Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny by Nile Rodgers (2011)

I LOVED this book.

I picked it up because of a rash of reading memoirs by members of the band Duran Duran (it's true--dang nostalgia) and they kept referring to Nile Rodgers in such glowing terms. I thought it would be interesting to read what he had to say about them. Not much, as it turns out, and I almost returned this book, but I read his captions on the photo spread and liked his sense of humor so I read it. Example:

"Here I am with the band for my second solo album, filming a video for our single, 'State Your Mind.'  A black man fronting a big-haired white band was a novelty then, but not the popular kind."  

The book starts in the late fifties in Greenwich Village, where Rodgers lived with his mother and white stepfather, who were heroin junkies. His fascinating childhood includes stops in the South Bronx, Alphabet City, South Central L.A., time spent in a sanitarium for ill children, and includes fascinating family and friends as he travels through the Beat Generation and the rise of Black Power, then the hippie movement. 

He has a vision of a new kind of black/white funk music, and sees tremendous success with his band Chic, only to be cast out and scourged when the Disco Sucks movement takes off. He produces some of the most iconic albums of the 1980s (David Bowie's Last Dance, Madonna's Like a Virgin, Duran Duran, and way more) and manages to do it all while doing a lot of drugs. He finally cleans up his act, starts a foundation that does great work, and in the last two pages of the book, gets a diagnosis of advanced cancer.

 In the last paragraph, he talks about his family's many secrets and how he'll keep this one (his diagnosis) from them. It may not turn out to be such a big deal, he says.

 MAN! This is a freaking awesome book. He tells his amazing stories with a lot of humility and a lot of humor and no self-pity and no arrogance. The amazingly vivid characters of his family members and his relationships with fellow musicians will definitely stick with me. SUCH an awesome book. So many bits of great language and humor are in this book that I can't quote them all, or I'd be typing out the whole book.  I will tell you that I loved his description of himself skipping school and "kicking back like Dean Martin with a cocoa martini."  Love.  SO much love.

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins (2012)

In a vast world of paranormal teen lit, this is an unexpectedly great novel (recommended by an actual teen). Yay!

Our heroine Anna Whitt has extremely sharp senses, but has never understood why. As the novel begins, she finds out that she is the daughter of a fallen angel (and a non-fallen angel) and her life is about to change.

Higgins creates a beautifully constructed world and peoples it with realistic characters, including the hot son of another fallen angel to whom Anna finds herself overwhelmingly attracted.  Great, realistic situations and complex, believable characters. Although incredibly readable and enjoyable, it ties in quite sneakily and successfully with adolescent issues (heightened senses stand in for raging hormones, complex parentage for feeling special, and peer pressure as an actual job).

Note for completists:  This is the first in a planned trilogy; parts two and three are not yet published, but certainly worth checking out.

Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub (2012)

Elsa Emerson was born and raised in Wisconsin, where her family runs a summer theater company.   She grows up around theater and actors, and becomes an actress herself.  She marries another actor and heads off to make their fortune in golden-age, studio system Hollywood. She has a couple of kids, gets discovered by a studio head and becomes a minimal star--now known as Laura Lamont.

She struggles between her identities and faces all sorts of challenges. It's basically a women's picture, like Mildred Pierce, and is a pretty good rags-to-riches actor story that doesn't end when the stardom does.  The story follows Elsa/Laura from ingénue-you're-going-to-be-star-baby to mature actress to dipping her toe into television, the whole time watching Hollywood change as she does.

I really liked some of the characters and the story takes some unexpected turns which are awfully interesting, but the passivity of the main character at times left me slightly cold.  Although I didn't love it while reading it, the more it sits with me, the more I like it and the more it lingers with me.  I love the scope of her life and her career, and how she changes as Hollywood changes--a story that just isn't told very often.

The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey (2102)

Although the title sounds like a nature book, and as though it's missing an apostrophe, this is a fabulous novel about Kate, a New York City Ballet dancer, and her complicated relationship with her sister, a fellow dancer who has recently had a nervous breakdown and moved home.

The subject matter is serious, but narrator Kate is incredibly witty and deconstructs ballet hilariously. Her synopsis of Swan Lake is deliciously funny. In addition to being funny, it actually provides great insight into the mind and body of a ballet dancer and the art of dance. Not to mention the complex relationship of sisters, especially competitive sisters.

Snarky, hilarious, poignant--I really, really enjoyed this novel to the point that I'll be looking up other works by the author and even works by authors who blurbed this novel. Books like this are total diamonds in the rough; interesting, engaging novels hidden away in a flood of trade paperback original novels with enticing covers.