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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 22, 2023 10:49:14 GMT
The Fly Girls by Bernard Glemser, originally published in 1960
Popular page-turners are often looked down upon, but many are enjoyable reads, with good stories, engaging characters and smart commentary on contemporary culture. For us today, the older page-turners, also, often provide some insight into how a society saw itself in real time.
The Fly Girls does all that by taking a look at a class of stewardess trainees for the fictional airline Magna International. During the Golden Age of travel, becoming a stewardess had a cache to it: the international travel, the elegance, the romance - real or imagined - plus the women, chosen, in part, for their attractiveness, all gave the job a mystique.
The Fly Girls focuses on five of the trainees in a class of forty, all who endure gruly weeks of study while being put up, dormitory style, at one of Miami's most fashionable hotels. The classes and workload will disabuse anyone of the notion that these young women were chosen or survived (only twenty eight of the forty make it to graduation) on their looks alone.
The five girls come from various backgrounds - the exotic Italian beauty, the trust-fund kid, the girl from poverty, the one escaping a new stepmother, etc. - as most are trying to become independent, see the world and, yes, meet men and potential husbands.
Whether that is a goal or not for young women today, the young women of the 1960s weren't shy about announcing it out loud. Yet some, like modern girls, were more interested in careers and experiencing life and saw "settling down" as something, often to the consternation of their boyfriends, they'd think about later.
The page-turning fun in The Fly Girls is seeing the girls transform into professional stewardesses during the weekday, while they go on dates, fight with each other, support each other, spend too much, drink too much or (for some) study too much the rest of the time.
For us today, it's a fascinating look into the early 1960s, where the "radicals" are called beatniks, Miami has an exotic feel to it, bigger and shinier cars convey status, women and men eat steak at expensive restaurants and middle-aged men like dating pretty and younger women (okay, not everything has changed).
Miami, then (think Jackie Gleason's successful TV variety show "from the sun and fun capital of the world, Miami Beach"), had a cool vibe: gamblers came for the racetrack and jai alai; conventioneers flew in for the sun, track, shows and girls, tourist came from everywhere and there was an arms race amongst the new luxury hotels.
Author Bernard Glesmer smartly shows the hard, challenging and, yes, seedy/ugly side of this outwardly glamorous world too. The training and work is grueling and, by today's standards, dictatorial, sexist and unfair. While women, even back then, are in more roles of responsibility and authority than modern writers often show, there clearly was a sexist bias in companies.
The girls also encounter plenty of nice men who behave like gentlemen, but many others are smarmy and worse. The gifts they receive often come with expectations and, as today, force and outright rape is real. Books went places movies only alluded to back then.
The Fly Girls, overall, is a fun read with enough grit and realism to keep it from being complete fluff. You care about "the girls," are exhausted by their studies, get angry at the pushy (and worse) men and equally angry at the girls who are mercenary and manipulative. But as in real life, there are also good men and women to root for.
Free from our modern political taboos and obsessions, The Fly Girls is a more-honest look at a sleeve of early 1960s America than modern period novels present. It's nothing more than a page-turner, but there's nothing wrong with that. Plus today, and until they invent a time machine, books like The Fly Girls are about the closest you can get to time travel.
N.B. The Fly Girls (originally titled Girl On a Wing) was turned into the movie Come Fly With Me, but by the time Hollywood was done with it, very little of the novel's story made it to the screen.
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Post by dianedebuda on Feb 22, 2023 17:52:25 GMT
But the movie does have a great title song:
When I was little girl in the 50s, I saved my allowance to buy a "real" Stewardess set - a hat, a wings pin and a tray with a dish set. Closest I ever got to living the role was owning a small plane with hubby & packing lunches to be eaten en route. ๐ Had my license for 2 years before I'd been in anything bigger than a 4-seater. Fond memories...
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 22, 2023 18:06:55 GMT
But the movie does have a great title song:
When I was little girl in the 50s, I saved my allowance to buy a "real" Stewardess set - a hat, a wings pin and a tray with a dish set. Closest I ever got to living the role was owning a small plane with hubby & packing lunches to be eaten en route. ๐ Had my license for 2 years before I'd been in anything bigger than a 4-seater. Fond memories...
That's a nice story.
I agree; the song is great. The movie is fun in a cheesy soap-opera way that's more enjoyable today as time travel to the era than for the drama itself.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Feb 23, 2023 6:51:51 GMT
The movie is fun in a cheesy soap-opera way that's more enjoyable today as time travel to the era than for the drama itself. And it has a real life flying nun in it - what could be more fun than that?! I am dismayed I am not bringing up pictures of your 50's era smart set dianedebuda. What kind of plane did you own/fly? So interesting. Feel free to share any other tales from the sky. Inquiring minds really want to know.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Feb 23, 2023 6:58:20 GMT
This review was so interesting FF. Loved it. I bought the book ages ago for a skim and a good laugh, always on the lookout for items to plump up the endlessly ironic section of my bookshelves. Now I have to actually read it. The author looks quite intriguing as well, a bit of a renaissance man...or woman: Mr. Glemser was born in London in 1908. He was an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force in World War II, then worked for the British Government in New York and Washington after the war. He resigned to devote himself to writing, and his first novel, ''Love for Each Other,'' a chronicle of a British family before World War II, was published in 1946. Among his other novels are ''Gallery of Women'' (1957), about a man's conflicting loves; ''Girl on the Wing'' (1960), about flight attendants, and ''The 60th Monarch'' (1974), set in Malaysia.
Mr. Glemser also wrote science fiction under the pen name Robert Crane and other fiction under the name Geraldine Napier. His children's books include ''All About the Human Body,'' ''All About Biology'' and ''Radar Commandos.'' In 1969 he wrote ''Man Against Cancer,'' based on discussions with prominent researchers throughout the world.
Glemser titles are available for loan at the Internet Archive. Hoping I can find mine amongst all my trash and treasures...
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 23, 2023 8:47:49 GMT
This review was so interesting FF. Loved it. I bought the book ages ago for a skim and a good laugh, always on the lookout for items to plump up the endlessly ironic section of my bookshelves. Now I have to actually read it. The author looks quite intriguing as well, a bit of a renaissance man...or woman: Mr. Glemser was born in London in 1908. He was an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force in World War II, then worked for the British Government in New York and Washington after the war. He resigned to devote himself to writing, and his first novel, ''Love for Each Other,'' a chronicle of a British family before World War II, was published in 1946. Among his other novels are ''Gallery of Women'' (1957), about a man's conflicting loves; ''Girl on the Wing'' (1960), about flight attendants, and ''The 60th Monarch'' (1974), set in Malaysia.
Mr. Glemser also wrote science fiction under the pen name Robert Crane and other fiction under the name Geraldine Napier. His children's books include ''All About the Human Body,'' ''All About Biology'' and ''Radar Commandos.'' In 1969 he wrote ''Man Against Cancer,'' based on discussions with prominent researchers throughout the world.
Glemser titles are available for loan at the Internet Archive. Hoping I can find mine amongst all my trash and treasures... Thank you for your kind comment; I'm glad you enjoyed the review. Glemser was quite the prolific writer and on a diverse set of topics. The only other one of his that I've read so far is "Here Come the Brides," which, like "The Fly Girls," is a fun as heck and silly as heck read. I do have a few others, though, on the bookshelf that I'll read when I want a light escapist book.
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Post by dianedebuda on Feb 23, 2023 15:13:24 GMT
I am dismayed I am not bringing up pictures of your 50's era smart set dianedebuda. What kind of plane did you own/fly? So interesting. Feel free to share any other tales from the sky. Inquiring minds really want to know. Full description of the set here.
Not our bird, but we had a Cessna 172 that looked like
Both hubby & I were licensed, but I usually did the radio work since female pilots were very rare in those days & I'd get special treatment from the controllers. ๐
Landed once at a small, but large enough to have a tower, airport in Louisiana for gas and just about the whole staff came out to see the body attached to the voice. Treated us to a lunch, too. ๐
Sold the plane when we moved to the country and had kids. Just not enough time and $ to keep skills up and the bird maintenanced.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Feb 23, 2023 23:17:42 GMT
You must have a beautiful voice, Diane!
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Feb 24, 2023 7:03:17 GMT
I usually did the radio work since female pilots were very rare in those days & I'd get special treatment from the controllers. ๐
Landed once at a small, but large enough to have a tower, airport in Louisiana for gas and just about the whole staff came out to see the body attached to the voice. Treated us to a lunch, too. ๐
Sold the plane when we moved to the country and had kids. Just not enough time and $ to keep skills up and the bird maintenanced.
This is great....sounds like the makings of a movie plot. We will have you land & keep the plane on your lawn like John Travolta. Love the Little Miss American Airlines set. Simply divine. Saving up for it yourself must have made it really special.
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Post by dianedebuda on Feb 24, 2023 12:23:50 GMT
You must have a beautiful voice, Diane! Nah, just being female was the magnet. Was also told at another airport that "the tower leaned" with everyone trying to see into our plane as it landed & taxied. ๐
Surprisingly I never was subjected to anti-female hostility as a pilot even when I flew solo. Such attitudes were not uncommon 50 years ago towards gals in a typically masculine activity.
Not sure why the airplane pic disappeared in the earlier post. Tried again and the pic sometimes shows & sometimes not when refreshed. So here's the link if anyone really wants to see a bird similar to what we had.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 19, 2023 9:31:35 GMT
Honorable Ancestor by Robert Standish originally published in 1956
Honorable Ancestor shows that our oh-so "modern" ideas about race and culture didn't spring spontaneously from the singular genius and tolerance of today's younger generation, but were being debated and discussed back when Robert Standish's thoughtful and engaging novel was written nearly seventy years ago.
Set back in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, Honorable Ancestor's protagonist, Giles Savernake, is a young, handsome man of the ruling class of England who travels to the Far East to better understand how his family's wealth - accumulated by his great-great-grandfather, Jeromy Savernake - was obtained.
This sets him on a journey where he learns that Jeromy made his money in the opium trade. Initially disgusted by his great-great-grandfather and the British Empire, but wanting to understand the Far East and the impact of the Empire better, Giles spends time living in China and Japan, which causes him to soften his absolutist views.
The story of opium and China, like the rightfully denigrated horrible slave trade, both have a much longer history than the colonial powers' involvement, with part of that story being a not flattering amount of support and profiteering by indigenous people themselves.
Giles comes to learn that all of these stories are complex, just like every culture is complex and that heroes and villains, like moral judgements of right and wrong, are rarely black and white or as simple as they first appear.
Through his journey, he comes to see that different cultures/races have different frameworks and mindsets. It is a modern view in that it is willing to see the good in all cultures, but it is also a throwback view as it is also willing to see and judge the bad in all cultures.
It is also modern, by implication, as it sees these, often vast, differences as driven by the race and cultures' historical experiences and reality, not genetics.
Today it's "white privilege," but Standish saw a "white prestige" as an obnoxious and failing idea that helped the British and other colonial powers rule countries that could easily have thrown them out through force.
It's both humbling and enlightening to learn how little of what we, today, believe is fresh thinking really is.
Giles' years spent in China and Japan is an incredible odyssey that takes the reader on a time-travel-like trip through the Far East.
He or she, through Giles, meets former aristocratic Russian exiles from the new communist regime and Scottish expats in Japan who have been there so long they have a blended cultural identity.
Giles also encounters a Chinese philosopher who understands the nuances of his people in a ruthlessly honest way and a young Japanese leader laying the ideological and cultural foundation for Japan's aborning militarism.
One is a brilliant and honorable man and one a sociopathic โbuilder of nations." Thankfully, Standish hadn't been poisoned by our modern thinking that won't allow honest criticism of non-Western cultures.
Giles, who becomes a reporter/journalist, moves all throughout the Far East, even finding his way to a massive famine outbreak in a remote part of China where we see that corrupt international charity organizations, more interested in fundraising on a large scale than helping the needy, are also not a new development.
As a result of being a journalist, but not particularly loving his profession, Giles shows us that politically-driven, intentional news bias is also not something new. It makes you appreciate that for all its faults, and it has them, the internet doesn't allow a few large news organizations to control the narratives anymore.
Woven into this engaging historical tale are two love stories. In the first, Giles has a passionate, volatile and on-and-off affair for several years with a beautiful but unstable exiled Russian aristocrat who is unable to make peace with her reduced station in life.
Intentionally drawn as the exact opposite, Giles also has a very slow-to-light affair with a young, pretty Scottish girl who was born and raised in Japan by her expat parents. The dichotomy is a bit too overt, but Standish isn't afraid to use obvious symbolism or overly engineered scenarios to make a point.
Thoroughly researched, often by the author's own experiences living for years in the Far East, Honorable Ancestor is thoughtfully and critically argued. And while Standish's book isn't great literature, it is great storytelling with a purpose; the purpose being to critically assess the Far East with a cynical attitude toward the British Empire and other colonial powers. Plus, it's just a heck of an enjoyable read.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 2, 2023 7:48:35 GMT
Requiem for a Wren by Nevil Shute originally published in 1955
Nevil Shute is an outstanding story teller. He crafts engaging tales that move along at a crisp pace, while capturing the small, telling details that make both his story and its characters come alive.
In Requiem for a Wren, Shute takes us on a trip through World War II and its immediate aftermath, as seen through the lives of two exceptional young people.
You come to appreciate the importance of the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service) to Britain's war effort, while also seeing how the war both elevated and broke people, sometimes doing both to the same person.
Janet Prentice, a plain looking young woman, enlisted in the Wrens early in the war and found her purpose in life in the military. Shy, the forced intimacy of military life allowed Janet to form the friendships she wasnโt able to as a civilian.
She also thrived as military discipline and hard work fit her personality, so much so, it gave her the confidence to form a romantic relationship with a handsome young sergeant, Bill.
She knew little about Bill, other than that she loved him, he grew up on a sheep farm in Australia and he had a handsome older brother, Alan, who was a fighter pilot.
Janet would have had a good life had Bill not been killed in the war. Bill's death, followed shortly afterward by her father's death, Bill's dog's death and her mother becoming ill, led to Janet having a nervous breakdown and leaving the Wrens.
All of this we learn, though, through a post-war investigation that Bill's once-dashing brother, Alan, conducted to find out what happened to Janet as he, Alan, struggles to adjust to post-war life after he lost both his feet when his plane was shot down in the war.
The core of the book is Alan's post-war search for Janet as we learn about the backgrounds of these two very different people whose paths crossed just once, during the war, but whose lives become entwined in a surprisingly odd and intimate way.
Alan's search takes us from a sheep farm in Australia, where we meet two kind parents worrying about their one remaining son, to a suburb of Seattle where a sickly aunt surprisingly gives former-Wren Janet a good home and purpose for a time.
We spend time, too, back in the war itself as we see the valuable contribution the Wrens made to the war effort in labor-starved Britain and how not all the heroism and sacrifice was made on the front lines.
Told as part mystery - what happened to Janet after she left the Wrens - and part post-war flashback to the conflict itself as seen through Alan's eyes and Janet's diary, Requiem for a Wren is an engaging page turner.
Shute also gives lie to the modern shorthand which believes that, back then, women were only allowed to have a few roles in life and all in support of men.
Shute's Janet is a smart, independent woman, who carves out her own niche and is respected for her skills and intelligence by the men she works with and the man who loves her.
Many of the bad things we attribute to the past are true, but they were also not the full story as life, then as now, was dramatically more complex, nuanced and varied than our politics, especially today's bitter version, wants to admit.
Modern authors of period novels could also learn from Shute how to write a story with a real female hero, as Janet is a hero, but she is, too, a woman of her time who thought within the conventions of the day, even if she stretched them.
She also didn't flyspeck every man and situation for prejudice and sexism and wasn't desirous to confront every single perceived injustice or slight.
The tic of virtue-signalling authors today is to write their period feminist heroes as if they were time travelers who popped up in another era, but with a present-day outlook and contemporary values.
These "heroes," then, somehow have the guts, grit and single mindedness to bend that past period's people and culture to their modern will - please.
This is why older novels by talented writers like Nevil Shute are so valuable. They provide a window into the past - into a particular period's culture, norms, foibles, values, mindsets, prejudices and struggles - without the bias and obsessions of modern prejudices.
Requiem for a Wren does all that, plus it's also just a darn good story with characters you come to care deeply about, which is what makes reading fun. The good news is if you like your first Shute novel, there are many more as he was a prolific and successful writer in his day.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 27, 2023 7:46:55 GMT
The English Air by D. E. Stevenson, originally published in 1940
D. E. Stevenson's The English Air, written in 1940 and set in the late 1930s, is a well-crafted propaganda novel wonderfully free of the modern political obsessions that are destroying todayโs period novels, but naturally, it's full of England's WWII-era biases.
Written right after war broke out, but before England faced The Blitz, The English Air captures the immediate pre- and post-war atmosphere and outlook of England as seen through one charming upper-middle-class family.
Middle-aged flighty and loving widow Sophie Braithwaite, her daughter, the carefree, sweet and pretty Wynne and her naval officer son Roy, live with Sophie's brother-in-law, Dane Worthington, a wealthy bachelor who is a spy for the British Government.
It is into this kind and happy household, in the summer of 1938, that Franz comes to visit. Franz is the son of Sophie's deceased English cousin, a cousin who had married a German man and went to live in Germany just after WWI.
Author Stevenson uses this construct to compare and contrast the outlook, attitudes, prejudices and values of England and Germany in the late 1930s.
Because his English mother died when he was young, Franz was raised by his German father to be a "modern" German and to "love their leader unquestionably." He was taught in the Hitler Youth that only their leader could protect Germany from its enemies.
It's with this mindset that disciplined and reserved Franz shows up at the Braithwaite's home, Fernacres, only to see a content English people enjoying life with a relaxed attitude and general bonhomie that he all but can't fathom.
Franz, raised in a country gearing up for war and taught that England is one of its potential enemies, can't understand the laid-back atmosphere and kindness he encounters as Wynne and her friends embrace him.
Franz is also thrown when Wynne's friends casually mock their government or joke around with the local police, things that would never happen in Germany. Young Franz gets further buffeted when he develops feelings for Wynne.
In conversations with Dane Worthington and others, Franz also begins to understand that England doesn't feel animosity toward Germany, but is more than willing to fight if it has to. This is not the England he expected to see.
After an eye-opening summer, a now confused Franz, but one still devoted to his leader and country, is ecstatic when England and Germany sign a peace pact, The Munich Agreement. But he is then rocked when Germany subsequently violates it.
With that reasonably long and telling setup, the novel becomes tougher as Franz's beliefs, loyalties, family obligations and friendships are tested time and again in the shadow of an aborning war between his parents' two countries.
Stevenson constructed an engaging story that shows a charming, kind and open-hearted England being dragged into a war it doesn't want. It also shows a Germany twisted into militarism by a maniacal leader who has warped the minds of Germany's youth.
Author Stevenson's characters are engaging and sympathetic. Stevenson also has a gift for picking the right details to bring a time and place to life. You can't help loving pre-war England, liking Sophie, Wynne and Dain and hoping that Franz makes the right decisions.
Like all good propaganda, it's "true" if, as Stevenson did, you put the lens in just the perfect spot to tell your side of the story and, of course, in the big historical picture, Stevenson was right.
The English Air is a fun and easy read populated with characters you quickly come to care about. And for us today, despite its period biases and agenda, it still valuably captures a moment in history when the world was about to be forcibly and irreparably changed.
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Post by kims on May 3, 2023 22:13:40 GMT
MASKED by Alfred Habegger. It unmasks Anna Leonowens of Anna and the King fame. It tells how her books were fabrications of the truth and why she made the fabrications. Her grandmother was Indian and the lengths she went to "mask" her relatives. It's terrible that she created sensational stories for her books, but heartbreaking that anyone should need to hide what they are. Still today, it is sad that people have to mask to be able to fulfill their desires.
She would have been horrified that the truth is revealed. I ignored the book at first because I thought why tell this when she didn't want it known. A friend told me to read it because in the process of hiding her heritage, she did considerable damage to the world perception of the king, the people of Siam, the culture and perception of Buddhism. Sad all the way around, the need to pass as what was considered English so great as to damage perception of a country for decades.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 6, 2023 6:51:39 GMT
All Over But the Shooting by Richard Powell, originally published in 1944
The 1930s and 1940s produced a plethora of books (and movies made from the books) about husband-and-wife teams fighting crime as quasi detectives.
The Thin Man series of novels is the most famous of these husband-and-wife sleuthing combos, but author Richard Powell's Arab and Andy Blake series is also enjoyable and engaging reading.
In the series third entry, All Over But the Shooting, Arabella, "Arab," and Andy Blake take on WWII German spies on American soil, but as in most of these series, the stories are only okay. You stay around, however, for the playful squabbling of the married couple.
Andy narrates the novel, but it is Arabella, his wife, who gives the book its punch. She's a petite, early twenties blonde with an incredibly inquisitive and sharp mind, a passion for guns and anything that explodes and a penchant for finding mysteries to solve.
Arab is closer to a modern heroine than Nora Charles from The Thin Man, who can often be a bumbling wife, as Arab not only doesn't bumble, she drives the investigation and is willing to take more risks than her often exhausted and cautious husband.
When the book opens, we find Andy living in a boarding house and pushing papers as a lieutenant in the Pentagon. Arab has just come to D.C. to be with him where she quickly finds a job as a secretary in, of course, the military's ordnance department.
Owing to the war-time housing shortage in Washington, though, Arab is forced to take a room in a separate and remote boarding house until she and Andy can find an apartment together.
After a series of suspicious events happen at Arab's boarding house, a prior tenant left in a hurry, a few creepy men come and go and Andy's modest snooping at Arab's urging is met with heavy resistance, Arab goes into sleuthing overdrive.
Andy's interest in the house's setup, though, is mainly piqued out of jealousy sparked by a big, tall blonde man, who lives near Arab's house. That man takes an interest in Arab believing she is not married because Arab had to pose that way to rent the room
Andy, a guy who just wants to do his Pentagon job in peace, initially dismisses Arab's concerns about the house, but as the evidence mounts, he takes what he and Arab have found to his commanding officer at the Pentagon.
With that setup, the story becomes a traditional spy thriller as Andy and Arab discover German spies are using the boarding house to get information, from war workers who live at the house, to send back to Germany.
Thuggish spies commanded by a James Bond like supervillain, kidnappings, gun battles, an island hideout, a submarine rendezvous and plenty of explosions, head bonking and smart sleuthing follows.
It's a serviceable enough story, with some real tension and neat spy technology for the day, but you read this one, like all the books in this series and similar series, because you enjoy the characters, in particular, the fun couple at the center of it all.
Andy and Arab are truly in love and don't so much fight as exasperate each other as she's looking for adventure and he's not. Also, men just come on to pretty Arab, which doesn't make Andy happy, especially as she'll go along for a bit if it advances their investigation.
Because Andy narrates, we only see Arab through his eyes, which show her to be a spitfire of a young woman whose love of guns, mystery and excitement attracts Andy to her even if he won't fully admit it to himself.
Andy and Arab might not quite have Nick and Nora's charm, but they are a likable couple to spend a few hours with, which makes these Arab and Andy Blake books, like All Over But the Shooting, breezy, fun and perfect beach reads.
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