Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life by Justine Picardie

Granted I can't afford the luxury that The House of Chanel sells, but I'm always fascinated by the lives of the glamorous people of the past. Unfortunately, today's "glamorous" people leave much to be desired.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
Coco Chanel

The audiobook was excellent to listen to and went through Chanel's life, from start to finish. Much of what is told is questionable as Coco was never one to tell the exact truth about herself to anyone. Everyone seemed to get a different version. What is known is that she was born into a poor family and her father was not around much at all. Her mother passed away with all the children in the room, which made an impression on Gabrielle (Coco was just a nickname). Her father showed up long enough to take her to a convent orphanage, where she stayed until she was 18.

Her rise to the top as the one and only Chanel is well written, including documenting all of Gabrielle's lovers (most were already married when Chanel got to them). Gabrielle herself never married nor had children and that seemed to bother her greatly at the end.

During the war (2), Chanel was investigated as helping the Germans. She had a "Comeback" couture collection at age 70. The list could really go on about her, and all of these things made her legendary.

The book did spend some time on Jackie Kennedy, simply because she was one of the most fashionable First Ladies and made the Chanel suit an icon. The beautiful pink Chanel suit that ended up covered in JFK's blood in Dallas.

I really did enjoy this book. In the end, Chanel was incredibly talented, iconic, and a grand dame of Parisian fashion. But, she was also a person, one who got lonely and got old.

Mad River by John Sandford

This is the 6th in the Virgil Flowers series (with a smattering of Lucas Davenport). I do enjoy Flowers as much as I do Davenport but I'm going to make a bold statement and say -  Davenport isn't adding to the story at all anymore. He needs to go and let Flowers stand on his own. We're 6 books in, Virgil has shown what he's made of and people like it.  Phase out Lucas a bit and let Virgil run!

This book was interesting in that it's a crime spree spurred on by a crime ending in several crimes. All by different people. We start out a with a Bonnie and Clyde (and extra Clyde) group robbing a rich lady's home. Things go badly and one of the daughters is killed.

But did they go badly? Or was that how it was supposed to go?

B&C&eC are on the run and killing people left and right (crime spree spurred on by crime). Flowers is called in to get this under control, because at this point, at least 5 people are dead in a matter of days.

As he digs, Flowers realizes that it's probable that the daughter's estranged husband may be behind her death.

Nothing is concrete except for Bonnie and Clyde and extra Clyde (Becky, Jimmy and Tom) and that ends as well as the real Bonnie and Clyde did. A lot is actually left unresolved and it makes Flowers angry and the reader frustrated. But in real life, things don't neatly tie up and get a case closed stamp.

Good Flowers book, but not the best.

Here We Go Again by Betty White

She seems like a nice ol' lady.

This book is a supershort audiobook (about 3 hours) and is filled with highlights from Betty's television career. I had no idea she mostly got her fame through talk shows and game shows. Rock on, Betty.

Also, Betty is a Trekkie. Again...who knew?

This is such a short, lighthearted book with a little insight into the famous Ms. White.

Albert of Adelaide by Howard L Anderson

Maybe I should just let the Books on the Nightstand podcast tell me what to read from now on. This was another recommendation and this one is fantastic.

The premise is so odd that you feel the need to read it. Albert is a platypus who escapes from the Adelaide zoo in Australia. He's trying to make it Old Australia, the place where life is good and animals aren't locked behind bars. It's a tale animals tell each other in the zoos and sometimes, one gets daring and breaks out.

If you are thinking this is a going to be a funny animal story, think again.

Anderson humanizes the characters so well that when a paw or tail or other animal feature is mentioned, it snaps you back to "Oh right, these are animals". The tale of Albert is told well (Audible.com has a great audiobook) and has more than enough shoot 'em up action to keep you worried about everyone's safety. Yes. Animals have guns. Frightening, isn't it?

The part of this story that kept getting to me was the savagery in the animal attacks. Because of the way the animals interact, talk... be human like....I kept forgetting that what they do to each other isn't savagery. It's predator and prey and it's the norm in the animal world.

Albert ends up in the desert, not the place for a water dwelling platypus. He strikes up friendships with Jack the Wombat who is a bit of a pyromaniac and the bandicoots, Roger and Alvin. Please, if you don't know what a bandicoot is, look it up. I had to and it made it that much better listening to the story to picture the crazy bandicoots.

Just when I was thinking animals were better than people, we come across animals that mimic the worst of humankind.

I think this novel lands up there on my favorites. Would it have if the characters had been human? I don't think so.

Try it out with a sample

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

Once again, book diet is intact as this was a library book and this is another great recommendation from Books On The Nightstand podcast.

This book starts out with "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist." In the late 60s, James meets Gwen and they fall in love and have a daughter, Dana. Problem is, James was already married and had been for 10 years before he laid eyes on Gwen. He already had a daughter as well. Oh what tangled webs we weave....

This story is told, first, from the side of daughter #2 - Dana. James and her mother married, albeit illegally, and he's a part time dad to Dana. Both families live in the same town and James does his best to impress upon family #2 that they are the secret family. They can't be upsetting his regular family life. It does seem that he tries to be a good father and provides for Dana, but she's obviously second.

The second part of the book is told by Chaurisse, James' daughter #1. You feel for both girls because they end up meeting and becoming friends. Unfortunately, Dana knows all about Chaurisse but Chaurisse is clueless as to who Dana really is. It's a tangled mess of a man wanting the best of both worlds and wanting two families. It can't possibly stay calm and sweet for him, and them, and it doesn't. Everyone's hands are forced and choices are made.

I appreciate that this book was told from the perspective of the daughters, the truly innocent of this. They are both played as pawns by their mothers and their father.  Clearly, their parents played the game and they were the losers but one did "win" a full time dad, while the other loses.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

A book that came to me through BookMooch.com (still on my book diet and doing well!) and it's a rather small book (198 pages) so obviously my brain went into "must read now" mode.

If you've read The Odyssey by Homer or if, like me, you know the myth behind it (with the help of The Simpsons), then this is a good little book to enhance it. This is the story of Odysseus but told from Penelope's point of view. Penelope is long dead and telling her story from Hades, in order to set some things straight.

We learn about why the 12 maids that were killed should not have been, how Helen started the War, how Penelope endured all the Suitors that descended on her castle when Odysseus failed to return from the Trojan War, etc.

The book is interspersed with "songs" and poems but I have to say I skipped those. The storytelling from Penelope was what I was after and it was very entertaining.

girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

Listening to a Books on the Nightstand podcast, one of the hosts talked about girlchild.

Basically he said:
Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman – This is a book that truly blew me away. Uncomfortable and unbearably sad at times, this story of young trailer park resident Rory Dawn Hendrix features writing unlike anything I’ve read before.

I 100% agree. I couldn't sit and read this in one go, no matter how much I liked it.

Let's start somewhere here:

1) This is the author's debut novel and I'm amazed and in awe. The writing was skillful but packed an emotional wallop. It was truly a messy book but put together so well. Kudos Tupelo!

2) The story of Rory Dawn Hendrix is heartbreaking. Because of her family she is described as one of the "third generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom". girlchild depicts a life in a trailer park outside of Reno and it's not a pretty life. It's not even an okay life. It's a sad, scary life that Rory Dawn tries to make sense of using the Girl Scout Handbook from the library.

The end is unresolved. You root for Rory Dawn but somehow you just aren't sure she's going to make it out of the life she was thrown in to.

Uncomfortable, heartbreaking, with an optimistic twist in there.