Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

A memoir published in 2007, I'm just now getting around to hearing it. Ah, audiobooks read by the author. Martin even sings in it.

I'm an eh fan of Martin. I have never seen The Jerk, loved The Three Amigos and really like his books. So I'm not sure exactly where I stand with him, I guess. Either way, this book is about his rise to fame in the stand up comedy world and it doesn't go much further than The Jerk.

Martin delves back to his life growing up in Waco, moving to California and getting his first job at DisneyLand. I had no idea that he was a magician (having learned the tricks at Disney's magic shop) and really never paid any attention to his stand up act (before my time). As he describes his time trying to become famous and what his act consisted of, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have found it funny. But for some reason, having listened to him telling me his story, I find him more likable and endearing. Go figure.

I'm not sure how the book would read on its own but I would highly recommend the audiobook just for the singing and banjo playing.

Diane: A Signature Life by Diane von Furstenberg

I love reading memoirs, mainly because memoirs are not bios, but the stories the author wants to tell. Naturally, memoirs are usually happier endings, better memories and more outrageous stories.

This one is by Diane von Furstenberg. Her wrap dress and shirt dress made her a fashion icon and she details how she got to live out the American dream. She was born in Belgium in 1946 (same year as my mom!) and she is the daughter of an Holocaust survivor. Her parents split and she ended up spending time in Paris but longing to come to America. After marrying Prince von Furstenberg, she did just that, bringing with her samples of her wrap dress and shirt dress.

She is the "immigrant-done-good" story to a T, even if she was a Princess. Diane describes her rise to the top of the fashion world, but does go into how she fell out of it and ended up selling off her name in the form of licenses. She made some bad (naive) decisions but clearly she came back pretty well.

There's quite a bit of name dropping in this book as well as detailed travel trips. You really never feel sorry for her, even when things start going badly, because her version of bad is definitely not mine. When things are bad for me, I can't jet off to Bali and pick up a man. Or, at least, I haven't tried that....

Fun background for any reader who likes their fashion stories.

Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

I actually forget where I heard about this book, but any book about food usually ranks high on my list. The subtitle of this book is "The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise" and that's exactly what it is.

Reichl was the New York Times restaurant critic for 6 years and she went through various incarnations of herself to get in and out of restaurants without being noticed. Notice I said incarnations of herself vs disguises. As you read how Reichl (with help from her friends) puts together the disguises, she really embodies each person and finds that each person is really a part of her (some are kind of mean though).

As much as I love reading about food, I love eating it. My health problems cause me to have to avoid a lot of foods that sound wonderful so I live vicariously through food books. Reichl is a great writer with the ability to bring you right down at the table with her. It helps she includes several of her favorite recipes as well.

Better than reading about food is cooking it. Thanks to my dad, I can cook and bake pretty well and spend a lot of time in my kitchen. With the thoughts of the food from Garlic and Sapphires, I'm adjourning to the kitchen to come up with another great meal.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Borders up and died and I basically got this paperback for almost nothing. I never had any interest in this series (trilogy, I think) not because it's blockbuster bestseller but because it's a blockbuster bestseller. Make sense? The masses aren't always right (Hello Twilight).

I still don't think the masses are right. I read the entire book but I just didn't get the appeal for the majority of it. It seemed very slow going and didn't seem to find it's speed until near the end, but it was a good enough story that I kept reading.

The original Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women and boy howdy, that's an accurate title. Are all Swedish books this horribly violent?

Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist who is on trial and convicted of Libel against a bigshot financial guy. He didn't defend himself and takes the fine and jail time. In another place, Lisbeth Salander is a strange woman who is an excellent researcher and runs profiles for a security company. Lisbeth has issues but for the majority of the book, I didn't think she was likable. Maybe she wasn't supposed to be but I do kind of want characters to root for or something. Anyways, Blomkvist is hired by Henrick Vanger to spend a year out in the country and write the Vanger family history....oh and to unravel the mystery of the missing Harriett Vanger.

It was a decent enough story that really exploded towards the end. There's a serious debate going on in my head about whether to read the remaining books. To be decided....

Limitless by Alan Glynn

This was originally titled The Dark Fields but was re-titled and re-covered with the movie stuff, which is a pet peeve.

I think I can sum this book up in one sentence: Kids, drugs are bad for you.


Actually, this was a pretty good book and I would even admit to wanting to try out the MDT-48 drug, if only to have a clean house and a banging career. But without the nasty side effects. Eddie Spinola is a massively down on his luck copywriter in New York. He ends up running into his ex brother-in-law on the street and is offered a little pill, the MDT-48, that Vernon swears will help Eddie out with all his problems. Apparently being a former drug addict makes it easy for people to just swallow random pills to see what happens. Which Eddie does and becomes hyper alert and scary smart.

Vernon is murdered and Eddie steals the rest of the MDT-48 stash from his apartment and proceeds to become a junkie all over again, albeit a wealthy, brilliant, stockbroker junkie. We know how this ends, everything has to come crashing down. And crash down it does, in a rather magnificent way.

Withdrawal from MDT-48 means death, so there's no illusions as to Eddie's fate. But perhaps the creepiest part of this story is when Eddie sees the the President of the United States on TV and sees the "alert, gorged MDT expression in his eyes". Well, we're all freaking doomed then.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I hope it keeps fairly well to the book but clears up some of Eddie's boneheaded decisions because for someone supersmart, he really is a moron sometimes.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Highly recommend everyone to read this book. I listened to it on audiobook (12+ hours) and it drew me in each time.

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman born in Virginia who unknowingly gave her cancer cells to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Back in the '50s it wasn't necessary, or even thought of, to ask patients for tissue samples for research. It was just done. When Lacks went to Johns Hopkins for cervical cancer treatments, the doctors took samples of the tumors and sent them to George Gey to work with. Gey had been trying to find ways to get human cells to live in a lab, with very little success. Lacks' cells turned the tide (and became known as HeLa cells) and are still living today.

This book has 2 sides: the good that the HeLa cells have done (the polio vaccine to name one very important discovery) and the Lacks family, who didn't know that their mother/wife had cells taken from her without anyone's permission. The Lacks family never received any money or any information about the HeLa cells and Skloot was determined to get the story out.

The whole research issue is an interesting one. The book brought up the case of John Moore, who found that his tissue was being used in research that would net the doctor a lot of money. He sued and was told he had no rights to his tissues and therefore could get nothing from it. This is based on the fact that millions of people, every day, leave behind tissue and cells at hospitals and doctor's offices and that tissue is what helps science proceed. As someone who has left behind a colon, thyroid and who knows what else after leaving a hospital, this amazes me. I always assumed tissue was incinerated but that happens rarely. Mostly it's stored and/or used in scientific research.

This is truly an amazing book and it's spurred me into looking at tissue research a little more in depth.

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

I'm slowly trucking along with this series and am pretty happy that book two is done before the 2nd season of Game of Thrones starts. Once again, this is an old book so these aren't spoilers....

But I'll still give you time to go away.....


The beginning of this was....not boring, but maybe a tad slow for my tastes. Once I got midway through, things started picking up so fast I was forced to forgo my laundry and just sit and read to finish the book last night. Dany's story arc didn't do much for me, so I'll not talk about it.

Great battles are brewing as everyone and their brother (literally) are proclaiming themselves King. Everyone and their brother still hates King Joffrey and who can blame them. Tyrion is now dispatched to Joffrey's side as Hand of the King (formerly occupied by Ned Stark - he of no head). I have to admit that I am fully rooting for Tyrion at this point. Wits and brains are incredibly more impressive than brawn. It got him pretty far in this book, but notably, at the end of the book, Tyrion, fights in battle. Brave little man, whose men turned against him and tried to kill him.

Arya is another favorite. She is Ned's daughter who managed to escape King's Landing before it was shut down. Yoren, of the Night Watch, was trying to get her out of town to the Wall. Unfortunately, bad stuff happens and Yoren dies, leaving Arya and a few buddies to fend for themselves...and get captured and sent to Harrenhal as slaves. Spunky little girl ends up kicking some ass and escaping again.

Winterfell falls to Theon Greyjoy (who stupidly feels up his own sister without realizing who she is). Then falls again to Ramsay Snow of the Bolton house. Bran and Rickon are thought dead by everyone but turns out they're not. Which is good. Sansa is no longer Joffrey's betrothed but still a hostage at King's Landing and hello, is Cersei just really crazy?? Yes, I think so. Incest will do that to you.

Stannis mounts a battle against his brother Renly for the rightful title of King but Renly is killed by a "shadow" (this is where my distaste for fantasy stuff comes in) so Stannis tries against King's Landing only to have to pull back in defeat. There's another case of killer shadows coming from the crotch of the sorceress Melisandre. Sorry, but give me a break.

So we're left with plot lines moved forward, but quite a bit in most cases. People dead, some we actually liked. People gravely wounded and some just gone into the ether of "read the next book" fog.

And now I shall read the next book.