I didn’t know too much about Martin Short before listening to the audio version of his autobiography, I Must Say. His time on SCTV and SNL came before I started watching those shows, and his late night talk show on Comedy Central — Primetime Glick — made me crazy (he has created a lot of intentional obnoxious characters — Jiminy Glick, Ed Grimley, etc.). But he’s been in a few of my favorite movies, The Three Amigos, The Father of the Bride movies and Jungle 2 Jungle (Mimisiku!), so I’m familiar […]
Nellie Oleson and the girl who played her
Although I was a huge fan of the books as a kid, I don’t think I’ve ever watched an episode of the TV show Little House on the Prairie. However, I saw Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated and the titled intrigued me, so I snagged it. It turned out to be a really good read — dark and funny. Alison Arngrim definitely has the whole, “heal thyself through laughter” thing down. And the girl has a lot to […]
This just…wasn’t very good
I was pretty psyched to read Liane Moriarty’s new novel, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, because I loved the last two books I read by her (Big Little Lies and What Alice Forgot). Both had twisty plot lines full of mysteries and last minute reveals. I could not put either one of them down because I felt so desperate to find out how they ended! In contrast, if The Hypnotist’s Love Story hadn’t been a Moriarty book, I would have dropped it about 100 pages in. My belief in her […]
Not quite magical enough
Sarah Addison Allen’s Lost Lake doesn’t quite contain the magical wonder that so defines her other books for me. It’s a perfectly serviceable romance, but despite the presence of a talking alligator and a teenage ghost, didn’t quite do it for me. “Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby […]