ERMA BOMBECK

This past Saturday was The Susan G Komen Race For The Cure. I thought I would highlight an author who battled breast cancer.

Erma was a stay at home mom who, in the early 60's started writing a humorous column for a local newspaper, for a whopping $3 a column. It quickly became popular and was syndicated nationwide. She soon began writing for the popular magazines of the 70's, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Family Circle, Mccall's and Readers Digest. She also lectured across the country.

I remember reading her column in the Post. I also enjoyed reading her books The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank and If Life Is A Bowl of Cherries, Why Am I In The Pits? She wrote several others.

Here's a word of advice from Erma. Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. She was a funny lady. Check her out.

Faking It by Elisa Lorello

Wow, it has been a long time since I have read a book without putting it down and finished it in one day. There were moments where you cry with her and then moments where you share in her happiness. I look forward to many more books from this author!!!


After breaking off her engagement, thirty-something writing professor Andi Cutrone abandons New England for her native Long Island to focus on her career and start over. When she meets Devin at a cocktail party, the sight of an honest-to-goodness male escort shocks her—and fascinates her more than a little. Months later, Andi impulsively calls Devin. Over cheesecake in Brooklyn, she offers him a proposition: he will teach her how to be a better lover, and in return, she will give him writing lessons. He agrees, and together they embark upon an intense partnership that proves to be as instructive as it is arousing. For in the midst of lessons in rhetorical theory and foreplay, Andi and Devin delve into deeper questions about truth, beauty, and self, gradually coming face-to-face with the issues at the core of their emotional limitations. Smart, witty, and introspective, Faking It is an engrossing novel about two people discovering their authentic selves.

Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?: The Lost Toys, Tastes, and Trends of the 70s and 80s

In the not to distant past my sisters and I went on a trip to Branson, MO. There we stopped in an old-fashioned candy store and a general store. We relived the past through the displays of candy and odd objects the owners had chosen to sell. What fun it was to wander down the road of our past...speaking of that, what ever happened to Klick-Klack balls and Chinese Jumprope?

Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?: The Lost Toys, Tastes, and Trends of the 70s and 80s looks like such a fun read!

If you owe a couple cavities to Marathon candy bars, learned your adverbs from Schoolhouse Rock!, and can still imitate the slo-mo bionic running sound of The Six Million Dollar Man, this book is for you.

Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? takes you back in time to the tastes, smells, and sounds of childhood in the '70s and '80s, when the Mystery Date board game didn't seem sexist, and exploding Pop Rocks was the epitome of candy science.

But what happened to the toys, tastes, and trends of our youth? Some vanished totally, like Freakies cereal. Some stayed around, but faded from the spotlight, like Sea-Monkeys and Shrinky Dinks. Some were yanked from the market, revised, and reintroduced...but you'll have to read the book to find out which ones.

So flip up the collar of that polo shirt and revisit with us the glory and the shame of those goofy decades only a native could love.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

I posed a question on Facebook as to what books people are reading; this book was given as a response. I'm a fan of history and I like to read about books dealing with WWII in particular. I know that I've already put it on my "books to read this summer" list.

Review
"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history….There has been nothing quite like Mr. Larson’s story of the four Dodds….The Dodd’s story is rich with incident, populated by fascinating secondary characters, tinged with rising peril and pityingly persuasive about the futility of Dodd’s mission....powerful, poignant…a transportingly true story."--The New York Times



In the Garden of Beasts is a vivid portrait of Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s reign, brought to life through the stories of two people: William E. Dodd, who in 1933 became America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s regime, and his scandalously carefree daughter, Martha. Ambassador Dodd, an unassuming and scholarly man, is an odd fit among the extravagance of the Nazi elite. His frugality annoys his fellow Americans in the State Department and Dodd’s growing misgivings about Hitler’s ambitions fall on deaf ears among his peers, who are content to “give Hitler everything he wants.” Martha, on the other hand, is mesmerized by the glamorous parties and the high-minded conversation of Berlin’s salon society—and flings herself headlong into numerous affairs with the city’s elite, most notably the head of the Gestapo and a Soviet spy. Both become players in the exhilarating (and terrifying) story of Hitler’s obsession for absolute power, which culminates in the events of one murderous night, later known as “the Night of Long Knives.” The rise of Nazi Germany is a well-chronicled time in history, which makes In the Garden of Beasts all the more remarkable. Erik Larson has crafted a gripping, deeply-intimate narrative with a climax that reads like the best political thriller, where we are stunned with each turn of the page, even though we already know the outcome.

The Lady and The Panda

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time.

Ruth was the toast of 1930s New York, a dress designer newly married to a wealthy adventurer, Bill Harkness. Just weeks after their wedding, however, Bill decamped for China in hopes of becoming the first Westerner to capture a giant panda–an expedition on which many had embarked and failed miserably. Bill was also to fail in his quest, dying horribly alone in China and leaving his widow heartbroken and adrift. And so Ruth made the fateful decision to adopt her husband’s dream as her own and set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

This book by Vicki Croke is on my 100 list. I saw that it was being discussed at The Buder Branch Library on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at
1:00 PM.