I MAY need to read more books next month, because this one was a bust

Now that it's pool weather, you'd think I'd have gotten more books read.  But I've been out of town or busy pretty much every weekend last month, so here's what I was able to read.  4 books, 1406 pages.  Maybe June will be a better month....

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (337 pages).  This was the backup book club book for May.  I finished the first one early enough and thought I'd read this one too.  I didn't really like it much, despite it being "one of the year's best books."  It covers several overlapping stories.  The first is in 1962, when actress Dee Moray shows up at Pasquale's family's hotel on the coast of Italy.  She's been sent there by the man who got her pregnant/told her she had stomach cancer.  Pasquale goes to the movie set (you know, just Cleopatra) and thinks that it's one of two men, Michael Deane (an assistant on the movie) or Richard Burton (yes, THAT Richard, of Elizabeth and Richard).  Years later, like recent times later, Pasquale goes to LA to track down Michael Deane, who is now a famous movie producer.  He meets Shane Wheeler, a young man who is there to pitch a movie.  The intervening years are also covered- Dee raising her son, Pat.  Her inability and eventual ability to live the life she's been handed.  The Deane party (Michael, his assistant, Pasquale and Shane) makes their way out of LA to track down Dee.  The ending was a lot better than I could've hoped for.  There was some good closure and I felt happy with how everything turned out.

Melissa Explains It All by Melissa Joan Hart (262 pages).  I love a good memoir.  And this one was cheesy fun, from start to finish.  I had absolutely no idea that MJH actually got her start in commercials, then moved on to Broadway before she got Clarissa Explains It All.  Sounds like she actually got some good, active training as an actress as a kid.  It also sounds like she had a lot of fun before settling down with her husband and having her three boys.  A little wild, but what 20 something with lots of money and fame wouldn't have (especially before the Internet was so huge)?!  Good, mindless reading.  If you like MJH.  Which I do.

Defending Jacob by William Landay (421 pages).  I've been told about 50 trillion times that I needed to read this book.  And everyone was correct!  I read 3/4 of it sitting by my pool one afternoon.  It was so good!  14 year old Jacob Barber, son of the first assistant DA in Newton, is accused of murdering his classmate, a classmate who had bullied him.  Most of the book leads up to and covers the trial.  Interspersed throughout is a transcript from Andy Barber (the dad) and Neal Logiudice (the DA who handled the murder trial) one year after the trial.  I 100% thought that Andy was being accused of the murders.  Turns out, I was way wrong!  I was sitting in sunshine when I finished the book and legit got goose bumps.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (386 pages).  The fact that I've never read this boo (or seen the movie) shocks even me.  The fact that it's a true story made it even cooler.  The cast of characters in Savannah was amazing!  Jim Williams (the gay antiques dealer), the Lady Chablis, Joe Odom (no, not Lamar's dad.  This one is a raucous host about town), Danny (Jim's employee/sometimes lover) and a host of others.  When Jim shoots Danny in self-defense, the trial(s) are all sorts of crazy.  Now I really want to watch the movie.  And of course, it's not on Netflix Instant Stream!