Day: October 6, 2013

Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes a book comes out and you wonder why (example just about ANYTHING Annoying Author “writes”). And if you do pick it up and read it, you wonder why you even bothered to spend your time or money (coughcoughAnnnoyingAuthorcoughcough).

Given the above and the fact I kept falling asleep (the kind of sleep where one minute you are awake and the next thing you know it’s two hours later and you’ve drooled all over the couch like a Newfoundland on Mucinex) whenever I tried to read Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations you would have thought I would just take the hints, close the book, shove it deep into the library tote bag and curl up Mr Couch with something wholesome like the third season of Archer and a packet of Swiss Rolls even though Swiss Rolls are so darn sweet I can taste colour.

My stupid brain ignored all the hints and warnings and epic nap time (aka brain escape) and kept slogging through the darn book. I feel awful and am sure the late Peter Evans was a wonderful writer but no. The ingredients are all there. Reporter who is a friend of rich and famous, down on her luck movie goddess, a book project, London, Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. But the end result was more dull and unpalatable than the time I tried to make chili without fresh spices or my first attempt to make scones.

It’s not that I’m a hater. Ava Gardner is one of the all time Hollywood beauties. I’m the person who cut class (really hope my Dad isn’t reading this review), took the Bentley shuttle to Harvard Square, bought Ava: My Story and started reading the darn thing before I had barely left the bookstore as a college freshman. It’s a miracle I didn’t walk right in front of a damn bus that day.  If the publishers and the Peter Evans/Ava Gardner estates meant Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations to be a memorial to them and the chance for the public to read what happened and could have been with their stillborn attempt at writing Ava’s memoirs then I beg to differ.

All I got out of Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is Ava likes a) men b) to swear c) is leery of revealing all d) is broke and everyone in her circle doesn’t want her to work with Peter Evans. And yeah, Ava says she never never ever claimed her third husband was 110 lbs of umm…man meat. (Once again really hoping my Dad isn’t reading this review).  And calling the book Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations implies there is something beyond shocking and tawdry to reveal. Maybe I’m dim because I didn’t find anything shocking or secret (besides the third husband man meat claim). The most shocking thing is that Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations even got published.

Housewife Superstar!

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Now if my head really exploded over Monica Dickens’ My Fair Lady novelization (and it almost did but we live in Moderate Income Apartments and exploded head is really really really hard to get out of cream walls and tan carpet), I am positive Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh (it’s like something out of a soap opera isn’t it?) would have a handy tip for stain removal, an inexpensive and delicious treat to give the Hazmat clean up crew AND find a use for all those delightful rubber gloves. Martha Stewart and Amy Dacyczyn, ladies you are on notice! Bow before Queen Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh.

I don’t know how (well living in New England vs Tasmania might be a tiny factor) I reached the age of almost forty-one without encountering the housewife goddess of goddesses Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh. But I have seen the light! Thanks to my bottomless craving for books, I found myself at the Plainville Public Library book sale last week. Because my hip was hurting like a melon farmer at harvest time I took the elevator vs the stairs to the sale. And while waiting for the elevator to arrive, saw the book that is making me trawl eBay, Awesome Books, Thrift Books and Book Barn for everything Marjorie. I mean I could just break down and order copies from Amazon but a) expensive b) the thrill of the hunt and c) Marjorie of all people would understand wanting to stretch my book buying dollar right?

Shimmering like a retro beacon, a vision in mint green and clutching gaudy orange flowers, Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh beamed from the cover of Danielle Wood’s Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess. It was as if Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh knew I was weak and the worst housewife ever and would scoop up the book the second I was done with the book sale. And scoop it up I did just in cause there were retro housewife fanatics lurking in the mystery section to race out and snatch right from under my poor scratched to heck hands. (And yes, I just know Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh has a cure for that and a replacement for the expensive RX cream I should be using every day).

Danielle Wood could not have engineered a book more perfect for me because Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess hits all my “YESSSSSS” buttons. Biography. Healthy snippets from Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh’s books. Dame Edna Everage. COLOR photo section. But enough swooning right?

Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh (am copying and pasting that over and over because my poor hands) is a treasure from the island state of Tasmania (yes, where the Tasmanian Devil and Errol Flynn come from) who for over sixty years has been perfecting the art of being a housewife. She’s won endless prizes, written more books than I ever will and has a museum in her house. She’s also survived grinding poverty, an abusive first husband (Mr Blackwell), over forty year estrangement from her eldest son, the tragic death of her beloved second husband, battles with stepdaughters and poor health. But her life hasn’t been all sadness. She’s designed two houses (the 1950s Cli-mar makes me want to go to Tasmania and see it in person), given books to the Queen, is adored by Barry Humphries and in her nineties still does more in one day than I will do in my whole vacation next month.

If you trawl through the stacks at Goodwill, Savers and Salvation Army, block the aisle in the cooking/crafts/gardening section at library book sales (hands off those Time-Life Art of Sewing because they are MINE!), scour estate sales for treasures and can make your own Oxi-Clean then Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess is tailor made for you. Heck if you’ve even picked up a duster or tried one of Heloise’s hints, Housewife Superstar: Advice (and Much More) from a Nonagenarian Domestic Goddess is for you. Now time to wrap up this review and do a little housekeeping of my own.

***

Sad news…Marjorie Pearsall Blackwell Cooper Bligh died last month.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10332641/Inspiration-for-Dame-Edna-Marjorie-Bligh-dies-aged-96.html

My Fair Lady

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Blacklight: <looking at the library books piled higgledy-piggledy on the dining room table> “Dickens? I thought you hated Charles…”

Me: <shrieking>: “Monica Dickens! M-O-N-I-C-A! Never say that other name. EVER!”

Blacklight: “How can you hate Char….”

Me: <head explodes>

A few months ago I discovered the author Monica Dickens. And have been requesting every Monica Dickens title available through the inter-library loan system. I may or may not have the Follyfoot series requested (I totally do!). But there comes a point where even a completest such as myself (Blacklight: “Don’t you mean crazy pants OCD?”) breaks. Now I have slogged through the Slough of Despond, I have gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (and read Rae Lawrence’s Jacqueline Susann’s Shadow of the Dolls). I have read Tooner Schooner and the first two Meg novels. I have read every single Beany Malone novel my library system has. I have read Eloise Takes a Bawth. But there is nothing and I mean NOTHING (not even the 1918 HP Lovecraft knocking on my door wanting to go for a brisk 16 mile hike holding a crate of Magnum Double Caramel ice creams) that can make me read the abomination I found waiting for me at the library yesterday. You would think I might have gotten a clue from the title but lots of books can have the same title right? And if Ray Garton thinks writing In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting was a career low…oh honey…I think I might have found something even lower….

MONICA. DICKENS. NOVELIZATION. OF. <choke> My Fair Lady…

I can’t even. No, you can’t make me. Even if you paid off all my bills. The cover alone (a washed out watercolor of Eliza in a pink dress getting gawked at by men folks) is awful enough. The artist was trying to pain Audrey Hepburn but ended up with a zombie Winona Ryder a few years before Winona Ryder was even born. Zombie Winona Doolittle wants to eat my brains and soul. Also isn’t that stupid dress suppose to be white? Have never seen the movie My Fair Lady and have no intention of doing any Google image search to get a definitive answer. Also why in the name of Great Tulu do you NEED a novelization of My Fair Lady says the person who bought The Abyss and Iron Man novelizations. And why drag Monica Dickens into writing it. Did she need crack money? School fees for her daughters? Did the price of hay for her beloved horses go up?

This…horror…this thing that should not be is going right back to the library this afternoon.