of gauzy fabric." Young men couldn't resist her. On July 4, 1976, they took a break from recording to do a show in Florida with Dan Fogelberg, Loggins and Messina, and the Eagles.  When Mick looked out over the crowd as he played he could see a wave of Stevie devotees dressed in her wispy, witchy, black dresses hoping to capture her magic for themselves and get the boy they wanted.  Rumours would become one of the top-selling albums of all time for decades and Stevie Nicks would go on to have a successful solo career on top of her time spent with Fleetwood Mac.  Stevie Nicks helped make Fleetwood Mac a success and with her stage presence, she was certainly a rock star.

The book ends in 1994 appropriately with the death of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.  Cobain was truly the last rock star.  Other entries include multiple ones on the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson as well as Duran Duran's making of the infamous "Girl's On Film" video and how that relates to the burgeoning MTV video world, Bonnie Raitt, Prince, Elton John, the death of Randy Rhodes, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Freddie Mercury, Led Zeppelin, Hank Marvin, and Buddy Holly.  This is a very well researched book that contains little gems of information that you might not have known.  In my opinion, the entry of the date when he interviewed Bob Dylan shouldn't have been in there, but otherwise this a very interesting book and I highly recommend it.   

Quotes

  Being a rock star, as Bruce Springsteen said to me thirty years ago, retards adulthood and prolongs adolescence.

-David Hepworth (Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of Rock Stars p 5)

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-People-Rise-Fall-Stars-ebook/dp/B06W5GQPBD/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532351824&sr=8-1&keywords=uncommon+people+the+rise+and+fall+of+the+rock+star

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Sunburn refers to the sunburn PI Adam Bosk sees on Pauline "Polly" Costello the woman he has been hired to observe and find out where she is hiding the money she ripped off of her stepdaughter according to his client Irving Lowenstein.  Pauline has just left husband number two with her three-year-old daughter and headed down the road and stopped in the small town of Belleville, Delaware and decided to hole up here for a while. She gets a job as a waitress at the High-Ho bar and restaurant.

When he flirts with her she doesn't respond at first and then when one night she does, he is so shocked and not sure about going back to her room that he just leaves the bar which is the wrong move.  To give him a reason to stay in the town he uses his cooking skills to work as a cook there and tries flirting with her but gets shut down.  So he decides to start a sexual relationship with the other waitress Cath to inspire jealousy and it works.

She tells him to just stop talking to Cath. That that would be the easiest way to break things off with her and keep their relationship a secret.  It's not long that Adam is falling for Polly and against her better judgment she is falling for him. We learn that Polly killed her first husband by stabbing him in the heart in his sleep because he was abusive and threatened to kill her and their disabled daughter.  She was pardoned by the governor who decided to pardon some women who had been ill-used by the world and the law. She had taken out a life insurance policy on her husband with Irving's help but put the policy in the name of her daughter.  Irving had expected to get a commission on that policy and was pissed when he didn't get it.  Polly turned the care of her daughter over to the state.  So she's left two children behind.

Her second husband hires a PI to find her and then comes down threatening her if she doesn't come back but Adam intervenes and he leaves and goes back home with his tail between his legs.  Polly is hiding something from everyone and has a secret plan.  Polly is a bit of a bitch, but you kinda can't help but like her anyway. Some of that's due to the fact that she was abused by her first husband.  You feel sorry for her for that. But some of it is just her moxie to do what she wants to get what she wants no matter who's in the way.  And both of their treatment toward Cath is deplorable.  You do feel sorry for Adam who seems like a sweet guy for what he is getting himself into. This book is set in 1995 before the internet really came about so it's not like he could run a search and find out all this information on her and she had changed her name.  He was dependent on the information Irving had given him and believed that Irving had run a LexisNexis report on her.  This book holds many surprises and twists and turns you don't expect.  Lippman is a master storyteller who weaves an intricate web that you won't see the design of until you get to the last page.  This was a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. 

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sunburn-Novel-Laura-Lippman-ebook/dp/B0727T88KQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532260700&sr=8-1&keywords=sunburn+by+laura+lipman

Freddie Mercury: A Kind of Magic by Mark Blake

"I don't have any aspirations to live to seventy. I don't want to sound moribid. I've lived a full life, and if I'm dead tomorrow, I don't give a damn. I've done it all, I really have." (1987)

"It would be so boring to be seventy." (1987)

 This coffee table biography book was published in 2016 around the time of Farrokh Bulsara's, or Freddie Mercury as he was known to billions, birthday on September 5, when he would have turned seventy.  It is filled with glorious pictures of Freddie Mercury during his life and the places that he went to and the people that were important in his life.  Also in bold larger than life writing is quotations from Freddie.

The book starts off at the beginning of his life with his birth in Zanzibar and being sent to a British boys school in India called St. Peter's near what is now Mumbai.  He was very shy but showed an aptitude for music and was given piano lessons.  He excelled at drama and art and music but faired not so well at his other school subjects and would eventually be dismissed from the school.  Not long after he is sent home to Zanzibar there is political unrest and his family is forced to flee the country or face death as his father is a government worker for a regime that has just been toppled. Freddie who loves British music convinces them to move to London where he enrolls in Isleworth Polytechnic to study art and hopefully get into Ealing just like Pete Townsend of the Who did. He wanted to be an artist but was obsessed with music.

While he had a four-octave voice it was untrained and wild and when he filled in for the band's lead singer of Wreckage no one paid him any mind. In fact, his friends that saw that performance heard screaming and screeching. But they also saw someone who was outdoing himself trying to put on a show and perform for an audience that was really not paying too much attention.  A performance that people would pay big bucks to see not that far off into the future.

Meanwhile, Brian May and Roger Taylor, the guitarist, and drummer of Queen were in a band together called Smile that was a bit successful.  Freddie used to hang around and do roadie work for them and offer unsolicited advice to them to make their show better.  After two years, the lead singer of Smile would leave and Brian and Roger would see what everyone else had already seen: that Freddie belonged in the band with them.  It would be another year before bassist John Deacon, the final member joined the band that would complete them, though.

Freddie's voice was still rough when they went out to do the gigs they did before they got the record deal. But John Anthony, the record producer who had done Smile's record that went nowhere, saw something in Freddie that he hadn't seen in their old frontman and he liked it and kept his eye on them and when he thought they were ready offered them a bad deal that Queen would take: they would provide Queen with a business manager (a clear conflict of interest), they would have access to a studio (when no one else was using it), they would pay for the album to be produced, and they would be responsible for Queen's publishing and arrangements.  There wasn't anyone else willing to take a risk on them so they took it.

As Brian May would say if you blinked you would have missed it seeing Freddie's voice transform from the screeching singing to the beautiful voice you hear today on your CDs or iPods. Freddie was a perfectionist and with no one more so than at himself.  At each rehearsal, he went full board like it was the take, not a rehearsal take.  Most of the songs from that first album, Queen, released in 1973, were songs that they had written a long time ago and were not where they were now. One single from that album was "Keep Yourself Alive", which I don't believe charted in the top twenty.  The second album Queen II had more success peaking at number five in the UK and the single "Seven Seas of Rhye" peaking at number ten on the UK charts.  It also had the iconic album cover with the four of them against a black background. A US tour supporting Mott the Hoople is planned. Then they come out with "Killer Queen" from the album Sheer Heart Attack and it hit number two as both an album and a single.  In 1974 came the dreaded and mistaken Lynard Skynrd European tour. Whoever thought up that pairing clearly wasn't thinking straight.  It was a disaster.  In 1975 they tour North America as headliners and Japan as Sheer Heart Attack and "Killer Queen" rock America.  They also replace the manager that was forced upon them with John Reid.  Reid got them out of the deal they had made in the first place at a cost.    

Throughout this period Freddie was dating Mary Austin.  They even got engaged once, though he changed his mind about it.  They dated for seven years before he came out to her and told her he was bisexual when she got tired of him lying about where he was.  She told him he wasn't he was gay and to accept it.  They still lived together for a while and acted like they were still dating, but by then Queen had had some success and he got her an apartment of her own whose window looked into his. They remained as close as a married couple to the end of his days.

This book goes into great detail of the making of Queen's defining work "Bohemian Rhapsody" and other songs to the point that you will want to pull out your Queen music wherever you have it stored and listen to the songs all over again with fresh perspective and a new appreciation.  It also gives you a real sense of who Freddie was. He was a shy man in private, while on stage an extrovert.  He hated giving interviews to reporters because of his shyness and often came off as aloof or a jerk for ignoring the press.  He was the glue that held Queen together. When they fought he was the peacemaker who brought them back together.  He had a way about him like telling John Deacon to go away so he could make his song "Another One Bites the Dust" danceable. Or when he was inspired to write "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" in the bathtub he rushed over to the studio and told the guys to hurry and up and get it down before Brian got back and ruined it with his overthinking of the guitar parts in such a simple song.  He was a gay man at a time when it wasn't cool to be gay especially in the rock world in which he lived. He still managed to carry it off in his own way and get away with it.  In the end, he did find someone to love, a hairdresser named Jim Hutton.  He died too young and was too cruelly taken from us.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Freddie-Mercury-Magic-Mark-Blake/dp/1495030113/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1488377353&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Freddie+mercury+a+kind+of+magic



 

The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

Placidia,"Dia", Fincher decides to accept Major Gryffth Hockaday who is fighting for the Rebels in the Civil War in 1863 offer of marriage after knowing him less than a day.  She feels a certain spark of something special when she's around him.  His wife has just died and he has a young child, Charles, that needs someone to take care of it, though he has a slave woman looking after it now on his small farm.  Dia's stepsister Agnes has just had a huge wedding to Floyd Parris a wealthy landowner, though she herself has land of her own.  Agnes is a bitter woman who is jealous of Dia's beauty but the seventeen-year-old Dia hasn't figured this out. She can be naive about some things.  Which makes the task she is left to do all the more incredible. Hockaday takes her to their home and stays for a couple of days and then is called back to the War early and so leaves her to handle the household--something she has not been trained to do.

As a wedding present, she has brought along the slave Abner to help with the household.  She quickly gets rid of the slave Sukie who is there to take care of the child because she is cruel to the child. Floyd takes her and sends her one of his slaves, Cleo in return.  Floyd has been helping her out as much as he can.  They need help in the fields to bring in the crop and going against Bob, who runs the fields, wishes she goes to the mailman in town and asks him, an evil man, to find her two men to buy. He sends her one who fights all the time and one who gets sick and dies.  He's also reading the Hockaday's letters to each other and not sending all of them along.  She also has to deal with the military and vagabonds coming to take her food, animals, and money and possibly her virtue.

The book opens up with Dia in a jail cell in 1865 being held for trial for killing the child she had while the Major was away fighting and being a prisoner of war. The child he did not father and the child for whom the father she will not name.  It is whispered that Floyd is the father.  This novel is told through letters from Dia to her cousin Millie and back and from Dia to the Major and back and Dia's sons to each other and their cousin in 1892 and court documents as well as Dia's diary.  This is a unique way to tell a story and it may take some getting used to, but honestly, I can't imagine this book told in another way.  During the Civil War journals and letters were the lifeblood of soldiers and their families.  So it makes sense to use these devices to tell a story that takes place during the Civil War.  You might figure most of it out ahead of time but this book still holds some surprises.  I really enjoyed this book. Dia is a powerful character with grit and determination to make it no matter what, though she goes through a dark period that she does not see a way out of she finds the strength to overcome and come out the other side.  I'm not quite sure what to make of her flighty son Achilles but her son Charles I do like. He is sensible and kind and smart.  The Major is a bit of a rough character, but in his letters home to her he shows his soft side and how much he cares for her and that he didn't marry her just for her looks or to find a mother for his child.  This is a great book and I definitely recommend it.

Quotes

He said he would not leave me for the world, and I believe him. I said I loved him as I ever did, and I hope he believed me. The truth is harder, as the truth often is.  We are no longer blessed with innocence, nor do we deserve to be. Paradise may have been lost, but paradise is a bad bargain. It costs too much. It conceals serpents and is littered with graves. I would rather have this: my husband wrapped around me, his breath against my face. The cord, or something like it, sustaining me.

-Susan Rivers (The Second Mrs. Hockaday p 254)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Mrs-Hockaday-Novel-ebook/dp/B01B3VMC1E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531743210&sr=8-1&keywords=the+second+mrs.+hockaday

                          

All New X-Men Vol. 4: All-Different by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Stuart Immonen (Penciler), Wade Von Grawbadger (Inker), Brandon Peterson (Artist), Mahmud Asrar (Artist), Marte Gracia (Colorist), Israel Silva (Colorist), VC's Cory Petit (Letterer), Chris Claremont (Writer), Stan Lee (Writer), Louise Simonson (Writer), Len Wein (Writer), Fabian Nicieza (Writer), Bab McLeod (Artist), Walter Simonson (Artist), Bab Wiacek (Artist), Jorge Molina (Artist), Salvador Larroca (Artist), Andres Mossa (Colorist), David Ocampo (Colorist), Tom Orzechowski (Letterer)

In the last issue, the time-traveling X-Men worked with Kitty Pryde of the Jean Grey School and Wolverine of the Uncanny Avengers to track down Mystique, Sabertooth, and Lady Mastermind who were pretending to be the time-traveling X-Men and committing robberies all across town.  They manage to capture Lady Mastermind and Mystique then Mystique escapes her cell.

In the end, they decide to join the older Scott and Magento's group.  Their hideout is in Canada where the old Weapon's X program was.  They figure no one will look for them there.  Colossus did not join them, but his sister Illyana, otherwise known as Magik, has joined the group.  The cuckoo sisters are pretty pissed that Jean is there and make their feelings clear, though Jean has no idea why they hate her so much.  Jean is being pulled apart from the thoughts of both the young Scott and the young Hank who both love her.

It isn't long before the alarm goes off and they need to go help a mutant in Florida. The Purifiers, an ultra-religious group is after her to destroy her but the new X-Men with Magik and Kitty plan to spoil their plans.  It turns out that Kitty recognizes the young woman as Laura a genetic clone to Wolverine who is in really bad shape and doesn't recognize Kitty and seems intent on attacking everyone, though Scott seems to calm her down.

Jean gets inside the head of the Purifiers and sees what they plan so the X-Men realize they have to take care of them.  But there are things they don't know about the leader of the Purifiers.  Or who they are connected to and the X-Men find themselves in a perilous situation.  Also included in this book are really fabulous comics written by Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, Len Wein, and others that are really cool to read. Though painfully short, a lot can be said in a few short pages.  This is my favorite book so far in the series.  The characters are really going through a lot right now. Kitty is dealing with her break up with Colossus and Jean with the battling beaus, who have wandering eyes as well.  And everyone is adapting to the new environment at the facility.  This is a great series that just keeps getting better. I highly recommend this book.     

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/All-New-X-Men-Vol-4-All-Different-ebook/dp/B00P16G50W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1531484773&sr=8-2&keywords=all+new+x-men+vol+4

Noir by Christopher Moore

Set in 1947 in this spoof on the old noir novels like Dashiell Hammett and James Cain only in the crazy funny way of all Christopher Moore books, Sammy Tiffin a bartender's life changes when he meets a dame named Stilton whom he refers to as the Cheese.  The Cheese is a war widow who is a waitress at a five and dime and Sammy who never served in the military yet has a limp that people think he got from the War. His boss Sal wants him to find some fresh-faced girls for this Air Force general friend of his who is trying to join a club and wants to make an impression with the girls who will put out.   Sammy figures he will go to Madame Mabel's to pick up some prostitutes, but Sal vetoes this, so Sammy has no idea where to get the girls.

Meanwhile, while eating dinner with his Chinese American friend Eddie Moo Shoes he sees the older men eating a soup made from snake piss that is supposed to be good for male erections.  This gives him an idea for a business venture as a friend of his is passing through with some animals some of which are snakes and he agrees to buy one with money he borrows from Eddie and some he had saved up.  He had the snake delivered to the bar because it wasn't safe to have it delivered to his apartment. Sal gets curious and opens the crate marked "Dangerous: Snake Inside" and gets bit and dies. Sammy not knowing what to do hides his body in the giant ice chest and tells Eddie about the snake which is now missing.

Sal had gotten the Cheese and her co-worker Myrtle to agree to go the party for the weekend for $100 each along with some of Mabel's cleanest girls. He also made plans with Mabel to have a girl take pictures of what goes on there at the secret meeting so that they can blackmail the members later.  When the Cheese and Myrtle go missing, Sammy begins a hunt for them that leads him to some interesting places. A pair of men in black is hunting him down as well as the two dames.

This book contains a cast of interesting characters. Eddie Moos Shoes is led around by the nose by Lois Fong a performer at the Shanghai Club where they both work.  Milo Andreas who is too disturbed by the war to drive his cab, so instead he sells shots to people coming out of Cookie's Cafe at night to put in their coffee.  Lone Jones is a large African American who believes that Roosevelt is still alive and that he will one day go and work in his Secret Service.  Lone Jones helps Sammy by punching out a troublesome, crooked, mean cop. But, of course, this only causes more problems and Eddie and Sammy takes him to Eddie's outcast (for being a "cat fucker"), Uncle Ho, to be doped up until they can figure out what to do with him which needs to be fast because they can't afford Uncle Ho's prices.

The writing is a delight and takes the noir language and plays with it like a kid with a new toy such as "the fog off the bay was steaming between the buildings like a scarf through a stripper's leg, leaving everything damp and smelling of sailors' broken dreams".  Moore has once again outdone himself and written a book that takes the noir genre and puts it on its head in such a zany and utterly creative and unique fashion.  This a fabulous book and I cannot recommend it enough.   

Quotes

The fog lay spread across the city like a drowned whore—damp, cold, smelling of salt and diesel—a sea-sodden street walker who’d just bonked a tugboat…

-Christopher Moore (Noir p 17)

“And I’d curse in French when I got stuck behind a cable car.”

“In French?” said Stilton.

“Yeah. Cursing in French is classier. It ain’t even like cursing. More like poetry.”

-Christopher Moore (Noir p 54)

And they were off again. Oh yes, there were trains and tunnels, rockets blasting off, torpedoes clearing their tubes, pistons and cylinders, oil rigs pumping, bridges collapsing, stars exploding, galaxies expanding, and a squeaky part that sounded like angry mice. He was Romeo and she was Juliet, he was Heathcliff and she was Cathy, he was Tristan and she was Isolde, he was Ahab and she was Moby-Dick, she was the Titanic and he was the Iceberg, and they liked that so much that he was the Iceberg for a while and she was the Titanic.  She was Snow White and he was the Seven Dwarfs, he was the Scarecrow and she was the Flying Monkeys—it was a epic and divine disaster they acted out in that crawl-space apartment, taking breaks to breathe, and drink gin and smoke, and they even dozed off together toward dawn.

-Christopher Moore (Noir p 74)

“Sal knows a general?”

“Air force. Not a real general.”

-Christopher Moore (Noir p 199)     

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Noir-Novel-Christopher-Moore-ebook/dp/B07192GP7F/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1531308050&sr=8-5&keywords=noir

Dead Girl Running by Christina Dodd

It's January at Yearning Sands Resort on the Washington state's Pacific coast and the owners, Annie and Leo Di Luca are going away to a family gathering/vacation leaving their new assistant manager, Kellan Adams in charge. Kellan isn't who she says she is. She's really Kellan's cousin Cecilia who was in an abusive relationship. One day Kellen arrived to rescue Cecilia. The two looked enough alike to be twins. When Kellen went into Cecilia's bungalow to get her things her husband sees her and takes an ax and kills her and blows up the building while Cecilia watches killing both Kellen and himself.  At some point she loses a year of her life after being shot in the head and then she joins the Army and becomes injured and is honorably discharged and takes the job at the Yearning Sands Resort hiring a few of her Army friends who need jobs.

The staff include: Mitch, one of her Army buddies who is good with electronics and is one of the drivers; Sheri Jean, guest manager whom the guest adore but the staff fear; Mara Philippi, the spa manager, likes to work out with Kellen and says she wants to enter the American Ninja Competition; Xander, masseuse, very Zen and into mediation; Mr. Gilfrin, head of security who is leaving her in charge of security so he can go away and observe the security department from afar for something fishy that may be going on; Adrian, Army buddy works with the cars; Temo; mechanic, handyman, now head of maintenance; Birdie, recent widow, lead mechanic;  and Chad Griffin, drunk pilot and womanizer. There's also the guests: Carson Lennex, an older actor who owns a penthouse there and acts mysteriously; Shivering Sherlocks, a group of women who have come to do a mystery weekend; Nils Brooks, says he is a writer; Justin and Julia Florence, newlyweds.

When a decayed body turns up on the beach and is identified as Pricilla Carter, the former assistant manager who everyone believed just packed up and left in the middle of a tour.  Pricilla had found some relics that some smugglers had left on the beach to be picked up and hid them at the hotel.  She had asked for money in exchange for the relics back.

This is when Nils Brooks takes Kellen aside and tells her he is with the MFAA or the Monuments Men who rescue relics for the government.  In this case, they are trying to keep them from being sold to fund terrorists.  There is one he is really after who killed the only other person who it was in the organization, his boss. This person is the illusive Librarian. Suspected of being a woman, but could be a man they cut off the hands of their victims. The Librarian has many smuggling operations running around the U.S., including the one there at Yearning Sands, but Nils isn't interested in stopping the smuggling. He wants to capture the Librarian whom he believes works or is a guest at the resort.

With all the trouble Annie and Leo send their great-nephew Max to help Kellen with security but also for other reasons.  Kellen doesn't know what to make of Nils's story. He seems to check out, but it all seems far-fetched.  Maybe he is the Librarian?  The only one she knows she can trust is Max and that's because he wasn't here for any of it. While Nils is trying to make moves on her, there's something that draws her to Max.  This fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled book will keep you hopping. While you probably will have guessed most of it, there are still some surprises that Dodd still manages to pull off that you don't expect.  This is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Girl-Running-Cape-Charade-ebook/dp/B075QVYMHX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531139020&sr=8-1&keywords=dead+girl+running

The New 52 Wonder Woman Vol. 4: War by Brian Azzarello (Writer), Cliff Chiang (Artist), Goran Sudzuka (Artist), Tony Akins (Artist), Dan Green (Artist), Matthew Wilson (Colorist), and Jared K. Fletcher (Letterer)

In the last book, Hera joined forces with Wonder Woman, Lennox, her brother, an alien from another realm named Orion and sometimes War to protect Zola and her child who is prophecized to take the throne of Zeus.  In Antarctica Zeus and Hera's firstborn son has defrosted and is seeking the throne for himself and seeks to kill all who stand in his way.  Cassandra, the voice of the gods and Lennox's sister is helping him.

Zola decides to name her son Zeke while the Moon Goddess is sent by Apollo to kill Zeke and Wonder Woman again puts her down while Lennox and Hera get Zola and the baby out of harm's way and go to a safe house of Lennox's.  After having made an agreement with Hades and Poseidon to leave their kingdoms alone the firstborn heads off to meet up with Lennox to destroy Zeke.

Orion arrives to help but they're getting their asses kicked all over the place and need an exit strategy so Zola grabs his transport and urges everyone to hop on and they head off into a tube that will lead them to Orion's homeworld, but Lennox goes back and closes the gate so they can get there.  While there they must figure out their next moves.  I was disappointed in the drawing of Poseidon as he was drawn as a giant ugly fish.  I guess I expected something more majestic and godlike.  But then Hades has never looked like much either but a child with a burning head.  It's hard to imagine him having sex with Persephone.  At the same time, the drawing of Apollo, Moon, War, Hera, and Wonder Woman are so amazing you can forgive a couple of screwups.  The stakes are getting higher in this book in the series as some of them die.  This series gets better with each comic and I can't wait to read the next one. I highly recommend this book.   

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Woman-Vol-War-New-ebook/dp/B00H4EW1GG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530887282&sr=8-1&keywords=the+new+52%21+wonder+woman+war

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

When Jude, her twin sister Taryn were seven and their older sister Viviene was nine, Madoc, a Faire, more specifically a redcap, arrived to confront his supposedly dead human wife and kills her and her husband and takes his daughter, Vivi and her human sisters Jude and Taryn to Elfhamme where he is a general in the High King's army.  He remarries to Oriana and they have a sickly child named Oak, whom the girls grow to love.

Fast forward ten years and Vivi rebels against everything Faerie and visits the mortal world every chance she gets and makes plans to run away to there. Meanwhile, Jude and Taryn are doing their best to fit in. Jude wants to be a knight in the High King's army. She does, however, have some trouble at school in the name of Prince Cardan and his coterie of friends Valerian, Nicacia, and Loche.  Then one day Loche seems to be on her side and encouraging her to continue to fight back against Prince Caradan. He has his own reasons for that. He begins flirting with her and takes her back to his house and they make out before a party.

While Jude is dreaming of making her mark at the Summer Tournament where she could be picked to be a knight in training by one of the Princes or Princesses if only Madoc would allow her to be.  This is when Prince Dain arrives at her house and makes her an offer she can't refuse. He sees the value of a human who can lie, as Faeries can't lie and humans can move about freely without being noticed much.  He wants her to be his spy. Prince Dain is the heir apparent, but his brother Balekin is likely going to make a move for the throne soon when their father hands over the crown to Dain in the upcoming ceremony.  In payment for this, he offers her a geas that will keep her from being enchanted by any faerie but him.  He also tells her a way to avoid the effects of eating faerie food and such is to eat small amounts daily and become immune.  It makes her sick as a dog, but it is slowly working.

The King will place the crown on Dain's head in the ceremony making him King and if someone tries to kill him after that they will be cursed and none of the Fey kingdoms will recognize them as King or Queen.  So the Court of Shadows, Dain's spy network, which consists of a goblin named Roach, a half human half faerie named Ghost and a pixie named Bomb are working to make sure that Dain sits on the throne. Madoc is also working to make sure that Dain sits on the throne.

But nothing is as it seems in Faerie and Jude would do well to remember that. This novel keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire way through flipping pages well into the night.  The characters are very complex and surprise you sometimes.  While Madoc killed their parents he doesn't seem like such a bad guy to them. He raises them as though they are his very own daughters, which he didn't have to do and cares about them as if they were.  You would think that Jude and Taryn would want to go back to the mortal would as soon as possible but the faerie world is all they know and while they live in constant fear Taryn wants to marry and live a quiet life while Jude wants to prove herself worthy and be needed and useful.  If only they can survive Prince Cardan's bullying and the machinations of court.  This book is the first in a trilogy and the next book can't come out soon enough to suit me.  Holly Black is a favorite author of mine and here she proves again why I love her so much: great storytelling and characters and a world you don't want to leave.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

Quotes

The kind of fabrics princesses in fairy tales wear.  Of course, Taryn is right about stories. Bad things happen to those princesses. They are pricked with thorns, poisoned by apples, married to their own fathers. They have their hands cut off and their brothers turned into swans, their lovers chopped up and planted into basil pots. They vomit up diamonds. When they walk, it feels as though they’re walking on knives.  They still manage to look nice.

-Holly Black (The Cruel Prince p 145)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Prince-Folk-Air-ebook/dp/B06Y5HPRLC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530707957&sr=8-1&keywords=cruel+prince+book

Too Wilde to Wed by Eloisa James

At the end of the book Wilde in Love, Lord Roland Northbridge Wilde, otherwise known as North, was engaged to be married to Miss Diana Belgrave.  He had completely redone his wardrobe to dress in ridiculous clothes that some would consider high fashion just to capture Diana's eye because she was considered the most fashionably dressed woman of the ton.  While engaged she always seemed to be trying to escape him, but they shared a kiss that sent sparks flying.  Then she mysteriously left without a note, not even taking her clothing and jewelry, and the engagement was broken off.  He searched high and low for her and finally found her in a cottage with a child. He left angry before she could say anything and bought a commision in the military and went off to fight in the war with the colonies in America.

Now it's 1780 and he's coming home and everyone's worried because Diana's been living all this time in Lindow Castle as a governess to the children and a nanny to Artie the toddler while also taking care of Godfrey who is her nephew and at the age of almost four doesn't speak.  When Aunt Knowe went and found her and demanded that she come and live with them, Diana let them think that the child was North's and insisted that she earn her way as a governess for the children and a nanny for Artie the Duchess's toddler.  The ton believes that North ravished or raped Diana and left her with a child and that she is forced to work as a nanny.

When North is apprised of the situation he is determined to fix it by finding a relative of either hers or Godfrey's to come and help her.  Maybe even set her up in a cottage somewhere with Godfrey and take care of her himself.  He finds that he is still in love with Diana and is determined to get her to marry him, but Diana does not want to be a Duchess and North is next in line to become Duke when his father dies.  North does not want to be Duke. It was supposed to be his older brother Horatius, but he died.  Diana is the kind of person who rushes in and does things and says things before thinking.  She does not know how to make change and she hates fancy parties and such.  She keeps telling him that she would make a lousy Duchess and more to the point she would hate being one so she refuses his offer of marriage.

What are the two of them to do?  North has been haunted by what he saw during the war and Diana has been his salve helping him to eat and sleep again when he is with her.  How will he manage without her?  Will Diana give in and decide to become North's Duchess after all?  Or will she take the cottage he will offer her?   And what of Godfrey's relatives?  Diana is a delight and keeps things lively with her antics. North is different in this book. He is less stiff and formal and sexier.  You feel for the man who is still suffering from the war.  This is such a great series. These books really seem to get better as you go along.  I really can't wait to read the next one, Wilde For You when it comes out.  It promises to be the best one yet.  I really loved this book and I cannot recommend it enough.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Too-Wilde-Wildes-Lindow-Castle-ebook/dp/B074DTG8JR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530533605&sr=8-1&keywords=too+wilde+to+wed+by+eloisa+james