Reasons to Stay Alive
by Matt Haig

This is Haig's first non-fiction book, a sort-of memoir about depression and anxiety. I say "sort-of" because parts of it are more pep talk than relaying events from his life. Reasons to Stay Alive describes Haig's first encounter with depression and how he survived it. It also includes, in lesser detail, other episodes to present day and how he manages his depression. The narrative is gentle and encouraging. Haig is careful to say that this is his version of depression, and not everyone who suffers depression will have the same experience or can expect the same relief in the way he did. The book is divided into 5 parts: Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, Being. Within each part are many mini-sections, and many of these are quite short. Some are lists, such as “Things you think during your first panic attack.” Reasons to Stay Alive is honest without being sappy. It offers hope and suggestions, but no cures. It offers comfort with no judgment. What I like best is it articulates something I've never been able to express very well: the difference between being depressed (a normal thing that happens to human beings) and Depression is the difference between hunger and starvation. We say, "I'm starving" when we're hungry as we say "I'm depressed" when low. Being hungry is uncomfortable, for sure, but it's a far cry from dying because of lack of caloric intake. If you suffer from depression and/or anxiety or you know someone who does (and you do), you need to read this book.

Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm reading Between the World and Me for the Current Event book group. Wow, is this a powerful book! Coates has basically written a long letter to his son about life and racism in the United States. At times, the writing is like poetry—exact and beautiful. While this is a short book, I'm planning to read it twice before discussing it at book group.

The Nix
by Nathan Hill

There’s a new novel out that I LOVE—The Nix by Nathan Hill. In 2011, Professor Samuel Andresen-Anderson sees his mother, Faye, for the first time in a long time—on TV—throwing rocks…..at the governor. Faye quickly becomes a media sensation, portrayed as a hippie with a criminal past. To Samuel, she’s the woman who abandoned him as a child. The narrative winds its way through numerous episodes of Samuel and Faye’s lives, from the 1960s to 2011. We meet a variety of characters. At times, I laughed out loud reading this book. Other times, my empathy swelled. While I love the plots of this book, its real strength is the thoroughness of its characters. They’re complex and flawed (in some cases, oh-so-flawed.)

Commonwealth
by Ann Patchett

After Bert Cousins and Beverly Keating divorce their spouses to marry each other, their six children spend summers together in Virginia, forming a tribe based both on their shared unhappiness with their parents and the genuine caring which develops among them. Their bond continues into adulthood, and though the several decades of the book. The story has moments of humor as well as touching and heartbreaking moments as Patchett explores the love and sense of responsibility which bind families together. The book will be released on September 13, and we will have signed copies available.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James
by Emma Hooper

This book has a dream-like quality which is nearly magical. One morning Otto awakens on his Saskatchewan farm to find a note from his 83 year-old wife, Emma, that she is walking to see the water—as in the Atlantic Ocean. He understands her need to do so, and stays at home, eventually teaching himself paper mache to pass the time. Their neighbor and long-time friend, Russell, is unable to let Etta go, and follows her. Eventually, however, he goes on his own quest and Etta continues her journey with James, a talking coyote. The book tells a story of love, adventure, and the effects of war. Magical realism isn’t for everyone, but I enjoy it, and it was appropriate for telling this lovely story.

Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren

Hope Jahren grew up in Southern Minnesota and spent much of her childhood in her father's lab at the community college where he worked. Lab Girl relates the story of Jahren's coming of age in the late 20th century and how she was influenced by her family life, school. and small town experiences. Eventually, she decides that she wants to become a scientist. Lab Girl describes problems faced by scientists such as lack of job stability and difficulties securing funding. Jahren gives readers a sense of additional challenges she faces in a field traditionally dominated by men. Early in her career Jahren meets Bill, a man who will become her collaborator and permanent lab partner. She eventually marries and becomes a mother, her husband and son adding new dimensions to her life. Lab Girl is a memoir told with honesty and humor. Through hard work and tenacity, Hope Jahren ultimately achieves success as a professor and researcher. Lab Girl is about an amazing life complete with challenges and victories. Readers may come away with a greater understanding of scientific research and increased appreciation of the natural world that surrounds us.

Here's the book’s trailer.

Early Warning
by Jane Smiley

Perfume River Nights
by Michael P. Maurer

This is a book about the war in Viet Nam during 1968. It’s written from the perspective of a gung-ho young man who’s anxious to prove his manhood by gloriously getting into the thick of battle. 

First I need to say up front that I avoid reading books and seeing movies about the war in Viet Nam.  Not because I support some political ideology but because I spent a tour of duty in Viet Nam and when I left I wanted to leave it behind. Understand my group was in a supporting role behind the front lines (if there were such a thing there) so my worst day was a stroll in the park for the author. 

The author’s attention to detail took me back, in a heartbeat, to those common areas of the war like “lock-down” (sort of like being in prison) before you got on a flight to Bien Hoa. Or the variety of people you work with and rely upon. What I found most interesting in the author’s writing was his attention to detail when describing encounters with the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). He avoids the gore and instead gets you inside the main character’s head dealing with the impossible situations you find in war. Do I listen to the experienced veteran or do I follow the orders of the “green” lieutenant?

I think you’ll find this an accurate read that keeps you turning the pages.

Longbourn
by Jo Baker

This is a great story for lovers of the PBS series Downton Abbey. The author takes the story of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and fills in the story of the servants "below stairs." There is just as much romance, heartbreak and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs with the Bennet family.

Some Luck
by Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for the book A Thousand Acres. This story is set on an Iowa farm beginning in the 1930's through the 1950's. Walter and Rosanna Langdon have 3 children, each widely different. We follow them as they grow through the depression, war, and changing social and economic values. The author's descriptions of the characters makes this a good read.

The Glass Kitchen
by Linda Frances Lee

Stories about kitchens, cooking and restaurants are a popular theme in books-especially in mysteries. This story is about just that but there is a twist. Portia dreams about a dish or even a complete meal and then sets out to make it, not knowing who might turn up to eat. Often it's just the right dish for someone with a problem. Toss in two sisters and a romance and you have a fun read.

The House in Prague:
How a Stolen House Helped an Immigrant Girl Find Her Way Home
by Anna Nessy Perlberg

Anna and her brothers lived in a beautiful house with her opera singer mother and her attorney father. Their life was like a fairy tale... until the Nazis took over. Her family managed to get onto a train heading west, but a German officer found money in her mother's purse and screamed "You are Jews!" This memoir was written by Anna, a very elegant woman who now lives in Chicago. It traces her life past the Velvet Revolution and to a visit back to her childhood home. She is an inspiration.

The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport
by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen

Into the Beautiful North
by Luis Alberto Urrea

Her remote Mexican town is lovely, but the economic situation got so bad that all the men left to cross the border, and now banditos are moving in. The Magnificent Seven (the 1960 movie: a remake is coming out soon!) came to the village's little theater, and 19-year-old Nayeli was inspired to take her friends into the "beautiful north" on a "mission from God" to find seven Mexican ex-cops or soldiers and convince them to come back and save her village. This is another story that shows immigration from a young person's point of view, but this is today's story.

The Things They Carried
by Tim O’Brien

This book is about a very specific war fought in a rainforest by drafted boys, a war that didn't have a consensus of support from the country. It's about every war. It's about the nature of courage. It's about death. It's about the heightened sense of life and the bonds among soldiers in combat. It's funny. It's disturbing. It's fiction, but parts are not. It's about war stories, how they bend the facts to tell the truth. It's about how war changes men. It's about Tim Obrien's soul. It's about all of our souls. But only Tim Obrien has written like this.

The Magician’s Lie
by Greer Macallister

This book is historical fiction like you have never read. It’s a tale of mystery, romance, and magic. When the husband of the renowned magician, the Amazing Arden, is found dead,  the Amazing Arden is the prime suspect. The officer who catches her by chance in the middle of the night is at first inclined to turn her over to the authorities, unless she can convince him that she is innocent. The story then goes back and forth between the past as the magician tells him her whole extraordinary story, and the present as the officer listens and tries to decide whether she is telling the truth. But it didn’t take long for both the officer in the story, and me as the reader, to get so caught up in her story that you (almost) forget that you have no way of knowing if she is telling the truth. From start to finish, to story takes place over the course of a few hours, the time it takes between the magician’s capture to the time it takes for her to tell her story to the officer. However, the story she tells is her life’s story, from her childhood up to this very night, the night of her husband’s mysterious death. It is full of surprising twists, and will keep you wondering till the very end… I read the whole book in one sitting. Highly recommended!

The Castle of Wolfenbach
by Eliza Parsons

Gentle Reader, don't take my recommendation, but that of Jane Austen's character, Isabella Thorpe, in Northanger Abbey. Published in 1793, The Castle of Wolfenbach, became an instant success, especially among young forward thinking young women coming of age in a turbulent Europe. The French Revolution rumbled just over the Channel, the American Colonies have declared their independence and Britain was uneasily winding up for the Industrial Revolution. Gothic Revivalist Melodrama had emerged in popular fiction, and Castle of Wolfenbach is one of the genre's best. Abductions, obscure noble parentage, obsessive jealousy, tender first love and yes, even a haunted castle. This book has got it all! Plus it shows you the tastes of a reading public just over two hundred years ago. Ah, Gentle Reader, you smile wryly... "You can't tell where you're going, if you don't know where you've been."