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!

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine ✔✔✔

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Betty Weissmann has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by her husband's mistress, she and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. In Schine's playful and devoted homage to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the impulsive sister is Miranda, a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister. Schine's witty, wonderful novel "is simply full of pleasure: the pleasure of reading, the pleasure of Austen, and the pleasure that the characters so rightly and humorously pursue..An absolute triumph" (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

The above is from Chapters Indigo website - I'm feeling lazy tonight. However, I must say I really enjoyed this book - a fairly light read, and certainly witty - I especially enjoyed the character of Felicity, the above-mentioned mistress.

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny ✔✔✔✔

It's interesting that the last novel I sign out from our local library here in Florida was written by a Canadian! I've read four of Penny's novels now, and by checking The Brutal Telling, which I entered on this blog on June 10, 2010, you'll get some background into this particular novel which I've just finished.

Penny keeps us guessing on three separate levels here all through the book - from Gamache investigating a strange murder in an Anglo historical library in Quebec City, to his second-in-command, Beauvoir, re-investigating the accused killer from The Brutal Telling - and finding him innocent - then finally to a hostage-taking incident some months previously when both Gamache and Beauvoir were severely injured, both physically and emotionally. Two of these levels finally intersect, but this author is quite adept at writing mysteries, without undue violence, too.

A comment on the book cover that her writing could well be a model for students of this genre is spot on. She's a wonderful mystery writer! She obviously has a great affection for Quebec City and it brought back lots of memories for me of visiting there over the years.

Even Silence Has An End by Isabel Betancourt ✔✔✔

This is the story of the author's six-year captivity by FARC - the people's army of Columbia - in the jungles of the Amazon. It was an interesting contrast to Unbroken, which I read earlier this year, because this book explores the relationships between people under such constant stress much more deeply.

"When you're chained by the neck to a tree, and deprived of all freedom - the freedom to move around, to talk, to eat, to drink, to carry out your most basic bodily needs - well, it took me several years to realize it, but you still have the most important freedom of all, which no one can take away from you: that is the freedom to choose what kind of person you want to be".

Ingrid never stopped dreaming of escape and did get away several times, only to be re-captured. The book is a treatise on the basics of life - fear, freedom, hope. She was often derided by her fellow captives, and suffered many indignities from her captors, forced to march many miles through dense jungle, with only her mother and children's broadcasts to hostages over the radio sustaining her - she was never allowed to speak to them, and they broadcast every day not knowing whether she was alive to hear them.

After finishing the book, I read some reviews, and found the readers' comments following them very interesting. Many people absolutely hate this woman, for being part of the "elite" in Columbia, for going into a dangerous region in the first place, and especially for suing the Columbian government after her release on the basis that she was not sufficiently warned about the area she was visiting at the time of her capture.

So the controversies that followed her time in the jungle have not really been resolved, including scathing remarks from some of her fellow hostages. But, for me, it was a good read, and I admired her spirit in facing each day with hope that this one might be the last in the jungle.

The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George ✔✔✔✔

Margaret George writes excellent historical fiction, including Mary, Queen of Scots and Helen of Troy, and now this one, which I read for our Tudor theme study at April's book club meeting. She is easy to read, never sensational, and always remains true to historic fact.

The Tudors is a favorite subject of mine, and I've already read many books on this theme, but I picked this one - some 900 pages long- first because most of the books I've read deal with Anne Boleyn or Elizabeth I, and I wanted to know more about Henry's other wives, especially after Anne Boleyn. Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel, which I read last year, had Thomas Cromwell as its subject and I found it overly scholarly. This one was an excellent choice.

Henry is seen as a man who never got over the fact that his mother never loved him, or at least never demonstrated any affection towards him. You also see the loneliness of the reigning monarch, not knowing who to trust, even himself. It's also quite obvious that once Henry made up his mind about someone's treachery, whether real or suspected, or wanted to get rid of someone, like three of his six wives, that he never spoke directly with the object of his wrath, almost as if he knew if he did, he'd be talked out of it. He really was just a little boy who wanted a mommy!