Rainy Afternoon Reading

"Crosby - His Life and Times" by Mark Whitaker   Simon and Schuster   532 pages   $29.99

The apparently endless stream of women who claimed that Bill Cosby drugged them and took liberties was just beginning to start flowing.  Amused I checked it out of the library.

I didn't find the book that interesting as Whitaker seems to have mistaken Cosby for God, but I did look in the Index to see if I could spot anything ... interesting.

In 1974, a woman he'd been seeing 14 months earlier returned at his request - he had a job for a month in Las Vegas with wife Camille on the East Coast.  When she arrived, she was not alone.  She had a baby girl with her and said that Cosby was the Daddy.

Today in 2014 the number of women is probably sufficient to establish a Class Action suit.  And since these antics took place 30 years ago, I also had to wonder, "Why now?"  Did the book's publication spur on the questions?

"Thank You For Your Service" by David Finkel   Sarah Crichton Books   256 pages   $26

This is Finkel's second war book and it continues with follow-ups on the guys he was embedded with in Baghdad.  It is virtually a catalog of human suffering for the soldiers and their families once they are safely home.  PTSD and the results on the brain that occur when exposed to bombs and mortars have changed many of the returning soldiers - and not for the good - which often has a domino affect on the wives and girlfriends that had been left behind.

Because it's about real people and contains their direct quotes, it is an interesting if not somewhat depressing read.

"The Baby Boom" by P.J. O'Rourke   Atlantic Monthly Press  263 pages   $26

As a rule I like reading O'Rourke.  But when I got to page 186 and realized that he was still talking about being in high school, I had to close the book and put in the back-to-the-library pile.