Hold Me Closer

Hold Me Closer: the Tiny Cooper Story by David Levithan  200 pp.

This is a companion to one of my favorite YA books, Will Grayson, Will Grayson. That novel was written by my two favorite YA authors, Levithan and John Green. In Will Grayson... the large, gay, football playing Tiny Cooper writes and directs an autobiographical musical play about his big gay life. Hold Me Closer is the script of that musical complete with song lyrics and some added commentary. The only thing I wish it had was the music to the songs. The play chronicles Tiny's life and mainly focuses on his search for a partner to love. One of the musical numbers is a parade of his ex-boyfriends telling the reason things didn't work out with each of them. An appearance by the ghost of Oscar Wilde who tries to council Tiny is an added bonus. There are some thoughtful lessons in this short book but Levithan doesn't beat you over the head with them. I especially liked Tiny's former babysitter telling him that you aren't less of a person if you are not one half of a couple. You don't have to read Will Grayson... before you read this but it will add more depth if you have.

Every Anxious Wave

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau, 276 pages

If you could go back in time and see one concert, which one would it be? The question is a great conversation starter, and, if you have a music-obsessed crowd, fuel for hours of hypothetical discussions and arguments. But when bartender and former punk guitarist Karl Bender stumbles across a wormhole in his closet (he literally stumbles into it, landing at a years-ago concert), the question moves out of hypothetical and into the possible, and Karl starts earning some extra cash by sending deep-pocketed music fans back in time. But things go awry when Karl's friend Wayne accidentally ends up in 980 instead of 1980, leading Karl to enlist Lena, a tattooed punk physicist, to rescue his friend.

This is a fun book, particularly if you're a music fan and enjoy time travel stories. Daviau raises a lot of questions about how our actions affect others and events in the future. And I certainly spent a lot of time pondering the which bands I would go back in time to see. A good debut novel from Daviau. I look forward to seeing what else she has to offer.

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements by Bob Mehr, 474 pages.

Bob Mehr, who it seems, is normally a columnist and writer of liner notes, does a really good job on a readable, informative, and consistently even story of my favorite band from the 1980s. I saw the book on the review shelf and put it on request because it was about the Replacements. I was a little dismayed when I saw that it was 474 pages long, and more dismayed when I realized how little white space there was; we're talking narrow margins and a small font. How could someone write so many words about a band? I figured it would be repetitive, and in the end, boring, despite it's subject, but I was wrong.
Mehr constructs the book carefully, with each new situation, each chapter starting with a brief bio of the person introduced. He begins with the parents of the band members, then the four Replacements, their friends, lovers, management, and their musical contemporaries. They all get an introduction and all get their say. There are no real heroes here. The book is by no means a hatchet job, though the truth, as Mehr tells it, could easily support one. The author does attempt to answer, in a sympathetic way, the question of how a band which so many people thought would succeed in a big way actively and aggressively avoided that success. How four people who were all capable of playing so well together always let it all fall apart. It's a fascinating story, and a pretty sad one.  The sadness begins with founding guitarist Bob Stinson, who died in 1995. Bob lived with the scars of being abused as a child, and then struggled with substance abuse, violent tendencies, and mental illness all his adult life, and it took a heavy toll on his music and his life. The whole band was right there with him in a lot of ways and seemed to relish living out their reputation as the most dysfunctional hyper-talented band going. They drank pretty much constantly, until they couldn't anymore. Paul Westerberg, the most famous of the Replacements, struggled with depression, along with his drug problems and alcoholism. Tommy Stinson, Bob's younger brother, started playing with the band when he was twelve, and dropped out of high-school during his sophomore year in order to tour nationally with the band. He waited a year or two before becoming a full-fledged member of the chemically-fueled destructive team, but he caught up quickly. Alcohol and drugs aside, the band seemed determined, throughout their existence, to go out of their way defy the advice of anyone and everyone in the business, to slap away any helping hand offered, and to sabotage themselves and their careers with their fans, radio stations (including Lin Bremer and Johnny Mars at WXRT in Chicago) their own lmanagement team, and their record label; all in colorful and almost unforgivable ways. Eventually they seem to turn on each other. There's never any real redemptive moment for anyone, but that seems to be the way the band wanted it.
Interesting stuff.

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750 years in Paris

750 years in Paris / Vincent Mahe 124 pgs.

An architecture history of one building in Paris over 750 years with fabulously detailed drawings showing the effects of social events on the site.  I really like the use of everyday animals...farm animals in the earlier years, dogs and cats in the later years.  Very fun book.

A Tale of Two Cats

A tale of two cats / Allen Dodd & Ivy Dodd 122 pgs.

Allen and Ivy moved from the city onto some acreage in Maine.  Their house and barn were over-run with mice and other pests.  Everyone said they needed a cat but they were dubious.  Then a cat showed up and adopted them.  Cassius was out in the cold and had some health issues.  They let him in and took him to the vet and in return, Cassius worked and cleared out everything that needed to go.  Later, they were talked into taking a kitten and Toby became the junior partner after rigorous training by Cassius.

People with cats won't find anything new here but it is a cute story.

Willful Disregard: a Novel about Love / Lena Andersson, trans. by Sarah Death, 196 pp.

A very simple story: woman meets a man, falls for him mind and body, and he doesn't want her (except for the occasional body business).  She wants him to the exclusion of everything; she can't have him; it's excruciating. Most of us have been there at least once, so where's the story?

Yet I devoured this short novel. The reader cringes with every foolish step the main character takes, willing her to step back from the psychological cliff even while we know (again, because we've been there) she won't. She analyzes her mistakes in painful detail, dismissing the advice of what she calls the 'girlfriend chorus.' Unusual and dark.

The Guest Room

The Guest Room: a novel by Chris Bohjalian  318 pp.

In general, I like Chris Bohjalian's books but this is far from my favorite. A successful banker allows his ne'er-do-well brother's bachelor party to be held in his Bronxville home. Richard Chapman's wife and daughter leave to spend the night at his mother-in-law's while the revelry occurs. What was supposed to be a night of drinking and entertainment by strippers turns into a bloodbath when one of the girls (prostitutes, not strippers) attacks their "bodyguards" with a kitchen knife. The house becomes a crime scene, the bad press puts Richard's lucrative job in jeopardy, his marriage is self-destructing, and the "friend" who arranged for the strippers/prostitutes is trying to blackmail him. Somehow, Bohjalian never seems to evoke sympathy for the characters, especially Richard. While the ending is a bit of a surprise, it wasn't enough to raise my opinion of this book. The Sandcastle Girls and The Light in the Ruins are better selections from the author's repertoire.

A Touch of Stardust

A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott, 296 pages

Julie Crawford is a Midwestern girl who sets off for California to make it big in movies. But she has no interest in being a starlet; rather, she plans to be a screenwriter, despite the uphill battle she faces as a woman in the mostly-male world of 1930s Hollywood. Set during the filming of Gone With the Wind and featuring several of the actors and actresses who were involved in the movie (as well as Carole Lombard, who married Clark Gable during filming), A Touch of Stardust offers a wide-eyed look at the magic of movie-making, as well as a look beneath the surface to the misogynistic, racist, and anti-Semitic world in which these movies were made. A well-written, quick-reading book, perfect for fans of old Hollywood.

The Capitalist

The Capitalist by Peter Steiner, 294 pages.
I glanced at what I thought what I thought was a great review of this title on the back from the magazine Booklist. When I was about half way through, and didn't quite think that the book was all that great, I looked again and saw that the review was about the author overall, and not about this book.
There are little hints of what seem like laziness, phoning it in; a couple of the characters seem almost caricatures, and one character's gun is described as a ". . .cold blue steel, a Glock .45. . ." which is an odd description for a type of gun that is famous for being made out of a nylon polymer. There are some complicated plot twists, and clashes between characters which all seem to go nowhere. Overall the book is okay, but not one to seek out unless you're already a Steiner fan.

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The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray

The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray

Robert Schnakenberg

Quirk Books

2016 is an election year, which means everywhere you go there’s an overload of rhetoric. However the one thing that everyone can get on board for is that Bill Murray is an American Treasure. With “The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray” fans of all ages are treated to an encyclopedic examination of the actor, his roles, his co-stars and his odd antics.

From “Gung Ho to Garfield,” “Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Ghostbusters” author Robert Schnakenberg gives us a thorough examination of Murray’s career as a comic, actor and celebrity goofball.

The book describes Murray’s films while also giving readers short bios on his family, friends and major influences, all of which help us get inside the mind of this great talent.

In a spring filled with intense nonfiction, scores of biographies and more emotionally gripping works of fiction than you can shake a stick at it’s great to have this amazingly frivolous read to lighten the long days.

It’s an election year, which means everywhere you go there’s an overload of rhetoric. However the one thing that everyone can get on board for is that Bill Murray is an American Treasure. With “The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray” fans of all ages are treated to an encyclopedic examination of the actor, his roles, his co-stars and his odd antics.
From “Gung Ho to Garfield,” “Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Ghostbusters” author Robert Schnakenberg gives us a great overview of his career while also getting pretty deep into the actor’s life off-screen. He also features short bios on his family, friends and major influences, providing us with a light overview of what makes him tick and why he remains relevant.
- See more at: http://www.alivemag.com/blog/index.php/2016/02/5-recommended-reads-for-february/#sthash.MnKsytsA.dpuf

It’s an election year, which means everywhere you go there’s an overload of rhetoric. However the one thing that everyone can get on board for is that Bill Murray is an American Treasure. With “The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray” fans of all ages are treated to an encyclopedic examination of the actor, his roles, his co-stars and his odd antics.
From “Gung Ho to Garfield,” “Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Ghostbusters” author Robert Schnakenberg gives us a great overview of his career while also getting pretty deep into the actor’s life off-screen. He also features short bios on his family, friends and major influences, providing us with a light overview of what makes him tick and why he remains relevant.
- See more at: http://www.alivemag.com/blog/index.php/2016/02/5-recommended-reads-for-february/#sthash.MnKsytsA.dpuf

The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray”
Robert Schnakenberg, Quirk Books
It’s an election year, which means everywhere you go there’s an overload of rhetoric. However the one thing that everyone can get on board for is that Bill Murray is an American Treasure. With “The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray” fans of all ages are treated to an encyclopedic examination of the actor, his roles, his co-stars and his odd antics.
From “Gung Ho to Garfield,” “Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Ghostbusters” author Robert Schnakenberg gives us a great overview of his career while also getting pretty deep into the actor’s life off-screen. He also features short bios on his family, friends and major influences, providing us with a light overview of what makes him tick and why he remains relevant.
- See more at: http://www.alivemag.com/blog/index.php/2016/02/5-recommended-reads-for-february/#sthash.MnKsytsA.dpuf