I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend (by Martin Short)

 A very charming memoir by Martin Short.  I particularly loved his reminiscences of SCTV and SNL, and the whole Toronto Godspell crowd. I would love loved even more of all of that.  Plus basically an entire chapter on Three Amigos would not have gone amiss. (He improvised the scene about Lillian Gish, which the studio wanted to cut from the film. How dare they.) 

I am not a fan of his more grotesque characters like Jimminy Glick or whatever horrifying thing he did on Arrested Development. But I loved hearing his philosophy of life, his clear love for his wife, and his thoughts on grieving his wife Nancy Dolman as well as first love Gilda Radner, who both died of cancer.  He manages to keep a positive outlook in spite of it all, and the book left me with an appreciation of his approach to life.

Would I have enjoyed more gossip? Yes. (Like I'm sure he could have said a lot more about Chevy Chase than he did...) But his holiday parties with Tom Hanks playing accordion or whatever? His lake house across the way from Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell?  He really does let us into his life. I love him on Only Murders in the Building, I love a lot of his work, and I enjoyed this memoir! 

Two Series Installments

The Man Who Died Twice (by Richard Osman) 

Second book in the Thursday Murder Club series; another charming and delightful installment.  I finished this a while back so my memory of this book is that I enjoyed the mystery more than in the first one, and overall I continued to adore the characters and the general cozy vibe of the story.  Will definitely stick with this series.

Openly Straight (by Bill Konigsberg)

Spoilers below; if you're on desktop you can highlight to read!

I'm looking forward to Destination Unknown and decided to try another of Konigsberg's books in the meantime.  Rafe, our main character, is a gay kid who transfers to an all-boys school and decides to don't ask, don't tell his sexuality. This is complicated when, of course, he falls in love.

This is part of a series and when the ending was unresolved, I did a little investigating into the subsequent books. I decided not to keep going with the series because of at least one scene of extremely dubious consent that made it impossible to forgive the main character. Rafe sleeps with someone under these circumstances: 1) the guy is drunk, and Rafe is sober. 2) the guy does not know Rafe is gay and thinks they are on the same page as questioning guys experimenting. This is unethical AT BEST and it is not presented as such in the novel.  Like, the character can maybe make this horrible mistake but the author needs to know it's like, unforgiveably awful.  The fact that in subsequent books 1) there is a happy ending for these characters, and 2) bisexuality IS APPARENTLY COMPLETELY ERASED IN THE PROCESS makes this all a non-starter for me. 

All that said, I am still going to read Destination Unknown and hope in the past decade, Konigsberg has learned bisexual people exist and that, like, consent is important? I will report back.

New York Reads

A little bit of everything, read on my travel days to and from New York. I finished the first two in June (traveling to NYC) and the second in July (traveling home).  I do so love an airplane read.

Finna (by Nate Marshall) 

First up, a Read Harder Challenge book for the category "a book of poetry." I learned about Marshall because he joined the creative writing staff at UW Madison and a writer friend of mine runs the program.  Loved his exploration of language and the juxtaposition of AAVE with more "literary" flourishes.  Some very powerful pieces here and I am betting listening to him read his poems is even better than reading the poems myself on a plane.

Our Year of Maybe (by Rachel Lynn Solomon) 

The first book by Solomon that I've read and haven't really cared for.  Not bad of course (I finished it happily) but I kind of hated the characters? I thought Peter sleeping with Sophie while not telling her he was bisexual or into another guy was pretty unforgiveable, even though Sophie was also toxic and codependent. Not for me.

The Thursday Murder Club (by Richard Oseman)

The start of a series.  Not perfect (too many red herrings for me) but overall very charming and entertaining. Loved the focus on the elderly residents of a retirement community (who are fully rounded characters, not just "cute old people").  I have obviously downloaded the sequel (thanks, libraries) so will keep you posted as the series progresses.

The Jaws Log (by Carl Gottleib)

I love Jaws, so I enjoyed reading this nonfiction account of the making of the film, written by one of the writers who also played Harry Meadows (and wrote himself out of the script as he went along). I think this is the expanded 30th anniversary edition from 2012, but Gottleib's notes seem to be from the original 30th anniversary edition from 2005. It's a fun time capsule. The original text references Waldenbooks for instance, then the footnotes bemoan that now bookstores have been absorbed into big conglomerates like Borders. There are a lot of references to the "men" who make movies. A lot. A lot.  So yes, it's dated, but it's of its time the footnotes, at least, are a little better about it than the original text.  The one thing I really wanted was more information about the various plotlines they scrapped and changed for the movie. I have read the book so many times (it's trashy but fun) and since Gottleib was one of the writers of the film, I was hoping he'd got into more detail.  Why does Hooper live in one version and die in another, for instance? He never explains. But otherwise, this was an entertaining read about a great film.