Melissa Rivers wrote a beautiful, not to mention hilarious, book about her mother, the one and only, Joan Rivers. Melissa recalls what it was like growing up as Joan River's daughter and all the good times they had together.
I really enjoyed this book because Joan was real. She hated sports, but loved the Kentucky Derby. She couldn't spell, but she insisted on proper punctuation.She broke the rules, but demanded good manners. How many of us are just like that?
Melissa's writing style is relaxed, and it's as if you are sitting right in front of discussing her mother. She describes her mother as the Manipulator. Melissa manages to write about her mother, poking fun at her, yet at the same time displaying great affection for her.
I really enjoyed reading this book. Anyone who enjoyed Joan back in the day should definitely read this. Plus, I liked the cover.
Disclosure
of Material Connection: I was provided a free copy of this book by
Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion.
A couple of weeks ago, my family and I went to on a self tour of the American Southwest. We hopped on a plane (my first time) and took a nice, leisurely flight to the Las Vegas Airport. We landed, disembarked, and went to the rental car building. After an hour and an insurance fiasco with the agency, we hot- footed out of Sin City and went to Laughlin, which is right on the border of Nevada and Arizona. The only bad thing about Laughlin was there were no restaurants. And I mean that literally. The only thing we could come up with there was an overpriced Outback.
The next day we drove on the historic (cliche, much?) Route 66. Whilst driving, we stopped on by Havasu City, and walked on the London Bridge.
However, our second night in Laughlin proved to be very successful. We decided to go into Arizona for dinner, and in Bullhead City, we found Callioni's. That place is amazing! Between the service, the pizza, and the price, you can't go wrong with them. At first we thought Callioni's might be a bar because loud music was playing. But we ordered our pizza and enjoyed the oldies, played by Melody Louise and her piano player. A little while after dinner a saxophone player named "Marvin from Vegas" came and joined the show. Gosh, he was incredible! I've never seen such an accomplished saxophone player. It was truly and incredible evening.
After Laughlin, we went to Williams, Arizona. Williams was a nice little town. At dinner it was snowing!!! In Arizona!! In May!!!! It was very cold. Brrrrr!
To go with our hotel, Mom made reservations for the train, so we got to travel like people did in the 1920's (when the train was built). We made friends with our train attendant and our fellow passengers. Everyone was really nice. (They were nice because the train was heated.)
Well, we finally got to the Canyon around 1pm. Much to our disappointment, the Canyon was completely fogged over! However God decided to do us a solid, and He cleared the fog for about 10 minutes. Good thing it wasn't any longer because Mom was near frostbite.( Not really but it makes the story much more dramatic.)
Just for fun we decided to go New Mexico because none of had ever been there. We ended up staying at this really neat hotel that was built by a movie director in the 1930's. Apparently, a whole bunch of famous, Old Hollywood movie stars stayed there. Each room was named after one of them. Ours was named "Jimmy Stewart".
We had another day to kill so we went back to Laughlin because it was finally something we were familiar with.
We left Laughlin, and on our last night of vacation, we spent it at the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas. Coming from a small- ish town, Vegas is the epitome of culture shock. But then you think about it, our family, as in Pa, Ma, Dick, and Jane went to the town where regrettable behavior was invented. But you know, we did nothing regrettable, except spending twenty bucks for coffee. Oh, caramel latte.....
"How To Get Dressed" by Alison Freer is a really awesome book! Miss Freer is a costume designer for Hollywood. In her book she talks about proper fit, clothing styles, how to properly care for clothes, a comprehensive list of types of cloth and how to care for them, and more.
Not only does Freer talk about how to properly dress for women, she also has chapter devoted to the men in their lives.
My personal favorite chapter was "Dumb Fashion Rules", where she discusses rules we can really go without like " you can't wear white after Labor Day" or "don't mix patterns".
One word of advice that I need to put in this review is that she is a strong believer in tailoring. Most of us don't have a budget to have our entire wardrobe tailored to perfection and a lot of her tips and ideas revolve around the "perfect fit" mantra.
I really enjoyed reading this book. Freer mixed humor, real life stories, and common sense making a fashionably wonderful book.
Disclosure
of Material Connection: I was provided a free copy of this book by
Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion.
I was so disappointed with this book. When I first saw that I could review Hyacinth Girls by Lauren Frankel, I was excited to do so. When I received it, I jumped right into the story. However just a few pages into it, the author had said the f- word more than once. Not only that but there were also several inappropriate sexual references. It was so bad that I couldn't finish the first chapter.
From the little I read of the book, Callie is a thirteen year old girl going to the small- town junior high school. One day, a girl throws ink on herself and blames Callie for it, evoking disgust by the small community. Rebecca, Callie's guardian, tries to clear Callie's name. That is about as far as I got.
I'm sure this would have been a very good book, but for me the language killed it.
Disclosure
of Material Connection: I was provided a free copy of this book by
Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion.
