Dear Great Book Guru, My book group is looking for a meaningful novel to discuss - something topical but also with a strong story line.  We will be meeting virtually and people have confessed to finding themselves easily distracted so we really need a compelling read.  Help!  Determined but Distracted

Dear Determined but Distracted, I have just the book for your group: SAINT X by Alexis Schaitkin. This debut novel opens in 1995 on an unnamed Caribbean Island. An affluent American family is taking their yearly island vacation to “beat the winter blues.”  It is a familiar story of leisure-seeking, racism, poverty, wealth, and elitism… but a few pages into the book the teenage daughter is found dead on the beach. The remaining 335 pages detail the impact this death has on her parents, the resort workers, their families, the aging movie star who finds her, the girl’s college classmate,  boyfriend,  teacher, and especially her seven-year-old sister.  The story jumps eighteen years and this young sister is now a fledgling book editor living in Brooklyn.  As she is about to alight from a taxi, she notices the driver’s name - it is that of one of the men originally suspected to have been involved in her sister’s death.  For the next six months, she obsessively insinuates herself into his life as she tries to learn the truth about the tragedy that shaped her life and the lives of so many.  Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, My book group has included films of interest for some of our virtual meetings, and we recently discussed Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING.  We all had so much to say about this 1989 film that I was wondering if there was a book that might stimulate a similar spirited discussion.  Any thoughts?   A Summer to Remember

Dear Summer to Remember, I just read a book that covers many of the topics your movie probably discussed, especially the sense of neighborhood and the part that it plays in our lives. James McBride’s DEACON KING KONG opens in September 1969 with the killing of a young drug dealer in Brooklyn. The highly unlikely assailant is an elderly deacon from Five Ends Baptist Church - a man known as Sportscoat.  The novel analyzes the impact the murder has on the African-American and Latino residents who witnessed it, members of the church where Sportscoat had served as deacon for many years,  the local  police, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportscoat himself. We also learn about the victim and his family… and most vividly this South Brooklyn neighborhood and the Causeway Housing Projects where the story unfolds. We see that the lives of all these people overlap in many, many ways and truth is hard to define.  McBride’s compassion for his characters is evident throughout making this a highly recommended choice!

Dear Great Book Guru, The Fourth of July has always been a favorite holiday of mine and its celebration in Sea Cliff is always grand. This year Carol Vogt and Christine Abbenda are presenting a rousing virtual celebration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence, two short playlets, songs and much more with over forty Villagers participating.  To watch, search Sea Cliff Civic Association on YouTube.  The link will also be available on the Sea Cliff Civic Association Facebook page. This event is followed at 11:30am by a car parade up and down the streets of Sea Cliff. While waiting for the festivities to begin, I would love a good book to read. Recommendations?  

Lover of the Red, White, and Blue

Dear Lover of the Red, White, and Blue, I just finished a wonderful political thriller AMERICAN SPY by Lauren Wilkinson. The story opens late at night in rural Connecticut. Marie, a young black former FBI agent, hears an intruder who is intent on assassinating her; she is able to overcome and kill him – all while her four-year old twin sons are sleeping in the next room.  We soon learn Marie is working for the CIA. Growing up in Queens with her sister and police officer father, she had always been attracted to law enforcement.  While working for the FBI, she was recruited by the CIA for a particular mission: to romantically entrap the Marxist leader of the West African country Burkina Faso.  Despite a myriad of misgivings, Marie agrees to the assignment, knowing she has been chosen only because of her race and gender.  Throughout the book, she questions her continuing loyalty to organizations that have so little regard for her.  A thoughtful look at the plight of marginalized women…. highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, I just read a wonderful article about Spike Lee and his long career in controversial movie-making.  He has a new movie coming out next week “Da Five Bloods”, a story of veterans of the Vietnam War, but my all-time favorite of his was “Malcolm X….” such a fascinating subject!  Even now years later, I would love to learn more about Malcolm X.  Thoughts? A Fan of Spike Lee

Dear Fan of Spike Lee, Like you, I have always wanted to learn more about Malcolm X so I was very happy to discover Manning Marable’s MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION.  Marable researched the recorded facts of Malcom’s life for over twenty years and the picture he draws is quite different from  that of the poor, uneducated convict who found redemption through religion and the love of a good woman and, at the end of his life, gave up his racist views in a burst of universal love.  No- Marable tells us a far different story: a man who created a tawdry persona and exaggerated his criminal past to make his message more powerful - a man whose marriage was painfully unhappy - a man whose friends and family betrayed him at every turn - a brilliant international diplomat who walked and talked with kings and princes.  His assassination at age thirty-nine remains clouded by mystery with suggestions of police, FBI, CIA, religious and gang involvement. This is a great read and highly recommended for its portrait of an iconic figure and a chaotic time in American history. 

Dear Great Book Guru, My book group has been gathering  for over twenty-five years and is now meeting virtually. We are all distracted and a bit uneasy about our first cyber meet-up.  Do you have a good book we could begin with?  Cyber Newbie

Dear Cyber Newbie, I have the perfect book for your group: Anne Tyler’s REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.   This is the bittersweet story of Micah Mortimer - a forty-two year-old man who lives alone - a self-employed tech expert, a superintendent of his small apartment building in Baltimore - a creature of habit as people would say.  We follow him through his days and nights as he consistently misreads people and situations (and, in fact, some inanimate objects!).  Of course, it is hard not to see ourselves in his bewildered customers as they struggle to explain to him their computer travails.  When his well-ordered albeit colorless life is upended by a series of encounters with an errant college student, an aggrieved woman friend, and an old college lover, we wonder if he will be able to see how his life could be much, much happier.  What we have in Micah is a good man who finds comfort in the distractions of ritual and routine…. until he doesn’t.  As in all Tyler’s twenty or so novels, the characters are funny, touching, and sometimes uncomfortably familiar.  Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, Last week you gave me a suggestion for my virtual book group which worked out very well - a combination book and movie.  We enjoyed comparing the two and those who are finding it hard to read during these stressful times were able to watch and discuss the movie. Do you have another combo we could use for next week?  Reader Viewer

Dear Reader Viewer, My virtual book group just finished a stimulating, rewarding discussion of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel A SINGLE MAN and its 2009 movie adaptation.  Over twenty-four hours, we follow George - an Englishman living in Los Angeles - a gay man in his late fifties who is dealing with the death of his long-time partner Jim who was killed in an automobile accident eight months earlier.  The story opens as he wakes from sleep and immediately thinks of Jim.  He is indeed a grieving widower - a fact unacknowledged by society or himself.  We are with him throughout the day as he fights with his neighbors, teaches his classes, works out at his gym, watches a tennis match, shops at the supermarket, dines with a woman friend from England, flirts intellectually with a student who has followed him home, and finally drifts off to sleep. It is a beautiful story of love, grief, and eventual solace.   George - a single man in many interpretations of the phrase - is Everyman.  The movie follows George’s day in a completely different manner but both are highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, For the last ten years, we have spent April in Venice. We love the city, its museums, its churches, its restaurants, its amazing light and its canals.  Well, this year, of course, we will not be in Venice, but we will be at home with lots of time to read.  Can you think of a book that is fast moving (so hard to concentrate) and evocative of our beloved “La Serenissima?”

Vicarious Venetian Voyager

Dear Vicarious Venetian Voyager, 

While there are always the Donna Leon novels with her unforgettable Brunetti, recently I read a wonderful psychological mystery set on the upper Eastside of New York City, Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, and finally - and largely – Venice: A BEAUTIFUL CRIME by Christopher Bollen.  Two young men meet in Manhattan and quickly fall in love.  Nick Brink has moved here from a repressive family situation in the Midwest. Clay Guillory was raised in Harlem and is still grieving the deaths of his mother and his elderly mentor.  When they meet, Nick is in a relationship with an older, sophisticated antiques dealer. The story quickly moves to Venice where the two young men plot an elaborate con involving a wealthy American, counterfeit silverware, and decaying real estate.  The storyline is clever and complicated with many surprise turns. The best part of the book for me - and I think for you - is how beautifully and accurately the mysterious allure of Venice is captured.  The perfect book to read in these times!