1. What are you currently reading? Jackie's Girl, by Kathy McKeon. A 19-year-old Irish lass lands on our shores and lands a job as personal assistant to the former First Lady. She's there as Jacqueline Kennedy becomes Jackie O. She becomes so ubiquitous that Rose Kennedy begins to refer to her simply as "Jackie's girl."
I just started this charming book, but so far it reminds me of the movie Brooklyn ... if young Ellis had ended up instead at 1040 Fifth Avenue.
2. What did you recently finish reading? Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe. More serious and far more entertaining than I anticipated. It's cliche, I know, but Rob Lowe really is "more than just a pretty face." On these pages, he's revealed himself as disarmingly candid.
2. What did you recently finish reading? Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe. More serious and far more entertaining than I anticipated. It's cliche, I know, but Rob Lowe really is "more than just a pretty face." On these pages, he's revealed himself as disarmingly candid.
I came to be fascinated by his mother, Barbara. Though he was a child actor, she was not a stage mother. She referred to rehearsals as "practices" and auditions as "try outs," and spent as much time/attention on her other sons' soccer and baseball as she did Rob's commercials and TV shows. She was clearly and admirably more interested in watching her sons express themselves than she was in financial success. She was also imaginative, creative, high strung and batshit crazy. There's an especially harrowing scene where Rob brings his new girl home -- she being Princess Stephanie of Monaco -- only to find his mother having a breakdown. Mom insisted to Rob and Stephanie that she was being driven crazy by her husband, who was shaping her Kleenex into voodoo dolls.
He writes of his mother with a moving mix of appreciation, exasperation, sympathy and love. Early on in the book, Lowe recounts that he couldn't even get an audition for Ordinary People. That's too bad. For while Tim Hutton was wonderful as Conrad Jarrett, it's clear that Rob Lowe has always known a thing or two about pretending everything is just fine and insisting that there's nothing to see here.
I am not familiar with any of these books. They sound interesting though. Enjoy/
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I am leaning toward Jackie's Girl, although the Rob Lowe book is one I've been wanting to read, too. Thanks for sharing, and here's MY WWW POST
ReplyDeleteI love all things Irish so I'll pick up Jackie's Girl. :)
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