Dear Great Book Guru,  With summer ending, I’ll so miss Sunset Serenades, breakfasts at Sea Cliff Beach, and meeting up with friends for outdoor dining throughout the Village. But now is the time to turn to some extensive reading- I have a 50 book challenge and have only read 18.  Help me, please !  Hopeful Fall Reader

Dear Hopeful Fall Reader,  I recently read a great book by a favorite author of mine: Colson Whitehead. HARLEM SHUFFLE is the first in a proposed trilogy – all to be set in Harlem over the  turbulent decades of the late twentieth century. We first meet Ray Carney in 1959. Owner of a flourishing furniture store in Harlem, Ray is confronted daily with ethical choices. As a side business he also sells jewelry and appliances  of very questionable provenance, but even his legitimate business requires payoffs to corrupt politicians and violent criminals. Always hoping to better his situation, Ray gets involved in a jewelry heist at the iconic Hotel Theresa- Harlem’s Plaza Hotel .  He realizes quickly that he has become entangled in a world of high finance and political malfeasance.  Throughout we see that Ray’s misdeeds barely register on the scales of justice with the race riots of the early 1960’s serving as a backdrop to Ray’s story. By the end of the book,  Ray is living a double life – middle class aspiring homeowner/businessman by day  and an avenging Robin Hood- like defender of his community after hours.   A very funny read and on the other hand- a complex look at what exactly  is a crime. Highly recommended!   

Dear Great Book Guru,  My friends and I are planning on starting a monthly book club and we need direction.  Some want to stick to fiction, but others want to stick to non-fiction.  Can you help us resolve the problem before our club ends before it begins!  Lover of Books

Dear Lover of Books, I recently read a great novel that has many aspects of non-fiction woven throughout: THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride. McBride is a longtime favorite of mine and most of his novels do  have a historical background. His THE GOOD LORD BIRD is a fictionalized account of John Brown’s Raid, and his earlier COLOR OF WATER was a memoir.  This latest book opens in 1972, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where a construction crew has just uncovered a skeleton with no identifying signs except a mezuza, a belt buckle, and a pendant.  The mezuza leads the investigators to question the town’s only remaining Jewish resident. But shortly after, Hurricane Agnes washes away all evidence so the case is dropped, and we are quickly brought back in time to the 1920’s where the story begins.  This a tale of Jewish, Black, and East European men and women living in an impoverished section of Pottstown, Chicken Hill, and the racist and anti-Semitic trials they endure. The title comes from the store run by Chona, wife of Moshe who owns a theater and dance hall. Her generosity and goodness to everyone is acknowledged by all and becomes a force that unites the community despite the many tensions that exist. This is an epic tale with many heroic figures and McBride masterfully brings them together for a dazzling conclusion.  Highly recommended!  

 

Dear Great Book Guru,  My friends and I take our children every week to Storytime at Sea Cliff Beach and we stay afterwards for lunch on the pavilion. Last week one of the parents mentioned a new book about a cruise gone terribly bad - she called it a psychological thriller and recommended it to us. Any thoughts?  Fan of Sea Cliff Beach.

Dear Fan of Sea Cliff Beach, I just finished reading THE ANNIVERSARY by Stephanie Bishop and it is quite the thriller. The novel opens with J.B.Blackwood, a forty year old Australian author receiving news that she has received a major literary award – think the Booker - but she is cautioned not to tell her much older husband Patrick, a famous filmmaker because Blackwood tells us “he can’t be trusted to keep secrets.”  J.B. has planned a luxurious cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary and its final destination will be the award ceremony. The couple had met years before when she was his student at a prestigious university while he was married with an infant son. The opening chapters recount their blissful courtship and travels around the world. A few pages in we learn that a storm breaks out onboard the ship and Patrick is thrown overboard. Gradually, we begin to suspect there is more going on in the marriage than our narrator has suggested. Ultimately, we realize that nothing we have been told – from childhood memories to present day events - is to be trusted. A disturbing albeit compelling tale….recommended!

 

Dear Great Book Guru, Last weekend I was at a Midsummer’s Night Dream party and there was lots of talk about what to read for the rest of the summer.  Someone suggested reading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer- the subject of the much-acclaimed movie recently released.  Is there one you would recommend?  Midsummer Reader

Dear Midsummer Reader, Last month in anticipation of the opening of one of summer’s most touted movies, OPPENHEIMER, I read the book the movie is based on: AMERICAN PROMETHEUS by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.  What an amazing tale! While over 500 pages, this book reads like a fast-paced novel.  Oppenheimer’s early years in New York City are colorfully presented with many anecdotes about his parents, school mates, and teachers and their influence on the young boy. The family’s history in Europe also adds to an understanding of where many of his beliefs and -yes - quirky behavior originated. His college years at Harvard and later in Germany present a colorful picture of his developing interest in the world of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics leading to his now famous appointment as head of the Manhattan Project and move to Los Alamos to oversee the making of the atomic bomb.  Throughout, we meet his many friends, enemies, lovers, and relatives – all of whom are described in exacting detail. The final half of the book deals with his spectacular fall from grace in the Cold War era with special attention paid to his chief nemesis, Lewis Strauss. The book presents us with a somber appraisal of a complicated man living in a complicated time.  Highly recommended!

 

 Dear Great Book Guru,  We just came back from Sea Cliff Beach where we had a great lunch at the Potters’ Cliffside Café. Everything was delicious but the lobster roll and turkey wrap were particularly wonderful!  While there, I listened in on a couple’s conversation nearby (always a fun Sea Cliff thing to do) and they were discussing a new book - a noir mystery set in 1970’s Boston.  Sound familiar?  Loving the Cliffside Café

Dear Loving…. Dennis Lehane’s SMALL MERCIES is a newly published bestseller and well worth the read.  Set in the racially charged summer of 1974, the book deals with crime, race, and class - in and about an Irish American housing project.  Mary Pat Fennessy has lived there all her forty or so years, raised two children, married twice, and is struggling desperately to get out of debt. Her childhood friends are involved with the mob so when her daughter does not return home one evening, she turns to them for help.  She soon finds herself enmeshed in a world where violence is the norm and she is both victim and perpetrator. A young black man is found dead on the subway tracks nearby and we learn that his murder is connected to her missing daughter, the upcoming school desegregation rally, and a widespread drug operation. Mary Pat has a moment of epiphany when she realizes her long held beliefs have little basis in reality. The grief and contrition she feels is described in exquisite detail, but few of the other characters share her moral awakening. The reader is left to question if goodness will ever triumph.  Highly recommended!  

 

Dear Great Book Guru, Last week I was at Clifton Park for the Sea Cliff Civic Association’s Sunset Serenade ….what a night it was! LOVEPEACE was the band, and the music and mood were rhapsodic.  While there, I overheard a group of people talking about a new book that was quite a compelling read. It was about a murder trial, but it hit on so much more. Ideas?  Sunset Serenade Fan

Dear Sunset Serenade Fan,  TRIAL by Richard North Patterson is a much talked about legal thriller that came out a few weeks ago.  The story opens in the present as a wealthy, Harvard educated politician, Chase Brevard, is planning his next career move. A Congressman from Massachusetts, he is considering running for the Senate when he sees on CNN a breaking story about a black teenager accused of murdering a deputy sheriff in Georgia. The case is receiving national attention because the boy’s mother is a prominent political activist who has championed voter rights and her son was canvassing when the murder took place. They insist that he was targeted by the sheriff and the death was an accident. Brevard realizes the boy is his son and the mother a woman he knew from college. The novel then traces the lives of the couple from their first meeting up to the present showing how wealth, race, and privilege brought them all to this moment.  The actual trial is a tense exposition of the effects of media and legal maneuvering with a shocking outcome.   Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, I was at Sea Cliff Beach for breakfast the other day (amazing avocado toast by Foster’s Javier!} when the question of parking came up.  Most people would prefer to walk to the beach but that walk back up the hill discourages even the most fit… so many drive leaving everyone with the search for parking and it can be quite a search. Someone mentioned a book which deals with parking  and its ramifications. Does this sound familiar?  Seaside Parker

Dear Seaside Parker, I recently read a quirky albeit fascinating book by Henry Graber: PAVED PARADISE- How Parking Explains the World. Graber’s contention is that parking has had a crushing effect on multiple aspects of American life. Since the advent of the car, we have spent precious resources and demolished our homes and cities in a quest for increased car storage.  Our most valuable real estate is handed over for largely free car storage, while curbside parking changes businesses, residences, and our very image of self. Public transit is sacrificed to the gods of car storage, zoning laws are predicated on it,   and public space is curtailed – all so that there are “homes” for cars. Graber travels across the country from New York City to Los Angeles and every major city in between to show the impact of car parking. He goes so far as to blame the present housing shortage and rise in homelessness to this obsession with parking. His goal is to show us the folly of our present day thinking and to offer us solutions for this perceived madness. Recommended!