INTO THE ABYSS : AN EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY
by Carol Shaben

On October 19, 1984, a Piper Navajo commuter airplane carrying nine passengers crashed in a remote area of Alberta, Canada. Four people survived: the pilot, Erik Vogel, a well-known politician, Larry Shaben (the author's father), a policeman, Scott Deschamps, and a criminal, Paul Archambault, who Scott was escorting. The weather was really bad but the pilot was under so much pressure, he thought that if he didn't fly the plane he would lose his job. For fifteen hours they huddled around a small campfire to await their rescue. Two of the men were in really bad shape and didn't think that they would make it out alive. It would be Archambault (the criminal) who would take care of them all.
Into the Abyss seemed like it was going to be a very exciting book. Nope. There's way too much information concerning the four men especially in the aftermath. (This is where I stopped reading.) Who cares? If you're an aviation aficionado and enjoy all the leaden details about small planes, you might actually think it's neat. I could have done without it. 
The author's writing is plodding. Of course, she has to use similes and they're ridiculous. I found a word not spelled correctly: she used "disorientated" instead of "disoriented." For a journalist, this is egregious.
So, don't be fooled by the cover.  It's not all it's cracked up to be.
Not recommended.

SHOCKED : MY MOTHER, SCHIAPARELLI, AND ME
by Patricia Volk

Audrey Morgen Volk (Patricia's mother) was a narcissistic, upper-middle-class New Yorker, a control freak where everything had to be just perfect.
Elsa Schiaparelli (known as Schiap) was an international fashion designer whose creations made the world gasp in shock.
When Patricia was ten years old, she read Schiap's autobiography and it transformed her. Both of these brilliant and opinionated women showed Patricia how to be a woman and to follow her own course.
Shocked  is about a mother-daughter relationship that at times can be excruciating to read. I, at first, thought the book was wonderful because the author is quite a wordsmith. After a while, it started to drive me crazy. You can only take in small doses at a time. The information about Schiaparelli is totally unnecessary and adds nothing. You don't really get a sense of how Patricia was transformed by either woman. As for Patricia's mother, Audrey, you keep reading about how beautiful she was. There are pictures at the end of each chapter and many are of Audrey and she is not beautiful nor pretty.
Too much rambling and not much substance.
Not recommended.

A CURIOUS MAN : THE STRANGE & BRILLIANT LIFE OF ROBERT "BELIEVE IT OR NOT" RIPLEY
by Neal Thompson

Believe it or not, I did not finish this book. I only made it to page eighty and called it quits. LeRoy Robert Ripley was a cartoonist who became famous and a millionaire by showcasing oddities. His early life and how he was always sketching were the best parts. As soon as he started to become successful by working at a major rag and then being sent to Europe for several months at a time, I was no longer interested. There's way too many details, too many extraneous characters, and too much redundancy.
Not recommended. 

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.