1960s Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Let’s Call Her Barbie

Catherine — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 07:02:02 +0000

As a child of the 60s/70s I was one of the numerous little girls clamoring for a Barbie doll. Much like the opening for the movie Barbie (fabulous, a must see) I’d loved my baby doll to death, but needed something more and Barbie was the dream, but it was not to be for […]

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Capote’s Women by Laurence Leamer

Catherine — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 07:53:25 +0000

After all the agita of getting taxes filed on time, I needed a reward. Overindulging in champagne was my first choice, but not a healthy option so I turned to reading that gave me the same light, fizzy feeling and required no thought to enjoy. The book is Laurence Leamer’s Capote’s Women: A True Story […]

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The Things We Didn’t Know

Catherine — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 07:23:56 +0000

When Andrea is 9-years-old she finds herself and her little brother Pablo uprooted from their home in Woronoco, Massachusetts and left in a small Puerto Rican village with an aunt they’ve never met. All because their mother hates living in their small 1950s factory town in America and is lonely. This unsettling turn of events […]

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Love & Saffron: A Novel

Catherine — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 05:40:27 +0000

Seattle and Los Angeles, same coast but vastly different places, especially in the 1960s. Imogene Fortier writes a column known to readers in the Pacific Northwest so is surprised to not only get a fan letter, but a gift from a young woman in L.A. It’s a small packet of saffron with a recipe for […]

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The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

Catherine — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 04:19:32 +0000

There are many types of satisfaction to be found in reading. One is the excitement of a new voice, a compelling story. But just as good (and sometimes better) is the quiet joy of opening a book and being immediately returned to a place and characters you already know. That’s the case with Alka Joshi’s […]

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Utopia Avenue: A Novel by David Mitchell

Catherine — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:15:15 +0000

‘Utopia’ means ‘no place.’ An avenue is a place. So is music. When we’re playing well, I’m here, but elsewhere, too. That’s the paradox. Utopia is unattainable. Avenues are everywhere. Derek, Elf, Jasper, and Griff each has a dream: make it big in the music industry playing music they love. So far, it hasn’t panned […]

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Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen

Catherine — Wed, 01 May 2019 07:18:31 +0000

When I was a pre-teen and even into my early teen years I would go to the local library and, using ‘safe’ magazines like National Geographic as covers, slip issues of the completely unsafe and utterly wicked Cosmopolitan to a quiet spot where I could learn: 3 easy ways to make a man fall for […]

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Cruel Beautiful World

Catherine — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 07:57:43 +0000

Sometimes a book’s marketing can end up working against it. I found this to be the case with Caroline Leavitt’s Cruel Beautiful World. The synopsis and various blurbs referenced the Manson murders—a real piece of clickbait and yet, aside from being set in the summer of 1969 and the main protagonist’s worry about being […]

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The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin

Catherine — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 07:28:52 +0000

Wonderful news, kittens, one of my 5 star, favorite novels of 2016 comes out in paperback tomorrow! The Swans of Fifth Avenue is fabulously divine reading about Truman Capote, 1950s Manhattan and wealthy people behaving badly. Witty and sharp, it is THE antidote for everything that is dreary right now. Once upon a time […]

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The Girls

Catherine — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 07:23:03 +0000

I wanted them to like me. Such a simple sentence. Six words, and yet, coming three-fourths of the way through Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls, they hold the key to the entire novel. They are instantly recognizable to any woman with a memory of her teenage years and they define fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd, the […]

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