Adult

Want to make this a great year? Well, this is just the book for you. Subtitled “Practical Thoughts for Better Decisions in Life,” this is a book you can read quickly on a brief flight that you will want to return to again and again to chart your growth in various parts of your life. Essential reading for anyone looking to improve.

Tale of the extraordinary women who raised James Baldwin, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, whose lives spanned Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement, and the specific prejudices Black women faced during these and many more pivotal moments in American history.

Zauner’s unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother and forging her own identity. Have tissue handy.

I don’t normally list education books on this site, but Frank is a friend and a wonderful speaker. You’ll learn more about digital organization from him in ten minutes than anyone else can teach in a 30-day course. So timely for educators dealing with remote learning.

I have my wife and Janee Dahl to thank for this five-volume series of quirky, funny diatribes that make for quick, happy reading. Check them out: you can finish each volume in under two hours, and they get progressively better.

From 1954 to 1981, Brennan wrote for The New Yorker's “Talk of the Town” department under the pen name “The Long–Winded Lady.” Her wonderful observations of New York form a timeless, bittersweet tribute to what she called the “most reckless, most ambitious, most confused, most comical, the saddest and coldest and most human of cities.”

The holidays are filled with relaxing music, so I decided to grab a biography from one of the master vocalists, Tony Bennett. In this rich and beautiful memoir, the legendary Grammy and Emmy Award–winning singer takes us behind the scenes of his multi-platinum career and provides a “master class in life” that reveals his journey as an artist and all the amazing characters he has encountered along the way.  

Looking at the headlines – the worsening climate crisis, a global pandemic, loss of biodiversity, political upheaval – it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed. This book offers an intimate and thought-provoking dialogue on one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. Sorely needed – now, more than ever.

A beautiful and moving novel of compassion in the face of loss, of the small acts that turn friends into family, and of the possibilities to achieve happiness at any age.

Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait – something we’re born with or not – but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort.

Rich with personal stories and inspirational quotes and sprinkled with a few easy vegan recipes, Brown’s autobiographical “cookbook” is a book to share – and to return to when you want to feel seen, loved and heard. Positive reading in negative times.

The 70+ time champion of Jeopardy has written an enticing, highly-entertaining biography/history of gameshows and trivia that caused me to laugh out loud AND ponder the answers to chapter trivia questions. A wonderful book to have on your coffee table or beside your toilet. Lol!

Inspiring and terrifying read (fitting for Halloween). Inspiring in how it shows the heroics of non-political bureaucrats. It’ll make you less irritated to pay taxes. Terrifying to see how one lunatic can try his hardest to destroy American democracy. Give it a read.

After a screenwriter is murdered on a film set, a street-smart school teacher searches for the killer in this riotously funny episode in the Hildegarde Withers detective series.

A powerful, darkly glittering novel of violence, love, faith and loss, as a young woman at an elite American university is drawn into a cult's acts of terrorism. Reminded me of the current political climate.