May 2017 Book List

The interesting trend I see in this new crop of books on my May 2017 Book List which covers (compiled from PW, Amazon, NYT) mid-March until the end of April is that I see more nonfiction titles than fiction titles. I wonder if all the difficulty we are experiencing in our politics separating real news from fake news, and fact from propaganda or outright lies is fueling a desire to read books that attempt to be based in fact. Another trend also relates to politics because, while our country is responding to the “America First” message and turning its back on globalism, writing is becoming more global than ever before as the nationalities of the published authors show. One constant: so many great books, so little time. I am reading from older lists right now and will not catch up to this list for some time. When I do catch up the novel American War by Omar El Akkad seems like it might suit my politics, sci-fi, apocalyptic tastes. What titles appeal to you?

Publishers Weekly

April 3, 2017

Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution by Peter Andreas (NF)

Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year by Peter Brooks (NF)

What Flaubert had just written: Sentimental Education (F)

Marlena by Julie Buntin (F)

The Happy End/All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre (Sounds like a can’t miss Poetry book)

Fever of the Blood by Oscar de Muriel (Mys.)

American War: A Novel by Omar El Akkad

Somebody with a little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill

Prussian Blue: A Bernie Guthrie Novel by Philip Kerr

The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty by Jonathan Morduch and Rachael Schneider (NF)

The Draw: A Memoir by Lee Siegel

God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America by Louis S. Warren (NF)

Foxlowe: A Novel by Eleanor Wasserberg

April 10, 2017

Long Black Veil: A Novel by Jennifer Finney Boylon (Thriller)

The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science by Marcus du Saufoy (NF)

Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War by Philip Fibura (NF)

Cruel is the Night by Karo Hämäläinen (F)

Beck by Mal Peet with Meg Rosoff (F)

At the Lightning Field by Laura Raicovich (Essays)

An American Sickness: How Health Care Became Big Business and How You can Take it Back by Elizabeth Rosenthal (NF)

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro (Memoir)

Darwin’s First Theory: Exploring Darwin’s Quest for a Theory of Earth by Rob Wesson (NF

April 17

The Golden Legend by Nadeem Aslam (F)

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. (NF)

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (True Crime)

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers by Deborah Helligman (NF)

The Sun King’s Conspiracy by Yves Jégo and Denis Lépée (Thriller)

Bang by Barry Lyga (F)

Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes by Ann Elizabeth Moore (Essays)

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

April 24

North of Happy by Adi Alsaid (F)

The Whole Together Thing by Ann Brashares (F)

Good Friday on the Rez by David Hugh Bunnell (NF)

The Last Neanderthal by Clair Cameron (NF)

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot (Memoir)

Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout (F)

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (F) (post-apocalyptic journey)

May 1

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan (F)

Season of Crimson Blossoms by Akubakar Adam Ibrahim (F)

The Leavers: A Novel by Lisa Ko (F)

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of this Will Matter by Scaachi Koul (Essays)

The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis (Autobiographical novel)

Ginny Moon: A Novel by Benjamin Ludwig (F)

The Unruly City: Paris, London, and New York in the Age of Revolution by Mike Rapport (NF)

A Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (NF)

Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky (NF)

Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk (F)

Amazon

Literature and Fiction

The Stars Are Fire: A Novel by Anita Shreve

If We Were Villains: A Novel by M L Rio

The Woman in the Castle: A Novel by Jessica Shattuck

My Cat Yugoslavia: A Novel by Pajtim Statovci, David Hackston

Spoils by Brian Van Reet

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley: A Novel by Hannah Tinti

The Half Wives by Stacia Pellietier

What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nineka Arimah

The Practice House by Laura Mitchell

What to Do About the Solomons by Bethany Ball

Marlena by Julie Buntin

All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan, Jessica Cohen

American War by Omar El Akkad

Bear Town by Fredrik Backman

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan

Mysteries and Thrillers

Rag Doll by Daniel Cole

Change Agent by Daniel Suarez

Earthly Remains: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

The Fix by David Baldacci (Amos Decker Series)

One Perfect Lie by Lisa Scottoline

The Devil’s Country by Harry Hunsicker

If We Were Villains by M L Rio

A Criminal Defense by William L Myers Jr.

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr

The Lost Order by Steve Berry

Biographies and Memoirs

When You Find Out the World is Against You by Kelly Oxford

Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce Wars by Daniel J Sharstein

The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince by Mayte Garcia

Richard Nixon: The Life by John Farrell

Sam Shepard: A Life by John J Winters

The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn

Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman

Nevertheless: A Memoir by Alec Baldwin

The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History by Stephan Talty

Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer by Tom Callahan

New York Times

March 26

The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution by Ganesh Sitaraman (NF)

The One-Cent Magenta by James Barron (NF)

Quicksand by Malen Perrson Giolito (Thriller)

Ties by Domenico Starnone (F)

Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar (F)

Ill Will by Dan Chaon (F)

The Barrowfields by Philip Lewis (F)

Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato (F)

Irish Fiction

Himself by Jess Kidd

Eggshells by Cartriona Lally

Slipping by John Toomey

March 31

The Evangelicals by Francis FitzGerald (NF)

A Novel of the Century by David Bellow (Les Miserables) (NF)

The Price of Illusion by Joan Juliet Buck (NF)

Blitzed by Norman Ohler (NF)

Sex and the Constitution by Geoffrey R Stone (NF)

Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu (NF)

The Unmade Bed by Stepah Marche (NF)

Down City by Leah Carroll (NF)

Reagan Rising by Craig Shirley (NF)

Jerzy by Jerome Charyn (F)

The Idiot by Elif Batuman (F)

Crime Fiction

Earthy Remains by Donna Leon

The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent

Prussions Blue by Philip Kerr

White Tears by Hari Kunzru (F)

Shot Blue by Jesse Ruddock (F)

April 7

An American Sickness by Elizabeth Rosenthal (NF)

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy (NF)

Ice Ghosts by Paul Watson (NF)

By More than Providence by Michael J Green (NF)

No One Cares About Crazy People by Ron Powers

Unwanted Advances by Laura Kipnis (NF)

The Campus Rape Frenzy by K C Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr (NF)

The Spider Network by David Enrich (NF)

My Darling Detective by Howard Norman (F)

No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts (F)

Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein (NF)

April 14

Nonfiction

Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr

A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes

South and West by Joan Didion

Letterman by Jason Zinoman

Who Lost Russia? By Peter Conradi

Never Out of Season by Robert Dunn

Martin Luther by Lyndal Roper

The First Love Story (Minus the Sin and Sexism) by Bruce Feiler

The Chessboard and the Web by Ann-Marie Slaughter

Fiction

The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World by Brian Boyle

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

Sympathy by Olivia Sudijic

The Dhow House by Jean McNeil

What to Do About the Solomons by Bethany Bell

Crime Fiction

Fallout by Sara Paretsky

The Burial Hour by Jeffrey Deaver

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

A Fever of the Blood by Oscar de Muriel

April 21

Nonfiction

Hamlet Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole

You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser

The Knowledge of Illusion by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernback

What We Can Learn from Falstaff by Harold Bloom

A Rabble of Dead Money by Charles R Morris

Portraits of Courage by George W Bush

The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

Madness Rules the Hour by Paul Starobin

Fiction

My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci

American War by Omar El Akkad

Marlena by Julie Buntin

One of the Boys by Daniel Magarielm

Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss

April 28

Fiction

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yaknavitch

Underground Fugue by Margot Singer

Nonfiction

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli

The Givers by David Callahan

The Golden Passport by Duff McDonald

Phenomena by Annie Jacobsen

Mercies in Disguise by Gina Kolata

The Family Gene by Joselin Linder

Visit Nancy Brisson’s Websites

http://thearmchairobserver.com/

http://notabene.com/

Or visit me at tremr.com or goodreads.com

Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood – Book

“Brush up on your Shakespeare”. Hogarth Press has commissioned modern authors to write novels based on Shakespeare’s plays. Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood is the famous Canadian author’s offering in this series. Her novel is based on The Tempest, a Shakespeare play that I have never read. I have no real excuse except that I just never got around to it. Now I’m glad that I didn’t. I think Atwood’s book would provide schools with a great precursor to this rather complicated play, although it is probably just as helpful if read after-the-fact. Felix Phillips is the Artistic Director at the Makeshiweg Festival and he gives new scope to Shakespeare by staging productions that are quite edgy and sometimes a bit over-the-edge. He has an assistant who he has perhaps given too much responsibility for all the nuts and bolts jobs that keep theater festivals afloat. Just as Felix is getting his new cloak (pieced together from stuffed animals) ready so that he can become Prospero, Tony breaks the news that Felix’s contract is not being renewed.

As it turns out the contract now belongs to Tony. Felix has lost so much. He lost his wife of one year when she died in childbirth, then he lost his daughter, Miranda (strange coincidence, Miranda is the main female character in The Tempest) to meningitis when she was three. This second huge loss happened very recently. Now he has lost the career he loves. He is old. He married late. He is fifty and is not likely to find another meaty job in theater especially after being let go. He is mourning and he is angry. He wants revenge and he is willing to wait until his main chance arrives to get it.

He goes to ground in a very bare sort of cottage built into the side of a hill with only an iron stove for heat and no indoor plumbing, but an outhouse. He spends nine years in self-imposed exile with only the ghost of his daughter to keep him company. He uses an alias. He is now known as Mr. Duke. In his new persona he takes a job as a teacher of literature at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute where he teaches, you guessed it, Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, he works with minimum security prisoners and he has them act out the plays, records the productions, and then plays them for the entire prison population on closed-circuit television. His course is in great demand.

Finally he gets to put on the play he never got to direct. He gets to put on The Tempest and if you never understood this play you will by the time the inmates and Mr. Duke are done with you. This is a very enjoyable way to learn about or refresh your memory about a Shakespeare play that has a rather complicated plot and lots of deep things to say about humans and the human condition. And it is the perfect vehicle for Felix’s revenge, as if the universe delivered this moment to him because he deserved it. The parallels make the novel fun for those who enjoy symbolism, metaphor, etc.

Hogarth, as I said, has given very famous authors each a play that mates well with the kind of fiction they write. If you go to Google and type Hogarth Shakespeare Series in the search window it will take you to a list of who has been assigned to which play. Some of the books in the series have been written and some are not out yet. Great idea. I hope to eventually read them all. Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood was an excellent place to start.

March 2017 Book List

It’s Spring (sort of) and this is the season when lots of new books appear on the market so I present to you my March 2017 Book List. Although you will find lots of repetition on these lists each source also offers some unique titles. If you just want a good story, nothing too esoteric, go the Amazon section of the list. If you have global tastes Publisher’s Weekly should satisfy, and if you like to get your book advice from the New York Times then that source is also represented in this list. For the truly compulsive, go for all three.

Nonfiction titles, for some reason, are getting longer and longer so they are, generally, easy to spot. If you are a true reader you probably wish to devour each new book and all of the older ones too. If you were to have a fantasy room it would probably have a comfy chair surrounded by piles of classic and newly-minted books. But if you set out to read each book that was published from February through Mid-March this year you would have to read a little bit over 6.5 titles per day. So don’t be discouraged if you are unable to meet your admittedly unrealistic book reading goals. You have a lot of company.

Publisher’s Weekly

Feb. 6^th

Civil Wars: A History of Ideas by David Armitage (NF)

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin (NF)

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (NF)

Schadenfreude, a Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For by Rebecca Schumen (Memoir)

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag trans. from the Kannada by Srinath Perur

Make Yourself Happy by Elini Sikelianos (NF)

Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular by Derek Thompson (NF)

The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease by Meredith Wadman (NF)

Feb. 13^th

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble

In Full Velvet by Jenny Johnson

We are Okay by Nina LaCour

Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma by Larry Millett

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker

The Last Night at Tremore Beach by Mikei Santiago

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt

The Undesired by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith (NF)

The American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Feb. 20^th

Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach

American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution by A. Roger Ekirch (NF)

Spook Street: A Novel by Mick Herron

Running: A Novel by Cara Hoffman

Rusty Puppy: A Novel by Joe Lansdale

Optimists Die First by Susin Nielsen

The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test and the Power of Seeing by Damion Searls (NF)

Encircling by Carl Frode Tiller trans. from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland

Feb 27^th

The Accusation by Bandi trans. from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Short Stories that offer glimpses of North Korea)

The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon (Bio)

Alpine Apprentice: A Memoir by Sarah Gorham

Walking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen trans. from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston

Daughter of the Pirate King: A Novel by Tricia Levenseller

The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek

The Gene Machine: How Genetic Techniques are Changing the Way We Have Kids – and the Kids We Have by Bonnie Rochman (NF)

The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World by Anne Marie Slaughter (NF)

Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson by Christina Snyder.

The Hate U Give: A Novel by Angie Thomas

Please Bury Me In This by Allison Benis White (Collection of suicide stories)

Velocity by Chris Wooding (YA Apocalyptic novel)

Camanchaca by Diego Zúniga trans. from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

March 6^th

Taduno’s Song: A Novel by Odale Alogiun

The Price of Illusion: A Memoir by Joan Juliet Buck

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Memoir)

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

Ill Will by Dan Chaon

Lenin’s Roller Coaster by Daniel Downing

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hornett

Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch (NF)

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

No Friends But the Mountains: Dispatches from the World’s Violent Highlands by Judith Matioff (NF)

The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico

Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World by Benjamin Reiss (NF)

The Photo Ark: One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals by Joel Sartore

Goodbye Days: A Novel by Jeff Zentner (YA)

March 13^th

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayeri

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis

In Between Days by Teva Harrison (Memoir, Cancer battle)

Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

Himself by Jess Kidd Atria

White Tears by Hari Kunzru

The Family Gene by Joselin Linder (NF)

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper

March 20^th

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

Lola: A Novel by Melissa Scrivner

Girl in Disguise by Greer Macallister

Find Me by J S Monro

Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching from Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem by George Prochnik (NF)

City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker (NF)

The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavic (F)

The New York Times Book Review

Feb. 3^rd

Too Close to Happy by Daphne Merkin (Memoir, Depression)

The New Brooklyn by Kay Hymowitz (NF)

Disaster Falls by Stéphane Gerson (NF)

The Weapon Wizards by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot (NF)

Upwardly Minded: The Reconstruction Rise of a Black Elite by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor (NF)

Fiction

A Great Place to Have a War by Joshua Kurlantzick (NF)

The Men in My Life by Patricia Bosworth (NF)

The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Best and Latest in Crime Fiction

Rather Be Devil by Ian Rankin

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

What You Break by Reed Farrel Coleman

The Lost Woman by Sara Blædel trans. from Danish by Mark Kline

Books Recommended this Week

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims (NF)

A House Full of Females: Plural Marriages and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (NF)

Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan (NF)

The Crossing by Andrew Miller (F)

The Patriots by Sana Krasikov (F)

Once We Were Sisters: A Memoir by Sheila Kohler

Feb. 12^th

Fiction

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron

The Evening Road by Haird Hunt

On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Nonfiction

Why Time Flies by Alan Burdick

Six Encounters with Lincoln by Elizabeth Brown Pryor

(Middle East)

The Attack by Loic Daewillier

The Arab of the Future 2 by Riad Sattouf

Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden

The Girl from the Metropol Hotel by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B Tyson

Generation Revolution by Rachel Aspden

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Lévy

Black Edge by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Feb. 19^th

Fiction

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Dibble

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

The Dance of Jakaranda by Peter Kimani

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

Autumn by Ali Smith

Fiction in Translation

Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux Chauvet

The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen

The Ninety-Ninth Floor by Jan Fawaz Elhassan

The Great and the Good by Michel Déon

Nonfiction

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

Two about Silicon Valley

Valley of the Gods by Alexander Wolfe

The Kingdom of Happiness by Aimee Groth

At Utmost: A Devotional Memoir by Macy Halford

Cannibalism by Bill Schutt

Best and Latest Crime Fiction

Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham

Racing the Devil by Charles Todd

Snowblind by Ragnar Janasson

Walk Away by Sam Hawken

Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay (lost Harlem novel)

Feb. 26^th

Fiction

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

The School Days of Jesus by J M Coetze

The One Inside by Sam Shepard

A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

Journeyman by Marc Bojanowski

Nonfiction

Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport

Pretending is Lying by Dominique Goblet

How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

All the Lives I Want by Alana Massey

Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine

When Police Kill by Frank Zimring

Unwarranted by Barry Friedman

Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

March 3^rd

Fiction

A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman

The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky

The World to Come by Jim Shepard

Argentine Fiction

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarae

Nonfiction

We’ll Always Have Casablanca by Noah Isenberg

High Noon by Glenn Frankel

Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin

Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a Memory by Aldo Schiavone

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall

Food Fights and Culture Wars by Tom Nealon

Reality is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli

The Islamic Jesus by Mustafa Akyol

Robert Lowell – Setting the River on Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings

Best and Latest Crime Fiction

What You Don’t Know by Jo Ann Chaney

I See You by Clare Macintosh

The Dime by Betty (Riz) Rhyzyk

Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James

March 12^th

Fiction

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Before the War by Fay Weldon

Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Nonfiction

Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes

Can’t Just Stop by Sharon Bagley

Convergence by Peter Watson

Divided We Stand by Marjorie J Spruill

The Brain Defense by Kevin Davis

The Gestapo by Frank McDonough

Abandon Me by Melissa Febo

Amazon

Best Books of March

Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

White Tears: A Novel by Hari Kunzru

The Night Ocean: A Novel by Paul La Farge

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter (NF)

Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, School, or, How to Become an Expert at Just About Anything by Ulrich Boser

All Grown Up: A Novel by Jami Attenberg

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (NF)

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy

Literature and Fiction

The Book of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall

Our Short History: A Novel by Lauren Grodstein

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

White Tears by Hari Kunzru

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg

The One-Eyed Man by Jr. Ron Currie

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett

Edgar and Lacy by Victor Lodato

Celine by Peter Heller

Eggshells by Caitriona Lally

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

Bright Air Black by David Vann

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Mysteries and Thrillers

The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

Celine by Peter Heller

Ill Will by Dan Chaon

Quicksand by Malin Persson Giolito

The Twelve Lies of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

Murder on the Serpentine by Anne Perry

Biographies and Memoirs

Dueling with Kings: High Stakes, Killer Sharks, and the Get Rich Promise of Daily Fantasy Sports by Daniel Barbarisi

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy

The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown by Catherine Burns

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Earnest Hemingway by Nicholas E. Reynolds

The Price of Illusion: A Memoir by Joan Juliet Buck

South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion

Grace Notes: My Recollections by Katey Segal

Being Elvis: A Lonely Life by Ray Connolly

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last Three Hermits by Michael Finkel

Science Fiction and Fantasy

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

News of the World by Paulette Jiles – Book

In Paulette Jiles’ book News of the World, Captain Kidd is in Wichita Falls, Texas, five years after the end of the Civil War, and Texas is in the midst of political upheaval. The Indians are still actively raiding travelers and communities whenever they feel that they need threats to help with treaty negotiations. Captain Kidd is a retired soldier and a printer/journalist forced out of business by the economy and then by the war. His great love of news has stayed with him through all the chaos of recent years. He is a lover of geography, literacy, and all human events in this world.

He has decided to earn his way in the world, now that his wife is dead and his two daughters are grown, by traveling to towns and small cities throughout the west, where newspapers are just about as scarce as readers, holding meetings to read out the “news of the world”. He avoids politics in these contentious times. He likes to read about exotic locations and interesting tidbits from lands people have heard of but will probably never travel to. He gives people a chance to escape the verbal battles that rage around them and marvel that other people live such odd lives and are, perhaps, unluckier than they are. People pay a dime to attend this somewhat cerebral entertainment.

In Wichita Falls he runs into an old acquaintance who works as a freighter, moving merchandise by wagon from a buyer to a seller, or vice versa. His friend Britt, it turns out, has been paid 50 dollars in gold to return a white girl, kidnapped by the Kiowa tribe when she was 3 to her Aunt and Uncle near San Antonio. His friend begs him to take this girl off his hands. Texas is a very big state and San Antonio is far out of Britt’s way. He will lose a lot of money if he takes her all the way home. He will give the gold to Captain Kidd.

“She seemed to be about ten years old, dressed in the horse Indians’ manner in a deerskin shift with four rows of elk teeth sewn across the front. A thick blanket was pulled over her shoulders. Her hair was the color of maple sugar and in it she wore two down puffs bound onto a lock of her hair by their minute spines and also bound with a thin thread was a wing feather from a golden eagle slanting between them. She sat perfectly composed, wearing the feather and a necklace of glass beads as if they were costly adornments. … She had no more expression than an egg.”

Now Captain Kidd does not in any way want to undertake this task. It is the rainy season and rivers are rising and he would have to cross several to get this child to San Antonio. Texas is relatively lawless and there could be bandits on the road. But he is the father of two daughters. And so we have a journey tale as this good man reluctantly undertakes the responsibility to get this child to all of the family she has left, people she does not even know. What happens on that journey, watching these two bond, is a sweet story and sometimes I do love a sweet story.

The author, Paulette Jiles, became interested in stories of children who were kidnapped by the Indians because they gave up their European heritage so easily and they were never happy to give up their second-hand Indian heritage. What was it about life with the tribes which gave children such a feeling of satisfaction and belonging even though it began as a harrowing and totally foreign experience? Of course we will probably never know the answer to this but there is still a part of us all that thinks that Native Americans or Indigenous People, or whatever the politically correct term is today, had a knack for living lightly on the earth and a natural social order which served most of them very well.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang – Book

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (trans. from the Korean by Deborah Smith) begins with a wife who stops eating meat. When her husband wants to know why she says “I had a dream”. As a reader we are privy to at least the text of her dream but her husband has little curiosity about this dream which returns over and over again. He never explores the dream with her because he thinks that he can be married and just go through the motions of the marriage relationship without any messy emotional subtext. He expects his wife Yeong-Hye to be the same. She will do all the wifely things the role requires and will be completely low maintenance and supportive. If women have fantasies about romantic love, perhaps there are men who have fantasies about no-fuss marriages such as this where no deep feelings are required, each partner simply plays their role.

Yeong-Hye’s vegetarianism is so extreme that it will no longer allow Mr. Cheong to live in his fantasy. The wife he chose for her ordinary ways is in a crisis that is disrupting the lives of her husband and also her family. I am what would be called a “maximillist”, if there were such a classification for people who like plenty of everything and who like it plush and fluffy. I guess the word often used is hedonist, although that word does not really fit. However, personally, I do have some experience with “minimalists” of varying degrees. I have a friend who is a fairly extreme minimalist, who does not even like gifts unless they are things that can be used up; who is so slim that she seems to be almost disappearing. This becomes the case with Yeong-Hye, who becomes so thin that her family tries to intervene, which ends up badly when her father slaps her and forces meat into her mouth.

The scenes change each time this book arrives at a new section. We think we have been transported into another story and that this is perhaps a book of short stories. It is, instead, more like a jazz piano composition that begins with a theme and then rearranges the notes in each new section only to have the main theme reappear and progress in new, but still familiar directions. This is a great book and short; a fast, but horrifying, yet artistically and intellectually satisfying, read.

How do we know so little about ourselves? How do we know so little about each other? Are most people this disconnected from each other? Even though this book is very sexual, it is not sensual. Even when connecting in very intimate ways these people have actually made little if any connection that brings any warmth to their daily lives.

Although we do get glimpses into Yeong-Hye’s young life because in the last section of the composition her older sister In-Hye becomes the narrator and she does, superficially attempt to unravel the reasons for her sister’s behavior, that dream that haunts Yeong-Hye is never satisfactorily explained (or maybe you will think it is). While certainly not a cheerful book, it is gripping and it plays on you like that jazz piano calmly going through its variations, with perhaps a somewhat emotional bridge in the middle.

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis – Book

If you are of a certain age then you were just in your teens when Sylvia Plath committed suicide and you probably read The Bell Jar which young people, especially young women, still read today. Sylvia Plath was very interesting to English major types because she was young and she was already famous. She won a sort of internship at Mademoiselle Magazine and went off to live in New York City. Quite an accomplishment for someone just starting out in life and we will never know if, or how much, her early success contributed to her clinical depression. We know she was gone too quickly and we wondered what else she might have done if she had survived.

For a while the young Sylvia Plath lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women which may have gained its fame from her short tenure there. I remember being fascinated to learn that there was a NYC residence that housed only women, with strict rules about guests of the male persuasion, much like the dorms I lived in at college where we were separated by gender and girls had serious rules, governing both curfews and male guests. It seemed so elegant and atavistic at the same time for a city as metropolitan as New York to have this type of restricted boarding house among its many idiosyncratic offerings.

In her book The Dollhouse, Fiona Davis, takes her readers into The Barbizon about 50 years after the days of Sylvia Plath, and at the same time, in flashbacks takes us back to the Barbizon in the 50’s. Her main character is a journalist of sorts for an online publication who happens to live at the Barbizon, now in transition with some units redone and sold as condos and some still rented to original tenants. After her married boyfriend, the owner of their shared condo, throws her out to go back to his wife she continues to try to interview some of these permanent residents who were there in the old days. One resident is especially interesting. She walks her dog everyday but no one has seen her face in many years. She wears a veil and there is a story that she has a terrible scar on her face and that someone fell from the lounge on the roof of the hotel to her death and that the mystery woman was with her when she fell.

Upon hearing this story our journalist friend is even more determined to hear the stories that the older residents have to tell. It’s almost like solving a mystery but one that was obviously resolved long ago as the veiled lady is not in prison. When circumstances conspire to allow Rose Lewin to install herself (without permission) in the mystery woman’s apartment the story begins to take shape. (There are repercussions.)

Although I did not get really attached to any of the characters in The Dollhouse, perhaps that was not the point of the novel. The author, through flashbacks does recreate the experience of living in the Barbizon which was very similar to living in a very classy dormitory. She also takes us into the jazz club scene and some of the diversity that is always encountered in this iconic city. And there is a bit of romance in the mix. However the content is a bit light and I was not successfully drawn into feeling emotionally involved in either the characters or the plot. (There was a spice book mentioned that I would love to see and smell). This is a good read, but not a great read.

February 2017 Book List

February 2017 Book List

New York Times Book Review

January 6, 2017

The Strays by Emily Bitto

Idaho by Emily Rushkovich

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Latest and Best Crime Fiction

The Old Man by Thomas Perry

The Borrowed by Chan Ho-kee

The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer

The Death of Kings by Rennie Airth

New Books Recommended This Week

The Correspondence by J. D. Daniels

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936 by Edward Sorel

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey Smith

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the present by John Pomfret

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

The Moravian Night: A Story by Peter Handke

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe

Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzwell

January 13, 2017

How America Lost its Secrets by Edward Jay Epstein

Human Acts by Han Kang

The Kaiser’s Last Kiss by Alan Judd

Books We Recommend this Week

Selection Day by Aravind Adiga

The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force by Eliot A. Cohen

The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes

War Against War: The American Fight for Peace 1914-1918 by Michael Kazin

The Strays by Emily Bitto

Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-1949 by David Cesarani

Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell

The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars by Daniel Beer

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

New Paperbacks

The Lost Tudor Princess: The Life of Lady Margaret Douglas by Alison Weir

Arcadia by Iain Pears

The Invention of Science: A New History of Scientific Revolution by David Wootton

Predicting Trump – The NYT recommends a 1935 book – It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

That Other Clinton: A Brief Biography of Bill by Michael Tomasky

Audacity by Jonathan Chait

The Afterlife of Stars by Joseph Kertes

Huck Out West by Robert Coover

Enigma Variations by André Aciman

Class by Lucinda Rosenfeld

Best and Latest in Crime Fiction

The Girl Before by J. P. Delaney

Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis

Different Class by Joanne Harris

New Books We Recommend this Week

The Dry by Jane Harper

Nicotine by Gregor Hens

My Life, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King as told to Barbara Reynolds

Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

Human Acts by Han Kang

New Paperbacks

World’s Elsewhere: Journeys around Shakespeare’s Globe by Andrew Dickson

The Gold Eaters by Ronald Wright

Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who are Transforming the Arab World by Katherine Zoepf

Mothering Sunday: A Romance by Graham Swift

Kill ‘em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride

Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey

Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency by David Greenberg

January 27, 2017

1^st Outline, now Transit by Rachel Cusk

The Patriots by Sana Krashikov

The Signal Flame by Andrew Krivak

Selection Day by Aravind Adiga

The Crossing by Andrew Miller

Earning the Rockies by Robert D. Kaplan

The True Flag by Stephen Kinzer

Once We Were Sisters by Sheila Kohler

New Books We Recommend this Week

Transit by Rachel Cusk

The South: Henry Hampton and “Eyes on the Prize,” the Landmark Television Series that Reframed the Civil Rights Movement by Jon Else

Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy that Will Prevail by Jonathan Chait

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

Huck Out West by Robert Coover

The Book that Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation by Randall Fuller

The Afterlife of Stars by Joseph Kertes

The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State by Graeme Wood

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

Enigma Variations by André Aciman

Amazon

Best Books of January

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund

The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel by Katherine Arden

The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk: A Novel by Kathleen Rooney

This is How It Always Is: A Novel by Laurin Frankel

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekeran

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

Human Acts: A Novel by Han Kang

Literature and Fiction

Huck Out West: A Novel by Robert Coover

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Indelible by Adelia Saunders

Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich

The Midnight Cool: A Novel by Lydia Peelle

Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich

Fever Dream: A Novel by Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell

The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper

Human Acts: A Novel by Han Kang

Her Every Fear: A Novel by Peter Swanson

The Girl Before: A Novel by J. P. Delaney

The Final Day: A Novel by William R. Forstchen

The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller

Nonfiction

Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelle

Is It All In Your Head? True Stories of Imaginary Illness by Suzanne O’Sullivan

What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Your Lost Evolutionary Strength by Scott Carney

Books for Living by Will Schwaibe

Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs by Martin Torgoff

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America by Mark Sundeen

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldeman

Letters to a Young Muslim by Omar Saif Ghobash

Biography

How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft by Edward Jay Epstein

Amazon: New for February

4321: A Novel by Paul Auster

The Impossible Fortress: A Novel by Jason Rekulak

Universal Harvester: A Novel by John Darnielle

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World by Brad Stone

Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me by Bill Hayes

Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel by George Saunders

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Literature and Fiction

Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel by Camille Pagán

4321: A Novel by Paul Auster

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel by George Saunders

The Impossible Fortress: A Novel by Jason Rekulak

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaimen

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

A Separation: A Novel by Katie Kitamura

The Weight of Him: A Novel by Ethel Rohan

The Clairvoyants by Karen Brown

Mysteries and Thrillers

Six Four: A Novel by Hideo Yokoyama, Jonathan Lloyd-Davies

A Separation: A Novel by Katie Kitamura

Right Behind You by Lisa Gardner

I See You by Clare Mackintosh

Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith

The Turn: The Hollows Begins with Death by Kim Harrison

Gunmetal Gray (Gray Man) by Mark Greaney

What You Break (A Gus Murphy Novel) by Reed Farrel Coleman

Racing the Devil by Charles Todd

Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

Biographies and Memoirs

Nearly Normal: Surviving the Wilderness, My Family, and Myself by Cea Sunrise Person

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall

The Perpetual Now: A Story of Amnesia, Memory, and Love by Michael Lemonick

Karakoram: Climbing Through the Kashmir Conflict by Steve Swenson

The Inkblots: Herman Rorschach: His Iconic Test and the Power of Being by Damion Searls

Truffle Boy: My Unexpected Journey Through the Exotic Food Underground by Ian Purkayastha with Kevin West

This Close to Happy: Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin

Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication, and Music by James Rhodes

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me by Bill Hayes

No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon by Erik Weinhenmayer, Buddy Levy with Forward by Bob Woodruff

Nonfiction

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity by Derek Thompson

Black Edges: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Haran

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World by Brad Stone

High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel

The Art of Invisibility: The World’s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data by Kevin Mitnick and Mikko Hypponen

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey

Gilded Age (Dark Gifts) by Vic James

All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel by Elan Mastai

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

The Book of Etta (The Road to Nowhere) by Meg Ellison

The North Water by Ian McGuire – Book

If you choose to read The North Water by Ian McGuire you will be signing on for the last whaling voyage of the Volunteer to Greenland with Captain Brownlee and his crew. You will be traveling with a murderer and you will be a pawn in a plot to make the rich ship owner, named Baxter, richer. The world has discovered fossil fuels, oil and gas, and the market for whale oil has all but dried up. Baxter doesn’t want to lose any money in this energy transition and he has a plan.

I guarantee that Ian McGuire will show you the truest depths to which men can sink and that you will feel only barely better about his main character, Sumner, who has been signed on by Baxter as the ship’s doctor. (Perhaps there are good reasons these men are almost never referred to by their first names.) Sumner has fallen far and he is addicted to opium from his time as a medic in India. A ship’s doctor can order in a big supply of laudanum and stay out of the limelight and find himself with very light duties.

You may not make it through the first chapter, which is harsh and brutal, and even these two words are understatements. If you do there is a sorry tale to tell with implications for another transitional moment that our culture is going through right now with our need to shift away from fossil fuels. A lot of people think they stand to lose a lot of money and seem to be ready to do whatever they must to turn back the clock to keep their fortunes growing. Is what Baxter is doing any worse than what these 21^st century billionaires seem prepared to do? Judge for yourself.

Of course Baxter’s plans for self-preservation do not call for him to actually get involved in any of the seamy details. Brownlee is in on the plan but no one in his crew realizes what he is up to. Why does he take the Volunteer north when all the other ships begin to head south? How many survive this ill-fated trip? How does Sumner end up reluctantly solving a murder mystery and exposing a man with no soul? With murders big and small all over the place is one villain any worse than the next? This story is in no way uplifting, but there are reasons to read it if you have the stomach for it. The North Water by Ian McGuire will set you to thinking. It reminds me of books by Joseph Conrad, and Cormac McCarthy, and Herman Melville because it is both brutal and meaty.

The Whistler by John Grisham – Book

John Grisham writes about the corruption that often seems rampant in our culture, and that seems to arise from the dark side of humans, tempting people to break laws and then to defend their behavior physically by intimidation and even murder, if necessary. In this book The Whistler we begin with an unidentified whistle blower. Whistle blowers have been learning to remain anonymous because the information they share is not information someone (or some group) wants shared. In this case the people who would like to silence the whistle blower are criminals so we see the need for secrecy, but how the two parties (info providers and info recipients) react is often less clear cut.

There is a go-between in this case, a guy who has no known address (lives on a boat) and has a fake name and basically lives off the grid. He relays the information from the whistle blower to Lacy and Hugo who work for Board of Judicial Conduct for the State of Florida in St. Augustine. Lacy and Hugo are tasked with investigating complaints about judges. They are not detectives or law enforcers and are not used to dealing with dangerous criminals or even equipped to do so. But this time the judge in question is entwined in a web of some complexity. There is a criminal gang involved, a Native America tribe, a ton of expensive and profitable development, and a casino on Indian land that is a gold mine once all that nearby development is in place.

But everyone is holding his/her cards close to the vest. The whistler wants to be protected before offering data that would prove that a corrupt judge is at the center of this web. The off-the-grid go-between has had dealings with this gang before, and although the gang is mainly interested in building things, raking off profits, accepting protection fees and off-shoring lots of laundered cash, the gang does not mind knocking someone off if it becomes necessary. In fact at least one person we have come to like does get killed and Lacy almost dies. As usual John Grisham puts himself and us at the intersection of human greed and human corruption.

Exactly how corrupt is the Honorable Claudia McDover? Is she worth taking down? Lacy is definitely in way over her head and even before she has any real proof to go on there is a target on her and her partner. This is one hot case for a pair used to going after small time judicial misconduct.

John Grisham, while he does not suck us in quite the way he did in his early books, still gives us a thriller that manages to cover both whistle-blowing and the human love affair with money however it is obtained. It is perfect for a weekend when TV is a wasteland, as it is most weekends, and if you like Grisham’s book you should enjoy The Whistler.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple – Book

“Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed in proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. Today I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.”

This is the mantra that Eleanor chants (and since this book is written in the first person it is quite a while before we learn Eleanor’s name – first we know she is Mom to Timby, and she is Joe’s wife, she writes graphic novels, at least she is supposed to be writing one; her husband is a “hand” surgeon who is in much demand in sports circles – we learn all this before we know her name). No matter, the pledge she makes on the very first page tells us plenty about how Eleanor’s life has been going and it seems a bit haphazard, self-absorbed, and borderline clinically depressed. Once she catalogs her faults and commits to change you would think she would catch a break while she tries out her new lifestyle. But right from the very beginning this is a day that cannot be tamed and Eleanor’s creator, Maria Semple, treats us to a manic day that has us (and Eleanor) doubting whether she has already jinxed her life beyond repair. Here is a writer who puts us right inside her character’s head and has us experience this absolutely mind-bending day at the same breakneck speed that it assaults and is assaulted by Eleanor. I have never made a pledge quite this detailed but I have set out to live a day on my own terms and I have found that our best laid plans like to turn and bite us in the butt, just for fun. This book is so good that we fly through it as if the family dog Yo-Yo was pulling us at the end of his leash and when it’s over we’re hardly sure what will happen next – although clearly change is indicated by the events of this whirlwind day. Where does Eleanor’s sister Ivy fit in to the picture? Why doesn’t Timby know that he has an aunt? All is revealed. It’s complicated.

The story ends with Eleanor repeating the same pledge she made the previous day. Although we are unsure, it seems as if she might make some progress after the revelations of the day before. Maria Semple’s current title is Today Will Be Different. She is also the author of the memorable Where’d You Go, Bernadette. She is a true original, and her books are wonderful.