The Gorilla Man And The Empress Of Steak : A New Orleans Family Memoir
by Randy Fertel

I should feel guilty due to the fact that no library in the county had this book on their shelves and I requested one of them to buy it. The reviews were what made me want to read the book in the first place. The title alone is enough to draw you in. Randy Fertel's mother founded Ruth's Chris Steak House and his father (who never worked a day in his life) ran for mayor of New Orleans and bought a pair of gorillas for the zoo.
Louis Armstrong lived a block away from the Fertels and there's some interesting information written about him. The whole history of jazz is incorporated within the story and you really get the flavor of New Orleans in the early part of the century.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stand the style of writing. It was all over the place and seemed disjointed. Too many characters abounded and started to collide. I only reached page 114 and that was enough for me.
Not recommended.

The Man Who Couldn't Eat : A Memoir
by Jon Reiner

If you enjoy reading about a man's struggle with Crohn's disease who spends, it seems, most of the book in the hospital where he is not allowed to eat anything by mouth for three months, be my guest.
Jon Reiner loves food so much but because of his illness, he has to take a different path.
I actually read the entire book because I wanted to see the end results. It wasn't worth it. I should have stopped earlier. What really ruined his story were the excessive amounts of similes (hundreds of them). His descriptions were vivid enough that you didn't need useless fodder.
Not recommended.

How To Survive The Titanic Or The Sinking Of J. Bruce Ismay
by Frances Wilson

If I had a rating system where five stars would be the best and one star the worst, I would give this book two stars. It's a shame because, for the most part, I really enjoyed most of it. What destroyed the book was constant references to Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, where a sailor abandons his sinking ship leaving behind hundreds of passengers. I can see why the author did this although she is comparing fiction with fact but after a while, it became so tedious that I wanted to throw the book across the room.
I didn't know anything about J. Bruce Ismay, the owner of the Titanic, but what is written here becomes repetitious. Ismay was never a happy camper and after the catastrophe, he became a recluse. Obviously, the author didn't have enough material for all I read about Ismay is his depression, being morose, unhappy, untalkative, his horrible marriage and ignoring his children, etc.
The two inquiries, British and American, on why Ismay jumped into a lifeboat with women and children and his problematic answer along with the survivors that testified, is very interesting but is not enough to sustain an entire book.
The title is not appropriate either. Put this all down as one big mess.
Not recommended.

My Long Trip Home : A Family Memoir
by Mark Whitaker

Here we go again with an "award-winning" journalist whose writing is sub-par (of course, the publisher wrote these words).
The book is about Mark Whitaker's parents, an interracial couple, and how they coped with life. I gave up reading early on. The writing is plodding. What bothers me the most is the awful editing. There's many misspelled words, wrong tenses, wrong words, duplication of one word in the same sentence. It's obvious that nobody proofread it.
Skip this book.
Not recommended.

Sybil Exposed : The Extraordinary Story Behind The Famous Multiple Personality Case
by Debbie Nathan

I remember being caught up in the "Sybil" craze back in the 1970s. She was the woman who supposedly had sixteen different personalities and because of that a new diagnosis was coined in the psychiatry field. The book was a huge success which then spawned a movie. But was it really true? You don't have to read all of Sybil Exposed (and believe me, I didn't) to find that out. The Introduction reveals the duplicity of three women. I probably should have stopped right then and there but I persisted in continuing until I reached Chapter 4 which was about Dr. Wilbur, the psychiatrist that treated "Sybil."
Psychiatry in the 1930s was absolutely horrendous with its unsuspecting patients. Pentothal ( a barbiturate known as "truth serum"), Metrozol (shock therapy that caused broken limbs), lobotomies, and other horrible "treatments" were all being used by psychiatrists because they thought they could cure their patients better. I found reading all of this to be too disturbing and quite brutal.
The writing style is juvenile and repetitive. Don't believe the positive reviews. Read the negative ones.
Not recommended.

What They Saved : Pieces Of A Jewish Past
by Nancy K. Miller

Several years after her father's death, Nancy K. Miller finds a treasure trove of objects about her family in a drawer. There are photographs of people that she doesn't know about. She is determined to track down any information that she can find on these lost relatives.
This book could have been much more interesting but several times it lost me with her going back and forth amongst the grandparents, great-grandparents, and her parents. Halfway through I decided that I no longer cared enough to continue reading.
Not recommended.

Ricardo Muti : An Autobiography : First The Music, Then The Words
by Ricardo Muti

I lasted three pages. Pretty bad. Ricardo Muti should just stick to conducting music and leave the writing to an established author. It's so boring and plodding.
Nothing more to say.