Reading...

"Star Island" by Carl Hiaasen Alfred A. Knopf 337 amusing pages $26.95

Hiaasen has brought back some old friends in this whimsical novel. Skink, the eco-terrorist and former Governor of Florida still lives in the mangrove swamp, surviving on fortuitious road kill. Chemo, the very tall, very repulsive-looking man, lost half of his left arm to a barracuda attack. He replaced it with a custom-made weed whacker. In this book, he's been hired to bodyguard a spoiled, no brain, alcoholic druggie "singer" named Cherry Pye. Think Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears...

Pye's parents can't control their daughter so they hire a body double for those times when "Our Star" is in rehab (again.) It's a marvelous story of mishandled kidnappings and told with Hiaasen's usual joie de vivre. He's lighter on the eco-save pedal, too, and that helps. He used to go on for pages about various land developments, etc.

"The World of Gloria Vanderbilt" by Wendy Goodman Abrams, New York 213 picture-drenched pages $40

Vanderbilt is now 86 and in her lifetime, she has always lived like a princess financially, but like the scullery maid as far as family affection was concerned. To escape her mothe and her aunt, she married Pat DiCiccio at 17. He beat her; the marriage didn't last long. Next she married famed conductor Leopold Stowkoski. He ws 62, some 40 years older than she was. That marriage ended in divorce. Then she married Wyatt Cooper from whence sprang Anderson Cooper, newscaster. He once said, "I'm glad my last name isn't Vanderbilt."

She and her relatives ived in houses that were grandiose -- a full city block in Manhattan, enormous "cottages" at Newport, RI, and "farms" with acres of land, extensive stables, and so forth. It is a world that is pretty much inconceivable today.

At first I thought the book was a vanity publication to flatter an old lady before she dies (which it certainly is) but now I realize it's an accounting of what used to be by someone who was there. It's a valuable, if somewhat checkered, history.