Review: I'm struck with Betty Dravis.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 30, 2012
So, I'm a storyteller, and I'd like to tell you a little story.  I started my writing career at age 15 as a bona-fide sportswriter in San Diego.  Random.  I was a little shy and intimidated, but I soon learned that to get the story one had to be cunning, courteous, and charming.  I managed to get two of them right, and I had my share of journalistic coups.  The reason I mention this is because I was utterly charmed by 'Star Struck', a short glimpse into the life of the always charming (that was the part I always got wrong) Betty Dravis.It is a short read.  Which was a blessing for me.  I am a fiction writer now, and I rarely have time to read.  I had a spare hour today, and I thought, whose book should I read...it needs to be short and entertaining.  Dravis' fits the bill in both cases.  The book itself is a series of recollections...impressions Dravis earned when interviewing various celebrities as a reporter in the greater Bay Area.  The description and other reviews will tell you all that.  I want to focus on the two parts of the book that resonated with me.One, as a former journalist, I could totally relate to the 'oh, god, I have to not appear intimidated' feeling that Dravis conveys with such deftness.  And two, if you can read this book and not want to kidnap Betty Dravis and take her to your mountain hide-a-way where you can both sip cold wine and she can regail you with her stories, then there is something wrong with you.  I have had the pleasure of interacting with Ms. Dravis in various writerly ways thanks to the internet.  She has always been kind and generous.  And that is what comes through in this book.  Sure, you get a glimpse of what it was like to meet Clint Eastwood and Jane Russell in their primes (awesome).  But of all the people in the book, if I could only spend an afternoon with one, it would be Ms. Dravis herself.This is not a celebrity tell all.  That would be tacky.  It is not an opportunity for Dravis to brag.  Tacky.  It is merely a ride that Ms. Dravis allows you to go on.  Anything else would have been objectionable to me.  I just spent an hour with Betty Dravis, sun streaming through my window, transported...not to a different place (we have both been lucky enough to call NorCal home), but to a different time.  With a lovely companion who can tell a good story.Should you buy this book?  WIthout a doubt.  I feel good about life right now and where else can you put a smile on your face for 99 cents?  I'd buy it for my friends and family, too.  And if I ever do get to kidnap Ms. Dravis, the first question I am going to ask her is how she got to be so sweet.The Biker (A Matt Stark Novel)Joe Café