Ruth Reichl | Nonfiction Memoir, 2019 288 pages LA Times food critic Ruth Reichl catapults into the opulent, gastronomically eloquent, ostentatious world of billionaires, Gourmet magazine and its owner, Condé Nast. It is astounding to read of her experiences entering this whole new world and working to find her place. And then, as the book…
Layla F. Saad | Nonfiction, 2020 256 pages For 28 days, addressing 28 topics associated with white supremacy, such as power, relationships, and white silence, Me and White Supremacy follows this pattern: “What is <topic>? “How does it show up?” and “Why do you need to look at it?” Then she presents “Reflection time journal…
Hala Alyan | Fiction, 2017 310 pages I must give Salt Houses four hearts. I can’t be critical of it; it has many good reviews. My life was in chaos in the last ten days or so, between work, volunteering, and relationships. I could not focus on this book, and so I just pushed my…
Peter Heller | Fiction, 2019 272 pages This is the perfect book to read when you are housebound in hazardous smoke due to exploding wildfires. Wynn and Jack, friends since freshman orientation at Dartmouth, are spending a couple of weeks in August canoeing the Maskwa River in Canada, which eventually empties itself into Hudson Bay.…
Richard Russo | Fiction, 1996 549 pages Perversely, I finished it. It was in large part because I was confined to the house with the Air Quality Index in the 500’s. Thanks to the breath-stealing wildfire smoke, I finished it. However, I didn’t enjoy it at all. The novel’s main character is Donald “Sully” Sullivan,…
Richard Powers | Fiction, 2018 502 pages The writing is exquisite. The range of characters is diverse and fascinating. The story line is ambitious, engaging, powerful, and thought-provoking. Except when it’s not (more on that later). We meet nine (?) characters whose lives, in some way and at some time, are made richer and fuller…
Timothy Egan | Fiction 2019 367 pages I am an atheist with an unhealthy aversion to history. So, how is it I could like Timothy Egan’s A Pilgrimage to Eternity at a three-hearts level? Because it is superbly written! And if you like history, you’ll give it four hearts. If you have a particular passion…
Blake Crouch | Fiction 2019 I learned a new phrase in reading about Recursion, “speculative fiction”. The book opens on November 2, 2018, when Detective Barry Sutton arrives to the 41st floor of a New York City skyscraper and attempts to stop the suicide of a woman whose legs are dangling over the edge. Ann Voss…
Melissa Albert | Fiction 2018 Alice Crewe Proserpine is seventeen and lives with her mother Ella as nomads, moving from place to place around the country for all her life. She never understood why there was constant upheaval, and why she lived in studio apartments, or converted barns, or someone’s couch, or other unsavory places…
Joshilyn Jackson | Fiction 2019 The story opens at a neighborhood book club. Suddenly the woman renting the Air B&B down the street, Angelica Roux, knocks on the door and decides she is going to join. Pouring excessive amounts of alcohol for all who are in attendance (none of which does she contribute), powerful Roux…