Speed Round

I have not been good about posting my last few books. And about half of the last six books that I tried to read, I abandoned due to their awfulness. So here are the ones that I finished, whether or not I liked them all that much.

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris
2013, 338 pages

I read this one at work yesterday. The mall was so dead! There were no customers and it was a long shift. So I read this. Here’s the thing. This is number 13 in the Sookie Stackhouse series. I remember reading the first one around the time that Twilight came out and feeling a sense of relief that at least in these books the vampires were badass and did not sparkle. So I liked the first few.

Now, however, it’s getting a bit old. The last few have not been very exciting. Harris kept adding all these characters, and now it seems that the last couple of books have just been bloodbaths trying to get rid of some of these extra characters. And I also think that Sookie always having someone shoot at her or attempt to kill her is getting old. It’s a formula that seems to be working, but it’s no longer interesting to read.

The other problem is that 1. there are 13 of these books and remembering what happened in the last one is impossible and 2. the problem of not remembering what happened is compounded by the TV show True Blood which has some elements of the books and some it has completely made up. All of this made it very hard to follow the story and remember what on earth is supposed to be going on in this little supernatural universe.

It was an okay read, fast and relatively interesting, but I wasn’t really into it.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 bedazzles

Typhoid Mary by Anthony Bourdain
2001, 160 pages

As mentioned in my post about Fever, I wanted to learn more things about Typhoid Mary. I had originally started reading the book Typhoid Mary: Captive to Public Health, which was mentioned in both this book and Fever, but it is a long, dry book that is more focused on the laws and health department itself during this time. That book was also written in 1996, so it spent a lot of time comparing the typhoid epidemic to the AIDS epidemic. This one was way easier to read and interesting.

It focused on the life of Mary, from her first arrest to her death in 1938 on North Brother Island, where she spent 26 years of her life. The last 6 she was bedridden from a stroke, so that’s no good. Reading this one showed how much creative license was taken in Fever. For example, her boyfriend got sick from pneumonia and died in the hospital before her second arrest, not becoming a severely burned drug addict in the fictionalized version. I guess that made a better story, but I don’t think it was necessary.

Another huge difference was how Mary was caught the second time. In the fictionalized account it would have you believe that she was caught while working in a hospital, but that was not the case. She was found hiding in a bathroom in the apartment of a friend.

The one interesting thing is that there is very little actual information to go on from Mary. She never spoke about typhoid, or her life before coming to North Brother or really gave anyone anything about her. So she’s, in some respects, just as much a mystery now as she was before. Interesting stuff and written in an easy to follow, amusing story, written by a chef who understood her as a chef.

There were also interesting bits about life at the beginning of the 20th century in New York. For example, rich women were expected to be huge and would eat a ton of food just to remain well over the 200 pound mark. So, that’s weird.

Rating: 4 out of 5 bedazzles