Non-Fiction
“The Ambassadors: America’s Diplomats on the Front Lines” by Paul Richter
“Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear
” A Field Guide to the Jewish People” Dave Barry, Adam Mansbach and Alan Zweibel
Fiction
“The Accomplice” by Joseph Kanon
“Robert B. Parker’s: The Bitterest Pill” by Reed Farrell Coleman
“Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel” by Lee Child
TV Show Recommendations
NBC: “The Good Place”- it’s a great way to understand ethics through an entertaining and thought-provoking program on a broadcast TV network
HBO: “The Watchmen”, “His Dark Materials”
Showtime: “Shameless”, “Ray Donovan”
PBS: “Tower of Song” a memorial concert featuring Leonard Cohen music- includes one of the best renditions of Hallelujah, performed by KD Lang
PBS: Ric Burns series on Country Music
Thank you, Larry, for providing this forum in support of books. It’s always a challenge in selecting books, since the list can be overwhelming. So, I’ll give you two titles; one is fiction and the other nonfiction. I’ll start with the nonfiction, since that comes out first. Full disclosure, I was given an advanced reader copy for review.
Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women’s Voices from the Gulag by Monika Zgustova.
Publisher: Other Press
$25.99 US – Hardcover
Pub Date: February 04, 2020
The author interviewed women, former gulag prisoners, and I was surprised with some of the reactions that these women had after having gone through such horrors. One running theme from the interviews was the hunger these women had for literature. Books were forbidden so they memorized poetry they had composed on their own. This is an important book and I do hope that people read it. History told from people who actually lived it seems much more powerful than reading it in a classroom from a textbook.
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman
Publisher: Ecco Press
US SRP: $26.99 US -Hardcover
Pub Date: March 03, 2020
Readers may recall that Laura Zigman is the author of Animal Husbandry, which was made into a movie titled Someone Like You with Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd. It’s been quite awhile since Zigman came out with another book, but now that she has, she does not disappoint. (I was given the advanced reader copy at a bookseller’s fall conference.) Something I like about this novel is how quirky it is. Who would ever consider carrying around a dog in a sling for emotional support? (As a dog lover, how could I question such a thought?) Yet, the author makes this believable where readers will laugh out loud, feel a sense of anxiety or both.