Friday, May 10, 2013

Palm Springs Poolside Reading



The last 10 days around the Palm Springs condo pool have been extraordinarily peaceful, and the temperature has been in the warm, comfortable 80s most of the time.



Early in the trip, I talked my neighbor Sammy into attending a local book signing for a salacious memoir by Grace Robbins, the widow of Harold Robbins, who was the best-selling novelist of the 1960s and 1970s. You have to be a certain age to remember him, but at one time the trashmeister's tomes such as The Carpetbaggers were inescapable.



Grace Robbins above was looking great for a woman in her 70s, and she radiated warmth towards old friends and complete strangers alike.



The book turned out to be poorly written and edited, with one Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous episode after another sandwiched between appallingly sexist scenes of her husband, other bestselling authors, and plenty of film moguls treating women like whores.



Meanwhile, as I wallowed in celebrity trash, neighbor Cory's poolside reading was Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists. I think he was just showing off.

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