Dear Great Book Guru, With the coming of Fall and the start of school, I feel I should add some non-fiction to my reading list.  Present day politics is always fascinating but there are so many new books coming out, I find it hard to choose.  A recommendation?  Seeking Knowledge

Dear Seeking Knowledge, Last week I read an enlightening albeit very disturbing book: CASTE by Isabel Wilkerson. Her premise is that strict, often hidden lines divide and keep us apart. Caste can be seen as casting roles in a huge production with society being the producer. Because of your role, you are assumed to have certain qualities, personality traits, deficiencies, virtues, and vices. Whatever you do, your role or caste determines the outcome. Wilkerson traces the American caste system to colonial times and the human need to have an underclass. The concept of scapegoat which goes back to the earliest stages of human history is also addressed. She spends a large portion of the book linking the caste systems of America, Nazi Germany, and India, seeing a common thread based on bloodlines, stigma, and divine will with the cruel logic of casteism requiring a bottom class for those in the middle  to measure themselves. The book abounds in anecdotes that exemplify her observations. In the end, she offers some optimism that our society will be able to move beyond present divisions to a shared humanity. Highly recommended!

 

Dear Great Book Guru,  With the coming of Fall, my friends and I  have resolved to broaden our reading- We want to explore other lands, other cultures in fast paced novels.  Where shall we begin? Eager Learners

Dear Eager Readers,  Last week I  read a book I think you will find just right: BEIJING PAYBACK by Daniel Nieh. The novel opens with Victor Li and his sister Jules meeting with their father’s attorney to discuss his estate. College student Victor has led a very comfortable life in the suburbs of Los Angeles - a basketball player with many good friends, a beautiful home, and a devoted sister. But all this changes when his father is found murdered and Victor discovers he was not a simple restaurateur but a smuggler and part of a vast international crime syndicate. He is left with enigmatic instructions to return to Beijing where he quickly becomes embroiled in a glamorous world of glitz, intrigue, and incredible violence. We go back in time to China’s leanest Communist years and the horrors of his father’s childhood. As a way to escape, he and his friends joined together to form this criminal enterprise which continues to the present, resulting in his murder.  Throughout the novel, Victor reminds himself of advice his father gave him - now all the more important - as he travels in both worlds his father inhabited.   He (and the reader) is faced with moral quandaries as he confronts the roots of his privileged immigrant experience. Highly recommended! 

 

 

 Dear Mystery Maven, I recently read a strange albeit compelling mystery by a favorite author of mine - Ottessa Moshfegh’ s DEATH IN HER HANDS.    The novel seems in the beginning a traditional mystery.  A lonely seventy-two-year-old widow, Vesta Gul, finds a neatly written note on the ground near her home - an abandoned Girl Scout campsite.  “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her body.”  But there is no body, no evidence of a murder.  Vesta decides to solve the “crime” and goes to her local library to find out how one goes about solving mysteries.  We soon learn more about Vesta than we ever learn about Magda.  At first, she tells us in glowing terms about her husband Walter, an older academic who has recently died.  As the novel progresses, we realize he was domineering, unfaithful, and cruel to Vesta.  With each presumption she makes about Magda, we learn something of Vesta’s life.  Her interactions with neighbors and even her dog show us a woman of great curiosity and kindness, but also someone who has lived an unexamined life.  Throughout we wonder how reliable a narrator Vesta is… but we always feel genuine affection for her.  Recommended!

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.