Come with Me by Helen Schulman – A part-time employee of a tech company owned by her friend’s 19-year-old son acts as his guinea pig to test an algorithm that allows people to access their “multiverses” and see their alternative life choices and paths.

The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim – From the author of The Calligrapher’s Daughter comes the story of two sisters—one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea—and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart.

The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem – Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn delivers the same memorable delights: ecstatic wordplay, warm and deeply felt characters, and an offbeat sense of humor. Combined with a vision of California that is at once scruffy and magnificent, The Feral Detective emerges as a transporting, comic, and absolutely unforgettable novel.

Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks – Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.  In this urgent and deeply moving novel, Faulks deals with questions of empire, grievance, and identity. With great originality and a dark humour, Paris Echo asks how much we really need to know if we are to live a valuable life.

The Girl They Left Behind by Roxanne Veletzos – A sweeping family saga and love story that offers a vivid and unique portrayal of life in war-torn 1941 Bucharest and life behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet Union occupation—perfect for fans of Lilac Girls and Sarah’s Key.

Fox 8 by George Saunders – Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regard with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until he develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak “Yuman” by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after “danjer” arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.

Tony’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani – Set in the lush Big Band era of the 1940s and World War II, this spellbinding saga from beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani tells the story of two talented working class kids who marry and become a successful singing act, until time, temptation, and the responsibilities of home and family derail their dreams.

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates – “Time travel” — and its hazards—are made literal in this astonishing new novel in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America — “Wainscotia, Wisconsin”—that existed eighty years before.  Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town she is set upon a course of “rehabilitation”—but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constrains of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating.

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny – The six-time Agatha Award-winning author of such best-sellers as Still Life and The Cruelest Month presents a latest entry in the popular Chief Inspector Gamache series.

There are a lot of great things about getting older (hopefully more stability, more positive experiences, the deepening of relationships, maybe even the growing of wisdom), but one of the sadder things about getting older is that sometimes people who you never knew, but who you admired, pass away.  That happened for me when the poet John Ashbery passed away, as well as when the novelist Philip Roth died.  They were heroes of mine, and it felt like someone I knew closely had died, someone who had changed my life.  Today I heard the sad news that the American poet Tony Hoagland passed away, who wrote really wonderful poems in casual, accessible language that could break out suddenly into great beauty.  Hoagland created poems from ordinary language (his poems did not show off their innovation, nor were they so extraordinarily difficult as to baffle interpretation), but that ordinary language, and the light it shone on our lives, could open up, and open us up, to something truly special and moving.  In honor of Hoagland, I wanted to post a poem of his, that I found on the Poetry Foundation website, which is a great resource.  Here it is, called “A Color of the Sky”:

The poem is on the surface about ordinary things – driving from work, calling a friend or partner to apologize about something, hearing songs on the radio, thinking about dreams, noticing liquor stores and police stations – but underneath this surface there is a great attention to, and love for, life in its rich and complex variety.  The poem is this thoughtful and quietly funny celebration of how strange and miraculous it is to be alive – to drive a car, to see a tree “overflowing with blossomfoam.”  It’s so easy to forget how joyful life can be, and the poem ends on this image of a tree “making beauty, / and throwing it away, / and making more.”  The tree, without thought, sometimes without anyone noticing, is “dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,” this amazing image that Hoagland chooses to see and chronicle.  He did this in so many poems.  I encourage you to check out his poems, which can be found in the CLEVNET system, for a dose of that wonderful Hoaglandian ordinariness made beautiful.  May he rest in peace!

Tony Hoagland

This month we cover a wide variety of non-fiction, from 1000 books to read before you die (a daunting but worthwhile task!), to feminism, to mental illness, to Stephen Hawking.  Plunge in, and if you find a title that interests you, go ahead and click on the title – it’s that easy!

1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich – A celebration of the reading life by the co-founder of the acclaimed A Common Reader presents a cross-genre, historically representative compendium of 1,000 forefront works of literature, complemented by essays on each book’s particular relevance.

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott – The New York Times best-selling author of Hallelujah Anyway presents an inspirational guide to the role of hope in everyday life and explores essential truths about how to overcome burnout and suffering by deliberately choosing joy.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking – The world-famous cosmologist and #1 best-selling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe’s biggest questions in a posthumous work.

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman – A gripping true-crime investigation of the 1948 abduction of Sally Horner details the crime itself and how it inspired Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel, Lolita.

In My Father’s House: A New View of How Crimes Runs in the Family by Fox Butterfield – A Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times journalist follows a family in Oregon, the Bogles, with a generations-spanning history of criminal behavior, aiming to debunk long-held stereotypes about race and crime and using these insights to highlight new efforts at reform.

American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures – From an award-winning actress and political activist (America Ferrera) comes a vibrant and varied collection of first person accounts from prominent figures—including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Issa Rae, Kumail Nanjiani, Roxane Gay and many more—about the experience of growing up between cultures.

Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter – The best-selling author of The Emperor of Ocean Park traces the story of his grandmother, an African-American attorney who, in spite of period barriers, devised the strategy that sent mafia chieftain Lucky Luciano to prison in the 1930s.

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly – The director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project urges 21st-century women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.

A Mind Unraveled: A Memoir by Kurt Eichenwald – The New York Times best-selling author of The Informant traces the decades he spent fighting and hiding the symptoms of epilepsy, a battle involving severe depression, and medical mistakes before a dedicated neurologist helped him to survive and thrive.

Some truly exciting and interesting fiction coming out this October, including new books by Andre Dubus III and Jodi Picoult.  If one of the books piques your interest, click on the title of the book, and this will take you to our catalog to place a hold.

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller – An architect spending the summer of 1969 in a dilapidated English country mansion discovers a peephole that allows her to observe the increasingly sinister private lives of her hedonist neighbors. By the award-winning author of Our Endless Numbered Days.

A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl by Jean Thompson – From National Book Award finalist and the New York Times best-selling author of The Year We Left Home comes a family saga about three generations of women who struggle to find freedom and happiness in their small Midwestern college town.

The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain – Learning that her unborn child has a heart defect, a 1970s family woman is urged by her physicist brother-in-law to pursue a solution that pushes the boundaries of science and faith. By the New York Times best-selling author of The Silent Sister.

Family Trust by Kathy Wang – Struggling to fulfill a terminally ill father’s final bequest, a privileged Chinese-American family in Silicon Valley is forced to contend with the realities of their ambitions and actual desires.

Godsend by John Wray – An 18-year-old, looking to escape her claustrophobic hometown, disguises herself as a young man named Suleyman and travels to Pakistan, where she is tempted into militant Islam. By the author of The Lost Time Accidents.

Gone So Long by Andrew Dubus III – A man living a solitary existence in seaside New England travels to a quaint Florida community in search of his traumatized, estranged daughter. By the award-winning author of House of Sand and Fog.

Listen to the Marriage by John Jay Osborn – Months of therapy in a San Francisco marriage counselor’s office trace the crises that are threatening a family and the efforts of a therapist who would help them overcome self-imposed obstacles. By the author of The Paper Chase.

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult – The #1 New York Times best-selling author of Small Great Things returns with a powerful and provocative new novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger – Emerging from an accident with damaged memories and compromised language skills, a movie-house owner from a small Midwestern town pieces together his story against a backdrop of community history, which is shaped by a prodigal son’s return.

Do any of these new non-fiction books strike your fancy?  If so, click on the title to reserve your copy!  We’ve got a lot covered here, from story-telling to university culture, immigration to opioid addiction, an actress’s memoir to a book on religion in art.

Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling by Philip Pullman – In over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world’s great story-tellers (author of His Dark Materials trilogy) meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining and, above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin and composition of Pullman’s own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to him. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humor and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts: a single, sustained engagement with story and story-telling.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt – The author of the best-selling The Righteous Mind and his co-author controversially link rising rates of depression and anxiety to today’s culture of safety, social media and political divides, arguing in favor of traditional wisdom that promotes grit and antifragility.

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas – The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker and immigration-rights activist presents a debut memoir about how he unknowingly entered the United States with false documents as a child.

Eliza Hamilton: the Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo – From the New York Times best-selling author of Irena’s Children comes a comprehensive and riveting biography of the extraordinary life and times of Eliza Hamilton, the wife of founding father Alexander Hamilton, and a powerful, unsung hero in America’s early days.

If You Love Me: a Mother’s Journey Through Her Daughter’s Opiod Addiction by Maureen Cavanagh – The founder of the Magnolia New Beginnings nonprofit peer-support group shares the gripping story of her confrontation with the opioid epidemic in the wake of her daughter’s sudden and brutal battle with substance abuse.

In Pieces by Sally Field – The Academy Award-winning actress shares insights into her difficult childhood, the artistic pursuits that helped her find her voice and the powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and mother.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari – The New York Times best-selling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus shares probing insights into such present-day issues as the role of technology in transforming humanity, the epidemic of false news and the modern relevance of nations and religion.

How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization by Mary Beard – A companion to PBS’ Civilizations chronicles the intertwined histories of art and religion to explain the irreconcilable problems that all faiths have navigated while trying to represent the divine.

Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee – The founder of the popular Aesthetics of Joy blog counsels readers on how to cultivate a happier, healthier life by making small environmental changes, revealing the unexpected impact of everyday spaces and objects on mood.

Hi Readers!  I wanted to introduce this new feature – the new fiction and new non-fiction roundup – which we’ll be posting a week before the new month begins.  This is a chance to learn more about some great new books that will be coming out in the upcoming month.  There is so much to read and so little time.  Hopefully our roundups help make those decisions a little easier.  If the covers or synopses interest you, feel free to click on the title, which will take you to our catalog to reserve the book!

– Andrew

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart – A self-made Wall Street millionaire, baffled by the implosion of his seemingly perfect life, takes a cross-country bus trip in search of his college sweetheart and the ideals of his youth. By the best-selling author of Super Sad True Love Story.

Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg – In her first new collection of short stories since 2006, Eisenberg presents us with characters swimming or drowning in a disintegrating environment – among them, some former Hollywood actors, an entitled young man who falls into an unlikely love affair with a human rights worker on a mysterious quest, a woman whose face illustrates her family’s history, a girl receiving treatment for an inexplicable psychological affliction, and a politically conscious puppeteer.

Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey – The love between a daughter and her mother—and the dark secrets they keep from each other—are at the heart of this wildly imaginative novel that combines elements of The Handmaid’s Tale, Stranger Things, and Twin Peaks.

Ordinary People by Diana Evans – Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children but his bereavement is getting in the way.  Set in London against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic election victory, Ordinary People is an intimate, immersive study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and aging, and the fragile architecture of love.

Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini – A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city’s swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone.

Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman – Eden Malcom lies in a bed, unable to move or to speak, imprisoned in his own mind. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his hospital room. He has never even met their young daughter. And he will never again see the friend and fellow soldier who didn’t make it back home–and who narrates the novel. But on Christmas, the one day Mary is not at his bedside, Eden’s re-ordered consciousness comes flickering alive. As he begins to find a way to communicate, some troubling truths about his marriage–and about his life before he went to war–come to the surface. Is Eden the same man he once was: a husband, a friend, a father-to-be? What makes a life worth living?

Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III – Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his arms by police. Now in her forties, Susan still suffers from the trauma of a night she doesn’t remember, as she struggles to feel settled, to love a man and create something that lasts. Lois, her maternal grandmother who raised her, tries to find peace in her antique shop in a quaint Florida town but cannot escape her own anger, bitterness, and fear.

The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien – Two of the greatest powers in the world—Morgoth, of the utmost evil, and Ulmo, the Lord of Waters, battle over the city of Gondolin—a beautiful but undiscovered realm peopled by Noldorian Elves.  By the beloved author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Legion: the Many Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson – A savant with a genius compartmentalized brain is hired to recover a stolen camera capable of photographing the past and discovers information with the potential to upend the world’s three major religions.  By Hugo award-winning Brandon Sanderson.

As my title suggests, this blog post is going to be a brief defense of being critical about movies.  This is a defense of film criticism, because I myself am admittedly a big secret film critic, which means that I am pretty selective about the films I choose to see, and I am somewhat obsessed with Rotten Tomatoes, a website that gives you the reviews for most films.  (Metacritic is good, too.)  Why am I selective?  For the same reason that I am selective about the books I read.  We only have so much time on this earth.  I don’t want to have to sit for two hours in a dark room and watch moving images of a movie that I don’t like, whether the character development is weak, the plotting is implausible or not in keeping with the logic of the characters, the acting is poor, etc.  Of if the plot is implausible, I want the movie to have earned it.  If I sit through a bad movie, I feel it is wasted time, and it kind of upsets me.  I also don’t feel challenged by bad movies.  I feel that if not a lot of thought has gone into them, then I don’t want to invest my own energies in sitting through them.  Hence the secret film critic.

I also don’t think, I should say, that opinions about films are only subjective.  I really think there are better and worse films.  Critics definitely sometimes disagree – and sometimes films that are intensely disagreed about are definitely worth watching – but there is also often a consensus among critics about what film is worth seeing and what film isn’t.  You can see this pattern on Rotten Tomatoes.  So I think it’s possible to be somewhat objective about films.

Why am I saying all this?  Because recently I have found that there is this amazing company, with quite a few films in Rocky River’s collection, that is kind of made for all the secret film critics out there.  It’s called “The Criterion Collection,” (the logo is at the top of this post), and it is a film distribution company that, as its website says, is “dedicated to publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world.”  In other words, it is a company with an enormous library of critically acclaimed movies.  Recently I have watched a few Criterion films from Rocky River’s collection, including “Safe,” directed by Todd Haynes, “Breaking the Waves,” directed by Lars Von Trier, and “Fish Tank,” directed by Andrea Arnold, and I was completely blown away by how good these movies were.  Everything about them, from the filming to the acting, showed such a deep and real care for telling a story well.  I left each film somewhat shaken, but with a strong sense of an emotionally satisfying story well-told.  So I left with a sense that my own experience had been deepened and enriched.

Of course, Criterion Collection does not have a monopoly on well-told stories in film.  But they are a great place to look.  So if you are at Rocky River Public Library, and you are a secret film critic, look for the “C” on the spine of the film (see picture below).  Then, if you look at the cover and read the synopsis on the back, and you’re still intrigued, I encourage you to borrow the film and watch it.  For all you know, you too will be amazed by a story told with deep care.