The Paper Wasp is the story of two young women living in small Michigan town who were best friends. Up until high school that is, when Elise was discovered and left town for L.A. to become an actress. In losing her popular best friend, Abby floundered and even though she ended up as valedictorian she never fit in again. Now, a decade has passed and Elise’s star is on the rise ... Read More...
The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont
Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of non-fiction. It’s not that I think it’s all bad—I know it’s no different than fiction with lots of great stuff out there. It’s just that reading it makes me drowsy. I can’t get more than 10 pages in most non-fiction without wanting a nap. So, it’s got to have a big hook for me to bite and The Castle on Sunset does. It’s Shawn Levy’s history ... Read More...
The Only Woman in the Room
For those of you who aren’t old movie buffs…why not?! Old black and white movies with all their stylized glamour are one of the best escapes out there. But I digress. If you’re not aware of Hollywood in the 1930s then you won’t recognize the subject of Marie Benedict’s new novel The Only Woman in the Room. It’s Hedy Lamarr, who at the peak of her career, was known as one of the ... Read More...
Hollywood Women: The Girls in the Picture
Mary Pickford was one of the first Hollywood stars, having acted from the time she was a child to not only maintaining her film career when silent moves became ‘talkies’, but going on to create her own studio, giving her and her partners the creative control actors didn’t have at the time. Frances Marion was a screenwriter, one of the first women in the business, who ... Read More...
Hollywood Women: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is catnip to anyone who loves old movies. In Evelyn, Taylor Jenkins Reid has created an amalgam of all the old glamor girls: Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor for their multiple marriages and off-screen shenanigans, Joan Crawford’s ruthlessness, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra…if you’ve read as many biographies of Hollywood stars as I have there ... Read More...
April Reading Recap
Safe to say that April stayed more true to form than March, in that we had A LOT of rain, which is fine because now we have flowers everywhere. My reading was not quite so productive. I did have a 5 star winner with The Takedown, but beyond that I was stuck with hit or miss books. Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith: One of those novels ... Read More...
