• What are you currently reading? W Is for Wasted by Sue Grafton. For light reading, there's a lot in this book. At age 38, our girl Kinsey meets her extended family (some cousins) for the first time under stressful circumstances. A former lover reappears. And she interacts, in a personal way, with Santa Teresa's homeless community. Grafton's unsentimental yet compassionate approach to this last is really staying with me. I'm very nearly done with it, and suspect I'll look back on this as one of the more memorable "letters" in the series.
• What did you recently finish reading? Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and The Marriage of the Century.
While I'm not unsympathetic to the easily accessible human tragedy -- two people genuinely loved each other but their relationship is derailed by drink and drugs -- it's not why I reread this book.It's indescribable fun to shove quarters into the coin-operated dryer downstairs and then pick up this book and read about jets, jewels and jaunts to Budapest and Rome and Puerto Vallerta. In 1968, they actually rented a yacht for $2,400/week ($10,000+ in today's dollars) to house their dogs on the Thames. England requires pets entering the country be quarantined for six months and Liz just couldn't bear the idea of her two Pekingnese and two Yorkies being caged for that long. At the end of his life, when Burton was living quietly outside Geneva with fourth wife, Sally, he was shocked by his own excesses during his marriage to Taylor.
• What do you think you’ll read next? I don't know. Next on the TBR pile is Five Days at Memorial about the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and how they coped during the crisis of Katrina. But the heartbreak of Katrina is still fresh and so that book might be too intense for my current mindset. Maybe The President's Club.
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I read The President's Club--I think I kind of skipped around, as I find some presidents more interesting than others--but I enjoyed the parts I read.
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