Paper Mache
When I lived in Maryland, my family and lots of others would take summer vacations to beach towns like Rehoboth or Lewes, Delaware, Ocean City, Maryland, or Chincoteague, Virginia. The summer reading list was standard fare in the local papers because, of course, you were going to take along a couple of books to read while sitting under an umbrella sipping adult beverages and staring at the Atlantic Ocean.
I still like to look online this time of year to see the various recommended books. I’m currently reading “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free” by Ben Jealous, former CEO of the NAACP and currently the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Here, in no particular order, is a sampling of multi-genre selections from my old hometown paper, The Washington Post, including fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography and science fiction.
“Age of Vice”
By Deepti Kapoor
This lush thriller swings back and forth through time and up and down the social ladder, from the hovels to the palaces of contemporary India. On the first page, a Mercedes speeding through Delhi careens off the street and kills five people and from there the intrigue never pauses to take a breath.
“U.S. History: Important American Documents (I Made Up)”
By Alexandra Petri
Petri shows what happens when a comedic writer takes pieces of history and uses them as occasions to go brilliantly bananas. The titles of these 84 short texts include “Richard Nixon Tapes but Just the Parts Where He’s Yelling at Checkers” and “The Team at Build-a-bear Responds on the Thirteenth Anniversary of 9/11.”
“Birnam Wood”
By Eleanor Catton
Catton’s new novel is a sleek contemporary thriller featuring a group of guerrilla gardeners that dramatizes political, technical, and environmental crises with delicious wit.
“Collected Works”
CLUB MEETINGS
– Feather River Tea Party Patriots hold a town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 445 B Street, Yuba City.
By Charles Portis
An ex-marine from the Texas Panhandle adopts a performing chicken on a bus ride home from New York. A touchingly ineffectual pseudo-religion turns out to harbor real cosmic truth. “True Grit” and the rest of his funny, strange novels are gathered here, along with his essays and journalism.
“Romantic Comedy”
By Curtis Sittenfeld
Sittenfeld’s novel is set in the writers’ room at “The Night
Owls,” a show modeled on “Saturday Night Live.” Its narrator, Sally Milz, is a misanthrope who has given up on the idea of romantic partnership. But when a pop star hosts the show, sparks fly, and complications ensue.
“The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” By Jonathan Rosen
We know how this haunting story will end: with a murder that made national headlines. Rosen was a lifelong friend of the killer, Michael Laudor and asks uncomfortable but crucial, compelling questions, and the result is an incisive but intimate tour de force.
“Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages”
By Carmela Ciuraru
Ciuraru’s new book tracks the marriages of five literary couples, including Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl. A tour de force, the book delves into these colorful relationships to show how not to be married.
There is a new autobiography by singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams titled “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You.” Jonathan Eig has written a new biography of Dr. Martin Luther King based on new interviews and source material, “King: A Life.” Need a dose of new science fiction? “The Terraformers” by Annalee Newitz, set 60,000 years in the future, sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Keep up with local arts and culture events at yubasutterarts.org.