The Review of Assassination Vacation

Listen, I'm a barnes and noble, Amazon, Walden Books, Books-a-Million nut. Years and Years of christmas] past and I've begged for 2 things. Socks and Gift cards to book stores. My friends comment on how they won't go with me because I have my mail forwarded when going.I t's not even just the read, but the challange, the adventure, the little gray cells, and the opportunity to tap into another mind. Each time we crack a book, each time we scribe a note, it's a representation of soul.


My newest read; which I'm taking to bed like an unlearned lover~is Assassination Vacation. Now, I could have rushed the virgin read written by Sarah Vowell. I could have! It is the first paper back book I've bought in years. It felt hardly worthy of my pliant hands. However, there was no hardbound version available, and I was in a spendthrift mood with a two thumbs up from a learned scholar pushing me into it's purchase. I caved. I'm glad. Sarah, I'm really glad. You're a nut job and I can't help but love your zest for history! You make it literally come alive.



Assassination Vacation follows the historical markers of the Nation's Presidential Slain. Beginning with Lincoln, followed by Garfield, and McKinley. I am curious on why she stopped at not reviewing the Kennedy case, but either she didn't have the funds to do it or felt that it was too overdone...no twist in the history. I have to say that I'm profoundly at odds with some of the information she scribes about. Being as the first 1/3 of the book is based on the Death of Lincoln we wind through the country to where his skull fragments were kept, to the Jail of Dr. Sam Mudd ("your name is Mudd) in Dry Tortugas, or Edwin Booth, (John Wilkes Brother) & the many homes of President Lincoln post mortem. Did you know he'd been body snatched? Yes, our president on our fiver was bodysnatched! Or that there is an old saying about there being a Booth that saved & killed a Lincoln. The way her mind reworks the old puzzle is facinating.

The last time I'd been this interested in something was when I read "The Blood Countess" by Andrei Codrescu. I'd never heard of Elisabet of Bathory. I think the brink of Historical Revival is soon to be reborn in America. We now have on Showtime "The Tudors", people are starting to do the retro revisitation even of Route 66 and Gettysburg again.

I live in the South, and while I had always had such a distaste for what it stood for as a sympathetic northerner. In itself I was meshed into my psyche that the south was horrible, as much so it was for those growing in the South to have distaste for the North robbing them of a livelyhood and rich culture. The Hatfields and McCoys still exist here. Not a day ebbs that I don't find myself stunned either way on life here. It's like moving to France for me. I don't speak the language,( although I'm working on an affect accent to persuade them that I am from here when it becomes obvious that it is socially necessary.) I don't speak the dialect that they have understood for years. I'm outside of thier comfort zone.

Assassination Vacation may be out of your comfort zone too, but if lost for hours in an Airport, put down the People Magazine and spend the money on this book. It's by far more amazing than the life of Jennifer Aniston.

I pen my adieu from the corner of crass and stupidity.