While I was gearing up to read Fifth Avenue, 5 AM (and by gearing up I mean placing it on my library request list) when it struck me that, while I’ve seen the film numerous times, I’ve never read the novella in which Holly Golightly is based! Our unnamed narrator is reflecting on the past after an old friend calls him with news about a woman, Holly, he used to know. Holly Golightly has left her home town and reinvented herself as a society girl. She drinks […]
A kookie little romance
This was a selection for the May nonfiction book club, and it lost. I’m so disappointed, you guys. But, I will persevere. Wasson recounts the history behind both Truman Capote’s 1958 novel, and the 1961 film directed by Blake Edwards and starring the inimitable and unconquerable Audrey Hepburn. Overall, this is a pretty good snapshot of Truman Capote, Audrey Hepburn, the film industry of the late 50s and early 60s, and the shifting beauty standards of the era. All of which amounts to a pretty […]
Sympathy for the Devil.
“Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger—with, rather, a measure of sympathy—for Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another.” – – – I remember being gobsmacked by this book when I read it for the first time six years ago, and now upon re-read, I find it’s just as good. In fact, it’s one of those books where the satisfaction comes not from […]
The Truest of True Crime, predecessor to everything
I had heard of In Cold Blood because of its resonance in popular culture, as it is considered to be a true crime masterpiece, if not THE best true crime book ever written. My favorite podcast “Literary Disco” did an episode on some Capote stories, which jogged my memory that I had never tackled this classic, and I decided to make this one a goal for the year. I “read” this via audiobook, and I highly recommend both that format, and the book. In 1959 a well known […]