From One Book Lover

The world of the famous and infamous is rather small, Craig Brown proves in his delightful book Hello, Goodbye, Hello .  It's like Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only across genres. The book is a chain of 101 meetings: Truman Capote meets Peggy Lee, Peggy Lee meets Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley...  The book blends from one encounter to the next seamlessly with well-recorded conversations and comments from reliable resources: published accounts, diaries, third-party accounts, all verifiable, all more honest than one would expect. But is it interesting? Mostly. The author is British, so he takes delight in a couple of politicians whose notoriety is lost on me. I could have skipped over them, but I didn't want to miss a single snarky, surprising encounter. And there are plenty. The encounters I enjoyed most were between the writers and movie actors. I'll never again see Sir Alec Guiness in the same light — his recollection of James Dean was swee...

I have a crowded nightstand. And that's not the half of it.  Hello, Goodbye, Hello — Truman Capote meets Peggy Lee, Peggy Lee meets Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley... it's a chain of 101 meetings.  The book blends from one encounter to the next seamlessly with well-recorded conversations and comments from reliable resources: published accounts, diaries, third-party accounts, all verifiable, all more honest than one would expect. Winds of Marble Arch — A not-easily found collection of Connie Willis' short stories. (Well, some not terribly short. In fact, most I've read have been rather long. Not quite a novella, but certainly a long tale.) I like her, and I like her stories. I can't wait to see what bite-sized nugget (or substantial snack) comes next. Wolf Hall — I have both of Hilary Mantel's books in this trilogy. (The third one is in production.) I really like them: a little rambling, but one wants to be in the heads of her chracters...