SAUL BELLOW'S HEART : A SON'S MEMOIR
by Greg Bellow

Having read many of Saul Bellow's books when I was in high school, I thought it would be interesting to read what his own son had to say about him. I only was able to get through half of it and then gave up. Saul was such a narcissist; he married four times and messed around with other women at the same time. Why so many females were charmed by him is a big question considering that he treated them so miserably.
The title is ironic. Saul had no heart for his families. It was all directed into his fiction.
Between the very poor editing and being bored, this book is one lousy read.
Not recommended. 

THE FORCE OF THINGS : A MARRIAGE IN WAR AND PEACE
by Alexander Stille

In The Force of Things Alexander Stille writes about his father, Mikhail Kamenetzki, a Jewish journalist from Russia who changed his name to Ugo Stille and wrote for the same Italian newspaper for forty-nine years and his mother, Elizabeth Bogert, a WASP from the Midwest. Their courtship was passionate but their marriage was difficult and stormy. The differences between them pull them apart due to their backgrounds.
When I first started reading this book, I truly loved the writing and thought that when I finished, I would read the author's other books. Not anymore. Midway through, it started to wear on me. There is so much detail about the family that it becomes deadening. I did not finish the book because I no longer cared what happened to them nor did I want to know.
Not recommended.

LADY AT THE O.K. CORRAL : THE TRUE STORY OF JOSEPHINE MARCUS EARP
by Ann Kirschner

Josephine Sarah Marcus was a Jewish woman from New York who lived with Wyatt Earp for almost fifty years. They were never married legally; she was a common-law wife which was the standard for all the four Earp brothers. Their lives were spent traveling from one place to another always prospecting for gold, setting up saloons, gambling, making money.
Josephine has always been in the shadows since there's a dearth of books about Wyatt and this book is no different. There's not a lot of information on her. She constantly reinvented herself which included many lies. Josephine was always in the background and still is.
I felt that I was hearing, again, about Wyatt and that is what the book is about. 
The writing is just awful. There is no depth; everything is just stated. I felt as if I was reading a term paper. After reading 140 pages, I quit.
Not recommended.

HER : A MEMOIR
by Christa Parravani

Christa and Cara were identical twin sisters with vibrant personalities. Cara was born first and was larger than her sister. (The doctor thought their mother was carrying a boy right up to birth.) Christa was the photographer and Cara the poetess. They both married young but were more devoted to one another than their respective spouses.
Cara was raped while walking her dog and her life went downhill after that. She became a drug addict and died of a heroin overdose at the age of twenty-eight. For Christa being twinless, it was dire and she too almost went off the deep end. It took her years to climb out of her hole and learn to function again living as herself.
I have read a few books about twins and I have always found them fascinating. Not so with this one. The sisters were hard to like. Cara was self-absorbed and narcissistic. Christa was shallow with no substance. 
The first quarter of the book grabbed you and was hard to put down. By the middle, it was becoming annoying. I couldn't wait to get to the end. The writing was not lyrical as other reviewers have said. It's loaded with similes which I hate because it's unnecessary filler. Her wording is very descriptive, sometimes too much.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed. The two sisters are people that I would not have cared to know about.
Not recommended.

THE GREAT PEARL HEIST : LONDON'S GREATEST THIEF AND SCOTLAND YARD'S HUNT FOR THE WORLD'S MOST VALUABLE NECKLACE
by Molly Caldwell Crosby

In the summer of 1913, a pale pink pearl necklace was bought by a London broker. (It was worth more than the Hope Diamond.) News of the sale spreads around the world enticing both jewelers and thieves. En route from London to Paris, the necklace disappears.
Sounds like an intriguing book, right? The subtitle certainly seems that way. Nope. Many reviewers said that it's fast-paced, a thriller, rich, and evocative. Nothing of the sort. My terminology is: dull-witted, slow, boring, and flat. I felt as if I was reading somebody's history report. 
Since the author has written two previous books, I thought this would be somebody to follow. No way. After sloughing through seventy-three pages, it was time to return the book to the library.
Not recommended. 

FORMER PEOPLE : THE FINAL DAYS OF THE RUSSIAN ARISTOCRACY
by Douglas Smith

There have been many books written about the Romanovs but not so with other families of the Russian aristocracy. Douglas Smith centers primarily on two: the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns and what happened to them from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 up to the Stalin era.
I, alas, only reached page 93 and it's quite a hefty book. There's way too many details, too many characters that you can't get your head around, too many footnotes and it all becomes quite dizzying. Even the directives for the black-and-white photographs are misleading and incorrect. I have read plenty of excellent histories on the Russian people and this one doesn't even come close.
Not recommended.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS : THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS
by Robert Gottlieb

Charles Dickens was the "father" of ten children. I placed quotes around father because he really wasn't much of one. He loved them when they were young but as they got older, his interest dissipated. Dickens was an even worse husband to his long-suffering wife leaving her for a much younger woman.
Great Expectations is set up in two parts. The first section describes the lives of the children (in chronological order) while Dickens was alive while the second part is after Dickens died.
I never got to the second part because I became very annoyed with one of the chapters talking about Henry Fielding Dickens who was the eighth child and the sixth son. What bothered me was the ricocheting of the names Henry and Harry. The first paragraph said Henry and the next said Harry. When I first read the name Harry, I didn't know who it referred to. I thought perhaps that it was another son or a friend. Nowhere in the entire chapter does the author explain Harry. If he was known as Harry and it was said so early on, no problem, but it wasn't. I found it to be very poor editing which is very surprising since Robert Gottlieb was the editor of The New York Review of Books for many years. There were other problems with the book and I just lost interest.
A much better biography on Charles Dickens and his family written by Claire Tomalin is the one to read.
Not recommended.