The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston is a lovely novel that tells the story of an eighty-two-year-old who discovers the wheelchair-bound body of Bernard Greer, who looks like Frederick. 

Fred was on the verge of homelessness and his wife Dawn had passed away after fifty years together. They had wanted to have children, but were never able to. Fred wheeled Bernard to try to find someone who could help, but then loses control of the wheelchair and Bernard's body falls into the river. At this point, Denise, a caregiver from Bernard's assisted living home, comes across Fred and assumes he Bernard. Fred tries to rectify the mistake, but Bernard had dementia so the protestations are cast aside as Fred taken back to the home as Bernard.

Also told in the book is the story of Hannah and Sadie, young sisters whose lives are upended when Sadie diagnosed with cancer, and their father, who we learn was Bernard, unable to cope with the pain of Sadie's illness and then death. He left Hannah and her mother, and Hannah vowed never to forgive him. 

Fred at the home tried to explain that he not Bernard, but people ignored his statements given Bernard's dementia, so Fred settled in with a warm place to stay that provided his meals. He became a friend to many, including home residents Albert and Val, and caregivers Kevin and Linh. Kevin fell for Linh, and Bernard encouraged him to approach her. Albert and Val were deeply in love, and Albert had advanced dementia and thought Fred was his brother Fred, who died in a car accident on the way to Albert and Val's wedding decades prior. They had another wedding in the home, with Fred serving as the best man, Albert's brother.

The stories of Fred and Hannah come together as he learns about her as Bernard's long-estranged daughter, and the two connect, at first with Hannah wanting to simply tell off the father she hadn't seen in decades and then with them reconciling. Fred learns of Hannah's money troubles and that her husband left her when she became pregnant. The caregiver Denise who found Fred and assumed he Bernard was struggling in life, with an emotionally abusive husband and drinking problem. Fred discovered her drunk at work and showed a great deal of grace to her in a time of need. Later in the book, estate attorney Andrew Mora comes into the picture.

There's choices made by both Fred and Hannah in kind of gobsmacking scenes towards the end of the book and and the overarching thing about Fred is he's kind. This is to Hannah, Denise, Albert, Val, Kevin, Linh, and others he comes across. It's a funny read in places and the book jacket notes it about "grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family." Then in the author's note, Johnston writes a lovely missive about the source material of this her first book, with mention of her grandfather Fred (who she dedicated the book to), mistaken identity, doppelgangers, and redemption.

The Land and Its People by David Sedaris

The Land and Its People by David Sedaris is a fun book of essays by the humor writer.

His latest work follows in the tradition of previous efforts like Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, and Happy-Go-Lucky, with Sedaris providing short chapters on his life, with the veracity of the stories being as he says "true enough."

In The Land and Its People, topics include his sister Amy Sedaris, him looking to replace the household work done by Hugh for after his hip-replacement surgery, and his efforts to win at the gamified Duolingo language learning app. 

Big Fan by Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski

Big Fan by Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski is a fun work of nonfiction subtitled Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love. Things that stood out in the book...

Mike's thesis (which Joe latched onto) about sports fandom: 1. Life is boring, and sports provide entertainment. 2. Life is chaotic, and sports provide order. 3. Life is lonely, and sports provide community.

Joe at the 2000 Australia Olympics match where Rulon Gardner beat Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling, and Joe after lived a sportswriter's dream hearing stories from Gardner's mom and dad.

TV writer Megan Amram and how her phoneme-color synesthesia causes her to see in her head letters, numbers, and words with different colors, helping make her incredibly quick at things like crossword puzzles and other mental gymnastics.

Liverpool soccer fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" at a match.

MLB reporter Tim Kirkjian: "anytime you go to a baseball game, you might see something you've never seen."

The semifinal of men's basketball at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where Steph Curry torched Serbia. 

Joe and Mike (and Mike's kids) hugging Mookie Betts, who they refer to as the "Greatest Living American."

How to Read a Book by Monica Wood

How to Read a Book by Monica Wood is a lovely novel that tells the interwoven stories of Violet Powell, Harriet Larson, and Frank Daigle. Powell is a twenty-two-year old released from prison after a drunk driving crash that kills a local teacher. Larson is a retired English teacher who leads the prison book club which Powell was a part of. Frank is a retired machinist who was married to the woman killed in the car crash.

The jacket notes it a hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. When the women at book club, they've they’re not just the crimes that put them in jail. Every week they would start by saying, “I am a reader. I am intelligent, I have something worthy to contribute.”

Violet, Harriet, and Frank meet in a bookstore in Portland, Maine. Violet was buying the novel she was reading in prison book club when released. Harriet choosing the next title for the club to read, and Frank working as the handyman at the store. Violet and Harriet were surprised to see each other and Frank and Violet shocked at meeting. Violet felt an overwhelming guilt about her crime, and Frank as well felt bad about scaring Violet with his reaction to seeing her in the store. Forgiveness is a thread that runs through the book and in fairly short order, the three became friends.

It comes out that Frank’s late wife Lorraine was planning on leaving him prior to the accident, and had told their daughter Kristy that Frank having an affair, not the opposite which was true. Harriet gets Violet a job as a lab assistant at the university, working with Dr. Petrov, an animal behaviorist who studies the intelligence of birds, parrots Bob, Alan, Oliver, and Charlotte, all able to speak and understand English. Then fellow book club member Dawna-Lynn escaped from prison and came to Harriet's house, while she, Violet, and Frank there. It's a fun and a lovely book, with people who care for one another, and has a nice postscript about their later lives.

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is a novel that begins in 1950s Iran. Seven-year-old Ellie's father dies and she and her mother have to move. In Ellie's first day of school, she meets a fellow student, Homa. 

The two become fast friends, with the irrepressible and brave Homa often leading Ellie to new experiences. Ellie's mom takes up with her late husband's brother, Massoud, and the three move to a wealthy neighborhood. Later, Ellie in high school has Homa reenter her life, joining her school from the neighborhood where they met. 

The Shah had taken control of Iran, away from the democratically elected prime minister. From fourth grade, Homa wanted to be a judge, and Homa's father had been imprisoned by the Shah's regime for supporting people's rights. Ellie met a fellow student, Mehrdad, and they began a relationship, and the three after graduation attended Tehran University, with Homa still aiming to set laws in the country. 

Homa was arrested for her part in student protests for women's rights and free speech, with Ellie accidentally making it happen, and went to jail. Homa was sexually assaulted in prison and came out pregnant. She was married by Mehrdad's friend Abdol, who loved her before she was arrested and was willing to marry Homa and help raise her child Bahar as his own. Had he not, Homa as a single woman with a child would have been a pariah. Abdol later died in a fire in a movie theater, with the doors having been locked to prevent people from fleeing to safety.

Ellie and Mehrdad married and she and Homa saw each other once when Bahar was a baby, and then again when she a teenager. Ellie and Mehrdad moved to New York, and Homa asked if seventeen-year-old Bahar could go live with them. Iran was becoming engulfed in protests and Homa stayed to fight for people's rights. In 1979 the Ayatollah took power and a mandatory headscarf for women, or hijab, became law. The book is about the repression of women in Iran, the "Lion Women" who fought bravely for rights, and a friendship through the years. It's an excellent read and a refrain from Homa throughout the book is to love madly.

Down the Drain by Julia Fox

Down the Drain by Julia Fox is a memoir that details the life of the actress from Uncut Gems from childhood to now. In the forward she writes "this is for the dreamers and the delinquents" and the takeaway from it feels to be how lucky she is to be alive and not in jail, with this in part because (as she writes) she's attractive.

The book starts in 1996, with her as a six-year-old landing in New York City from Italy. She came to the U.S. to live with her father, who wasn't incredibly interested in parenting. The Italy she left featured her also not terribly interested in parenting mother, and grandfather who basically raised her. It was a ridiculously chaotic childhood in New York, basically exhibit A in how not to raise kids, rather just let them raise themselves, with an environment of drugs, sex, violence, and stealing.

After she barely graduates from middle school, she goes back to Italy, then takes up with a guy there. She hates it and goes back to New York for a visit at Christmas. She takes up with a drug dealer for a couple days, then back to Italy. She then on her own gets a ticket back to New York to be with her violent, drug dealer guy. Her father put out a missing persons poster, one with her wrong birth year, height, and weight. 

She got arrested, barely passed drug tests while on probation, and then a job as a dominatrix, which led to her getting a sugar daddy who paid for everything for her. The book in a lot of ways is a detailing of depravity, with the seemingly endless stream of insane stories.

Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel

Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel tells the story of seventy-seven-year-old Pepper Mills. She moves into a retirement community in Austin, Texas, starts seeing another of the residents, and becomes pregnant. 

Other characters in the book include Pepper's children, Alice, Darcy, and Max, along with her ex-husband Roger, also a resident of the retirement community. Her grandchildren are seven-year-old twin boys Oliver and Pierre, and teenage girls Sari and Lola. In the retirement community, Pepper meets and starts a relationship with Moth Holden, and becomes friends with Maisie and Dot. 

The news of Pepper's pregnancy, possible as a side effect of an experimental cancer treatment decades earlier, gets out and people gawk at her and/or try to attach here to their various causes or business ventures. There's interesting things in the book about the lack of autonomy women have over their bodies depending on what state they live in, relationships they form, and things they do for one another, particularly Pepper for her granddaughter. 

Lola came to Pepper and said she was pregnant so they along with Moth drove to New Mexico so Lola could have an abortion. Shortly after, Pepper's baby girl, Bob, was born, and then Pepper became an abortion fairy, driving people across state lines to be able to have abortions. It's a nice book. 

The Names by Florence Knapp

The Names by Florence Knapp is a lovely novel that tells the story of Cora, the naming of her newborn son (whose father wants named after him), and its impact on the lives of Cora, her nine-year-old daughter, and son.

The book progresses in sections, with each having three chapters. The first section tells the story of their lives at the time that Cora registers her son's name, second their lives seven years in the future, and subsequent ones over a thirty-five year span.

The first chapter in each section tells the story of what occurring in their lives if Cora registered for her son the name Bear as Maia wanted, the second chapter about if Cora registered the name Julian that she thought of, and third if she registered the name Gordon after her abusive husband, a well-respected doctor in town.

It's an interesting construct that Knapp puts together and she in the novel shows the impact of the naming decision, creating alternate universes for Cora, Maia, the son, and even Cora's mother. There's so much that happens in the lives of the characters based on the name choice made by Cora. In one universe without a father, in another without a father and mother, in a third with them there in an abusive house of horrors. It's a powerful book, beautiful and heartwarming at times, devastatingly sad and painful at times. 

An interesting choice Knapp made was to not have the three different realities be all good in one and all bad in another. There's unexpected turns taken in the lives of the characters, particularly for the son and what happens with him if he named Bear. It seems as if just as the impact of a name is shown, detailed as well is the impact of both the choices people make and the vagaries of things that happen in their lives. In the first universe, Bear dies of a wasp sting, in the second, Julian gets his family back (with mention of him running past a wasp nest), and in the third, Gordon rescues his mom (with no wasps noted). The epilogue has an alternate timeline for the father, and closes with another for Cora's son, had a different name, Hugh, been chosen.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe is a solid work of nonfiction subtitled A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. Keefe details the story of Zac Brettler, a nineteen-year-old who in 2019 jumped to his death from a balcony overlooking the River Thames in London. 

It's a deeply reported book that covers London, including it's wealth from both financial institutions in the city and foreigners, with the many empty luxury apartments owned largely as investments by those out of the country. Keefe delves into the influence of Russian oligarchs and their families on London, as well as the criminal underworld and how someone can get sucked into it all. 

Zac in his early teens become enamored with money and status, it comes out that he at nineteen presented himself to strangers as Zac Ismailov, son of a wealth Russian oligarch and heir to his fortune. Zac had a connection with a man, Mark Foley, tied to oligarch Roman Abramovich, who owned Chelsea Football Club, and became close with two older men, Akbar Shamji and Verinder Sharma, known as Indian Dave. 

Shamji was a hustler and Verinder a gangster, someone who made a living collecting debts owed to underworld characters. Zac purported to be in business with Shamji, including foreign cars and mining, and told his parents that he was staying in an apartment of Sharma's that was empty. At least Sharma appears to have viewed Zac as a mark, someone who could enrich him with Zac's family money. 

Zac went missing and several days later his body was found in the Thames. It then came out that there was video footage from the Mi6 building of Zac alone on an apartment balcony, and then jumping. His hip clipped the embankment wall, nearly making it to the water from the fifth floor. Shamji and Sharma in between Zac going missing and his body being discovered expressed concern to Zac's parents about his well-being and purported to not know his whereabouts, but additional video revealed that as a lie. Cameras captured footage of Shamji leaving the apartment he was in with Zac and Sharma, Zac then jumping, Sharma returning to the apartment and leaving again, staring into the water below the balcony. From additional evidence, Sharma may have broken Zac's jaw before he jumped, and likely threatened his life. It appears that rather than a suicide, Zac jumped from the balcony hoping to land in the Thames and escape, but hit the embarkment on his way in. 

Police knew that Shamji had lied to them, with Sharma answering no comment to all questions, but couldn't prove that a murder had been committed, especially after Sharma died of a drug overdose. The video of Zac jumping along with the death of the principle suspect caused the police to stop investigating. The book is a fascinating portrait of an underworld, including with a Russian oligarch connection, and somebody sucking themselves into it, playing a game that wasn't a game to the other parties. Zac's mom Rachelle noted in the inquest to his death that he "wanted money and power, fast." Zac got tied up with a charlatan and a gangster, and died quite possibly attempting to escape violence. 

Heart the Lover by Lily King

Heart the Lover by Lily King is an interesting novel that tells the first-person story of a main character through decades of her life.

In the fall of her senior year of college, the narrator meets two other students, close friends Sam and Yash. They nickname her Jordan and she starts dating Sam, with a convoluted and often stormy relationship between the two.

She and Sam break up and she later starts a relationship with Yash. The two of them go to visit Yash's family in Tennessee and she goes to Paris for a job. He flies there for an extended visit, they have an amazing time together, and Yash receives a job offer in Paris. He decides to go back to America, and the two of them are to then live in New York City. All their plans are made, and then when she arrives in New York, she learns that he hasn't come, rather has gone to Atlanta to move in with Sam.

The book jumps forward in time to her as a married adult with two kids, one of whom suffers from seizures and debilitating pain and has made the choice to have a high-risk surgery to get better. She hears from Sam, who tells her Yash is dying, and she flies to see him along with Sam, his family, and Yash's family. She and Yash express how much they mean to each other and she tells Yash that she had his baby twenty-seven years ago and gave her up for adoption. Her contact information was left in case the daughter ever decides to get in touch, and then she could tell her daughter about Yash.

She leaves the hospital around the time Yash goes unconscious and goes for her son's surgery, landing and receiving a message from Sam that Yash died. It's kind of a lovely book about relationships over time.

My Kind of Place by Susan Orlean

My Kind of Place by Susan Orlean is a 2004 collection of her travel writing. There's just over thirty different pieces from her included, with these the ones that stood out...

All Mixed Up - about a neighborhood grocery store in Queens, NYC and the interesting cast of characters that work and pass through there.

Rough Diamonds - on baseball in Cuba, where they love the game dearly.

The Congo Sound - about an African music store in Paris.

The Place to Disappear - covers Bangkok's Khao San Road, known as a gathering spot for itinerant travelers.

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge is a really good work of historical fiction that begins with 105-year-old Woodrow Wilson Nickel furiously writing down a story, one from his life in 1938.

Nickel is an Okie, a farmboy from the Dust Bowl, making the book reminiscent of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. He came to the east coast after the deaths of his baby sister and both parents, and made it through the Great Hurricane of 1938, which killed seven hundred, including the only family he had left, his cousin. Also surviving the storm were two giraffes who crossed the Atlantic, slated to go to the San Diego Zoo. 

The giraffes were to traverse the country in the care of Riley Jones, who Nickel would know as the Old Man, and Nickel after learning of their destination saw the giraffes as a way to get him to California. Nickel also came across Augusta Red, a young women he finds himself smitten with, who states she's taking pictures of the giraffes for Life Magazine. He in a stolen motorbike tailed the truck with the giraffes, then conned his way into driving they and the Old Man, and she tailed them in a green Packard. 

They embarked on the twelve-day road trip across the country to the San Diego Zoo, and zoo director Mrs. Belle Benchley. The Old Man was a lover of animals, treating the hurricane giraffes that he referred to as the darlings with great care, and grew to see how well Nickel worked with the two, who he knew as Boy and Girl. Red continued following them, spending time with Nickel and telling him of her heart trouble. When passing through Texas, they wound up at Nickel's burned down home, and he told the Old Man what happened there with his father after his mother and baby sister died. A flash flood then hit them and Red saved the rig from falling over with the giraffes in it, ruining her car, camera, and the photos she hoped would be in Life. 

Boy then saved Nickel and Red when someone tried to steal the giraffes, the second person to do so, and the book is a compelling adventure tale. Also interesting is the newspaper headlines included that cover Europe and what the Nazis are doing. There's also so much poverty, with the cross-country trip coming across Hoovervilles, scores of people living in shanties. At the beginning, it wasn't entirely where the book going, but it winds up being a history lesson, travelogue, and story of love and animals and unexpected endings. It's told first-person by Nickel and at the start it notes that the story he writing in notepads was to someone, and it comes out at the end who it was. Lovely book.

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger is an excellent novel that's a work of suspense, family dynamics, and the consequences of AI, including moral and ethical responsibility around artificial intelligence.

Detailed is the Cassidy-Shaw family, with seventeen-year-old Charlie, fourteen-year-old Alice, eleven-year-old Izzy, father Noah, and mother Lorelai. The book starts with them on the road in their autonomous minivan, with Charlie behind the wheel and Noah in the passenger seat, as the adult responsible for Charlie's actions. There's an accident that leaves dead a retired couple from the other car involved.

Several weeks after, the family goes to a house on Chesapeake Bay and come across technology mogul Daniel Monet there with his teenage daughter, Eurydice, and people that work for him. While Charlie and the daughter develop a relationship, Alice and Izzy start exhibiting odd behavior, and it comes out that Lorelai and Monet know each other. She's a star in the field of AI and it's ramifications, with a dual doctorate in engineering and philosophy, and received a MacArthur Fellowship. 

Police wanted to interview the family about the accident, and it was interesting the way things progressed, with each person playing, and revealing their part in what happened. While he was behind the wheel of the minivan driving on autopilot, Charlie was texting with Izzy about Alice, and Alice screamed, causing him to jerk the wheel, taking control of the car away from the autonomous driving system. The question of fault in the car accident is very up in the air given the autonomous vehicle, and revealed is that Lorelai created the autonomous driving system, on behalf of Monet. Charlie and Eurydice go missing and the ending is unexpected, and circles back to autonomous systems and responsibility for their actions. It's a compelling read.

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer is a lovely debut novel about thirty-six-year-old Clover Brooks, who lives in New York and is a death doula, spending time with people at the end of their lives.

Clover's parents died when she was six, and lives with her dog and two cats in the apartment that she was raised in by her grandfather. He passed away in his office at work thirteen years ago and Clover kept many of his things, as if he still there. She had never been in a relationship and was a loner, with her best friend her eighty-seven-year-old neighbor Leo that she played mahjong with. 

Clover met her new neighbor and eventual friend Sylvie, and then Sebastian, who she met at a death cafe meeting. Sebastian's grandmother Claudia was terminally ill and he hired Clover to spend time with her. Claudia had been a photojournalist in the 1950s, and was to marry someone in the U.S. after returning from holiday in France. She met a local, Hugo Beaufort, and sailed to Corsica with him for ten days. She then still came back to the U.S. and got married, largely because she was expected to. 

Clover and her new friend Sylvie researched and found there a Hugo Beaufort born in France in 1931, listed as a resident of Maine. She went to try to find him, only to discover he had passed away a couple of months prior, but she met his grandson, Hugo. Upon hearing about Sebastian's grandmother, Hugo guessed that she Claudia, who his grandfather had talked about her right before he died, and said she was the reason he moved to America. He and Claudia each requested their ashes be scattered in Corsica, where they were together. 

Hugo found letters his grandfather had written to Claudia but not sent, the last one saying he had seen her with her husband and she looked happy, so he's going to leave her be. Clover gave to Claudia the letter, and others Hugo wrote which said Claudia the love of his life. She died content and her final words to Clover were "learn from my mistakes, my darling. Don't let the best parts of life pass you by because you're took scared of the unknown. Be cautiously reckless." Clover then came upon her neighbor Leo in the last moments of his life after a heart attack and he said to her "the secret to having a beautiful death is to live a beautiful life. Promise me, kid, that you'll let yourself live."

Clover received a package that Claudia had arranged to be sent, with a digital camera and several lenses. She embarked on a three-month trip traveling the world, documenting her time in a notebook from Hugo. The two then met in Corsica and scattered together in the sea Claudia's ashes and Hugo's grandfather's ashes. 

It's a nice read and Brammer closes with "you can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough; if you want to believe that everything happens for a reason. But if we completely understood one another, if every even made sense, none of us would ever learn or grow. Our days might be pleasant, but prosaic. So maybe we just need to appreciate that many aspects of life - and the people we love - will always be a mystery. Because without mystery, there is no magic. And instead if constantly asking ourselves the question of why we're here, maybe we should be savoring a simpler truth: we are here."

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe is an interesting memoir by the writer and director of movies including Say Anything, Singles, Jerry McGuire, and Almost Famous. Additionally, Crowe wrote the book Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then won an Oscar for the movie screenplay he adapted.

Crowe was born in 1957 and in The Uncool, writes about heavily about his teen years in San Diego in the 1970s. He had a supportive mother and father, older sister Cindy, and oldest sister Cathy who committed suicide. He began writing music reviews for an alternative weekly newspaper, The Door, at the age of fourteen and at fifteen both graduated high school and became Rolling Stone's youngest-ever contributor.

The movie Almost Famous is about his youth, and before long he was interviewing Ozzy Osbourne at a Black Sabbath show, the Eagles, Kris Kristofferson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Allman Brothers Band. Later there was Led Zeppelin, who he was flying with on their plane, and significant time with David Bowie, who told eighteen-year-old Crowe, "ask me anything, hold up a mirror and show me what you see." 

Bowie also told Crowe he "young enough to be honest," perhaps part of why other musicians spent time with Crowe. Later Crowe recounts the story of bringing from Jamaica back to the U.S. marijuana seeds he pulled out of Bob Marley's stash. At twenty-one, Crowe wrote about everyday high school kids, with his book Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The Uncool closes around the time Almost Famous: The Musical came out in 2019, with the ending centered around Crowe's mom. It's a revealing and solid book.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a lovely novel that tells the story of Sybil Van Antwerp, done entirely through letters she writes and receives. The book begins with seventy-three year old Sybil in 2012 writing to her brother Felix, and goes up to letters from 2021. Sybil corresponds as well with people including: 

• Fiona, Sybil's at times estranged daughter
• Theodore Lubeck, her neighbor that cares for her
• Melissa Genet, a local college Dean who refuses her request to audit classes
• Harry Landy, the troubled high-achieving student son of a former colleague 
• Dezi Martinelli, the son of someone she played a role in sending to jail
• Basam Mansour, a customer service agent with a DNA testing company
• Henrietta Gleason, her recently learned of biological sister in Scotland 
• Gilbert, her son who died young and with whom she regularly writes missives to
• Authors like Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, and Larry McMurtry that she writes with
• People that she wrote in the 1950s when her letter writing began

Evans writes an originally constructed book, spinning the story together letter by letter. They're lovely pictures of relationships progressing over time and the wrap up to the book is kind of great.

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe is a solid collection of a dozen The New Yorker pieces. The collection is subtitled True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, with those below ones that stood out:

The Jefferson Bottles (2007) - Noteworthy was how Bill Koch, whose father founded Koch Industries, collected wines, and sued people.

The Avenger (2015) - Details Ken Dornstein, whose brother died in the Pam Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Interesting from this piece is the level of obsession that it shows Dornstein had to find those responsible.

The Empire of Edge (2014) - About New York Mets owner Steven Cohen and his hedge fund SAC Capital. Covers his scant punishment for wrongdoings, especially in relation to how much he profited from them.

Journeyman (2017) On Anthony Bourdain and his CNN show No Reservations that would travel the world to authentic places. Bourdain then took his life in 2018.

The Worst of the Worst (2015) - Details defense attorney Judy Clarke, who has represented a number of extremely high-profile guilty people that she's attempted to keep off death row, seeking life imprisonment sentences instead. Plaintiffs she's represented include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Ted Kaczynski, Zacarias Moussaoui, Eric Rudolph, Susan Smith, Robert Bowers, and Jared Loughner.

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Syrian Canadian Zoulfa Katouh is a lovely debut novel about eighteen-year-old pharmacy student Salama Kassab, who volunteers at a hospital in Homs, Syria, caring for those injured, including six-year-old Ahmad who died of internal bleeding, at the hands of the Syrian military.

Salama's father and her brother Hamza were imprisoned by the government the year before after going to a protest, and her mother killed a week later by a bomb. Salama hopes to escape the country with her pregnant sister-in-law, Layla, an artist. 

Salama has PTSD, which takes the form of an imagined companion, Khawf, who frequently tells her what she must do to survive, even if it's a painful, and potentially horrific, choice. She finds love with Kenan, who has two younger siblings, thirteen-year-old Yusuf and nine-year-old Lama. She secures passage, eventually for all of them, out of Syria, with it to be via boat across the Mediterranean to Italy, from Am, whose sister she treated in the hospital. Salama finds out her father died and brother still held in prison, counter to her hope that they both no longer being tortured.

The book takes a unexpected turn as it comes out that Layla being alive was imagined by Salama, just like Khawf a figment of her PTSD. Layla had been killed by a sniper five months before. Salama then is told in her head by Khawf that the hospital about to be bombed, rushes there and tells Dr. Ziad to evacuate, saving many. Salama, Kenan, Yusuf, and Lama take the boat and jump overboard, leading to the Kenan's siblings safely in Germany with family, and Salama and Kenan in Toronto. It's an excellent book, with many events taken from real atrocities suffered by Syrians and inflicted by the dictatorship.

Joyride by Susan Orlean

Joyride by Susan Orlean is a memoir on her life and career as a nonfiction writer, with books including The Orchid Thief, The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, On Animals, and her first, Saturday Night. 

Orlean starts with her path as a writer. She graduated from the University of Michigan, then moved to Portland and worked at Willamette Week as her second writing job there. She went to Boston and worked at the Boston Globe, also as her second writing job there, and then New York City. She eventually wound up at The New Yorker, first doing freelance pieces before she became a staff writer there. 

There's fascinating anecdotes about journalism in years past, with large expense accounts, frequent travel to write stories, and often open-ended timeframes for time to complete them and how frequently staff writers had to publish. She also covers how access as a writer was different in the past, she wanted to write about working in missile silos, asked the military if she could visit, and did so with little difficulty.

Orlean describes her book Saturday Night as a wild experience of being passed to different editors, some of whom were interested in the book and others who were simply assigned to it. She twenty-five years ago wrote The Orchid Thief, expanded from a magazine article into her second book, which became the basis for the movie Adaptation, with the Charlie Kaufman-written screenplay about making the movie from the book. In researching Rin Tin Tin, she notes finding late in the research process a volume of material that expanded the scope of the book. When she wrote The Library Book, it coincided with her moving from a country home in Hudson Valley, New York to Los Angeles. 

The "writer on writing" content she provides is fantastic. On subjects, she writes:

• Writers fall into two categories, those who have something they want to say to the world, and those who believe the world has something to tell them, with her in the second camp. 
• Two categories of story subjects she loves are "hiding in place sight" and "who knew?" 
• She likes to write about subjects that are passionate about something, especially if it likely wouldn't be covered by other writers.
• Every person has an unimaginably rich world inside of them. She loves the idea of describing a world, it may not be a celebrity world, but it's a world nonetheless. 
• When you pick a topic, you declare it matters. Writing is then learning about that topic and sharing it, including your thoughts on it, with others.
• Editors or bosses she worked with said that her stories being about obscure topics made them require great execution to be successful.
• Subjects at times would feel an attachment with her, she's asking in depth about their lives.

On her writing process, she notes that:

• She reads her work aloud, listening for the cadence of the words.
• A lesson taught to her about writing that it involves reporting, then thinking, then writing. 
• Her work is something that anyone could do, putting in the research and reading the archives to be able to describe something, but they don't. 
• It was her job to do the research, think about it, and then tell the story.
• Another lesson she was taught is stories don't need a huge conclusion, they should leave readers falling forward, finishing the tale in their heads.
• The engine of her stories is the drive from ignorance to knowledge. 
• To manage the volume of material from researching books, she put information on index cards and spread it all out, then grouped them together. It's assembling a coherent whole. 
• She doesn't use a tape recorder, rather takes notes. 
• Writing a book is about fulfilling a daily word quota. 

It's an informative and compelling book and Orlean also covers being a speech coach for the Democratic National Convention, including trying to convince Senate candidate Barack Obama to tweak a speech.

Frostlines by Neil Shea

Frostlines by Neil Shea is a work of nonfiction subtitled A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic. Shea writes a series of chapters with each on his time in an area north of the Arctic Circle.

 The book starts with him watching narwhals talk with each other, or tusking, in Canada's Admiralty Inlet. In a a chapter about wolves on Canada's Ellesmere Island, he notes how the animals were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park in the mid-1990s. 

He writes of the Northwest Passage, and how forty-one ships made the voyage through the Passage in 2023 and thirty-eight in 2024. Covered in one chapter is the decline in caribou herds across the top of North America. In another, he shows a  classroom in Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, where a freshly killed caribou is butchered for the students to see, and the parts all parceled out to the Nunamiut people. 

Shea as well covers Greenland and the Norse people who vanished from there in the mid-fifteenth century. The last chapter is on the border between Russia and Norway, stretching 120 miles, stopping at the Barents Sea. He writes about the Norwegian town of Kirkenes and how people used to cross the border in both directions, but now after the invasion of Crimea, then Covid-19, then the invasion of Ukraine, traffic has largely stopped.

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon is a work of historical fiction that tells the story of John Lowry and Naomi May on the Oregon Trail. She's a young widower from a white family, he's half-Pawnee, raised by his white father, without his mother.

John was retained to travel the first part of the journey west by Naomi's travelling party, which included her immediate family of mother and father Winifred and William May and brothers Warren, Will, Webb, and Wyatt. Also part of the group was the Bingham family and Caldwell family, whose son Naomi had been married to. 

The group set out in 1853, and people that made the trip west were in search of a better life, and found many hardships along the way, and encounters with both Indian and illness sometimes fatal. John and headstrong Naomi, who draws and paints, fall in love and John and Naomi marry. At the start of the book, Naomi's mother, father, older brother Warren, and the Binghams are killed by Indians, and Naomi and her youngest brother Wolfe, who was born during the trip, are taken by the tribe. 

John comes across the massacre, sees that Naomi has likely been taken, and goes in pursuit of her. He comes across a group of Shoshoni, including his sister, Hanabi and the chief, Washakie. John learns about a different group of Shoshoni, led by Pocatello, with a reputation for killing white people. Washakie tells of a coming meetup of tribes and there Washakie and John state their case for the release of Naomi and Wolfe, but a vote of the various leaders results in Naomi being released and Wolfe kept, to be raised by a woman, Weda, in Pocatello's band who lost her own baby.

Naomi goes with John and Washakie and his people, but from the death of her parents and brother, and taking of Wolfe, she retreats into herself, lost in grief, hence the Where the Lost Wander book title. Wolfe is brought back to them by Weda as he's sick and she hopes they can heal him. Instead, Wolfe dies in Naomi's arms. He had been loved by many and Naomi and John left Washakie and his people and rejoined Webb, Will, and Wyatt and formed a life. It's a solid book and while still fiction, it's interesting how it based on real people.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

The Wedding People by Alison Espach is a lovely novel that tells a story about Phoebe Stone, who arrives at a Newport, Rhode Island resort hotel with the intention to take her life.

Phoebe had been left by her husband, was going nowhere at work, and found her cat dead, leaving her in a broken state. Upon arrival at the hotel, she finds herself the only guest not part of a week-long wedding party, and becomes quickly intertwined with Lila and Gary, the respective bride and groom to be.

Lila is used to being the center of attention and Gary older, and has a daughter, Juice, from his wife who got cancer and died. Espach writes of how people have a part to play at the wedding, and that includes telling the bride how perfect everything is. Phoebe comes in and doesn't feel a compunction to lie given that she was going to take her own life. She forms relationships that matter with Lila, Gary, and Juice.

Events wind up having Phoebe be tapped as the maid of honor, and the toast she writes is lovely. She was going to say, "a wedding is a huge waste of money, but it's also true that this wedding will never be a waste. Because I came here to die. And now look at me. Lila, every day this week, you gave me a reason to get up in the morning, to put on a beautiful dress and be part of something, and for that I will always be grateful."

At the end, Espach writes this about Phoebe, to be alive, she must leave this hotel, despite the uncertainties of everything. Walk down the long hallway of that mansion come winter, not knowing what will become of her, which is a thing that does scare her. But she also feels a thrill imagining the candles she'll light at night. Frank, the nineteenth-century yellow dog, who will sleep on her bed as she writes. The snow dusting the ocean.

It's a lovely story of someone falling into a situation and then how the characters lives touch each other. The book is immensely entertaining, but most of all has heart.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrick Backman

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman is a novel that tells the story of seven-year-old Elsa, who is different than other kids and often picked on at school. 

Her best, and only, friend is her grandmother, seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. At night, Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms, and new friends from her grandmother's world, including Wolfheart. The story is an odd one, but finishes nicely, and is about being different, having family, friends, and protectors.