May-June Books

*Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo returns to the setting and many of the characters of his most successful book, Nobody's Fool.   Sully is confronting a daunting health prognosis, which he hides from his loved ones, including a longtime mistress, an increasingly distant best friend, and an obsessive chief of police. This is classic Russo, filled with humor, heart, hard times, and characters whom you can't help but love despite, and perhaps for, all their faults.

Fool Me Once by is Harlan Corbin 8^th consecutive NYT best seller. Former special ops pilot Maya, sees an unbelievable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya's husband, Joe—whom she had seen brutally murdered two weeks earlier. To regain confidence in her own senses, Maya must discover and confront deep personal and family secrets.

 

*The Man with No Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates is a 30-year journal of mirrored self-discovery by a   neuroscientist and the attractive, charismatic E.H. who is unable to store new experiences or to retrieve some of the old.  She becomes famous for her experiments and inadvertently falls in love with him even though she must re-introduce herself each day. Oates deftly probes the significance of memory in meaning of love, and relationships while subtlety exploring academic mores, changing gender roles along scientific ethics and objectivity,

** Seven Brief Lesson on Physics by Carlo Rovelli is a lucid, insightful, almost poetic review of the scientists, from Einstein and Niels Bohr through Werner Heisenberg and Stephen Hawking who have shaped the science of Physics. The “concise and comprehensible writing makes sense of intricate notions such as general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology and thermodynamics” (The Scientific American) and “artfully hints at meanings beyond its immediate scope.” (NYTimes).

  Old Age: A Beginner’s Guile by Michael Kinsley is A collection of essays on aging, Parkinson's, a culture of celebrity, and the legacy of the Baby Boomer generation as they march toward a toward a door marked “Exit.” The book is clever, personal and insightful, but, for me, it didn’t quite achieve its potential—but then so few of us do.

*A Man Call Ove by Fredrik Backman is a Swedish novel that is winning raves in 25 countries as “the most charming book of the year.”    Ove was a curmudgeon when he was young and has always seen the world in black and white.  Without his Sonja, Ove decides to join her in the next world. But a young couple, their children and a bedraggled cat move in next door and upset his plans and world view.  Curmudgeons of all ages and their partners will find much hilarity and heartbreak to enjoy in this engaging story.

**All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage is a “lyrically written, frequently shocking and immensely moving . . .literary thriller.”  At its heart of this gothic insightful story about two families entwined in their own unhappiness, is a gruesome and unsolved murder.  “A rich and complex portrait of a psychopath, marriage and community.”

* The Widow by Fiona Barton “is a taut reconstruction of a crime and a ruthless examination of marriage” in the tradition of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train.  Jean Taylor has been the perfect wife, but after her husband is suspected of a terrible crime and dies before the crime is resolved, she become a different person. Barton peels back the lies spouses tell not just to each other, but to themselves in order to provide meaning and stability for their lives.

Big Fear by Andrew Case is “a hard-punching police procedural” that draws on his experience as an investigator and policy director of New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board. Case obviously knows his City and the Police Department as he weaves a tale of extensive police misconduct and the impact that one or two honest cops can have.

March-April Books

*Miller’s Valley by Anna Quindlen portrays the demise of a Pennsylvania farm, the family that has owned it for generations, most of the family members and a way of life. As she matures from precocious youngster to purposeful young woman, Mimi comes to terms with life as it should be versus life as it is. She may manage enough grit, determination and intelligence to adapt and find her own definition of success and happiness.

**A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin is “a compelling family saga that follows troubled math genius Milo Andret from birth to death”. Milo goes from inauspicious beginnings in rural Michigan to solving a decades-old mathematical problem and teaching at Princeton. He destroys a promising career because of alcoholism and womanizing. The second half of the novel is told by his son, who inherits many of the same skills and problems. In addition to the engaging prose, “the novel is a subtle meditation on creativity, happiness, and fate." Canin's ability to explain complex mathematics and the minds of truly brilliant people is impressive.

*Ronald Reagan by Jacob Weisberg is an even-handed, balanced, brief and bracing portrait of America's fortieth president and the ideas that animated his political career and make him arguably the 2^nd most influential president of the 20^th century. "He didn't suffer from anxiety or self-doubt. The search for something beneath the surface has tended to produce few results."

**The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health by bestselling physician David Agus presents numerous fascinating scientific morsels—such as parabiosis (anatomically connecting two living creatures) and CRISPR (a tool for editing the genome). Agus recommends a daily aspirin and statin drug, envisions the smartphone as both a health diary and a "virtual personal therapist," and even suggests that individuals consider banking their plasma.  He argues for a scientific and Zen-like approach to wellness that emphasizes listening to your body's signals, measuring and tracking important numbers (blood pressure, activity, weight, sleep), trusting your intuition, and keeping active.

*The Travelers by Chris Pavone has travel writer Will Rhodes being seduced and then coerced into a series of covert operations.  As he jets around the world (from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland), he begins to suspect that his firm and his wife might also be hiding secrets that could upend (or just end) his life.

**The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross, former Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, identifies immerging innovations while making strategic recommendations for taking advantage of opportunities in such fields as robotics, cybersecurity, genomics and digital technology.  Google’s Erick Schmidt says Ross “can see patterns in the chaos and guidance for the road forward. He has an unusual diversity of expertise that allows him to apply multiple lenses to the world's challenges. Despite good writing and excellent mastery of complex subjects, the book is heavy going at times.

The Road to Little Dribbling:  Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson is a twenty-year follow-up to his charming, funny, insightful Notes from a Small Island. Regrettably,  I thought it possessed little of the characteristics that first made me a Bryson fan, and I didn’t finish the book.

January-February Books

            

*The Crossing by Michael Connelly has Harry Bosch coming out of a retirement forced by enemies within the LAPD to help his half-brother (The Lincoln Lawyer) defend a client whose DNA was found on a rape/murder victim. Perhaps the client has been framed for murder, so Bosch secretly teams up with former partner Lucia Soto to investigate possible corruption inside the LAPD. While not his best effort, nobody does procedural details better than Connelly.

*A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, “all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family." Abby and Red are growing older and it is time to make decisions about how best to look after them, and the future of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. After 50 years as a writer, Tyler still has the talent, wisdom and patience to turn out an excellent book.

I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright is the script for the acclaimed one-man show exploring the true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transvestite and celebrated antiques dealer who successfully navigated the two most oppressive regimes of the past century, the Nazis and the Communists. I had trouble following the print version of the play, but in the Ensemble’s production, John Tufts flawlessly navigated the 30 roles and make it understandable and enjoyable. 

*The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee is the story of how a traumatized college graduate, a lonely housewife and a burned-out mother of three endure the challenges of their respective demons and families in the face of unexpected consequences within their American expat community in Hong Kong…” a beautiful, transporting novel about motherhood, marriage, and friendship.”

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by cognitive psychologist Alexandra Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. Imagine being able to smell every bit of open food in the house as well as sadness in humans. Sometimes a little slow going, but Scarlett asked me to read this so I could be more understanding of her needs.

Marry, Kiss, Kill by Anne Flett-Giordano sounded like a great concept: a Santa Barbara murder mystery set during the Film Festival written by a successful TV writer and the pick of a Graduates book club. It could have been good, but wasn’t.   The local color was okay, but characters were one-dimensional and as lovable as Ted Cruz, the plot unbelievable and the dialogue too clever by half.

*Saving Sophie by Ronald H. Balson is about an ordinary attorney from Chicago-until his wife dies, his young daughter is kidnapped, and he becomes the main suspect in an $88-million-dollar embezzlement case. Jack is on the run, hoping to rescue his daughter from her maternal grandfather (a suspected terrorist in Palestine) before he is arrested.   Balson writes an engaging story with believable characters and even weaves some well-done history of the Israel-Palestinian history.

Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham is the popular writer’s alternative to The Lincoln Lawyer. Sebastian Rudd works out of a customized bulletproof van, a heavily armed driver who is also his body guard and paralegal. He takes on clients other lawyers won't even consider: a drug-addled, tattooed kid rumored to be in a satanic cult, who is accused of molesting and murdering two little girls; a vicious crime lord on death row; a homeowner arrested for shooting at a SWAT team that mistakenly invaded his house.  While not his best work, this is vintage Grisham and an enjoyable read.

The Guilty by David Baldacci is the 4^th novel about government assassin Will Robie that  “straddles that line of edgy, high-concept suspense, augmented with a bit of the political thriller, and deep character studies.” Collateral damage in an assignment impacts Will’s legendary skills and he takes a leave to help his estranged father who has been indicted for murder in Texas. This a different tack for Daldacci, has a more personal, introspective tone but is still engaging.