Featured Books

Summer Reading 2008 by Ron Klopfanstein

Summertime is a great time to read about the place where the sun always shines. Setting a book in Los Angeles has almost always guaranteed a book will feature characters and stories with an aura of a perversely seductive seediness blooming in the overheated environment of glamour, desperation and the endless cycle of great hope turning to bottomless hopelessness.

There’s still plenty of time to read these four books from my summer reading list. The new Jackie Collins blockbuster Married Lovers, Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey, High Life by Matthew Stokoe and the most eagerly anticipated non-fiction read this summer Barbara Walters’ triumphant Audition.

Also Featured: Include Me Out by Farley Granger, Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary L. Francione, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida by Matthew Calarco, Philosophy And Animal Life by Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking and Cary Wolfe

Panic In Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, And Other Journeys To The Edge of Science by Richard Preston, Murder in Byzantium: A Novel by Julia Kristeva (Author) and C. Jon Deloqu (Translator), How The States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein, The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mysters of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace, Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness by Elizabeth Farrelly and Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954-1959 by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel, with forward by Mike Wallace

Previously Featured Books

Anything Goes: The Autobiography by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowman, reviewed by Ron Klopfanstein

The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston, reviewed by Denise Klopfanstein

The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes by the Editors of McSweeney’s with an Introduction by John Hodgman, reviewed by Ron Klopfanstein

Married Lovers by Jackie Collins

The appropriate title to begin your summer reading has to be the new Jackie Collins novel, Married Lovers. Her latest blockbuster is being compared to her all-time classic Hollywood Wives. In this, her 26th book, three of L.A.’s A-List power couples are besieged by scandal, greed and a devastating crime of passion.

Jackie Collins is known for her strong beautiful heroines and in Married Lovers she introduces us to Cameron Paradise a woman she envisioned as a “tall, gorgeous, very fit blonde” who, in a first for her, moves in the world of the West Coast’s private fitness clubs.

“Fitness trainers”, she explains, “are very popular in L.A. and what better way to create a heroine who has both integrity and strength.”

What it is about Hollywood and the lifestyles of the rich and famous that inspires Jackie Collins to write the books that have made her world famous?

Her fascination with Hollywood stems from the fact that she has lived there on and off since she was fifteen years old and she knows the culture and show business “extremely well, inside and out!” Her millions of readers will attest to that.

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

In Bright Shiny Morning, author James Frey describes his setting this way:

Los Angeles is the capital of many things. It is the entertainment capital of the world. It is the pornography capital of the world. It is the defense and aerospace capital of the world. It is the street-gang capital of the world. It is the beauty-queen-hoping-to-be-rich-and-famous capital of the world. It is the artist capital of the world. It is also, most unfortunately, the-major-city-that-gets-tagged-by-natural-disasters capital of the world.

Frey has created a brilliant hybrid of fiction and non-fiction in Bright Shiny Morning. He offers fascinating information about L.A.’s lush, but often unlucky, history, sociology, economy and corruption then tells four stories of characters who come undone, or are redeemed, or are driven crazy simply because they fell in love and dreamed dreams.

High Life by Matthew Stokoe

Another new book that continues this Day of the Locust tradition by leaving the reader feeling both excited and shattered is High Life by Matthew Stokoe:

“Hollywood, the City of Dreams. Jack had one ambition: to become famous, a star--in exactly what way he didn't care. He just wanted to be like the people whose lives he followed in the tabloids: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Tom and Nicole. Instead he entered a world much seedier than anything he could have imagined, a world of drugs and crime, whores, snuff shows, incest, deceit, and despair. His wife, Karen, a hooker, is found dead--murdered and disemboweled. During his search for her killer he meets Bella, a woman of immense wealth, and sees a chance to make his dreams of money and fame come true. As it turns out, though, his nightmare is only beginning.” -Akashic Books

Audition by Barbara Walters

Another author who knows all about celebrities is Barbara Walters. I guess I wasn’t the only reader who has been wishing for the legendary newswoman to write her memoirs-Audition premiered at the top of the New York Times bestseller list!

I confess that I immediately skipped ahead to see what Ms. Walters had to say about the “roller-coaster ride or a bumpy trip on a fast-moving bus” that viewers know as the Rosie O’Donnell year on The View. While the backstage perspective Barbara Walters offers up on this tumultuous time, as well as the problems dealing with out-of-control diva Star Jones, are as fascinating and personal as we would expect they are also amazingly tactful and “classy”.

In fact, though Audition is a jumbo-size book filled with personal anecdotes and observations about celebrities (in entertainment, news and politics) it is a remarkably tasteful and professional account of a heroic woman who crossed paths with the most important, fascinating people of our times.

Barbara Walters always manages to raise the bar in news and broadcasting and now she does it publishing; it will be hard for a memoirist or biographer to top the achievement that is Audition.

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This year’s television writer’s strike jolted Americans into an unexpected interruption of our favorite pastime. However millions of viewers found a surprise by tuning into BBC America and discovering Torchwood, a fantastic science fiction drama that more than fills the void left when The X-Files left the air six years ago.

Every episode of Torchwood is an action packed adventure against a backdrop of a sci-fi time traveling mystery as interesting as that of Lost. The characters in Torchwood weave an emotionally compelling tangle of sexual tension, rivalry and gut-wrenching emotion. Each are complicated flawed heroes who are dazzling to watch and impossible to forget. This is especially true of John Barrowman’s “Captain Jack Harkness” TV’s most dashing, sexually liberated hero on either side of the Atlantic.

I couldn’t wait to read Anything Goes, the autobiography of John Barrowman who plays Captain Jack. As a fan I hoped to read a story about a man who was as charismatic, charming and as dynamic as the character he plays on TV and I was not disappointed. John Barrowman has “skied in the Alps, snowboarded in the Rockies, driven fast cars in Monte Carlo, sailed the Aegean, dived in the Caribbean, flown on the Concorde multiple times and kite-surfed across the Straits of Gibraltar…” and that’s just part of one paragraph in this book!

In High School his guidance counselor told him he needed a “plan B” in case he didn’t make it in entertainment. He told her that he didn’t need a “plan B” declaring “if I fall back on anything, it’ll be my ass.” He was right. He had the talent, the drive and certainly the looks to prove it and he takes the reader along for the ride in Anything Goes. John Barrowman’s sexiness, audacity and sense of humor really fuel this story and make the reader feel like he’s speaking directly to them. John’s had an exciting climb to stardom and he shares all the intriguing bodaciously fun anecdotes you’d hope for.

John is also a much-admired hero in real life and a role model for the gay community. On-screen there is no character with a healthier attitude toward sexuality than the happily bi-sexual Captain Jack. Off screen, John Barrowman is rightly credited with considerable bravery for being a public and proud gay man. Anything Goes describes his successful relationship with his partner Scott Gill culminating in a civil commitment ceremony, as well as his coming to terms with his sexuality.

In reading Anything Goes I felt as if I were getting to know John Barrowman, and finding him to be as exciting, inspiring and sexy as I hoped he would be.

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The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston, reviewed by Denise Klopfanstein

Feilding’s father loved her mother,

But Feilding’s mother loved another.

The man who Feilding’s mother married.

Was not the man who child she carried.

This mocking children’s rhyme is the mystery that will keep readers turning the pages in The Custodian of Paradise, a novel by Wayne Johnston. Sheillagh Feilding has spent her life buffeted by men; the distant man who raised her, although he was embarrassed by her size which he considered to be proof that he wasn’t her father; the boy who impregnated her with twins when she was 14; her mother’s second husband who took Sheilagh’s children to raise as her own; the diminutive impoverished boy who she came to love and most of all, the mysterious man who only communicated with her through letters, calling himself her “provider” which both terrified her and comforted her.

Spending her life in solitude, she finds relief through writing caustic articles about the men who have intersected her life. “I write to the point where not another word will come, go out and walk for miles, read until my eyes begin to close, then try to sleep. I nod off momentarily, then wake as though someone has just burse into the room.”

Sheilagh is a richly drawn character with a striking physical presence. She is 6’3” tall and has a withered leg on which she wears a large built-up boot. Fueled by alcohol, with and intelligence, she limps through the dark streets of World War II Newfoundland by night saying nothing, yet seeing everything.

Sheliagh Fielding is an unlikely hero. Readers will cheer for her, worry about her and think about her long after she meets her provider and unravels the central mystery of her life.

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Just in time for April Fools Day! The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes is the kind of book that will compel you to read sections out loud to whomever will listen. This book is filled with wildly hilarious essays: a bitter office worker writes a seething running commentary complaining about the co-worker in the next cubicle, Winnie-the-Pooh and Lady MacBeth’s midnight wanderings are explained by her use of Ambien.

In the funniest piece I have read this year, Grendel’s Mother first takes on the manager at ShopRite over a store policy limiting coupon use then fumes watching Tom Cruise go off the deep end on Oprah.

Some of the other essays that make up this book include “Social Security Denies Gregor Samsa’s Disability Claim”, “Dateline: To Catch A Predator: Humbert Humbert”, “Klingon Fairy Tales”, “Celebrity Biographies Written By A Guy Who Cannot Distinguish Fiction From Reality” and “Rough Drafts of Jenna Bush’s Young-Adult Novel”. Each one is carried off with the perfect tone for maximum comedic impact. You’ll recommend The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes to everyone you know, you’ll want to give copies as gifts and you will want to bookmark favorite sections so that you can go back and reread them whenever you need to laugh. Buy this book.

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Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new—new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum finds characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. From this most innovative of young writers comes another journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up.

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Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe

A group of "settlers" (more like survivors) arrive in Virginia from the ravished island of Manhattan, intending to establish an outpost, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. But nothing goes quite as planned (one settler, for instance, keeps losing body parts). At the heart of the story is Pocahontas, who speaks Valley Girl, Ebonics, Old English, and Algonquin—sometimes all in the same sentence. And she pursues a heated romance with settler Johnny Rolfe via text messaging, instant messaging, and, ultimately, telepathy.

Deadly serious and seriously funny, Matthew Sharpe’s fictional retelling of one of America's original myths is a history of violence, a cross-cultural love story, and a tragicomic commentary on America’s past and present.

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

A sensation across Europe—millions of copies sold

A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.

It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.

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Ceremonial Violence: A Psychological Examination of School Shootings by Jonathan Fast, Ph.D.

Ceremonial Violence analyzes the Columbine high school shooting and four other cases and explains for the first time why teenagers commit school rampage shootings. These cases include:

• Brenda Spencer, 16, who after shooting at elementary school children for no apparent reason explained to a reporter: "I hate Mondays."
• Wayne Lo, 18, a brilliant Taiwanese student and violin prodigy who embraced white supremacist rhetoric. One night he stalked the campus of Simon's Rock College with a semi-automatic rifle picking victims at random.
• Evan Ramsey, 16, who went on a shooting rampage in Anchorage, alerting some twenty-five friends beforehand so they could observe the mayhem.
• Luke Woodham, 17, who claimed to have been controlled by demons when he killed his classmates.

In addition to these cases, Fast provides a detailed, clear narrative of the Columbine shootings. With his grasp of the elements of abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, sociology, and neurology that contribute to the homicidal mindset, Fast offers us a means of understanding and coming to terms with these tragedies.

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Godchildren by Nicholas Coleridge

All the godchildren, looking back on that fateful dinner, remembered it in the same way: the vacant wooden throne at the head of the table, the huge array of wine glasses and water glasses that were always a feature of dining at any of Marcus’ houses, the sense of expectation and dread that hung over them like a cloud of mustard gas.

In his magnificent island home overlooking the sea, the great tycoon Marcus Brand plays host to his six godchildren. But soon, secrets will be revealed that dramatically alter the tone of this holiday weekend, and all will have to confront a web of betrayals and lies spanning four decades…

Each from a different background, the godchildren grew up enthralled by their godfather:

• Charlie, fascinated by Marcus's wealth;
• Mary, whose life is blighted by tragedy; Jamie, feckless but utterly charming;
• Saffron, stunningly beautiful but unaware of her power over men;
• Abigail, insecure and gauche;
• and Stuart, who is torn between admiration and hatred for his capitalist godfather.

Godchildren is an epic tale; powerful, engrossing, and impossible to put down. With his trademark blend of wicked satire and impeccable writing, Coleridge has created gloriously jaw dropping portrait of the British upper crust.

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Left in Dark Times by Bernard-Henri Levy

In this unprecedented critique, Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the world’s leading intellectuals revisits his political roots, scrutinizes the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those on the horizon, and argues powerfully for a new political and moral vision for our times. Are human rights Western or universal? Does anti-Semitism have a future, and, if so, what will it look like? And how is it that progressives themselves–those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism–have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes: an unthinking loathing of Israel; an obsessive anti-Americanism; an idea of “tolerance” that, in its justification of Islamic fanaticism, for example, could become the “cemetery of democracies”; and an indifference, masked by relativism, to the greatest human tragedies facing the world today? Illuminating these and other questions, Lévy also brings to life his own autobiography, highlighting the thinkers he has known and scrutinized and the ideological battles he has fought over thirty years–revealing their bearing on the present.

Above all, Lévy offers a powerful new vision for progressives everywhere, one based neither on the failed idealisms of the past neither nor on their current misguided, bigoted, and dangerously sentimental attachments but on an absolute commitment to combat evil in all its guises. The “new barbarism” Levy compellingly diagnoses is real and must be confronted. At a time of ideological and political transition in America, Left in Dark Times is a polemical, incendiary articulation of the threats we all face–in many cases without our even being aware of it–and a riveting, cogent stand against those threats. Surprising and sure to be controversial, wise and free of cynicism, it is one of the most important books yet written by one of the crucial voices of our time.

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The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton’s beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family.

For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These “Wednesday Sisters” seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature–Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens–and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year.

As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success.

Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.

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Personal Days by Ed Park

In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. There’s Pru, the former grad student turned spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety stalks him in his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jack II, who distributes unwanted backrubs–aka “jackrubs”–to his co-workers.

On a Sunday, one of them is called at home. And the Firings begin.

Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance, this astonishing literary debut is at once a comic delight and a narrative tour de force. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever worked in an office and wondered: “Where does the time go? Where does the life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?”

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My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan

Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away.

For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is —and who we are.

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Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson

We have vast oceans of information at our disposal, yet increasingly we seek knowledge with brief glimpses at online headlines while juggling other tasks. We are networked as never before, but we communicate even with our most intimate friends and family via instant messaging, email, and fleeting face-to-face moments that are rescheduled a dozen times, then punctuated when they do occur with electronic interruptions and a lack of focus.

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing--attention. Attention is the key to recapturing our ability to reconnect, reflect, and relax; the secret to coping with a mobile, multitasking, virtual world that isn't going to slow down or get simpler. Attention can keep us grounded and focused--not diffused and fragmented.

Distracted offers the cutting-edge solutions we need to cure--not just live with--an epidemic of inattention. How did we get to the point where we keep one eye on our Blackberry and one eye on our spouse--in bed? At a time when we can contact millions of people worldwide, why is it hard to schedule a simple family supper? Most importantly, what can we do about it?

Journey with Maggie Jackson as she explores the many ways in which we are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained attention-the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its erosion, she introduces us to scientists, cartographers, marketers, educators, wired teens, virtual lovers from the telegraph age, and roboticists building smart machines to comfort and care for us. She takes us from the nineteenth-century roots of our mobile, virtual multitasking ways into a darkening future of snippets, glimpses, skimming, McThinking, and mistrust.

Jackson makes it clear that if we continue down this road of scattered attention spans and widespread societal ADD, we will be in danger of squandering and devaluing the essence of humanity, and our technological age could ultimately slip into cultural decline. But we are just as capable of igniting a renaissance of attention by strengthening our varied powers of focus and perception, the keys to judgment, memory, morality, and happiness. She investigates the science of attention--describing some of the exciting new scientific research that shows how attention skills can be nurtured.

Taking us beyond Blink, Faster, and CrazyBusy, Distraction is unique. It's simultaneously an original exposé of the multifaceted nature of attention, an engaging and often surprising portrait of postmodern life, and a compelling roadmap for cultivating sustained focus and nurturing a more enriched and literate society.

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