The Last Concubine by Leslie Downer ✔✔

Heather dropped this off to me, I started reading it Thursday afternoon and I finished it today. It tells the stories of women in Japan in the early 19th century, just at the point in time where the old ways are supplanted by new ways brought about by rebellion and upheaval. It really was more of a historical romance than historical fiction, but it was interesting enough. Only two stars though. Good to read during the snowstorm, though!

Careless Love - The Unmaking of Elvis Presley ✔✔✔✔

I've been thoroughly immersed in Elvis Presley ever since visiting Graceland. Reading these two volumes was a revelation in so many ways - so many things about Elvis' life I didn't know. The last time I was as emotionally affected by a biography of a musician was some twenty years ago when I read Beethoven's biography.

This second volume was sad a lot of the time as I watched Elvis go steadily downhill. The large quantities of prescription drugs that he took, the many doctors he had at his beck and call, the women who came into his life, his changes in temperament - there were times when I didn't like him too much, but then I would become sad when I saw how needy he was, how lonely he was even amidst his ever-constant companions.

He obviously never got over the death of his mother, and his relationships with women illustrate that over and over again. I think he even had a death wish in those last few years. - he certainly seemed obsessed by mortality.

The Colonel,too, was an enigma, and the author didn't appear to like him very mich - the same can be said for Ginger Alden, his last "girlfriend", who was with him when he died.

These books were extra-special for me - an excellent, gifted young man whose life was wasted away.

Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick ✔✔✔✔

I am an Elvis fan. Not enough to go to Collingwood every year for the Elvis Impersonator festivals, but I was always interested in his career, especially his meteoric rise to fame when I was 10 or 11 years old. I remember seeing him on The Ed Sullivan Show with all the screaming girls and his gyrations on stage ( I was watching the show at Helen and Jim's home in Edmonton - that I do remember), then reading about him in Photoplay and Modern Screen magazines. I also occasionally purchased Hit Parader and Song Hits magazines when my measly allowance covered it.

I sort of lost track of him in the sixties when I was studying piano so intensely, but I seemed to always know what was going on in his life. The day he died, I was visiting a friend here in KL with David (two years) and Karen ( two months old) along with me - her husband came up the stairs to tell us Elvis had died. I remember being sad, and I have always remembered that date.

This year we visited Memphis and Graceland on our trip home from Florida, and I found the Guralnick books in one of the Elvis souvenir stores at Graceland. I had long known about them, and wanted to read them, so it seemed appropriate to buy them as my own souvenir of Graceland and Elvis' life. I wish now I'd been able to read them first, as I think our visit, interesting and enlightening as it was, would have been even more significant.

Before we drove to Memphis, we stopped in Tupelo and visited Elvis' birthplace home and the church he attended with his parents, and the story of Last Train To Memphis begins there.

I learned so much about Elvis from this book - he was a bit of a loner as a child, was extremely close to his mother all of his life ( she died in 1958 ), always knew he would do "something with his life", was very religious, was scared and shy before performing, but became a different person onstage, to the point that he didn't even know he was making all those movements which defined his stage presence, was really and truly a polite, engaging, likeable young man whom everyone eventually admired and adored, even some of his harshest critics (except for Frank Sinatra, who must have been as jealous as all get out), who refused to take acting lessons because he wanted to be himself in his movies ( too bad- I never thought they were very good...), who respected and revered other performers who may have imitated his own particular style ( like Gene Vincent of Be-Bop-A-Lula, and Jerry Lee Lewis)

I also have the second book, which I'm anxious to read, too. These books are definite keepers!