Library Loot: Val Lends A Hand

The title of this post should read "Val lends a CARD" because I have somehow misplaced my faculty card, which is what I use to check out books. Seeing my downcast look, Val took pity and lent me her card, with the admonition that I had to return it by midnight because my beautiful dress would turn to...oops, wrong story. Here's what has been checked out on Val's card:

Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s - Ann Douglas. A study of intellectual life and the arts during the 1920s. So many people figure that Paris during this decade was the place to be at that time, but Douglas asserts that there was plenty going on at home.

Scott O'Dell - Hal Marcovitz (Who Wrote That? series). A juvenile biography of the author of Island of the Blue Dolphins. Fun fact: O'Dell was born Odell Scott, but when he was working as a reporter and a typist scrambled his byline and rendered it as Scott O'Dell, he liked it so much that it became his pen name and eventually he legally changed it. OK, I'm on a roll now: Fun fact #2: O'Dell was on the set of the movie Son of the Sheik back in the 1920s. The script required a close-up of Rudolph Valentino holding a string of pearls. Valentino was hot, but he "had hands like a butcher", according to O'Dell. Apparently, O'Dell had the goods, so he became Valentino's hand double for that one scene. Fun and informative reading. I'd love to read the others in this series.

Now, to find my own card...