friendship

Book 45 for 2025: “Atmosphere”, Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Joan, the main character, is an astronomer obsessed with the stars since childhood. She is content with her life as a physics professor until she sees an ad seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space program. While her initial attempt fails, she applies again and succeeds.

In the summer of 1980, she begins her astronaut training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, along with other trainees, including some from the military and others chosen because of their specialist expertise. She is one of those. Some of the top military pilots are nice and some like to make jokes at the expense of women. The women know they won’t all be chosen to go to space. As a consequence one woman in particular becomes excessively competitive. Others help each other and hang out together.

The novel details the rigor of astronaut training both mentally and physically, how trainees behave under stress, and how all the stress makes some people nicer and others increasingly rude. In the midst of all this Joan continues to care for her beloved niece and discovers a love she never dreamed of in her wildest dreams.

Book 44 for 2025: “Kafka on the Shore”, Haruki Murakami

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This is my first Murakami novel; it will not be my last. It’s fascinating and profound. A 15 year old boy, Kafka, runs away from home. His mother and older sister disappeared when he was four. He does not remember them. His father, a famous sculptor, ignores him. Although they live in the same house, they rarely see each other. After running away, he finds a private (but open to the public) library in another city and is taken in by the two people in charge of the library.

Nakata, another main character who is an elderly man, is not very bright due to a bizarre event that sent him to the hospital in a coma when he was a child. He talks to cats and makes fish and eel fall from the sky like rain. He becomes friends with another principal character, a young truck driver, who helps him out because Nakata reminds him of his grandfather.

The novel portrays the lives of these characters through their actions, dreams, and fantastical events. The unreal becomes real and people learn about their true selves through these events.

Book 42 for 2025: “Hope In A Time of Dying”, Len Leatherwood

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This autobiographical novel was written by a good friend of mine whose own family experienced some of the horrors of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. The main character, Hope Winterfield, and her husband make their living as antique dealers in Texas when her elder brother, Robert, a doctor with HIV, convinces them to move with their three daughters to the LA area to help him out. Because their antique business is not doing well and she wants to help her brother, they move, thinking that if it does not work out, they can move back to Texas.

Robert has an ex, Anthony, who is also his business partner, who hates Robert’s new love, the charming, handsome, younger man, Cody. Hope takes the job Robert has offered her, only to discover the dynamics surrounding the job, her brother, friends she has known for years, and many others are nearly overwhelming and that quite often nothing is as it seems. Added to all this is Hope’s difficult mother who often denies the realities of her own life. This is the tale of a family and complicated family dynamics where the main characters have to decide what it most important in life and what they should value the most and fight for.

Book 33 for 2025: “Landscapes”, Christine Lai

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The novel fascinated me in so many ways, the style of writing, the subject matter, what I learned about some famous paintings and especially Turner. I will never see works by Turner in the same way as I previously did. Before mostly I noticed the colors, the translucence. I totally missed the details and the violence nearly hidden.

The novel takes place after an ecological collapse in England where first violent floods occurred followed by a devastating drought. Now it has not rained in three years and Penelope, the main character, spends most of her time working as an archivist for the notable collection at a soon to be demolished estate in the English countryside. She has lived here for two decades with her current partner, Aidan, who owns the estate. The disasters have nearly destroyed the once magnificent mansion. Now Penelope and Aidan allow refugees from the disasters to live there with them as they transition to new places and housing until the new buyers demolish the place.

Most of the novel is Penelope’s diary, what she writes about her life present and past. In the midst of this her archivist notes appear as well as descriptions of famous paintings, most of which show women being brutalized in one way or another, e.g. The Abduction of the Sabine Women, 1633-34, Nicholas Poussin. Later in the novel there are segments from the viewpoint of Aidan’s brother, Julian, who previously owned the estate and with whom Penelope experienced a violent and disastrous relationship.

This is a tale of survival, redemption, memory, and art as a means of renewal. I liked this novel so much that I spent time looking up the art the protagonist describes, researching Turner, writing down passages, etc.

Book 14 for 2025: “About Grace”, Anthony Doerr

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This is one of the most heart wrenching books I have ever read. As a child, the main character, David Winkler, discovers he possesses the ability of premonition via dreams that come true. Only his mother understands him; unfortunately she dies while he is still young, leaving him with father who is only physically there. He becomes an hydrologist, specializing in the structure of snowflakes, leading a rather lonely life as a weatherman in Alaska. While at the grocery store, he meets a woman. He knows what she is going to do before she does it. Eventually, they develop a relationship. The remainder of the novel details the consequences of their relationship and their having a child, Grace. David dreams that he will not be able to save Grace from flood waters, his wife thinks he is crazy, and then to avoid what he perceives will be Grace’s fate if he stays, he disappears. Eventually, he arrives hungry and destitute on a Caribbean island where he is taken in by a kind family who have escaped imprisonment in Chili during the military dictatorship there. He agonizes over whether his running away saved Grace and is unable to find out what happened to her. Eventually he saves up enough money to search even though he has no idea where she might be or how she will react of he finds her alive. Will her mother forgive him, will Grace if he finds her? He is driven to find out no matter the consequences.

This novel’s main themes include love, longing, forgiveness, the meaning of friendship, and the human search for grace.

Note: I have now read everything published by Anthony Doerr. His works contain beautiful prose and detailed descriptions. One of the most impressive things about his work is the amount of research required to write in such great detail about so many subjects, e.g. structure of snow flakes, the anatomy of different types of shells, the history of the city now called Istanbul and its ancient neighborhoods.

Book One of 2025: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store”, James McBride

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This is another great novel by one of my favorite authors. The book begins with the finding of a skeleton in a well in 1972. Since it is located near the site of an old synagogue, the police start to question a local, elderly Jewish man, Malachi, but get nowhere. Before they can come back to ask him more questions, Hurricane Agnes washes away the skeleton and many houses in the lower, wealthier part of town. When they do finally get around to hunting for him again, he has disappeared.

Then the novel goes back 47 years in this nondescript Pennsylvania town where the white people live in the lower, nicer part of town, and the Jews and black people live in or near an area called Chicken Hill, a poor area with little water and no plumbing. It is the story of a Jewish couple, Chona and Moshe. She runs the grocery store in the title, and he runs a dance theatre where he hosts dances, sometimes showcasing very famous musicians, mostly Jewish or black or Latino. It is also the story of some of their black neighbors, one of whom was Chona’s best friend in school, Jewish immigrants from Europe like Malachi, and a deaf black child, Dodo. When the state comes for Dodo because his mother has died and they think he should be institutionalized, Chona’s kindness and the courage of a local black worker, Nate Timblin, bring the black and Jewish people together to save him. While all this can be sad and serious, I also found myself frequently laughing. This novel reveals the quirks of all sorts of people, how they relate to one another, the dangers of racism, and ultimately the meaning of community, courage, and friendship and how much these things matter.

Celebration in Downtown LA

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As a counselor for College Match LA, I joined a group of current students in college and alumni at Perch LA, a restaurant in downtown with a rooftop venue. The views there are fantastic, the finger food yummy, and seeing some of my students delightful–they are at Oxy and loving it. Here are a few photos.

The view after dark.

Ice skating.

Book 25 for 2024: “The Spoiled Heart”, Sanjeev Shasta

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The main character, Nayan Olak, is a Sikh whose parents immigrated to England. He has worked decades first on a factory floor and then later risen through the ranks of his union. Encouraged by others, he decides to run for head of the union when suddenly a young woman of the same ethnicity decides to run against him. She will do anything to beat him including using an unfortunate argument between them to accuse him of all sorts of misdeeds.

In the meantime, a woman, Helen, who left town under mysterious circumstances years ago shows up with her young adult son who is recovering from the aftermath of another unfortunate misunderstanding. Helen works for home health but refuses to take care of Nayan’s dementia ridden father. He cannot figure out why since she willingly takes care of others. He becomes obsessed with her, helps her son who becomes a sort of substitute for Nayan’s son who was killed along with Nayan’s mother in a fire many years previously. The police never determined who started the fire even though they knew it was arson.

Tragedies ensue as this story about race, misunderstandings, secrets, and relationships progresses. It also demonstrates the power, for better or worse, of misunderstood words and actions.

Book 21 for 2024: “The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu”, Tom Lin

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If you like the unusual, violence, magic, revenge, stories of racism, classism, and Westerns, this is the book for you. Ming Tsu, a Chinese orphan at the time when the Chinese were building the railroad, is taken in by the head of a crime organization and taught to be an assassin. He falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a wealthy railroad magnate, elopes with her only to have her father (who has hired the crime organization to further his goals) kidnap her and force Ming Tsu into labor for the railroad. He eventually escapes, joins with a Chinese clairvoyant whom he calls the Prophet and a group of touring magic show performers, many of whom have supernatural abilities. He sets out to gain revenge, hunting down and killing all who helped his father-in-law kidnap Ada and put him in bondage. This is the classic Western romance, revenge story with a totally different twist and an unexpected ending.

Book 16 for 2024: “Digging to America”, Anne Tyler

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This book details the lives and relationships between two families, one native to the US and the other Iranian immigrants. When the young couple in each family adopt a Korean baby, their lives become intertwined. Every year on the anniversary of the arrival of the babies, they take turns hosting an Arrival Party. Two of the grandparents, one on each side, one male and one female, find their lives linked in unexpected ways. The book explores what it means to be an immigrant, how the native born sometimes view those from another country, and questions to what extent a person’s character is due to culture and what is simply the way that person remains regardless of culture. While a serious exploration of culture, family relationships, friendship, and cultural adaption, the book is also quite funny. I found myself sometimes laughing out loud and at other times feeling sad. I also found myself thinking more about my own personality and its development.