Marilyn Monroe – Cannonball Read 17

April 2024 Leftovers

X = : Poems by Stephen Berg

Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh

The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais

Watch It Burn by Kristen Bird

Sleep With Strangers by Dolores Hitchens

The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn by Josh Young

One of Us Is Wrong by Sam Holt

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

Blackmailer by George Axelrod

The Darkest Glare: A Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles by Chip Jacobs

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

May 6, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Happy April, y’all! X = : Poems**** This is why library book bingos are necessary. I only checked this one out because I needed to read a book of poems and I wanted to check the nettlesome “X” off the A-Z reading list. A convoluted reason to begin with and this wasn’t even the book I thought I was getting! I thought I’d get a different X by a different author. I’m glad I got this one. Some of these really spoke to me, including […]

Beauty Queen

The Enchanters by James Ellroy

September 19, 2023 by Jake Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR15Bingo: hold steady. James Ellroy is a favorite author of mine; I return to his work often. This is the second in his Freddy Otash series. And it features a “protagonist” in a lot of trouble. I only found out less than a month ago that James Ellroy was coming out with a new book. I keep my ear close to the ground as far as Ellroy is concerned so I’m not sure why the delayed announcement here. But I put […]

Blonde Assassin

The Blonde by Anna Godbersen

November 27, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

The fun thing about this book is that few of the individual subplots work and yet, Anna Godbersen creates such a vivid re-imagination of Marilyn Monroe as a person that I really didn’t care. Monroe is often depicted—mostly by but not limited to men (looking at you, Joyce Carol Oates)—as a wide-eyed naifish mentally damaged sex doll. I have to imagine there is more to her life than going around speaking in innuendo and substance-induced rage but rarely have I seen this depicted. Blonde is the latest […]

In the City of LA

The Empty Glass by JI Baker

A Student of History by Nina Revoyr

Friend of the Devil (Reckless #2) by Ed Brubaker

November 23, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

By both design and coincidence, I read three consecutive books on Los Angeles over the last 48 hours. The first two were good 4-star reads and the third was an excellent 5-star one… The Empty Glass Oliver Stone’s Blonde. This got poor reviews and I guess I get it? I suppose it depends on what your expectations are. Me personally, I enjoyed this wild romp through Los Angeles as a low level county morgue guy tries to unravel a government conspiracy around Marilyn Monroe’s death. […]

“Mama always knew the wrong thing to say.”

Beauty Mark: a Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe by Carole Boston Weatherford

March 3, 2021 by cosbrarian 4 Comments

In this slim volume, Weatherford imagines a memoir written by Monroe, chronicling her life from her tumultuous childhood in foster care to her troubled final days in her L.A. home. It includes both personal, introspective pieces about Monroe’s internal struggles as well as pieces that catalog her film career and persona, and the public response to it. I devour any biographical media of Monroe’s as she is my number one icon. As a teen, I stole a poster of her from a neighboring school’s production […]

There’s always been a rainbow hangin over your head (CBR12Bingo: Violet – Blackout)

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

August 24, 2020 by octothorp 2 Comments

I have to be honest, I never got the cult of Marilyn, even with an aunt whose sloe eyes and platinum hair invited a comparison she doubled down on by naming my cousin after Monroe. I’ve seen quite a few of her performances, and wasn’t unimpressed – you have to be pretty clever to play dumb convincingly, and even in her low-watt-bulb roles Marilyn never seemed dumb, just sort of airily unconcerned with whether she seemed smart or not. I’ve seen Niagara, I’ve seen Some […]

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