In keeping with the official policy of this blog: Claudine Auger. Apparently, she was a very successful actress in Europe, and less so elsewhere. But: she was the Bond girl in “Thunderball”.
Johanna Lindsey, who I have actually heard of, but never read any of her books. She actually passed away October 27th, but her death was only recently announced.
Her books sold at least 60 million copies, according to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, and she ranked among the leading romance writers of her era, most notably Jude Deveraux, Judith McNaught, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers.
“Since I was old enough to appreciate a good novel, I’ve been a romantic,” Ms. Lindsey was quoted as saying in the book “Love’s Leading Ladies” (1982), by Kathryn Falk. “I enjoy happy-ending love stories more than any other type of reading. Romance is what comes out of me.”
Ms. Lindsey set her passionate tales in many locales, including the Caribbean; the Barbary Coast; England as early as the year 873; Norway, when the Vikings ruled; 19th-century Texas, Wyoming and Montana; and the planet Kystran, in a series of science-fiction bodice-rippers.
…
Liz Perl, the marketing director of Simon & Schuster, said that Ms. Lindsey had been a shy, private person who only occasionally toured to promote her books.
“On several occasions, her mother would accompany her, which was really sweet,” Ms. Perl said by phone. “Her mother was quite outgoing, so Johanna would sign the books, and her mom would stand next to her and tell fans anecdotes about Johanna when she was young.”
She added, “When she turned her books in, she wouldn’t celebrate by buying a car or going to Paris, but by buying a video game and playing it for 12 hours before starting her next book.”
I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed hanging out with her.
Gen. Ahmed Gaïd Salah, who the paper of record describes as “Algeria’s de facto ruler”.
General Gaïd Salah’s unexpected death at 79 — his official age, though he was most likely older — less than two weeks after the army’s favored candidate was elected president, creates a power vacuum in the vast North African nation, a major oil and gas producer.
A survivor from the generation that led Algeria to independence from France in the early 1960s, General Gaïd Salah was the man who increasingly blocked the demands of the popular protest movement that has rocked the country’s politics since last February.
As chief of staff, General Gaïd Salah orchestrated a hardening crackdown on the movement, imposed a presidential election that the protesters rejected, and demanded, in regular if stiff televised speeches to other army officers, that the demonstrators back off.
The movement has rejected the newly elected president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, as a mere figurehead, put in place to carry out the general’s wishes.
I try to leave geopolitics to Lawrence, so all I’ll say is: it should be interesting to watch this play out.
Elizabeth Spencer, another author I’d heard of but have not read. She was apparently most famous for “The Light in the Piazza”.
Baba Ram Dass, counterculture guy.
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By the 1980s, Ram Dass had a change of mind and image. He shaved off the beard but left a neatly trimmed mustache. He tried to drop his Indian name — he no longer wanted to be a cult figure — but his publisher vetoed the idea. Ram Dass said that he had never intended to be a guru and that Harvard had been right to throw him out.
He continued to turn out books and recordings, however. He started or helped start foundations to promote his charities, to help prisoners and to spread his message of spiritual equanimity. He made sure his books and tapes were reasonably priced.
The old orthodoxies slipped away. He said he realized that his 400 LSD trips had not been nearly as enlightening as his drugless spiritual epiphanies — although, he said, he continued to take one or two drug trips a year for old time’s sake. He said other religions, including the Judaism that he had rejected as a young man, were as valid as the Eastern ones.
