Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir / Linda Ronstadt

The sound of the 70s for me is dominated by Linda Ronstadt belting out Top-40 hits like “You’re No Good,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “Heatwave,” “It’s So Easy,” and “When Will I Be Loved?”. The doe eyes peering out from LP covers belied the powerhouse voice. The LA music industry wanted a bona fide female rocker, but Linda was never comfortable in that role and she always defied classification. When her fame forced her to sing her hits again and again in enormous acoustically-challenged arenas and the life on the road began to get to her, she decided to explore other aspects of her musical persona. She followed her pop superstardom with collaborations with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton, Nelson Riddle, and explored her Mexican heritage with the enormously successful Canciones de mi padre, among other projects. There are some personal stories in this slim volume, but it’s mostly what the subtitle says—a musical memoir. There is no gossip or mud-slinging, Jerry Brown and George Lucas are mentioned almost peripherally-- but that makes me respect all the her more. I heard Ronstadt on “Fresh Air” and was impressed with her intelligent, well-formed answers. This person is completely grounded and never succumbed to the dark side of celebrity and riches. Her voice may now be gone, but her musical legacy assures her a hallowed place in the history of popular music.

Here's a quote from Simple Dreams:

“Someone once asked me why people sing. I answered that they sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day. Perhaps more than the birds do, humans hold a grudge. They sing to complain of how grievously they have been wronged, and how to avoid it in the future. They sing to help themselves execute a job of work. They sing so the subsequent generations won’t forget what the current generation endured, or dreamed, or delighted in.” p.196

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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