DNR: The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera)

The Saint of Bright Doors
by Vajra Chandrasekera (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club selection. This book was chosen because it was one of three in the window of a bookstore in Nashville. We all hate this bookstore now.

The book was popular enough that I had to settle for reading the hardcover, which I needed to pick up in Manhattan because I couldn't get it in Brooklyn. Being only a year old, it's still quite popular, apparently.

If this had not been a book club selection, I would've given up on it a lot sooner than I did. As it was, I kept reading until the day of our meeting and I was still only about a third of the way through the book. I found out that only one person managed to finish it (and she was mad at us that she stuck it out). Even the group founder, who is a librarian, was unable to finish this.

No one had anything nice oto say about it beyond the fact that it started off interesting in the first chapter and then went whereever it was that it went. It didn't go through a bright door, though, which were described a lot, but otherwise were beside the point of the story, which went hither and yon.

Anway, this book was a waste of a few weeks of my time -- although not completely because I did read a different book on my kindle app at the same time. It's not only a "DNF" but I've added the tag "WTHDIJR" to the blog for this book. Because what the hell did I just read?

Once vacation is over, I'll be on my way back to Manhattan to drop this thing off. And then, on to the next book.

The Skeleton in the Closet (Fox)

The Skeleton in the Closet
by Angie Fox (2015)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Book two in the Southern Ghost Hunter Series became available for free from Book Bub, so I picked it up. I was in between book club books and I figured that this would be a quicker read than anything else I had ready since I was alredy familiar with the premise.

Verity Long is still poor, after being forced to pay off her fancy wedding after she left her cheating fiance at the altar. He still wants to get back with Verity despite or even because his mother opposes it. In the meantime, she has (maybe) a thing with his brother who is in local law enforcement, rather than being employed as a rich snob. And Frankie the 1920's era gangster ghost is still around.

Verity tries to unground Frankie (see book one) with little success. Meanwhile, it's the annual Cannonball in the Wall celebration of a Civil War battle that saw a cannonball get lodged a wall in the middle of town.

Darla, a friend of Verity's (and her sister's) is handling donations for the event, and the two oldest and most fuedin'-est families are trying to out-do each other. She makes a startling discovery and ends up dead. Her discovery is missing as well.

Verity investigates the library and all the ghosts who are stuck in time within its walls and finds some revealing evidence, but not THE revealing piece of evidence until much later.

After that, it's dodging dangers on two planes of existence until the truth about the Cannonball in the Wall is know to all.

But most people still think Verity is nuts for blowing off the wedding.

I wouldn't be opposed to reading more of these, but they aren't so great that I'll be buying them any time soon. If the libary has them, I'll borrow them.

Two Short Books

Big Bullet Monster Bomb: lost little things: a short story for mature readers
by Adam Archer (2020)

The Race
by John Russo (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I don't remember where I found these stories. I don't think it was reddit. It could've been on Facebook or Twitter.

Nothing about the Bullet Bomb book was particularly geared toward mature readers, other than the cover showing a woman wearing rags that barely cover what they need to. It seems like a story set in a larger world that I haven't read but I have no idea of this is the case. It's post-apocalyptic and the last of the human race is slowly morphing into cratures. This much is interesting.

The main character is pulling a sled of her belongings (including guns) and looking for some place to hide so she can sleep. Her sleep cycle is screwed up so she's up for a long time and then needs a prolonged sleep.

When she encountered some creatures attacking an overturned RV, she decides to go into action. It's at this point and after that it fell apart for me. It was a bit of a mess after that. But I read it until the end. I didn't bail on it. Interesting, but not great.

The first notes I wrote after reading it were: too many parenthetical expressions. Eloise and Marhsa. Good setup, no follow through. Fell apart with the first battle.

By contrast, The Race is just a mess. It takes place in a dystopian future. Amazon makes deliveries by drone. One brother decides that they can get rich by shooting down the drones and taking the packages for themselves. The packages would be insured, so no one loses. The other brother thinks it's a stupid idea.

Brother 1 shoots down a down with a shotgun (it might've been a rifle, I forget), and the drone goes down. Brother 2 says that Brother 1 has to get the package and return it. Brother 1 says he's going to keep it.

And now the race is on over hill and dale not to mention through woods, quicksand and swamp, to get to this package. It seems like they are surprised by the terrain that is right next to their own farmland. It also seems like Brother 1 must be an incredible marksman to shoot down a drone so far away with a store-bought rifle without a laser scope. You would think that the drone would crash within a couple hundred yards from where he fired.

If that wasn't bad enough, they get to a point where they haul the huge package, a large TV, of the bayou (again, suprise -- there's a bayou!) in a boat. The boat gets flipped, depositing the brothers in the water, and sending the large box flying into the air, up the enbankments, and into the trees. The physics of it are basically "somehow".

The item finally retrieved and they head home after spending most of the day following the path a disabled drone. There's a twist at the end that is 100% the twist you would expect to see even before you knew that there would be a twist at the end because the story needed an ending.

My notes when I read it were: Johnny and Robert. Shooting packages from Amazon drones. how far away was this thing? Race from the farm into the swamp, and they came to a bayou that they seemed surprised to see. They rescue the package and it manages to magically fly up a hill and clear some trees. They spend the majority of the day looking for something that was taken down with a shotgun. And the final twist, SPOILER, telegraphed really, was that the lost package was ordered by the wife.

Funny Shorts 5 (McDonnell)

Funny Shorts 5
More Comic Plays
by John McDonnell (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

My first book of 2024 but not really. It is a collecting on one-act plays, or scenes, really, that one can use in theater classes. I'll use the Good Reads description because I read this nearly a month ago and I've already forgotten much about it:

In this collection you’ll find Dracula getting an image makeover, pigeons discussing their artistic methods, sibling rivalry among witches, an assassin who writes poetry, a verbal shootout in a senior center, Lucifer getting dumped by his girlfriend, a first date with an alien, and much more. These funny skits are perfect for community theater, schools, senior productions – anywhere audiences want to be entertained.

Some were amusing, some were harder to get through. Not much to say. It was a quick read: about three days, reading in fits and starts.

Edit: Okay, so there was a reason that I didn't remember the end of this book: I didn't finish reading it.

I must have been reading this when the last Book Club book came in from the library and then stopped reading. I have now completed it. It had its moments.

My overall opinion hasn't changed, so I guess my sample was indicative of the entire product.

The Shadow Glass (Winning)

The Shadow Glass
by Josh Winning (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed but mostly positive reviews.

For fans of the Dark Crystal or Labyrinth (I've seen the first, not the second), imagine a similar film that was created by a one-time director named Bob Corman that defined a generation and spawned a lot of ancillary material. This is the world of the movie The Shadow Glass, which created a word known as "Iri", pronounced "eerie".

Jack is the son of Bob, who recently passed away. Jack was estranged from his father, and now in financial straits, he looks to sell off some of his father's things. He winds up encountering creatures from Iri in his father's attic, which seek the Shadow Glass. Bad times have come to Iri and they have until the next full moon to set things right.

Jack is a non-believer, but Toby is a fanatic, knowing everything about Iri. He tries to help Jack.

There's a quest to find the Shadow Glass, the actual prompt from the movie, but it's rumored to have been broken up in pieces for storage. (In the end, this seems odd just because the pieces themselves don't seem to be all that big.)

To antagonize Jack, there is someone who hates him and Bob but loves Iri as it was in the film and nothing more. He winds up teaming up with the villains in the piece just so he can get closer to Iri.

The book was enjoyable, but there wasn't much of a payoff to it. What is this big moment on Iri? We never really find out. How will the Shadow Glass help? No clear idea what it will do (or did). And Jack gets faced with a false choice out of nowhere at what he wants to do.

One other point: this is not a book for young children. Jack gets his finger bitten off. It doesn't grow back. It isn't fixed by magic. There isn't a reset at the end of the story. Likewise, a movie studio guard gets swallowed whole and his uniform is spit out. It has its creepy moments.

I don't have much to complain about, but it wasn't the greatest book either. On Good Reads, I'm likely to give it four stars just because of the mediocre things that I've given three stars to.

Once again, this was a book that I listened to while walking concurrently with reading. Some of the script and transcript reading didn't sound well in audio. I also didn't finish the audio because I got to the end of the ebook first.

Graphic Novel: Superman in the Fifties

Superman in the Fifties (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then.

Of the three, this was the one that it took the longest to read. Back in the fifties, the artwork in comics was much simpler but there was a lot more text to read. The pictures are interesting enough, but nothing is visually stunning. And, of coure, the story lines are about 70 years old.

The funny thing about this was the number of other rockets that landed on Earth and how many of those came from Krypton. There were three villains, not the Phantom Zone villains, who were imprisoned in a rocket. There was Krypto and Supergirl. And there was another alien, whose name I unfortunately forget, who thought he was Superman's big brother -- I remember the story being Mon-El, and maybe they reprinted this and changed it to Mon-El for the Legion of Super Heroes, but that wasn't his name. There were Bizarro stories. And, of course, Superman's Best Friend Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girlfrien Lois Lane.

I remember in the late 70s or early 80s when a grownup Lana Lang came to Metropolis. Apparently, she'd done this back in the 50s as well.

It was an interesting look into the past. Two things that stand out: Superman didn't have "heat vision" then but rather used his "X-ray vision" to heat things up; and he used his "super-ventriloquism" more than once in the book, and the outcome of one story depended upon it. Yes, Superman could literally throw his voice and have it appear to come from somewhere else.

It was a fun but long read. I'm glad I read it, and I'm happy that I finally brought it back.

Graphic Novel: Superman '78

Superman '78 (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then.

Superman 78 is a vit of an anomaly. Batman 66 holds a place in the hearts of many in a generation who grew up with reruns of the classic series day after day. At the same time, many of those same people, or their older siblings, grew up with the Adventures of Superman from a decade earlier.

While people have fond memories of Christopher Reeve as Superman, there were only four movies to work with, the last time being a little different from the first two, and the mythology isn't quite the same as the comic book. Granted, some of that mythology has been adopted into comics or television every now and again, but DC Comics had made a habit of rebooting their entire line-up on a regular basis.

Basically, we have a bunch of Superman stories with movie lookalikes. The book consists of six issues of the a series of the same name, starting after the movie took place. Luthor is released to work on science for the betterment of the world instead of the betterment of Luthor. Next, Brainiac comes along. He's been collecting pieces of planets in his museum. When he detects a Kryptonian on Earth, he demands Superman surrender himself to prevent the contamination of Earth. Superman reluctantly agrees. We then find the Bottle City of Kandor on Brianiac's ship where Jor-El and Lara have survived. Superman eventually escapes with the help of Lex Luthor, who needs to prove that he can succeed where Superman failed.

It was an interesting group of stories, but nothing special. Just another take on territory well-traveled. I was happy to see that the date was only 2021-2022, so that explains why I wasn't familiar with the comics existence.

One more graphic novel to finish.

Graphic Novel: Power Girl: Power Trip

Power Girl: Power Trip (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then.

I finally spent a couple hours getting through the rest of Power Girl so I could return the book already.

Power Girl has an odd history. For anyone past the half-century mark in their life's journey, they will recall that Power Girl was the Earth-2 Supergirl analogue, back when there was an Earth-2.

Then in the mid-80s, DC Comics decided to "simplify" something that many of their fans didn't find all that complicated. (Yes, there were some contradictions that could've been cleared up by Fiat, but that's another issue.) When the "Crisis" ended, many characters that existed on both worlds were combined into one, some disappeared completely, and in cases such as the Flash, the Golden Age and Silver Age heroes co-existed.

The problem is that the Earth-2 Superman went away but Power Girl remained. There were attempts to give her new backstories until one would stick. I remember from back then when Arion, king of Atlantis. This book addresses that and other theories. It then dismisses them as delusions of the Psycho Pirate. I don't know if that part happened back then.

As a graphic novel goes, it got off to a choppy start and then got a bit smoother. Afterward, I checked, and that was because the last 12 chapters of the book were taken from a single series, when the opening chapters came from a few different sources.

Power Girl takes on the Ultra Humanite who wants her for her body. Literally. He wants to put his brain in her indestructible body. It doesn't go so well, but he'll make a return appearance, as will some of his allies. Also in the background is Dr. Sivanna from Captain Marvel (Shazam!) stories. He's not an active menace to Power Girl but makes his presence known.

The surprise character (for me) is the new Terra. Not to be confused with the Teen Titans traitor Terra, this teen is actually from deep underground but also earth-moving powers. The two team up well.

I enjoyed this, for the most part. The explanation about the hole in her uniform was a little silly. And there were plenty of references to staring at her boobs, which is to be expected.

Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus)

Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed but mostly positive reviews.

I watched the series while I was waiting for the book to become available at the library. I think I'm glad that I did it in that order. For one thing, it preparted me for the intelligent dog that was abandoned from the military. For another, had I read the book first, I might've been bothered by some of the changes made for the book, including an entire subplot that was created for the show.

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist except that she doesn't have her PhD because of an incident in school. She stabbed the mentor who tried sexually assaulted her and then wouldn't apologize for hurting him. She works as an asistant at the only place that would hire her, Hastings Research Institute. There she meets their star chemist, Calvin Evans, who mistakes her at first for a secretary. The two become involved and fall in love. He then dies, but only after a) putting her name on the deed to his home, and b) getting her pregnant despite their precautions. Neither wanted children and Elizabeth did not wish to be married and change her name.

With Calvin no longer present, the powers that be at Hastings make her life miserable and she is finally let go when it's discovered that she's pregnant (and unmarried, too!). She makes money consulting with the chemists who bring work to her.

She gives birth to Mad, aka, Madeline and tries to balance motherhood with everything else, including building a lab in her kitchen. This is how she meets her neighbor from across the street, Harriet Sloane. A few years later, Mad is in school (early because of some document alteration). Mad is given her lunch to another girl who is the daughter of a TV producer, who is coincidentally looking for a new TV show to fill a void in the afternoon. When he's confronted by Elizabeth, he realizes that she could host a cooking show for the network. She finally agrees for the money.

Zott is difficult to work with because she won't confirm to how things are done. Despite this, her show is a big hit, even though the head of the studio wants to get rid of her.

I enjoyed the book for the most part, and can appreciate some of the changes that were made in the series. I prefer the younger Mr. Pine of the show.

My book group's reception was mixed but more positive. Many of them would've liked more of the cooking show than all the backstory we have to sit through. And when Mad has a family tree assignment and wants to find out more about her father's past, that might've been the time to discover everything about Calvin.

One thing I have been told by editors in rejections for some of my short stories (and sometimes I get an extra sentence or two) is that they want to see the growth of the protagonist. Well, Elizabeth Zott doesn't grow. At all. If any, she becomes more annoying because she seems stuck in the same rut with the same outlook she had 300 pages earlier. (And this is the opinon of the female members of the book club.) Everything eventually falls into place for her with a lot of luck and sheer coincidence. (Some of the coincidence gets a little bit explained, mind you, but it's still a bit out there.)

When asked how we would describe the character, I said, "Sheldon without the support network." I later thought of Temperance Brennan ("Bones"). Both of those characters were highly intelligent but lacking in social skills and somewhat unaware of how to act in certain situations. The two with better support networks grew over the course of their TV shows many seasons. In contrast, the only change we see in Zott is that she might go from being unaware how things actually work and knowing but not giving a damn. She will never budge an inch -- we assumed because she felt owed by this point. If she feels it's the right thing to do, that is all she will do, regardless of the consequences. Luckily, most of the times, things work out. And when they don't, she can pull a huge kitchen knife from her bag to give some a heart attack.

I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as good as it could've been.

Stake and Eggs (Childs)

Stake and Eggs
by Laura Childs (2012)

[No Image, Audiobook]

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is the fourth book in the Cackleberry Club series. For some reason, it was not avaible in ebook form at any of the three library systems in NYC. It was not available in book form in either Brooklyn or Manhattan. (I don't have a Queens branch near me.) And it was only available as an audiobook from the New York Public Library system through the SimplyE app, but not the Libby app. It was a total accident that I found it. I'd been searching Libby, but when I searched the libaries' website catalogues, I finally found it.

SimplyE is an app that hast been on my iPad for quite a while. I don't remember downloading it and I can't say that I've ever used it. Maybe it was the app I used when I downloaded comic books many years ago. I can't say. But I put it on my phone and used it.

IT IS A TERRIBLE APP. USELESS. It doesn't always save your place, backing you up to the last time you started listening. And when my book was due, I returned it and downloaded it again, and it restarted me at Chapter 1. I had no idea exactly where I was, but it doesn't matter because THERE'S NO TABLE OF CONTENTS MENU. Actually, there is, but any time I tapped on it, it brought me to the NYPL Catalogue page.

I was so desperate that I actually asked my wife, who may have been a little miffed at me at that particular moment, if she could show me how to do something on my phone. Appealing to her sense of, not so much superiority, but of I-married-an-idiot-ity, got her to put miffed aside and try. I almost didn't get my phone back because she was working under the assumption that the interface, though primitive, made some kind of sense. It did not.

Okay, now about the book, which was fine enough, but I'm not spending money to buy a copy.

First off, I've realized that the names don't mean a thing. There are no stakes that I recall in the entire book. The murder is committed with a piece of fence wire. Previously titles also didn't seem to matter. Also, it takes place in winter, so the election that we never got to in the last book is already behind us. Spoilers, the crooked mayor and the dogged Sheriff Doogie both won.

This review has been sitting here for a few weeks, unfinished. I'd forgotten about it, honestly. And I'm forgetting more about the book, but here's what I remember.

Toni finally decides she's going to divorce Junior, after he was a hero in the last book. The other two ladies are happy about this but aren't sure if she'll actually go through with it. Junior shows up with a car that has his new invention: the car cooker, which is an oven built into the engine that cooks as the car goes. It's a running gag throughout the book, with food needing a few more miles until it's done. He says that he has investors looking into it. His cooker car will, of course, play a part in the finale, as silly as it sounds.

The Winter Fair is coming and there is a radio competition to find a medallion hidden somewhere in town. The clues are all vague and refer to ice. The initial ones of course should be vague, but they don't get any better or more specific. I mention this because one note I did leave myself from a couple of weeks ago is that where the medallion is found makes absolutely no sense for the rest of the story because the place it was in at the end didn't exist at the beginning.

So the bank president is killed on a snowmobile with a wire strung between two trees. He's head is found in the woods sometime after the snowmobile crashes into the back of the Cackleberry Club. Meanwhile, a teen runaway had seen the man who hung the wire, so he's laying low because he's afraid he'll be next. He switches jackets with the busboy who works at the cafe, and manages to sneak in for some food. He gets caught. Joey, meanwhile, gets attacked and is hospitalized. Suzanne comes to realize it's because the two boys switched jackets.

All of the regulars put in appearances, and a few people are vying to be the new bank president.

In the end, the runaway identifies the killer, who then steals Junior's car and the chase is on.

I won't say that the series is getting stale just yet, but it's almost done for me. I'll take some time off before the next book. I'm not even sure if the next book is available for loan.

DNF: The Zoo of Intelligent Animals (Holdsworth)

The Zoo of Intelligent Animals
by D.A. Holdsworth (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This may be the first "Did Not Finish" book that I've listed. It's certainly the first that I labeled "DNF". Usually, I decide at about 10% if it's worth continuing, and sometimes I ask again at 20%. Other times, I know in the first few pages. Unless I promised to give feedback, I've learned to cut my losses rather than suffer through -- and likely avoid reading anything in the process. (Games, videos, whatever.)

I stuck with this book until I was almost halfway through. Things were finally starting to happen ... and I found myself totally uninterested. And if you're going to start with a trope like an alien zoo filled with humans, you need to make it a lot more interesting a lot sooner. And I might've stayed the course, but this was a 400+ page book. I had basically an entire 240-page book to go.

I knew I'd be cutting out of this book soon any way because I have a Book Club selection on hold. But while checking my place in line the NYPL suggested a collection of stories by Jane Yolen, who I've read before (although I didn't complete that collection -- perhaps it's time that I did). I started on that book, which, again, I'll drop out of when my other book arrives. And I'll get back to the collection. And maybe I'll get back to this.

Aside from dullness, it made an error in the science, something which could've been hand-waved, but not like this. All but one of the main characters are people out of time. That's because they've traveled through space and suffered the effects of time dilation. That much is fine. If the explanation had been that they'd past through a different dimension, again, that would've been okay. Had they traveled long distance and near light speeds, that would've been permissable. But instead the explanation was that they'd spent time on other planets in this universe where time passed differently. And the explanation for that was that the planets are traveling at higher speeds through space.

Gentle readers, if there are any of you out there, this is poppycock. The planet, and the star is was circling, would have to be moving at over .95c to achieve the time dilation effect described. Stars don't move like that and planets that somehow did wouldn't support life. And the fact that there's no suggestion of just how fast the planet (and star) must be moving tells me that the author didn't consider it and that he expected that the reader wouldn't either.

And the worst part of the offense is that the exact reason probably didn't matter but there needed to be on because the timelines on the two planets wouldn't match up otherwise. And these late 19th century folks would be very out of place in the early 21st century.

The book was a free download, not a library book, so there's a chance (slim as it is) I will pick it up again and try to continue because I was a little curious where he was going to go with his zoo, but by no means hooked.

And since I got this, I've been getting emails to buy his first book, which, oddly, isn't a free download. Usually, the first is free to get you to buy the second. Or so I thought.

I'm Glad My Mom Died (McCurdy)

I'm Glad My Mom Died
by Jennette McCurdy (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club choice, but it got 0 votes, which is surprising because I thought I'd voted for it. It was the first one available for the library. I read it, without the audiobook. I get the feeling that the audio might've been difficult to listen to, both storywise and the way it was told.

Jennette appears to have OCD but she is diagnosed as Mormon. That attempt at humor as about on par with the tone of the book. Her mother dreamed of being a star and wanting that for her daughter. Jennette has older siblings, but she is the one that got pushed into acting. And she always did everything her mother wanted because she loved her mother and her mother loved her and wanted the best for her. Or so she believed to be the case at the time. Much of the narrative is written in the naive voice of a person who came to an ephiphany much later in life.

Unlike other Disney stars who came from wealthier background, McCurdy's family was poor, and her mother, a hoarder, delayed paying bills and kept the creditors away as best as she could. She also leans heavily into the story that she's a cancer survivor. McCurdy's big claim to fame, as far as her resume was concerned, was her ability to cry on command. THis was something casting directors looked for and it got her many parts.

Problems arose at puberty when her body started to develop and she wouldn't be able to play kiddie parts any more. Her mother encouraged her to become anorexic. Other mothers notice and told her mom, not realizing that she was the cause of it. Anorexia later gave way to bullima when McCurdy got more successful and got start binging on food.

Her big break was, of course, iCarly, where I know her from, although I likely saw at least some of her earlier bit parts. She refers to the person in charge there simply as "The Creator" and never names him. The Creator is able to control her with the promise of her own show when "iCarly" wraps up (years in the future). The first time he meets with The Creator alone, without her mother (whose cancer has returned), he gives her an alcoholic beverage, which she drinks because she wants to make him happy, and this is followed by some massaging. Not many details are giving here but when the show ends, her "team" (lawyers, agents, whoever) on a conference call tell her that there's a $300,000 bonus for her so long as she never talks about the Creator's behavior. To her credit, she calls it out as hush money and refuses to take it. To her further credit, in the book she includes her reaction after the call as "did I really just turn down $300,000?" Even after a successful series, McCurdy may be well off but she isn't exactly wealthy.

She goes into details about Sam & Cat, the followup show she did with Arianna Grande when she'd been promised her own show. McCurdy was denied chances to pursue a movie career while shooting "Sam" but Grande was allowed to leave to do singing performances. One time, she missed so many days that the episode was rewritten so that her character was locked inside a box for the duration of the episode. McCurdy had to act opposite a box and Grande's line were dubbed in later. A final straw happened when McCurdy's promised directorial debut was canceled because someone threatened to leave the show if she directed it. (Grande isn't named here, but no one else had that clout.)

Along the way, we read about her first kiss, her real first kiss, her first adult relationship, losing her virginity, and her therapists. The book is divided into Before and After her mother's death, and it's quite a while into the after that she starts to piece everything together.

This was an interesting and a quick read. I don't know if I would've read it if it hadn't come up an option for the book club (and was immediately available). Had it been a different actress, say from any of the children's shows that I didn't watch with my kids, I probably would've returned it to the library as soon as I knew that it had lost the vote.

I also write Fiction! Thank you for finding and reading my page. You can now order my newest book Burke's Lore, Briefs: A Heavenly Date / My Damned Best Friend, written by Christopher J. Burke, which contains the aforementioned story and a bonus story. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon.
Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.