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I'm almost done with Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (basic premise: SNL-ish skit writer falls in love with SNL-ish musical/guest host - awkwardness ensues). I really enjoyed learning about how comedy sketches are written and selected for this fictional version of SNL, but I did not enjoy how the author had to take so many opportunities to knock the reader over the head with her view on every hot topic social cause (sexism, gender as a social construct, BLM, election deniers...) while trying to weave it into witty banter between the suppose to be funny characters. Some of that is fine - it is truly what real life people talk about some of the time, but it was often just a clunky distraction from what otherwise was a good story.
I definitely get that.. I thought the 1966 movie version gives a good distillation of a couple chapters.
I read Michener's Chesapeake; there is a lot of detailed minutiae & background.. but a reader definitely gets their money's worth.
Interesting comparison. I enjoyed all of Michener's ...Hawaii, Chesapeake etc...but it seems the types of detailing weren't as boring as Shell Seekers got to be.
Just finished one I would have no problem recommending.
The Stone Girl: A Novel by Dirk Wittenborn
From Amazon blurb "The Stone Girl is a riveting tale of deception, vengeance, and power set against the haunting beauty of the Adirondack wilderness."
Power and corruption from extreme wealth and sort of a Samson and Goliath revenge plot.
A little lengthy at 467 pages, but that doesn't consist of useless fillers, so that's good. And an ending that's realistic, not just "happily ever after"
Just before that, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron.(The leader of the 1831 bloody slave rebellion in Virginia)
More novel than fact since there are very few facts available about Nat, himself, but very good reading.
Anybody remember the old comic strip Kudzu? It was syndicated thru the 8os and 9os..
This is a 1995 collection of Kudzu comic strips. It was basically about a teenager growing up in a town that resembled an updated Mayberry. Some decent laughs & cultural commentary in here..
I was looking though a past book thread on here from 2013 https://www.city-data.com/forum/29926057-post5.html Saw a highly recommended book The Proud Breed by Celeste de Blasis. Looks great. Ordered it from ILL (Inter Library Loan). She also has a trilogy called The Swan.
Quote:
Her third book, The Proud Breed (1978) was about the pride of being a Californian. Of the novel, De Blasis observed, "This story is very dear to me, and the need to write it came from the demands of pride. I grew up in an educational system that taught me more about the eastern seaboard than I needed to know and almost nothing about California... and the paucity of that history grew to be more and more galling. In the writing of The Proud Breed I have discovered what an immensely rich, varied and intricate weaving has made the fabric of this state, and I am proud to be even so small a thread in the pattern." The book became a Doubleday Book Club selection.
I just finished reading Eartha & Kitt, A Daughter's Love Story by Kitt Shapiro. What a wonderful, easy book to read, highly recommended.
For 70 years she thought she was born on 1/26/26, and, out of curiosity, she went to the town she was born in to look at the Birth Certificate, and hopefully find out who her father was, and secondly, to find out if 1/26/26 was her birth date. Wrong! It was 1/17/27! So all along she thought she was an Aquarian, and she finds out she's a Capricorn.
Being steeped in Astrology myself, I knew after the first chapters, she was a control freak Capricorn.
It's miraculous that she was able to escape plantation life in the South and rise as far as she did in life.
I love rags to riches stories, can't get enough of them.
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Quick tidbits from people on any area of life. Not every person featured is a luminary. There's a man named Bryan Anderson, a soldier who is now an amputee. I don't recall ever reading or hearing about this man until this book.
Just finished reading Homecoming by Kate Morton. It was loooong but it was pretty good. Some of her previous books were impossible to put down and this book followed her usual pattern of flashbacks (which I don't usually like) but it seemed to drone on and on at times. Still, her writing is like beautiful poetry so you do want to read every word and not miss anything. Just way too long, longer than her other books but I'm not sure how or where she should have pared it down.
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