Backman surfaced in America as the author of the word-of-mouth-runaway-bestseller-turned-into-an-Oscar-nominated-film, A Man Called Ove. It’s been on the bestseller lists for a couple of years now with no sign of letup. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry joined it well over a year ago.
If you haven’t read this Swedish author, let me start by saying if the only Swedish author you are familiar with is Steig Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) just put that out of your mind. Larsson may have been Sweden’s biggest selling author but Backman is pushing him off the list. Backman is the yin to Larsson’s yang, the lightness to his darkness, and I, for one, most welcome this new voice.
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is written from the point of view of the granddaughter, Elsa. She’s seven years old and beyond precocious, and her grandmother is her best friend. They share a secret language, stories about the Land-of-Almost-Awake and all the kingdoms within. Elsa doesn’t really have any other friends, her grandmother is her world. She basically puts up with her mother.
When her grandmother passes away, Elsa is devastated. Then she learns her grandmother has left her a sort of scavenger hunt, a series of letters that she wants Elsa to deliver for her. Letters of apology.
This is a hard book to describe. The plot doesn’t really matter; suffice it to say there are some people who don’t like the fact that the narrator is a child. Get over it – it’s so worth it. All the people who live in apartments in the house with Elsa’s family are unique individuals, to say the least. And eventually it all makes sense.
Backman has a unique voice and I think you either love it, and then you will love all his books no matter the subject or protagonist, or you don’t. And I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t (at least not yet).
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE’S SORRY by Fredrik Backman. Washington Square Press; Reprint edition (April 5, 2016). ISBN 978-1501115073. 372p.
I don’t generally read inspirational books, and I rarely read business books but I make an exception for Simon Sinek.
Sinek was the closing speaker at a conference I attended a few years ago and he just blew me away. Since then, I’ve watched his TED talks and occasionally check in at his YouTube page. Whatever he has to say, I’m willing to listen. He has several books as well, and this is his latest.
It’s a tiny little book, cleverly illustrated in the style of classic children’s literature that was reminiscent of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel or Caps for Sale. The theme of togetherness is one that is predominant in business today, and the idea that teamwork is best that has been scientifically proven (check out Margaret Hefferman’s TED talk, Forget the Pecking Order at Work – fascinating stuff.)
Sinek offers lots of pithy thoughts, some with further explanations at the back of the book. My favorites:
Bad teams work in the same place. Good teams work together.
Leaders give us the chance to try and fail, then give us another chance to try and succeed.
Always plan for the fact that no plan ever goes according to plan (a variation of the oldie but goodie, “man plans and God laughs.”)
Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.
This is probably not going to change your life but it may give you fresh perspective on a day you really need it. Enjoy!
Bonus: Simon Sinek (public speaker and author of START WITH WHY: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action) dissects the United Airlines controversy.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
TOGETHER IS BETTER by Simon Sinek. Portfolio (September 13, 2016). ISBN 978-1591847854. 160p.
It’s always a happy day in my house when a new Lisa Scottoline book appears on my doorstep. While my heart truly belongs to her series (Rosato & Associates which turns into Rosato & DiNunzio) I also enjoy the nonfiction books she writes with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, which are collections of the columns they write for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Then a few years ago (probably more than a few at this point) Lisa started writing standalones, sort of ripped from the headlines thrillers and family dramas that are most reminiscent of Jodi Picoult books. This one is a real suburban thriller, so if you like Harlan Coben or Jodi Picoult, add Scottoline to your reading list.
One Perfect Lie starts out one way and then takes a sudden, shocking turn. Set in a small, Pennsylvania town, Chris Brennan applies for a teaching position, taking over for a teacher out on leave. He also applies to be the assistant coach of the baseball team, and through the application process and then his starting days at the high school, he comes across as creepy and evil.
The story really focuses on some of the kids on the baseball team. One of them is suspected of stealing fertilizer that is used for explosions. And this is just days before the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. There’s Raz, who lost his father earlier that year and whose mother is having trouble adjusting. Jordan’s mom is a struggling single mother, but he never knew his father. And Evan is the golden child, son of a surgeon and a mom who lives for Facebook, posting one perfect family picture after another.
The teachers, students and their families all accept Chris and for the first time in his life – a life that seems to have been very difficult – he feels a sense of being at home. But it may all blow up – literally and figuratively.
Scottoline excels at character development and they propel the story along. And the ending was exceptionally gripping. This was a one night read for me and I really enjoyed it. Another winner from one of my favorites.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
ONE PERFECT LIE by Lisa Scottoline. St. Martin’s Press (April 11, 2017). ISBN 978-1250099563. 368p.
This is a modern day cowboy romance with a significant twist.
Ford Kendrick and Jamie Keller have been sweethearts forever, dreaming of moving away from their small Montana town and starting their own ranch somewhere. But when Ford’s family runs into some financial problems and his grandfather’s health is precarious, he knows all his savings have to go into the family business and that he’ll have to stick around to help out.
Ford pushes Jamie away, telling her she needs to go and make her own way somewhere else without telling her why. Heartbroken, she heads to Georgia and ends up enlisting in the army.
Jamie returns home to Montana with severe PTSD – and this was quite an unusual twist. I’ve read romances where the men have come home from war with issues but this was a first for me. Jamie is in a very bad way. She’s got serious physical issues and scars, but it’s her mental problems that are really crippling.
At lunch with her mother, a woman who is completely devoid of empathy, Jamie loses it and causes a scene. Ford is at the same restaurant, and sees her. Determined to help, he shows up at her house and she almost kills him, blasting gunfire through the front door in a drunken, drugged haze. This just makes him more determined to find their happy ending, but that’s only half the story.
The other half of the story is what happened to Jamie. She knows she was burned and shot, and that one of the men in her group saved her life. But they were the only two survivors and she lost the rest of her friends that day. Understandingly, she has completely blocked out her memories of that day. Getting psychiatric help from the Army via Skype, she is not making much progress with her memory of that fateful day.
I must admit this was not that big a mystery, even I figured out what had happened pretty early on. But this deep dive into PTSD and the repercussions after soldiers return home felt brutally honest – especially in light of this article I had read about it in the New York Times Magazine a while back. Well, that article just won the Pulitzer Prize and I highly recommend reading it, and this book.
For more information on PTSD, read this Pulitzer Prize winning piece from the New York Times: The Fighter
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
HIS COWBOY HEART by Jennifer Ryan. Avon (February 21, 2017). ISBN: 978-0062435408. 416p.
If a book has a blurb from Jon Stewart , and the author is known as the “The Jon Stewart of the Arabic World” I have no choice but to read the book. So I did.
I first learned about Bassem Youssef while watching Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. And I was intrigued. A few weeks later, I stumbled across the book at my library and grabbed it.
I like learning about different cultures, and I don’t know a whole lot about Egypt. I did have a co-worker from Egypt (who has since been promoted and moved to another branch of the library) and we talked on occasion about her family and her life in Egypt and here, so I have some understanding, at least of how her family lives. But she is no revolutionary, and Youssef is. So I was happy to read a very interesting point of view from a very funny Egyptian voice.
While I appreciate his humor, the Egyptian government did not. He was threatened and arrested but eventually fled Egypt and landed in California. Youssef is not just a comedian; his first career was as a heart surgeon. Besides not knowing much about life in Egypt, I know even less about their politics. Comedy is not especially welcome by an oppressive regime, and that was not a surprise. But Youssef’s life has been extraordinary so far, brutal at times, sad for sure, but his writing style, his satire, is laugh out loud funny.
From the publisher:
“Hilarious and Heartbreaking. Comedy shouldn’t take courage, but it made an exception for Bassem.” –Jon Stewart
“The Jon Stewart of the Arabic World”—the creator of The Program, the most popular television show in Egypt’s history—chronicles his transformation from heart surgeon to political satirist, and offers crucial insight into the Arab Spring, the Egyptian Revolution, and the turmoil roiling the modern Middle East, all of which inspired the documentary about his life, Tickling Giants.
Bassem Youssef’s incendiary satirical news program, Al-Bernameg (The Program), chronicled the events of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, and the rise of Mubarak’s successor, Mohamed Morsi. Youssef not only captured his nation’s dissent but stamped it with his own brand of humorous political criticism, in which the Egyptian government became the prime laughing stock.
So potent were Youssef’s skits, jokes, and commentary, the authoritarian government accused him of insulting the Egyptian presidency and Islam. After a six-hour long police interrogation, Youssef was released. While his case was eventually dismissed, his television show was terminated, and Youssef, fearful for his safety, fled his homeland.
In Revolution for Dummies, Youssef recounts his life and offers hysterical riffs on the hypocrisy, instability, and corruption that has long animated Egyptian politics. From the attempted cover-up of the violent clashes in Tahrir Square to the government’s announcement that it had created the world’s first “AIDS cure” machine, to the conviction of officials that Youssef was a CIA operative—recruited by Jon Stewart—to bring down the country through sarcasm. There’s much more—and it’s all insanely true.
Interweaving the dramatic and inspiring stories of the development of his popular television show and his rise as the most contentious funny-man in Egypt, Youssef’s humorous, fast-paced takes on dictatorship, revolution, and the unforeseeable destiny of democracy in the Modern Middle East offers much needed hope and more than a few healing laughs. A documentary about his life, Tickling Giants, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, and is now scheduled for major release.
Something to look forward to.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
REVOLUTION FOR DUMMIES by Bassem Youssef. Dey Street Books (March 21, 2017). ISBN 978-0062446893. 304p.
I don’t read a lot of political books. I do watch a lot (too much) TV news, and I read a lot of newspapers; usually the “fake” kind like MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and other Pulitzer Prize winners. And I listen to podcasts like Pod Save America from the hilariously named “Crooked Media,” and I watch the late night shows that help me laugh about what’s going on in this country and keep me from leaping off the ledge. (Feel free to comment as you like, the comments have to be approved. By me.)
So, Chris Hayes. I love him on MSNBC, he’s smart and quick and rarely loses his cool, something I truly admire (and wish I was better at.) So when I heard he wrote a book, I was “all in.”
This is a book about racism in America and yes, a white guy can write about it. And he does a really good job. The title refers to what Hayes considers the racial divide in this country, specifically in our criminal justice system. He believes that white Americans are treated as citizens, with civil rights and respect, while minorities are treated as colonists, where their civil rights are nonexistent and they basically live in a police state. He makes his point by tracing American history from the 1960’s civil rights era through today, and while it is disturbing, Hayes writes well, making his point clearly and succinctly. I found this book very upsetting, but I knew that going in.
From the publisher:
New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award–winning news anchor Chris Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a Colony and a Nation.
America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure—wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation—reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first “law and order” president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.
Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?
A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential “broken windows” theory to the “squeegee men” of late-1980s Manhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists—in a place we least suspect.
A Colony in a Nation is an essential book—searing and insightful—that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.
If you care about making America great “again,” or just care about how American citizens are treated in our criminal justice system, pick up this book. It is a most worthwhile read.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
A COLONY IN A NATION by Chris Hayes. W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 21, 2017). ISBN 978-0393254228. 256p.
Colleen Oakley is being compared to JoJo Moyes and I have to say I agree. I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. Well developed characters made the story super compelling.
Jubilee Jenkins suffers from an exceedingly rare allergy – she’s allergic to human touch. It is so rare that twenty years earlier, when she was a young child, the New York Times did an in depth piece on her.
She’s had a lot of strife in her life, but things really took a turn for the worse when she turned 18. Her mother married and moved out, leaving Jubilee to fend for herself. She becomes a recluse, and eventually agoraphobic, and for nine years has no contact with anyone, including her mother, other than checks that regularly appear.
Jubilee’s mother passes away and the husband calls to tell her. He also tells her he is not going to be supporting her any longer, but he’s paid off the mortgage of the house she lives in and she also inherited the car. Jubilee finds a job at the library, and eventually meets Eric and Aja.
Aja is a super smart little boy who bonds with Jubilee, and Eric does too. Eric is divorced with a teenage daughter living with her mother in another town and she won’t speak to him. Eric adopted Aja after his parents, Eric’s best friends, died in a tragic accident. The little boy has some issues, to say the least, as does Eric.
All these damaged characters make for an engrossing read, and Oakley does a really fine job of not going the easy route. This book was unputdownable and these characters are going to stay with me for a long while. Highly recommended.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH by Colleen Oakley. Gallery Books (March 7, 2017). ISBN: 978-1501139260. 336p.
Levine writes two of my favorite series, the Jake Lassiter series and the Solomon & Lord books. With 2016’s Bum Rap, he put his series characters together in one book, and he’s done it again here to great success.
Bum Luck is a terrific legal thriller and humorous crime novel, but more than that Levine tackles a tough subject: CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Lassiter is an ex-Miami Dolphin whose spent his pro career, not to mention high school and college ball, suffering one concussion after another and those headbanging injuries have come home to roost.
Lassiter realizes he has a problem when he gets his client, a famous and hugely popular football star, a not guilty verdict based on Florida’s infamous “stand your ground” law. Convinced his client is really guilty, Lassiter has fantasies of killing him himself – a little vigilante justice. Meanwhile, Solomon & Lord are opposing counsel in an insurance claim case and Lassiter is helping them more than his client, the insurance company.
Lassiter is also suffering from tremendous headaches, dizziness and tinnitus, in addition to his vigilante fantasies, and meets a neurologist that he wants to date, but she’s more interested in his brain issues. Lots of twists and turns keep the pages turning and this was a one nighter for me.
I’m deeply troubled by all the news about CTE and this was the perfect vehicle for a closer look at it. Levine manages to make it all easy reading and never gets preachy, and I am most appreciative that he made that leap in this excellent read.
4/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
BUM LUCK by Paul Levine. Thomas & Mercer (March 28, 2017). ISBN 978-1477823101. 332p.
The Notable Books Council, first established in 1944 by the American Library Association, announced the 2017 selections of the Notable Books List, an annual best-of list comprised of twenty-six titles written for adult readers and published in the U.S. including literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The list was announced in January and I was delighted to see one of the two poetry winners was my favorite poet, Billy Collins. The other was a poet that I was not familiar with, Safiya Sinclair. Seemed like a good time to check out her debut book of poetry, and I’m very glad I did.
The Notable Books Committee described it as, “sharp observations on our off-kilter world will spark your emotions while engaging your mind.” Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, calling it “stunning debut collection.” And Booklist, in another starred review, said “reading (and rereading) Sinclair is an urgently necessary, absolutely unparalleled experience.”
A few other people liked it, too.
From the publisher:
Winner of the 2016 Whiting Award Winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Poetry) An American Library Association “Notable Book of the Year” Longlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award One of BuzzFeed’s Best Poetry Books of 2016 One of The New Yorker‘s “Books We Loved in 2016”A Poets & Writers Top Ten Poetry Debut of 2016 A Publishers Weekly “Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2016”
Colliding with and confronting The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair’s Cannibal explore Jamaican childhood and history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke, creating a multitextured collage of beautiful and explosive poems.
Lets start at the beginning, where Sinclair explains the title:
The word “cannibal,” the English variant of the Spanish word canibal, comes from the word caribal, a reference to the native Carib people in the West Indies, who Columbus thought ate human flesh and from whom the word “Caribbean” originated. By virtue of being Caribbean, all “West Indian” people are already, in a purely linguistic sense, born savage.”
Talk about being hooked from the beginning of a book! The poetry is exquisite; the language is so vivid and emotional and at times, shocking. I couldn’t read it in one gulp, I took my time and savored every page. I came away feeling like I learned something, which I can’t always say about poetry. The best way to see if you may like a poet is to try reading some – or listening to the poet read her own. Enjoy.
Sinclair reading “Hands”
Confessor
This is where you leave me.
Filling of old salt and ponderous,
what’s left of your voice in the air.
Blue honeycreeper thrashed out
to a ragged wind, whole months
spent crawling this white beach
raked like a thumb, shucking, swallowing
the sea’s benediction, pearled oxides.
Out here I am the body invented naked,
woman emerging from cold seas, herself
the raw eel-froth met beneath her tangles,
who must believe with all her puckering
holes. What wounds the Poinciana slits
forth, what must turn red eventually.
The talon-mouths undressing. The cling-cling
bird scratching its one message; the arm
you broke reset and broke again. Caribbean.
Sky a wound I am licking, until I am drawn new
as a lamb, helpless in the chicken wire of my sex.
I let every stranger in. Watch men change faces
with the run-down sun, count fires
in the loom-holes of their pickups, lines of rot,
studying their scarred window-plagues,
nightshade my own throat closed tight
against a hard hand. Then all comes mute
in my glittering eye. All is knocked back,
slick hem-suck of the dark surf, ceramic
tiles approaching, the blur of a beard.
The white tusk of his ocean goring me.
This world unforgiving in its boundaries.
The day’s owl and its omen
slipping a bright hook
into my cheek —
Source: Poetry (December 2015)
The Art of Unselfing
The mind’s black kettle hisses its wild
exigencies at every turn: The hour before the coffee
and the hour after.
Penscratch of the gone morning, woman
a pitched hysteria watching the mad-ant scramble,
her small wants devouring.
Her binge and skin-thrall.
Her old selves being shuffled off into labyrinths,
this birdless sky a longing.
Her moth-mouth rabble unfacing
touch-and-go months under winter, torn letters
under floorboards,
each fickle moon pecked through with doubt.
And one spoiled onion. Pale Cyclops
on her kitchen counter
now sprouting green missives,
some act of contrition; neighbor-god’s vacuum
a loud rule thrown down.
Her mother now on the line saying too much.
This island is not a martyr. You tinker too much
with each gaunt memory, your youth
and its unweeding. Not everything blooms here
a private history — consider this immutable. Consider
our galloping sun, its life.
Your starved homesickness. The paper wasp kingdom
you set fire to, watched for days until it burnt a city in you.
Until a family your hands could not save
became the hurricane. How love is still unrooting you.
And how to grow a new body — to let each word be the wild rain
swallowed pure like an antidote.
Her mother at the airport saying don’t come back.
Love your landlocked city. Money. Buy a coat.
And even exile can be glamorous.
Some nights she calls across the deaf ocean to no one
in particular. No answer. Her heart’s double-vault
a muted hydra.
Anthony Franze debut novel, The Advocate’s Daughter, was so good that it made my best books of 2016 list. I always worry about the so-called “sophomore slump” – writers generally have years to work on their first novel and a much, much tighter timeline for the second. I’m happy to report that The Outsider is a terrific legal thriller as well. And with the Supreme Court in the news, it’s also timely.
Franze is an attorney who has argued before the Supreme Court, and that’s where he sets his thrillers. He offers a wonderful backstage tour of our highest court, complete with notes at the end so you know what is true and what is made up. Plus his stories are riveting, as is the case here.
The “outsider” is Grayson Hernandez, a young man who graduated from a non-Ivy League law school and is working as a messenger in the Supreme Court building. Hernandez grew up in a poor part of D.C., and his best friends really related with S.E. Hinton’s Outsider. In fact,Hernandez’s nickname was Pony Boy.
The day he stumbles onto an assault against the Chief Justice in the parking lot changes his life – in more ways than is at first obvious. Hernandez saves the Chief Justice but the attacker escapes. Shaken, the Chief Justice decides to offer Hernandez a clerkship, the most sought after position for law school graduates.
Most, if not all, the clerks are from top tier law schools, the brightest of the brightest. Hernandez is bright, but had to stay home to help run his family business so those opportunities didn’t come his way. And then the Justice offers him some perks along with the job; his apartment in Georgetown, which comes with a new Audi. Hernandez is overwhelmed but the justice convinces him to accept the offer.
Hernandez loves his new job, discussing law with these brilliant scholars and the smartest one of all, the beautiful Lauren Hart. He has a hard time fitting in, of course, but the Justice offers advice from time to time and eventually he finds his place.
Meanwhile, it appears a serial killer is at work in the D.C. area, and the murder sites all have one thing in common; a feather quill pen, a gift that the justices present to all attorneys who come before them, is found at all the crime scenes. Hernandez is approached by the FBI to help, and he quickly gets in over his head.
There are enough plot twists to keep the pages turning and the suspense just keeps ratcheting up until the final denouement. If you’re a fan of legal thrillers, or just fast paced adrenaline reads, you won’t want to miss this one.
3/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE OUTSIDER by Anthony Franze. Minotaur Books (March 21, 2017). ISBN 978-1250071668. 320p.
Posted by Stacy Alesi 
