The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone I know raves about this book with such an awkward title. I think I put off reading it because it couldn't possibly be that good. And it's not the most remarkable book I've read, but it is charming, the antagonist is delightful without being grating, and the history of war on this little English island was enlightening, as well as the attitudes and emotions of the people who survived the war and tried to put their towns and lives back together. I never love epistolary novels because the voices of the different writers never seem different enough, and the details are suspiciously excessive and include quotes, which seems unlikely to me that every writer would do so. Still, definitely worth the read. Quick, informative, funny, joyful.


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Fosse

Fosse by Sam Wasson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting biography of a sometimes inspirational, mostly tragic life. Wasson does a good job of finding enough sources to show a charismatic charmer, paranoid perfectionist, humble and hardworking aspirant, and a dissatisfied egomaniac. His constant search for perfection and his desire to create better, new, different was truly inspiring. The fact that he never felt satisfied with what he had done or what he had, his constant search for approval (and being depressed when he got it), were tragic. I couldn't help comparing him to Steve Jobs a little bit: both driven to genius work in their field by a pervasive sense of inferiority. Wasson does a good job of including good details and some editorial commentary to help explain some of his actions. He does assume the reader is already a Fosse fan and already knows the basic storylines and plots to his better known musicals and films. I did enjoy reading this on my iPad, so I could immediately refer to dances and scenes on YouTube.


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