Reading Room #7

Viveca Lindfors

Yvonne DeCarlo

Patrica Harty

(Don't know this one.)

Pat Mace

Kim Novak

Lizabeth Scott

Lee Remick

Dana Wynter

Anne Baxter
(Don't forget to read.)

Book Babes Galore!

Man, I thought that I had some great pictures of sexy readers. Hey, I ain't got jack, compared to Women Reading, Book Porn, and Hot chicks with books, some of which is NSFW.




("Read a book, read a book, read a M-F-ing book.")

Field Day!

Betty Field

Yummy!

Dreamy Liz

Also see Creamy Liz.

Old Dog, New Reading

In my recent reading, I've kinda been traveling in the Way Back Machine to the very early 1900s. I had just finished Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman and had watched several good documentaries about the grim war in the Pacific. I used to think that the atomic bomb won the war, but it was actually won by logistics and the Seabees. I never realized how many American soldiers, sailors, and Marines died of various jungle diseases in the Pacific theater. It was grim. Anyway, so I put all that aside and picked up Hearst Over Hollywood by Louis Pizzitola, which was interesting, except that I learned a lot more about yellow journalism, raw greed, and Tammany Hall politics than I did about Hollywood. I realize that there are many other books about the life of William Randolph Hearst, but I doubt I'll be exploring those any time soon. Keeping with the Tammany theme, I next read Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, the story of a deadly blouse factory fire in 1911 New York, by David von Drehle. (Excuse me for stringing "deadly blouse" into an adjective phrase there.) Anyway, the book was quite compelling. At the time, garment workers were trying to get their work week reduced (yes, reduced) to 54 hours. I hadn't known that either. (Amazing what new tricks an old dog can learn just by reading, ain't it?) Now I'm almost done with A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s by Roger Kahn, which is great fun even if you're not a fan of boxing (I'm certainly not). I'm learning a lot about early 20th century American journalism and everyday life. It seems that some of the darker side of movie scripts like The Front Page (1931), Night Mayor (1932), A Shriek in the Night (1933), His Girl Friday (1940), and even The Big Carnival (1951) had foundations in certain actual events from the 1910s and 20s. And next up is a book about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but we'll have to wait to see how that goes.

And what are you reading this month?

Huh?

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

I've been bouncing back and forth between reading history and biography recently. I finished Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends by Allen Barra. And, continuing on sort of a Great Plains theme, I read Timothy Egan's excellent book about the dustbowl, The Worst Hard Time. And since I was in an Oklahoma Panhandle and Texas sort of mood, I read the relentlessly grim Candy Barr: The Small-Town Texas Runaway Who Became a Darling of the Mob and the Queen of Las Vegas Burlesque by Ted Schwartz and Mardi Rustam. (That's NSFW Candy in the cowboy hat above.) Brushing all that dust off my jeans, I decided to read something completely different with Just One More Thing by Peter Falk, a fast and funny book which should entertain both the fans of John Cassavetes and the fans of the television show Columbo. I was hoping for more about Natalie Wood, who starred in both The Great Race (1965) and Penelope (1966) with Peter Falk, but that was not to be. Falk's book has a lot of photos, including one of Peter with Inger Stevens in an episode of The Dick Powell Show called "The Price of Tomatoes." Anyway, I raced through those 281 pages in three and a half hours, and got started on Gus Russo's The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld on the Shaping of Modern America, which is much, much thicker and might take me three and a half weeks. We'll see.

So what are you reading?
Go ahead, tell me.
I'd like to know.

Reading is Just Sexy

Thanks to Jenn for the idea. (She doesn't sell them.)
Take the graphic below and design your own at:
Zazzle
Discount Mugs
Gift Mugs






I just finished reading The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin, and I'm about done with Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 by Keith Lowe, both of which are excellent (depending on your personal tastes). And next up is Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr by Michael Seth Starr.
So what are you reading?

Another Fay in Paradise

Fay Spain