I still haven’t finished the books I got from the library or “The Dubliners” (yes Sarah, it does take surprisingly long time to read such a short book) and today I got my package from Adlibris!! I want to start read all of them at once! Which one should I read? Tricky...
“The Gun Seller” by Hugh Laurie. Apparently he wrote it back in 1996 (feels like yesterday to me…) On the back of the book: When Thomas Lang, a hired gun with a soft heart, is contracted to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts instead to warn the intended victim – a good deed that doesn’t go unpunished. Within hours Lang is butting heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femme fatales, whilst trying to save a beautify lady… and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.
“The Duchess” by Amanda Foreman. Wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. Back of the book: Beautiful, glamorous and charismatic, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, was an icon of her age; she was also a compulsive gambler, an influential political operator, a drug addict, a doting mother and adulteress.
In a world of decadence and excess, of great houses. Extravagant parties and sexual intrigue, Georgiana, like her descendant, Diana, Princess of Wales, was publically adored but personally troubled. From her complex ménage à trios with her husband and best friend to her vast gambling debts; from her adoration of her children to her passionate but doomed love for Earl Grey. She was a fascinating, contradictory woman whose story still resonates today. I’m guessing they don’t mean tea when they are talking about Earl Grey.
“American Eve” by Paula Uruburu (which is a very funny name). I read that Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the books about Anne of Green Gables used Evelyn Nesbit to base her character Anne on. Anyway, I read some about this Evelyn and I wanted to read more so I got the book. Back of the book: By the time of her sixteenth birthday in 190, Evelyn Nesbit was already know to millions as the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty, and whose innocent sexuality was used to sell everything from chocolate to perfume. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. But when Evelyn’s life of fantasy became all too real and her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, murdered her lover, New York City architect Sanford White, the most famous woman in the world became infamous as she found herself at the center of the “crime of the century” and a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity and sex.
“Gypsy, a memoir” by Gypsy Rose Lee. I have been wanting to read this book for some time now but I never got around to buy it, then the other day (week) I saw the movie and loved it so I had to get the book. Back of the book: The memoir, which Gypsy began as a series of pieces of ‘The New Yorker’, contains photographs and newspaper clippings from her personal scrapbooks and an afterword by her son, Erik Lee Preminger. At turns touching and hilarious, Gypsy describes her childhood trouping across 1920’s America through her rise to stardom as The Queen of Burlesque in 1930’s New York – where gin came in bathtubs, gangsters were celebrities, and Walter Winchell was king.
Gypsy’s story features outrageous characters – among them Broadway’s funny girl, Fanny Brice, who schooled Gypsy in how to be a star; gangster Waxy Gordon, who fixed her teeth; and her indomitable mother, Rose, who lived by her own Golden Rules: “Do unto others… before they do you.” I have no clue who Walter Winchell is… or Waxy Gordon.
No comments:
Post a Comment