I finished Martha Gellhorn's Travels with Myself and Another last night. I feel compelled to refer her as a "gal" in the best sense of the word. I knew nothing about Gellhorn until I read Michael Reynold's multi-volume biography of Hemingway years ago and honestly, I can't figure out how those two ever thought they would last. I can totally seen Hemingway and Gellhorn having a torrid affair, but married? She just wasn't the settling down getting dinner on the table kind of chickee, that's for sure.

Travels is about trips across China, Africa, the Caribbean and a nightmare in Moscow. It's very funny, especially when Gellhorn has had enough (this happened a lot in Moscow) and although it sometimes rubs up against the nasty line of racism, it's mostly just honest. It was interesting to read what Uganda and Kenya and other African countries were like prior to independence - the chaos that was already there, the chaos that was coming, the insanity of the missionaries, etc. All in all, it was nice to spend time with Martha separate from her ex-husband and I will look for more of her books in the future.

Gwenda made mention today of a title out from Unbridled Books: Mohr by Frederick Reuss. I like the premise here, that the photos are real and the story created around them is fictional. I have a thing for old photos - it always seems so sad to find them at garage sales or flea markets, just sitting there, forever unrecognized. When my father was dying we found a ton of photos in his house but while he knew what they were and who they were he was no longer able to put complete sentences together and tell us. After he died my aunts went through them with us and knew a lot of the people and locations but the pictures from when he was in the military, before he met my mother, are a mystery to everyone.

And there's this series of five photos of him and a beautiful girl taken in Spain that no one knows anything about. They are so happy in the pictures - clearly she was a girlfriend - but he wasn't able to tell us who she was.

So photos intrigue the hell out of me and I'm looking forward to reading Mohr and seeing what Reuss does with this idea.

And finally, Jenny D. raved about Sara Gran's books a while back and then Gwenda mentioned her blog the other day and now I see that Come Closer is due from Berkley in May and really I think I need to read this book. Recommended by both Jenny and Gwenda? Please - how can I resist?!