Books – Page 14

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton, 278 pages)

For some people, the title of Richard Powers’ new novel, Bewilderment, might seem a nod to his last.

Although The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the 612-page book, published in 2018, had decidedly mixed reviews from the general public. Many readers found it confusing, overwrought, pretentious, unwieldy and preachy.

There are no such problems with Bewilderment, which is a taut and engrossing read from its opening pages to its unsettling ending. It is Powers’ 13th novel and should delight his longtime fans and recruit new ones. There is a raft of intelligent design bobbing in this fast-moving river of a book that centers on two characters: a widowed astrobiologist and his neurologically atypical son who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive behavior. In all of modern literature, you will not find a more sympathetic account of what it’s like to be a single parent raising a child who cannot regulate his behavior. Nor will you find a more thoughtful, yet accessible, musing on the mysteries of the universe.

The novel begins with a father-son camping trip that Theo Byrne arranges as an extended time-out for his son, Robin, who is on the verge of being expelled from third grade because of his out-of-control behavior. Robin, who goes by Robbie, is 9 and has the usual challenges of children that age; other children bully him, for example, because of his name, which was given to him because it was his mother’s favorite bird.

Alyssa Byrne has been dead for two years, but her spirit is very much with her son and husband, who recite her favorite prayer every night: May every sentient being be free from unnecessary suffering. Alyssa was what is commonly known as an animal-rights activist, but without the red spray paint. She was a sharply intelligent, untiring force of nature who used natural winsomeness to alleviate the suffering of animals and to draw attention to mass extinctions under way. In the words of her husband, “She ionized any room, even a roomful of politicians.”

Alyssa’s sudden death (the details of which are slowly revealed) was catastrophic for the family, beyond usual ways. It left Theo an island with no support in his insistence that Robbie not be subjected to psychoactive drugs while the child’s mind was still developing. And it left Robbie, already prone to fits of rage and other antisocial behavior, obsessed with his mother and her causes. At one point, he decides to paint a picture of every endangered animal and sell the paintings to give to one of Alyssa’s favorite charities.

All this alone is fodder for a very good novel, especially given the sensitivity and insight that Powers brings to the challenges of parenting children with autism-spectrum disorders, especially for those doing so alone.

But Powers brings another layer to the story through Theo’s choice of career. A researcher who uses data and imagination to envision forms of life that could populate planets that have yet to be found, Theo shares these potential worlds with his son, who possesses extraordinary wisdom and empathy. Their conversations about the Fermi paradox (the fact that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life despite the overwhelming odds that it exists) and other scientific concepts lend an intelligence to this novel that inferior literature lacks, and Theo’s descriptions of theoretical planets at times mirror what’s going on in the book. It’s a lovely dance, expertly choreographed by a master.

Robbie’s escalating problems lead Theo to seek out an experimental therapy called Decoded Neurofeedback, which Theo and Alyssa had participated in years ago. Using artificial intelligence, a subject’s brain is mapped, and then taught to steer toward another subject’s emotions. Because Alyssa’s data was available, it is eventually incorporated into Robbie’s treatment, and unforeseen consequences ensue.

This puts Theo, a science-fiction fan since childhood, deeper into an already mind-boggling dilemma — whether to continue with therapy that is apparently helping his son, even when unfolding events threaten to publicly expose Robbie’s participation in a controversial treatment.

As in The Overstory, Powers has points to make, about nature, humans’ oversized footprint on the planet, and politics. His occasional asides into the actions of a fictional president (clearly Donald Trump, or an imitator, though never directly identified as such) — such as a directive that all Americans carry proof of citizenship at all times — seems unnecessary, although there is an endearing fictional Greta Thunberg with whom Robbie falls in love and who is a perfect fit with this story. And when the reason for the title is finally revealed in the waning pages of the novel, it’s a political observation, but pitch-perfect no matter what ideology the reader embraces.

A Hollywood happy ending would betray the complexity of this deeply serious and heart-rending novel, so don’t look for that. But this should be a contender among the best novels of 2021.

Book Notes

If your life has been a little colder, a little drearier these days, maybe it’s because it’s November. Or maybe it’s because it’s been almost five years since the last BBC episode of Sherlock aired, and Benedict Cumberbatch is still being cagey about whether he will make another season.

No matter. There’s usually something new in the Holmes universe, and this month comes Miss Moriarty, I Presume? (Berkley, 368 pages) by Sherry Thomas, writer of something called “The Lady Sherlock Series.” The major characters are Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson, and previous titles in the series include A Study in Scarlet Women and A Conspiracy in Belgravia. It’s anybody’s guess what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would think of this, but the books have made the New York Times bestseller list.

Doyle died in 1930, but his inspired character lives in the genre of pastiche, literature written in the style, and with many of the same characters, as a famous work. Call it a more formal and tasteful style of fan fiction, one that satisfies the appetite for more and more stories of a beloved character.

British writer James Lovegrove has done this successfully with the Sherlock Holmes franchise, and he released a new novel in October: Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors (Titan Books, 416 pages). That’s seasonal enough, but he also published Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon two years ago (Titan, 384 pages). It seems that Halloween and Christmas are morphing into one big festival, probably starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas.

There are nine other Lovegrove/Sherlock books, and he’s also written a handful of short stories, published in anthologies, all listed on his website. That should be enough to keep you entertained until a fifth season of Sherlock comes out.

If not, there’s a Benedict Cumberbatch adult coloring book available on Amazon.

Book Events

Author events

• MITCH ALBOM Author presents The Stranger in the Lifeboat. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Fri., Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• KEN FOLLETT Author presents Never. Virtual event with author discussion and audience Q&A, hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Sun., Nov. 14, 1 p.m. Tickets cost $36 and include a book for in-person pickup at The Music Hall. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• TANJA HESTER Author presents Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., Nov. 22, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• HILARY CROWLEY Author presents The Power of Energy Medicine. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Nov. 18, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRENE BROWN Author presents Atlas of the Heart. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Via Zoom. Tickets cost $30. Ticket sales end Dec. 2, at noon. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• COVID SPRING II BOOK LAUNCHVirtual book launch celebrating COVID Spring II: More Granite State Pandemic Poems, an anthology of poetry by 51 New Hampshire residents about the pandemic experience in New Hampshire, now available through independent Concord-based publisher Hobblebush Books. Includes an introduction by Mary Russell, Director of the New Hampshire Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library. Sun., Nov. 7, 7 p.m. Virtual, via Zoom. Registration required. Visit hobblebush.com or call 715-9615.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

The Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson

The Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson (Celadon, 249 pages)

Jane Goodall was just 23 years old when a renowned paleoanthropologist hired her to study the behavior of chimpanzees in the wild in Tanzania. Goodall had no background in science, not even a college degree.

But she had something that proved even more important: persistence. She was willing to sit for hours patiently and crawl through brush looking for the animals that her boss believed could better explain human evolution. Goodall also had her mother, who accompanied her on the trip and would share a “wee dram” of whiskey with her every night, Goodall writes in her latest venture, The Book of Hope.

Months passed before Goodall had anything to report, but one day she observed a male chimpanzee using a stem of grass to scoop termites out of a mound. This was an exciting development in animal science, since at that time it was believed that only humans used tools. It was also an exciting development for Goodall personally, because she got new funding and began the career that would see her become the world’s most famous naturalist.

Now 87, Goodall is still mostly known for her work with chimpanzees, although these days her primary job is giving talks about environmental issues via Zoom. She is deeply concerned about climate change, extinction, the loss of animal habitat and a host of other connected issues, as is Douglas Abrams, her co-author and the likely reason this promising title disappoints.

Abrams is an entrepreneur and another “New York Times bestselling author” you’ve never heard of. His company, Idea Architects, came up with the idea to do a series of books collaborating with famous people on a cheery topic like hope or joy. Abrams’ first book, called The Book of Joy, Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, was built around the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Goodall, meanwhile, gets the subject of hope all to herself.

It was a good idea, poorly executed. Throughout her career Goodall has been something of an ambassador of hope for the natural world, and she’s written multiple books about her work. She understands what’s known as “eco-grief” — a sense of despair about what’s happening to the planet and its inhabitants. But because of Goodall’s observations of how flora and fauna can recover from devastation, she says there are four reasons that people should be hopeful about the future.

Sure, they are platitudes (cue “the indomitable human spirit” and “the resilience of nature”), but in the right hands this book might have worked. Unfortunately these are the wrong hands, and they’re too many of them. (Who is this “with Gail Hudson” mentioned on the cover and nowhere else?) Generally speaking, the chances a movie will be bad rise in proportion to the number of screenwriters. This is true of books, too.

But I blame Abrams, who employs the laziest form of narration: unspooling conversations in banal “I said, she said” construction while padding paragraphs with unnecessary, fawning detail.

An example: “The morning sun was making Jane’s cheeks glow as we began another day of interviews. Looking at her in her salmon-colored turtleneck and gray, puffy jacket, I realized I never thought of her as being old.”

Get a room, people.

The book is based on a series of conversations that Goodall and Abrams had about hope. They begin by discussing her career and what Abrams calls the science of hope — research on what hope is, and how its presence or absence can inspire or kill us. They also quickly destroy any hope that the book will be compelling by strangely talking about the book within the book.

Actual line: “Okay, we can add a section of Further Reading for those who want to learn more about the research we discuss in the dialogue.”

Goodall is the victim here. When she’s allowed to talk, with no descriptions of what she is wearing or what warm throw she is wrapping around her shoulders by the fireside, she is generally fascinating, as are her stories.

I’d heard before about 2,000-year-old seeds that archaeologists sprouted, but I didn’t know that these were the seeds of date plants collected from the courtyard of the biblical King Herod, nor did I know they grew to mature trees that bore fruit. Goodall herself has eaten one of those dates.

Nor did I know about the Survivor Tree from 9/11, a pear tree that was nearly destroyed when the towers collapsed but was painstakingly nursed back to health, was replanted near Ground Zero, and has since cradled birds’ nests.

These are the sort of stories that Goodall says gives her hope, along with similar stories of animals on the brink of extinction that are coming back with intensive human intervention.

For example, there’s an endangered bird in Europe, the black robin, that naturalists coaxed into laying two eggs, which they took from the nest (with much angst) and placed in another nest to hatch. The hope was that the parents would try again and they did, building another nest and laying two more eggs, which again were removed. Eventually there were six eggs that hatched, and all the fledglings were returned to the mother (with extra food so she wouldn’t exhaust herself trying to feed them.)

She is also inspired by “rewilding” efforts going on in Europe, the intentional return of wolves to national parks in the U.S., and hundreds of other projects that attempt to undo damage to ecosystems by overhunting and overharvesting. And Goodall and Abrams spend a whole chapter drawing hope from the actions of young people.

The book ends with a discussion of Goodall’s hope in life after death. It’s a surprising turn in the conversation born of a question someone asked her once: What’s your next big adventure? Dying, she said, and she wasn’t being morbid. “If there’s something (after death), which I believe, what greater adventure can it be than finding out what it is?”

Abrams may well be a terrific interviewer, and he does extract interesting stories from Goodall, but his prose is uninspired at best, and too often tedious. He did Goodall no favors by injecting himself into what should have been solely her book. C

Book Notes

A debut author who lives in Vermont is getting a lot of buzz on must-read lists for fall.

The novel is The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (Little, Brown and Co., 336 pages), and the author is Nathaniel Ian Miller, who once wrote for newspapers but now raises beef cattle. Animal-rights activists best stay from the Ned’s Best Beef website, which features pictures of cows with cutlines that say things like “tasted fantastic.”

Let’s hope, at least, he brings that sense of humor to the novel, which is about a Stockholm man who goes to the Arctic seeking adventure and gets more than he bargained for when he is disfigured in an avalanche. “There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements,” according to the publisher. They had me at “the company of a loyal dog,” although I still have not emotionally recovered from the loyal dog in Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars(Vintage, 336 pages).

Another promising new book that will wreck your emotions is One Friday in April, a memoir about suicide by Donald Antrim, who came close to jumping off the roof of his four-story apartment building in 2006. Antrim is a novelist with impressive credentials, including a MacArthur Fellowship and being named one of 20 best novelists under 40 by The New Yorker in 1999. Those accolades could not erase the pain that Antrim battled, which he considers a disease of the body and brain called suicide. The excerpt on Amazon is riveting, whether or not you have intimate knowledge of this disease.

Finally, Mary Roach, queen of the one-word titles (Stiff, Bonk, Gulp, Grunt and Spook, among others) is back with Fuzz (W.W. Norton, 320 pages), subtitled “When nature breaks the law.” Roach is a science writer with a gift for digging up seemingly implausible things, such as the fact that just a few centuries ago animals were actually put on trial for human crimes like trespassing or breaking and entering. (And you thought our legal system had problems now.) It looks like another fun read that will give you plenty to talk about at holiday parties. If there are holiday parties, you know.

Book Events

Author events

• CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE Author presents Comfort Me With Apples. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore. Fri., Oct. 29, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

• MITCH ALBOM Author presents The Stranger in the Lifeboat. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore. Fri., Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

Poetry

• “IN MY SHOES” Poetry reading and open mic event. Eight poets who recently completed a four-week poetry class will read their poetry. Community members are invited to bring and read an original or favorite poem that fits with the theme for the open mic portion. Sat., Oct. 30, 1 to 3 p.m. Twiggs Gallery (254 King St., Boscawen). Free. Light refreshments will be served. Visit twiggsgallery.wordpress.com or call 975-0015.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, by Blythe Grossberg

I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, by Blythe Grossberg (Hanover Square Press, 290 pages)

Earlier this year Netflix released a documentary on the college admissions scandal that was dubbed Operation Varsity Blues. If there were to be a prequel, it could be based on I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, a memoir that reveals the lengths to which the wealthy go to ensure that their children do well in high school.

Massachusetts native Blythe Grossberg is a learning specialist who spent nearly 20 years tutoring “the children of the one percent” in New York City, all the while tucking away unflattering anecdotes about her clients and their offspring. It is, in many ways, a story of “poor little rich kids.” Grossberg is sympathetic to the teens, not so much to their parents, some of whom seem to view children as a sort of designer accessory.

Grossberg, who now runs a tutoring company based in Boston, made up names and changed identifying details to create composite characters for the memoir. That seems justified for ethical reasons, if not legal ones, but it does drain the book of some of its power, knowing that Lily, Alex and Trevor, some of the students featured in the book, don’t actually exist, at least not exactly how they are depicted.

That said, maybe that’s a good thing.

Alex, for example, is among the teens portrayed here whose parents play a minimal role in his life. Their job is to make money and hire the tutors, drivers and housekeepers.

For much of the year Alex’s driver picks him up in a black Cadillac Escalade so he can play tennis before and after school. Practice doesn’t end until 7, and then his tutors (plural) await. “He spends far more time with his driver than with his parents, who often don’t come home until long after I’ve tutored Alex in writing,” Grossberg writes.

In addition to Grossberg, the teen has a Yale-educated tutor for math and science, and another tutor, who charges $800 an hour, to prepare him for the SAT. He also has a team of psychiatrists who help with his anxiety.

Although his days are packed with activities, there’s plenty that Alex doesn’t have to do. He doesn’t do homework on his own; that’s saved for tutoring time. His meals are prepared, his clothes washed and put away, his room cleaned, all by others.

Grossberg sees another of her students, Lily, a high school freshman, in between squash lessons and personal training, to which she is driven by the family’s housekeeper. There are few family dinners; in fact, there is no time for dinner at all — Lily eats sushi while she is tutored.

Grossberg works with 16-year-old Ben in the business center of the fancy hotel where he lives. “His parents live in a room nearby with a younger brother, but they are never home.” He eats mostly room service, his favorite a $27 burger on a ciabatta roll. “Bereft of parental supervision, Ben spends his days shuttling between his allergist and therapist and ordering room service. He often goes to school without the proper clothes because his parents forget to go shopping for him.”

While Grossberg at times works to defend the parents as hard-working and well-meaning, they don’t come off well in this book. They complain when she can’t come on the evening they request, or when their children receive Bs. When a grade is not to their liking, it’s either the teacher’s fault (the child is “a bit politically conservative” for this school) or Grossberg’s. Incredibly, some have to be dunned to pay Grossberg’s invoices, sometimes because an accounting firm handles all the family’s expenses.

Grossberg calls the teens “Gatsby’s children” and says they are the spiritual heirs of Fitzgeralds’s hero, who lived in luxury on Long Island. The Great Gatsby, of course, is required reading for most American high school students, and Grossberg’s charges read about Jay Gatsby and his friends with little self-awareness. In fact, they have little awareness of the world outside their world; as do their parents, who are incredulous when Grossberg tells them that she is not summering in the Hamptons. (Does anyone not in the 1 percent use “summer” as a verb?)

Essentially, this is a book not just about tutoring but about the outsourcing of parenting that can occur when enough disposable income is present. One night Grossberg had just gotten home to her family when a student’s mother called and asked if she would speak with her daughter, who was upset about a grade. Grossberg says she could tell from the background noise that the mother was at a restaurant. She called Sophie, who had gotten a B- on a test and was sobbing. She ranted for a while and then announced she had to go study for another test. “I realized she just needed to talk and her mother outsourced it to me,” Grossberg writes.

The same mother later appears in the book when her husband is under investigation for financial wrongdoing and is pictured on the front page of The New York Times. On Grossberg’s next visit, she worries about what to say, but needn’t have: The mother launches into a discussion about her unhappiness with the B+ her daughter has just received.

And on it goes, a car accident in book form that you can’t stop ogling even though you know this is all none of your business, not what’s going on in these children’s lives, nor in their parents’, nor in Grossberg’s. And here’s the thing: While Grossberg is sternly opposed to the lives that Gatsby’s children are leading and makes clear that neglect is one of the parents’ sins, she is collecting all these anecdotes by working long hours after her own teaching job, leaving her young son in the care of babysitters for six days a week. The circumstances are much different, and Grossberg repeatedly compares her impoverished lifestyle, replete with holes in her shoes, with those of her clients. And yet, on some level, both the rich and the (relatively) poor commit the same parenting sin.

Grossberg, the daughter of lawyers and married to an Ivy-League educated magazine editor, makes clear that she needs the money she earns tutoring, but she also lives in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. I found myself wondering why the couple didn’t just move somewhere cheaper, and devote more time to her son.

Ultimately she does move, back to Massachusetts, although by then her son is a teenager. She’s now president of a tutoring company that, from the looks of the website, still caters to the 1 percent. The poor we will always have with us, Jesus of Nazareth said, to which we can add, and they’ll do their homework by themselves. The rich will have help, and it makes for entertaining reading. As for the writing, people probably won’t hire Grossberg based on this book. B-

Book Notes

With William Shatner having formally gone to space the dawn of space tourism is officially here, and the publishing industry was ready for launch.

The most promising read for the general public is Christian Davenport’s The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (PublicAffairs, 320 pages), but it’s three years old, making it practically ancient history in a rapidly changing field. Similarly, Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Space Raceby Tim Fernholz (Mariner, 304 pages) was published in 2018.

More recently, there are two choices. Liftoff by Eric Berger (William Morrow, 288 pages) is a narrower look at Musk and “the desperate early days that launched SpaceX.” There’s also Test Gods by Nicholas Schmidle (Henry Holt & Co., 352 pages) which looks at the third major player in space tourism, Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic.

Shatner, meanwhile, might want to update his autobiographyUp Till Now (Thomas Dunne Books, 358 pages). From his remarks after his return to Earth, it sounds like the flight he made was life-changing, and the memoir was published in 2008. But even more remarkable than going into space at age 90 is the number of books Shatner has written, to include science fiction, multiple memoirs and even a book about horses, published in 2017, The Spirit of the Horse (Thomas Dunne Books, 304 pages). By some accounts Shatner has published 22 books even while continuing to work as an actor, a remarkable second act. It’s a safe bet that a 23rd is already in the works.

Meanwhile humorist David Sedaris has published Round 2 of his diaries. A Carnival of Snackery (Little, Brown and Co., 576 pages) spans the years from 2003 to 2020 and is a followup to 2017’s Theft By Finding, which covered 1977 to 2002. Sedaris already written about many of the events recounted here, but this promises to be an even more unvarnished look, the original material, so to speak

Book Events

Author events

• WENDY GORTON Author presents 50 Hikes with Kids: New England. Virtual event hosted by The Toadstool Bookshops of Peterborough, Nashua and Keene. Via Zoom. Sun., Oct. 24, 2 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• RAVI SHANKAR Author presents Correctional. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., Oct. 27, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE Author presents Comfort Me With Apples. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Fri., Oct. 29, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Chasing Eden, A Book of Seekers by Howard Mansfield

Chasing Eden, A Book of Seekers by Howard Mansfield (Bauhan Publishing, 216 pages)

Sy Montgomery and Howard Mansfield, who live in Hancock, are the first couple of nonfiction in New Hampshire, really in all of New England.

Montgomery is a naturalist known for her books on animals and the people who love them, to include an octopus at the New England Aquarium (Soul of an Octopus) and a Wilbur-like pig that she raised (The Good, Good Pig). Her latest, The Hummingbird’s Gift (Atria, 96 pages), introduced Brenda Sherburn, a California woman who rescues and rehabilitates hummingbirds.

Less prolific as a writer but equally engaging is her husband, Mansfield, whose books cover a wider range of topics. His body of work includes a book entirely about sheds (and, of course, simply called Sheds), a collection of essays called Summer Over Autumn, and books about landmarks (The Bones of the Earth) and the strong lure of our homes (Dwelling in Possibility). Mansfield plumbs history to tell obscure stories, while exploring our attachment to places and things. His latest is Chasing Eden, A Book of Seekers, released by Peterborough’s Bauhan Publishing. He pivots here to study people: the strange and stubborn characters of American history who took advantage of the Founding Fathers’ urging to pursue happiness, even when to the rest of the world they might look a little bit crazy.

“We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to a friend in 1840, and Mansfield uses the quote to explain the restless searching of Americans in the 19th century. Of course, it didn’t end with the new century. “Our agitation has not ceased; it has taken different forms,” Mansfield writes, noting that at any given time 500,000 people are on planes. The world is full of “tourists, travelers, voyagers, sojourners, pilgrims.” Some of us are traveling for work or family obligations, yes. But others, he argues, are looking for more existential things; we are seeking to reclaim our own personal Eden.

In three sections — one on freedom, one on peace, one on God — Mansfeld introduces a disparate band of Eden-chasers, from a disheveled, smelly group of zealots known as the “Vermont Pilgrims” to the Tennessee abolitionist dubbed “the accidental Moses” to the better-known (and presumably better-smelling) Pilgrims who famously dined with the Wampanoag tribe and unknowingly gave us Thanksgiving (and Black Friday sales).

It was a daunting task, to gather these unconnected acorns of history and find the common, exhilarating theme, but Mansfield does so masterfully, and with each chapter, leaves the reader wondering, how did I not know that before?

How did I not know about the Mummyjums, the religious sect that did not believe in changing their clothes or bathing but somehow managed to poach followers from other small cults as they traveled around the country? (“The mayor of Cincinnati, concerned about the spread of smallpox, asked that they camp a mile from the city,” Mansfield writes.)

How did I not know about the Black doctor, Albert Johnston, who practiced for much of his life in New Hampshire, by “passing” for white, until his racial background was revealed when he tried to join the Navy just before the U.S. joined World War II? The story will make your blood boil, especially when the Navy sends a letter suggesting he join the war effort as a fireman or carpenter.

And how did I not know that iconic “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” bumper stickers have been around since the 1930s and that then they were “a badge of honor in an era when radiators overheated on the way up and brakes overheated on the way down.” And that people from all over the world write and request new stickers when theirs wear out.

But for all of Mt. Washington’s fame, the time people spend at the summit reveals something a bit disturbing about our Eden-chasing. Mansfield interviewed Howie Wemyss, general manager of the auto road, who told him that the average stay at the top is 45 minutes.

“That’s a lot for an American,” Mansfield replied. Especially for the site of the “world’s worst weather.”

The staff has tried promotions designed to coax visitors into staying a while longer, even just an hour. But then people ask, Wemyss said, “Do we have to stay an hour?”

Eden, apparently, has a short shelf life, even when people spend hours or days to get to it. But Mansfield doesn’t dwell on this. Instead, he peels back these and other hidden bits of American history in his easy-going, what’s-the-hurry style that probes every corner of a story Chasing Eden is a thoroughly New England book, even when it ventures outside the region, perfect for fall evenings by a fire. A

Book Notes

The 1993 movie Hocus Pocus, against all odds, has become a Halloween cult classic, and a sequel is being filmed for Disney+ in Massachusetts.

So I know you’re thinking: But is there a cookbook?

Amazingly enough, there is. The Unofficial Hocus Pocus Cookbook (Ulysses Press, 144 pages) by Bridget Thoreson is a testament to American capitalism. It appears to be heavy on the pumpkin recipes, seasonal treats (squash ravioli and baked apples) and clever titles (“I Smell Scrod!” and “Blood of Owl Soup”).

“This book is a celebration of Hocus Pocus, its characters, and of course, its big musical number for no apparent reason,” Thoreson writes. As they say, if you like this kind of thing, you will love this sort of thing.

As for other seasonal fare, there’s not much new out except for Witches, Then and Now (Centennial Books, 192 pages), edited by Shari Goldhagen, which looks to be a thin history of witch lore.

Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts (Fig Tree, 336 pages) looked promising, until the synopsis revealed there’s nothing spooky about it. It’s a novel about a thirty-something food writer who gets ghosted by a man who said he wanted to marry her.

For an actual ghost story revisit 2020’s The Regrets (Little, Brown & Co., 304 pages), which is a strikingly original novel by Amy Bonnaffons about a man who dies in an accident but is sent back to Earth because he is deemed “insufficiently dead.” He’s given a list of instructions, all supposed to keep him from incurring regrets. “Ghost falls in love with a human” has been done, but rarely as hauntingly as this.

Finally, 2018 gave us What October Brings: A Lovecraftian Celebration of Halloween (Celaeno Press, 332 pages), a satisfying collection of stories and verse about the spooky season from the pen of the late H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft was a New Englander who wrote science fiction and horror that didn’t become widely popular until after his death at age 46 in 1937. His work is now cult classic, like Hocus Pocus, but also beautiful: “The palette of Fall roars against the dark hills, the trees still clothed in finery, hanging on, perhaps, for the ball, the festival, All Hallow’s Eve.”

It’s a paperback, but still a great coffee-table book for the season.

Book Events

Author events

• HOWARD MANSFIELD Author presents Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers. Thurs., Oct. 14, 6:30 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• R.A. SALVATORE AND ERIKA LEWIS Authors present The Color of Dragons. Tues., Oct. 19, 6:30 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Tickets cost $5. Space is limited, and registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel, by Martin Walker

The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel, by Martin Walker (Knopf, 316 pages)

I do love cozy mysteries. I love the wit, the lack of gratuitous violence, and often the underlying area of expertise that each series includes — like mysteries centered around the experiences of a White House chef or an embroidery shop owner or someone who owns a bakery. Cozies follow a predictable pattern; the “detective” is often reluctantly drawn into a murder that they must then solve. They’re usually written with good dialogue and a protagonist who frequently questions his or her ability to succeed. Of course, all good cozies also teach you about the protagonist’s hobby or business.

Cozies are what I turn to when I need a break from reading the heavier political books that are out there. I think of them as a palate cleanser, sort of like watching an episode of Murder, She Wrote between episodes of Dateline.

I wasn’t familiar with the Bruno, Chief of Police series, written by Martin Walker, and when I picked up book No. 16 (!), The Coldest Case, without having read any of the other ones, I had some doubts. Would I be missing too much backstory with the characters?

Turns out I didn’t need to worry. The Coldest Case is a compelling murder mystery that is solved by a modern-day Renaissance man, Police Chief Bruno, who seems to know a little about a lot of things. In this story Bruno has been haunted by a 30-year-old cold case in which a body was found in the woods near St. Denis, France.

After visiting a museum exhibition, Bruno gets the idea to “recreate facial structure” over the victim’s skull in the hopes that it will lead to identification. To do this he calls in an expert who can sculpt the face. While the facial reconstruction is being done, newly obtained DNA evidence links the murder victim to a French special forces soldier who died in action.

Now the unsolved murder mystery also becomes a tangled web of family secrets. The murdered man turns out to be the dead soldier’s father. The mother is also dead and had kept her secret from both her husband and her family. It turns out solving the cold case is going to need a great deal of diplomacy.

In doing the investigation Bruno moves from the Bergerac vineyards to old Communist Party strongholds in Paris and their links to the Soviet bloc. It’s an exciting and intelligent read filled with historical facts that move at a steady pace.

There is a small weak spot in this book. Bruno’s relationship with his long-term girlfriend Isabelle sets off some alarms (I couldn’t really see what he sees in her) but as this is the 16th book I’m sure there is history that I am unaware of. Their relationship wasn’t a deal-breaker for the book; it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Bruno is so accomplished and Isabelle seems so, well, childish. Still, the overall storytelling makes up for this small bumpy patch.

And as in all good cozies you learn things along the way, like about the breeding of basset hounds, the care of riding horses, gardening, and of course, this taking place in the Perigord region of southern France, the glorious food that is prepared and eaten. Not only do you get the pleasure of solving a mystery but you also get to learn about French culture and topics that you probably never knew you’d be interested in.

“‘Good for you, and your priorities are the right ones,’ the mayor said, nodding his approval and trying to put her at ease. ‘But we can’t let you come to the Perigord without enjoying the sights and the food, so you can understand why we’re all so devoted to this region.’”

That right there seems to be the additional reason for this book. The first reason is, of course, the murder mystery and the telling of a fine story, but the second and equally important reason is to share the beauty and culture of a little slice of French heaven on earth.

This is one of those books, like Under the Tuscan Sun, that will make you put the region in which it takes place on your bucket list to visit. Martin does an excellent job of describing the scenery, meals, culture, and people of Perigord. Reading this book is like taking a tiny vacation in the middle of your workweek.

Although this was my first Bruno, Chief of Police novel, it will not be my last. Enjoyable, entertaining and educational — a winning combination. A

— Wendy E. N. Thomas

Book Notes

Call up Kate Bowler’s new book, No Cure For Being Human, and Amazon informs that it’s the No. 1 bestseller in the category of colorectal cancer, which seems a dubious honor that the author may not want.

Amazon categories are like that. You might think you’re writing in a genre of inspiration or faith, but the company likes that label “bestseller” and will scuttle around on the algorithm floor until it finds a category that fits.

At this stage of life, I have zero interest in colorectal cancer and hope that continues. But I have but a lot of interest in Bowler, who was a relatively obscure professor at Duke Divinity School until she got sick and started writing about it. Her illness revealed a master wordsmith, and her first book about her experience with cancer, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved(Random House, 208 pages), was warm and witty, yet a ferociously blunt take on getting a devastating diagnosis as a young mother.

No Cure for Being Human (Random House, 224 pages) continues in that vein, and its opening pages suggest that Bower’s sense of humor has gotten even sharper throughout her years of treatment.

For an entirely different kind of suffering, though still viewed with humor, check out How to Suffer Outside (Mountaineers Books, 224 pages), Diana Helmuth’s original take on the well-worn topic of hiking and backpacking. “Someday, at some point in your life (if it hasn’t happened already), you’re going to see something misshapen,” she writes, continuing, “This is the best time to put everything in a backpack and leave.” Which is pretty much what Cheryl Strayed did in Wild, but Helmuth puts a more practical take on the subject, writing more in the style of Jen Sincero’s “badass” series. If you need inspiration to join the leaf-peeping hordes, this breezy paperback might help.

Finally, every now and then you come across a book that withered on the vine but should have been a bestseller simply because of its title. To wit: Naked Came the Leaf Peeper, a 2011 novel by Brian Lee Knopp and Linda Marie Barrett (Renaissance Bookfarm, 212 pages). It’s a collaborative novel, meaning 12 different authors contributed to it. A book by committee: What could go wrong? But long past-due kudos for the title.

— Jennifer Graham

Book Events

Author events

• JORDAN MORRIS Comedy writer and podcaster discusses his podcast, Bubble. Virtual event presented by The Bookery in Manchester via Zoom. Fri., Oct. 8, 2 p.m. Visit facebook.com/bookerymht.

• MELANIE MOYER AND CHARLIE J. ESKEW Virtual author conversation presented by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Sat., Oct. 9, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• DIANNE TOLLIVER Author presents Life Everyone Has a Story. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Oct. 9, 10 a.m.

• ARCHER MAYOR Author presents Marked Man. Virtual event by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Oct. 12, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• HOWARD MANSFIELD Author presents Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers. Thurs., Oct. 14, 6:30 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Harrow, by Joy Williams

Harrow, by Joy Williams (Knopf, 224 pages)

The literary genre of science fiction is so yesterday. What’s hot today is climate fiction, colloquially known as cli-fi. It’s a niche within a niche: dystopian drama specific to climate change — the villain, of course, being us.

Into this mauldin sea falls the latest novel by Joy Williams, best known for The Quick and The Dead and The Changeling. Harrow is her first book in 20 years, and it simultaneously feels as though she labored over it every hour of the past two decades, and also as if it sprang fully formed from her forehead yesterday. It’s that fresh and topical, that beautifully crafted.

It’s also, let’s be clear, a very strange story.

The narrator, Khristen, was raised by a mother with a tenuous grip on reality. The mother was convinced that Khristen had died briefly when she was a baby and was returned to life with an extraordinary purpose. This vague mission was drilled into Khristen throughout a childhood growing up in a climate-cursed world where there is an insatiable demand for houseboats with fireplaces and hot tubs, where zoos have been washed away, where ordinary things like oranges are memories, and where meteor showers contain no actual meteors, but accumulated space junk.

“Life never seemed more unreal than when I was with my mother,” Khristen muses at one point, showing that Williams intends to speak to the human condition at all times, not just in this future hellscape. And a hellscape it truly is: “The land was bright with raging fires ringed by sportsmen shooting the crazed creatures trying to escape the flames.” But at times, there are oases of normalcy: a bowling alley here, a birthday party there, although a birthday party where a child’s cake is frosted with the grotesque image of the 19th-century painting “Saturn Devouring His Son.”

After the boarding school she was attending shuts down unexpectedly, Khristen wanders through this world like a nomad, because that’s what people do when an apocalypse comes. “The people I saw didn’t seem to be traveling. They were milling, like little flies after a rain,” she observes. In this world, insects, rocks, even flowers “were aware of nothing but hope’s absence. Something definitely had gone wrong. Even the dead were dismayed.”

She briefly befriends a professor who once rescued horses used for research; the horses are long gone, perhaps everywhere. Then at his recommendation she travels to a resort where her mother might have gone for a conference, the last time she’d communicated with her. There, however, she finds a group of elderly people, all with terminal illnesses, who had not succumbed to the despair paralyzing the rest of the world but instead were energized by their final quest: to avenge nature. They are carrying out what amounts to random acts of revenge largely unnoticed because, “Certainly no one expected the old to be difficult.”

“The elderly were encouraged to depart life and they obliged with little protests and surprisingly few regrets. It had not been foreseen that some would turn on the very institutions that had made them the last beneficiaries of what was enshrined as progress.”

It’s a wickedly smart turn of events, that a handful of old people, whom the young blame for the dystopia around them, turn into eco-terrorists, given the generational warfare sparking throughout the book. (In one scene, a mother and daughter traveling by train pass the Rio Grande River, or what’s left of it, and the daughter says accusingly, “You haven’t left us anything!” to which the mother replies “I didn’t drain the Rio Grande, my dear.”)

But these terrorists, who all suffer some sort of terminal condition, are not especially effective; they mostly dream of killing herbicide representatives or taking out an expedition of trophy-hunters without actually doing it. They, like the rest, are basically milling like flies, vehicles for Williams’ perverse imagination and mind-bending turns of phrase.

Not much happens in this novel, not in the way that stuff happens, say, in an Avengers film, and it slows even further in the third section, as the characters mature. But Harrow is entertainment at its finest, while also at its worst: Should we really be entertained by climate catastrophes? Making jokes at the expense of polar bears?

“Tell me,” says the mother sparring with her daughter on the train. “When was the last time you read a good book by a polar bear?”

Therein lies the quandary at the heart of the climate debate, rarely engaged: Was it worth all of this — the rising seas, the killer storms, the 6th extinction — so human beings could ascend to their peak? And is it over, that peak, and if so, when was it? Williams has no answers to these or any of the questions that Harrow poses, but it’s a disarming piece of cli-fi, erudite and droll, and only mildly depressing. A

Book Notes

I’d never thought of CNN in terms of anything but breaking news until people started telling me about the show Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.

The series, which debuted in February, follows the actor as he eats his way through Italy, and it’s been renewed for a second season. Of course, then, there had to be a book, which comes out next week. Taste: My Life Through Food (Gallery, 304 pages) is already showing up on bestseller lists in advance of its release. It’s a memoir of Tucci’s life, though, with much reminiscing about meals. If it’s recipes you want, go 2015’s The Tucci Table (Orion, 256 pages), written with Felicity Blunt, or 2012’s The Tucci Cookbook (Gallery, 400 pages).

Also out next week, and mentioned solely for the bright light of its title, is I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins (Riverhead, 304 pages). It’s about a writer with postpartum depression who leaves her husband and newborn and explores her psyche in the Mojave Desert. She’s written one other novel and a short-story collection but has already won a handful of literary prizes to include the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Meanwhile, readers of the sports blog Deadspin may remember a columnist by the name of Drew Magary. His storytelling skills are put to the test in The Night the Lights Went Out (Harmony, 288 pages), which is a chronicle of a traumatic brain injury he suffered when he fell and smashed his head on a cement floor. Apparently, somehow he has managed to make this both poignant and funny (the funny part only possible because he has recovered 95 percent of his brain function). If nothing else, it will remind us to watch where we’re going. It’s out Oct. 12.

And finally, New Hampshire author Howard Mansfield has a new book coming out in October. Chasing Eden, A Book of Seekers (Bauhan Publishing, 216 pages) is a season-appropriate, New England-centric reflection on Americans in pursuit of their happiness. Among them: a group of 19th-century painters looking for inspiration in the White Mountains and a quirky group known as the “Vermont pilgrims” who “never changed their clothes, bathed, or cut their hair.”

Thankfully, another group of pilgrims looms larger in the national memory, and Mansfield covers them, too. Look for Chasing Eden in paperback Oct. 12.

Book Events

Author events

ARCHER MAYOR Author presents Marked Man. Mon., Oct. 4, 6:45 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

• JORDAN MORRIS Comedy writer and podcaster discusses his podcast, Bubble. Virtual event presented by The Bookery in Manchester via Zoom. Fri., Oct. 8, 2 p.m. Visit facebook.com/bookerymht.

• MELANIE MOYER AND CHARLIE J. ESKEW Virtual author conversation presented by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Sat., Oct. 9, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• DIANNE TOLLIVER Author presents Life Everyone Has a Story. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Oct. 9, 10 a.m.

• ARCHER MAYOR Author presents Marked Man. Virtual event by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Oct. 12, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• HOWARD MANSFIELD Author presents Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers. Thurs., Oct. 14, 6:30 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Mellencamp, by Paul Rees

Mellencamp, by Paul Rees (Atria, 320 pages)

John Mellencamp hasn’t been a reliable hitmaker since the 1980s, back when he was known as John Cougar. Generation Z would be hard-pressed to name five of his singles, even though “Jack & Diane” and “Pink Houses” still get play on oldies stations.

Mellencamp himself could qualify as an oldie, as he’s about to turn 70 next month. So why would anyone but his biggest fans read a book about his life?

Billed as the definitive biography of the rough-hewn rocker from a small town in Indiana, Paul Rees’ Mellencamp works because it’s written by Paul Rees, a longtime British music writer immersed in the industry and gifted with the elegant prose common in magazines like GQ and Vanity Fair. He takes a local-boy-makes-good story and adds a touch of mystery, making Mellencamp a surprisingly engrossing story even for people who are only vaguely aware of Mellencamp’s music.

Even more surprising is that he’s helped by the subject himself, a profane and rough-edged product of an often dysfunctional house who seems unable to utter a sentence without dropping an f-bomb. Prudes, cover your eyes. The direct quotes from Mellencamp in this story wouldn’t make it past TV censors, even as loose as their standards have gotten lately.

Mellencamp uses profanities as casually as the rest of us use verbs and admits to having a high-voltage temper that lost him jobs early in his career. He came by it honestly: His father was an angry man who once beat his teenage son savagely and violently cut off his hair. That’s the sort of thing that would land a lot of people in therapy for decades, but Mellencamp grew up as tough and defiant as his dad and, astonishingly, says he has good memories of his childhood, which he paints in vaguely Ozzie-and-Harriet terms. Theirs was a church-going family which, for fun in the evenings, would have “bongo parties” in which grown-ups would gather around the gramophone, singing boisterously to artists like Woody Guthrie while someone kept the beat on a bongo drum. “These were happy, rowdy affairs,” Rees writes.

In retrospect, there was no sign in Mellencamp’s teen or early adult years that he would be able to support a family let alone become a famous musician. When he was 18, he got a 21-year-old woman pregnant, then secretly married her but continued to live with his parents. The secret was exposed the night he went to the prom — with another girl — and was congratulated on his marriage by someone who had seen something about it in a local paper. That’s the sort of wild story that populates this book; whether or not you’re a fan of Mellencamp’s music, or his style of living, he has led an utterly fascinating life, and the story that Rees skillfully teases out of these early anecdotes is ultimately more about determination than talent.

Living off his new wife’s income, young Mellencamp bounced from job to job, showing little evidence of ambition. (In another of those bizarre anecdotes, he once got fired from a job at a telephone company after accidentally disconnecting an entire town from its service.) But he kept coming back to his music and at some point developed a steely resolve that allowed him to leave Indiana for the first time and go to Manhattan to go door-to-door at music companies, leaving demo tapes. This went on for a while. He papered a door in his home with rejection slips. But then magic happened. He got a call from a manager who liked what he heard and told him he was sending him a plane ticket and he should return to New York the next day. That would be Mellencamp’s first plane ride.

It would take years, however, before Mellencamp found success, and when it first came it was, ironically, in the U.K., where his first hit, “I Need a Lover,” took off before it hit the airwaves in the U.S. In those difficult years, in which Mellencamp’s first marriage was unraveling, Rees gives us a glimpse into the pop-music industry, as Mellencamp crosses paths with a star-studded roster of antique rockers, to include The Cars and The Eagles. For all his bravado, Rees writes, Mellencamp struggled to maintain belief in himself and his product, as he listened to these bands recording their now famous songs in nearby studios. “I’d walk by their room and hear all of those beautiful songs coming out. Then I’d listen to what I was doing and it was a … joke. It got to the point where I didn’t want to go to the studio,” Rees quotes Mellencamp as saying.

How the singer overcame his doubts, foul mouth and hot temper to ultimately have 28 hit singles and sell more than 60 million albums worldwide is as interesting as what he does now, which is … paint. Didn’t see that coming, but the singer sells his work on johnmellencampart.com, and to this untrained eye, it’s quite good.

Before Rees gets there, however, he answers many questions you didn’t know you had, such as how “Jack & Diane” came about, and what was up with the ever-changing name. (A manager insisted he debut as Johnny Cougar, which Mellencamp hated. And even Mellencamp wasn’t the family’s original name. A great-great-grandfather who emigrated from Germany Americanized Mollenkamp.)

There is also a satisfying amount of crude philosophy from the rocker who says, “Happy is not a normal way to be.” Happiness, according to Mellencamp, is a “very small commodity.”

“We live to work. And we should toil like galley slaves and try to find happiness in our work. That’s what life is about,” Rees quotes him as saying.

Them’s fighting words to hedonistic America, but Mellencamp has always been a rebel with a punch at the ready. B+

Book Notes

Earlier this year the Macmillan imprint Feiwel & Friends announced that it would be publishing a handful of classics with a twist: The beloved characters of books like Little Women and Wuthering Heights would be of different ethnicities than the original and as such would experience the world differently. Otherwise, the plot and themes would be roughly the same.

The first of the series, called “Reclaimed Classics,” came out this month. It’s a retelling of Treasure Island called A Clash of Steel, written by C.B. Lee (Feiwel & Friends, 432 pages), and the main characters are Asian girls sailing the South China Sea.

Also out this month is a reboot of Little Women, with Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy March portrayed as Black. Called So Many Beginnings (Feiwel & Friends, 304 pages), it’s written by Bethany C. Morrow.

Yet to come are reimaginings of Robin Hood and Wuthering Heights.

Meanwhile, the finalists for the National Book Awards in fiction were announced last week. You’d have to read more than one a week to get all 10 read by Nov. 17, the day the winner is announced, but with enough coffee it’s definitely possible.

And the nominees are:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner, 640 pages, release date Sept. 28)

Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead, 272 pages)

Abundance by Jakob Guanzon (Graywolf, 328 pages)

Zorrie by Laird Hunt (Bloomsbury, 176 pages)

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (Harper, 816 pages)

The Prophetsby Robert Jones Jr. (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 400 pages)

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead, 240 pages)

The Souvenir Museum: Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco, 256 pages)

Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton & Co., 288 pages, released this week)

And finally, noteworthy if only for its title, Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton, 336 pages)

Book Events

Author events

• EMMA PHILBRICK Author presents Arkivestia. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Sept. 25, 1 p.m.

• DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

• ARCHER MAYOR Author presents Marked Man. Mon., Oct. 4, 6:45 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

• MELANIE MOYER AND CHARLIE J. ESKEW Virtual author conversation presented by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Sat., Oct. 9, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• DIANNE TOLLIVER Author presents Life Everyone Has a Story. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Oct. 9, 10 a.m.

• ARCHER MAYOR Author presents Marked Man. Virtual event by Toadstool Bookshops of Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Oct. 12, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com.

• HOWARD MANSFIELD Author presents Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers. Thurs., Oct. 14, 6:30 p.m. Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord). Visit gibsonsbookstore.com.

Book sales

• MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

• FRIENDS OF BROOKLINE PUBLIC LIBRARY TWO-DAY BOOK SALE Featuring hardbound and paperback books of all fiction and nonfiction genres, plus CDs, DVDs and audio books, for sale. 4 Main St., Brookline. Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visit brooklinenh.us/brookline-public-library/pages/friends-of-the-brookline-public-library.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Water, A Biography, by Giulio Boccaletti

Water, A Biography, by Giulio Boccaletti (Pantheon, 300 pages)

Watching muddy brown water flood the streets of Louisiana, Mississippi and New York City, I want to turn to Giulio Boccaletti’s Water, A Biography for an explanation of how we suddenly seem on the verge of being extras in that 1995 film Waterworld.

The excess, or lack, of water gets more of its share of headlines these days, so the timing seems right for a serious look of how we got here and where we’re going, told in a compelling narrative that can engage non-scientists.

Unfortunately, Water, a Biography is not that book. It’s a treatise written by an economist and scientist for other economists and scientists, and for their policy-making friends. While it may win awards, Boccaletti’s book will not be attractive to the general public; for that, you’ll want Philip Ball’s H20: A Biography of Water, published in 1999. Boccaletti’s work is encyclopedic, in both scope and presentation.

He begins promisingly, with words that evoke Genesis if written by a physicist told to write a version of “In the beginning” without mentioning God:

“Long before Earth ever formed, the subatomic particles that emerged from the Big Bang’s first instants formed a plasma of hydrogen and helium. Gravity pulled them together in a nuclear fusion that fueled the first stars, the furnaces that forged heavier elements like oxygen. In the proto-stellar material left by the death of those first stars, hydrogen and oxygen reacted. They produced water.”

That’s lovely, and Boccaletti goes on to provide a fascinating overview of water throughout space and history: why water exists everywhere in our solar system, what caused ice ages, why a great flood myth is common to cultures all over the world, and why water, in the author’s words, is the “principal greenhouse gas” that wraps the planet like a blanket. He then moves into a history of how access to water played into the change from hunter-gatherer societies to the sedentary agriculture-based communities, and the development of crude dams, canals and irrigation systems.

In these early societies, water also played a role in religious myths. In one story found on tablets in Nineveh, Boccaletti writes, lesser gods were required to maintain the canals. “Eventually the gods, tired of having to do all the work, created man to do the digging for them. In other words, those who wrote [the epic] believed that humans existed for the struggle of managing water.”

He goes on to examine the use and control of water in Egypt, Greece, Italy and China, among other ancient societies. Rome’s system of controlling water was particularly sophisticated. “At the time of Augustus, Rome already had far better infrastructure than most European cities would have until the nineteenth century,” he writes. (In fact, one of those ancient aqueducts is still in use today.)

It’s about here that the book begins to bog down for the reader who may not be overly fascinated by European power struggles over water access throughout the Middle Ages. There is relief in a discussion about what’s known as the Little Ice Age, the period of cooling temperatures that began in the 14th century and saw temperatures fall about 2 degrees below average in Europe for a few centuries. During that time, there were also violent, flooding storms in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. “Between 1620 and 1621 the Bosporus froze. Baghdad flooded in 1630. The Arctic pack ice grew enough for Inuits to land kayaks in Scotland. Snowfall, heavier than ever recorded — before or since — lay on the ground for months.”

The cause of the Little Ice Age? Well, no one is sure, just like no one is sure how water came to be on Earth, although there are theories to explain the Little Ice Age, to include volcanic eruptions and sun spots. Regardless, Boccaletti explains, the slight changes in temperature created societal problems to include a “shorter, less reliable growing season,” which led to higher costs of grain and, in some places, famine or malnutrition. “The political crisis of the seventeenth century was inseparable from changes in environmental conditions,” he writes.

As for our current climate, Boccaletti takes it up late in the book and does so carefully, saying it’s too early to predict the extent of the challenges ahead, although “There is a very good chance that [the climate] may change far beyond anything in recent experience, thanks to modernity’s impact on the chemistry of the atmosphere.”

Some countries, however, are better equipped to deal with the changes: “Countries that are rich can manage water better, but it is often the case that countries are rich because they found a better way of managing water.” China’s Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam in the world, may be one of the most impressive attempts by a society to control water. But Boccaletti argues that it is an illusion that society can protect itself from a variable climate with concrete. “The question, once again, is what will happen when — not if — that illusion is shattered.” And for that, he has no answers, or has saved them for another book. B-

Book Notes

In the aftermath of deadly flash floods in New York and New Jersey, The New York Times amused some of its readers by publishing a guide to packing a “go bag” and “stay bin” in order to be prepared for emergencies.

Such information is readily available, even on government websites, but the old gray lady is not usually in the ranks of doomsday preppers, people who are equipped to take on any sort of natural or man-made disaster.

One thing conspicuously absent from Tara Parker-Pope’s list, however, was any sort of book. This is odd because if you’re bugging out to an emergency shelter, bunker or cave, you’ll need something to do when you get there, possibly for a long time. (May I recommend Moby-Dick, The Gulag Archipelago or Les Miserables?)

More importantly, if a doomsday scenario ever occurs, you’re not going to have internet access. So it seems that any sort of survival bag should contain at least one book that teaches you, well, to survive. Enter the newly released 4th edition of The Survival Medicine Guide, by Dr. Joseph Alton and Amy Alton of YouTube survival video fame. It’s billed as “the essential guide for when help is not on the way” and, at nearly 700 pages in paperback, seems to cover everything. Moreover, it’s published by the brilliantly named company Doom and Bloom LLC.

From a legacy publisher, there’s also last year’s The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skill and Survival by Steven Rinella (Random House, 464 pages). You may not want to learn how to do everything Rinella teaches, but you definitely want to know someone who did.

And out this week is the paperback version of a 2009 book, Hawke’s Green Beret Survival Manualby Mykel Hawke (Skyhorse, 456 pages). He promises to deliver the information you need on not only medicine and food but also fire, tools, navigation, shelter and “survival psychology.” The publisher promises it’s geared to the untrained civilian, i.e., me.

Finally, one of the best fiction books about surviving a flu pandemic that wipes out much of the human race is Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars (paperback, Vintage, 336 pages). It was published in 2012 but feels alarmingly relevant these days.

Book Events

Author events

• AMY TIMBERLAKE Newbery Honor winning author presents her second Skunk and Badger book, Egg Marks the Spot. Virtual event via Zoom, hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Sept. 21, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• JEFF BENEDICT Author presents The Dynasty. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., Sept. 22, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• EMMA PHILBRICK Author presents Arkivestia. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Sept. 25, 1 p.m.

• DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

• DIANNE TOLLIVER Author presents Life Everyone Has a Story. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Oct. 9, 10 a.m.

Book sales

• MULTI-BOOK AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m.

• MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel (Ecco, 194 pages)

Matt Siegel is obsessed with food — not with eating it, but with learning about it. Siegel’s first book, The Secret History of Food, was born of his pastime of reading about the origins of the things we eat, going down the rabbit holes of history via Google searches and library books.

This means that many of the stories the former English professor tells here have already been told by someone else in formats less engaging. Siegel (not to be confused with the longtime Boston DJ) lives in Richmond and is a hunter-gatherer of the quirky detail, the sort of information that sticks to the brain, and he writes in the folksy style of beer-fueled conversation. His is a voice that sometimes seems too conversational; a grimmer editor might have cut a number of weak jokes. But too much editing and this would be a lengthy magazine article instead of a book.

Siegel begins by arguing that it’s not just eating food but cooking it that changed the earliest humans into modern man, because the process of cooking food changed us into more social creatures, with “larger brains, larger gatherings, more free time, and more collaboration.” In a way, cooking domesticated humans much like humans domesticated wolves, as did the gradual development of table manners. People in Asia and Europe, for example, replaced bladed utensils with chopsticks and rounded dinner knives, for example, to cut down on mealtime stabbings, Siegel writes.

From there, he leads a global tour of foodstuff, to include corn, cereal, vanilla, ice cream and pie, the latter of which was a primary means of fattening the early colonists in New England.

New Englanders didn’t invent pie, but we perfected it, having wrenched it from the hands of the English, who primarily stuffed it with “birds and nightmarish sea creatures.” Back then, Siegel writes, a pie crust wasn’t something to be enjoyed; it had a practically indigestible coating that was seen as a disposable container — “the inedible Tupperware of the Dark Ages.”

“Far from being a delicacy or dessert, it was merely a convenient way of congealing various bits of bird and beast into something portable and relatively stable,” Siegel writes. The name derived from the word magpie, the bird, which should have been our first warning. And the colloquialism “eating humble pie” appears to come from the unsavory pies that household servants used to make for themselves with animal guts unused by their employers.

New Englanders, before they turned the pie crust into a container for fruit, spices and custard, also indulged in meat pies, to the point where a pie of some kind was a staple at every meal, regardless of time, causing one 19th-century physician to write that the “brave men who made up the Boston Tea Party … were pie-biters from Boston.” The physician added, “the Yankee pie is a mighty stimulator of energy … conducive to vigilance, aggressiveness and longevity.” Not everyone agreed; someone in England once criticized Ralph Waldo Emerson’s custom of having pie for breakfast, prompting The New York Times to publish a defense of Emerson’s eating habits, which led to a years-long cross-Atlantic debate.

While Siegel’s pie report is the most New England-centric of the book’s content, his other stories are no less compelling, to include the chapter called “Honey Laundering,” which covers every aspect of the one food that that never goes bad (it can crystallize or turn cloudy, but even then is fine to eat). Among the most interested honey facts: Beehives have historically been weaponized, lobbed at enemy ships; beekeeping was a craft kept alive by the Christian church because beeswax was needed for candles; and you definitely want to buy local honey, even though there are few laws that guarantee its safety and source. (The cheap honey in grocery stores may contain chemicals and pesticides, and some counterfeit honey consists of corn syrup and yellow food coloring.)

Vanilla, Siegel writes, is the victim of slander, because despite its reputation for blandness it is the second most expensive spice to grow (behind saffron). Vanilla beans are the product of a type of orchid, and the pods take years to mature. “So you could probably have a kid and put them through kindergarten in the same time, and for less aggravation, than it would take to seed and harvest your own vanilla crop.”

Also, you probably don’t know what vanilla really tastes like, Siegel says, because up to 99 percent of “vanilla” flavoring in food comes, horrifyingly, from “things such as wood pulp, tree bark, rice bran, chloroform, or castoreum,” a secretion extracted from the nether regions of North American beavers.

From there, Siegel segues into a cornucopia of facts about ice cream, which include Thomas Jefferson’s recipe for ice cream (just a guess, but the cheapest brand at your supermarket is probably better) and how ice cream came to be classified as “essential foodstuffs” during World War I, which may be the best thing Herbert Hoover ever did.

And on he goes. Like his own reading journey that led to this book, Siegel coaxes the reader through turn after turn in a rabbit hole of information, marrying easy prose with weird facts, such as the Aztecs’ obsession with chili peppers (used for medicine, face washing and torture) and how common foods such as tomatoes and potatoes were once considered poisonous and satanic. The best chapter, however, is on the strange origins of boxed breakfast cereal, and let’s just say if John Kellogg were alive today he would be canceled and no one would eat corn flakes or Grape-Nuts (the recipe for which is said to have been stolen from a sanitarium safe).

There’s little original material in this book, but the selection and presentation are fresh, and Siegel is an able and entertaining curator of the information. Also, he named his dog Waffle, so bonus points for that. B+

Book Notes

Another football season, another book about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick — oh, wait.

TB12’s defection to the South disrupted a cottage industry, dissecting the 20-year partnership between the New England Patriots coach and his star quarterback.

One of the most prolific writers on the subject was Michael Holley, a former Boston Globe sports writer turned NBC broadcaster whose books include 2016’s Belichick and Brady (Hachette, 394 pages), 2011’s War Room (It Books, 352 pages) and 2004’s Patriot Reign (It Books, 256 pages). So inquiring minds might wonder what Holley is writing about now.

Turns out he, too, has defected to another camp: shockingly, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Holley collaborated with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher to produce Cowher’s memoir, Heart and Steel, published in June (Atria, 288 pages). For those with short memories, Cowher coached the Steelers for 15 seasons before Mike Tomlin took over in 2007. The book is not just about his football career but also about the challenges of suddenly becoming a single father of three daughters after losing his wife and father within a period of three months. Highly recommended for the bye week for anyone who possesses a Steelers’ terrible towel.

But fear not, Patriots fans. The cottage industry continues with Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots’ Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness (Liveright, 528 pages). You just have to wait a few weeks. Set for release Oct. 12, Wickersham’s book will test whether the public will still buy books with both Brady and Belichick on the cover. The publisher promises a “full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots” by the ESPN senior writer, with insight on Belichick’s “tactical ingenuity” and Brady’s “unique mentality.”

For those who’d rather look ahead than look back, check out Lars Anderson’s Chasing the Bear, How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time (Grand Central Publishing, 304 pages). The Pats’ new quarterback, Mac Jones, hails from Alabama.

Finally, for those of you who’d rather have a root canal than watch football, there’s ammunition for your case in Against Football (Melville House paperback, 208 pages), Steve Almond’s 2014 “reluctant manifesto” against the sport. Almond is a Massachusetts writer who not only hates football but hates the Patriots, just so you know. He’s most famous lately for a New York Times podcast, “Dear Sugars,” hosted with Wild author Cheryl Strayed.

Book Events

Author events

• KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

• R.W.W. GREENE Author presents Twenty Five to Life. Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com), Fri., Sept. 10, 5:30 to 7 p.m.

• MARGARET PORTER Author presents The Limits of Limelight. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Sept. 14, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• JEFF BENEDICT Author presents The Dynasty. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., Sept. 22, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

Book sales

• MULTI-BOOK AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m.

• MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Featured photo: The Secret History of Food.

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis (Doubleday, 176 pages)

Resist the temptation to dismiss Helen Ellis because of her previous titles, Southern Lady Code and American Housewife, which sound like something Paula Deen might have written.

Ellis was, in fact, raised in Alabama, but shrugged that life off early in her 20s to move to New York City in hopes of becoming a writer. Before that dream was realized, however, she made a name for herself as — no joke — a high-stakes poker player. When the writing career came, it was jump-started by an anonymous Twitter account she called “American Housewife” with the handle @WhatIDoAllDay. Her timeline was richly sardonic, the MiracleGro for popularity on that platform, and a brand was born.

Her fourth book is a collection of essays called Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, mostly composed of foul-mouthed reflections on aging, periodically interrupted by foul-mouthed reflections on cancer and other indignities of life. It begins benignly enough, with Ellis reporting that she is heading for Panama City, Florida, “aka ‘The Redneck Riviera,’” with four friends for a jaunt she calls the “grown-ass ladies’ trip,” the highlight of which is a night out to see a TV psychic, Theresa Caputo, star of a show called Long Island Medium.

After the national anthem, which everyone sang while facing an American flag projected onto the screen, the TV psychic explained that she goes “where the Spirit leads” and that occasionally she gets hot, because perimenopause. This caused Ellis to whoop and clap. “God bless this woman for yelling ‘menopause’ in a crowded theater.” she writes. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in her power, but I believed we could be friends, so she had me now, and I was rooting for her.”

And Ellis is off, with her particular brand of humor, which is a combination of Nora Ephron without the divorce and Erma Bombeck without the kids. Married for 25 years and happily childless, Ellis identified ironically as a housewife until just a few years ago, when she started owning the title “writer” after years of being famous as a pearl-wearing poker player. That distinction is one that makes her a “character,” which she explains is different from a naturally funny person. “A character wants to be the life of the party. Or the life of a seven-hour flight delay. Or the life of a Piggly Wiggly checkout line.”

For the perplexed, Piggly Wiggly is a chain of supermarkets mostly in the South. That, and the pearl-wearing, however, is about Southern as Ellis gets. There’s some of the late Texas humorist Molly Ivins in her, but she would be right at home in the cast of Sex and the City, and her humor is as racy in places as that of Carrie Bradshaw. There is, for example, the chapter in which she admits that she and her husband speculate about the sex lives of their friends. For example, she will say, after long-married friends leave, “There’s no way they’re still having sex,” to which her husband will respond, “Shh, they’re still in our hallway.”

She writes of salivating over a velour housecoat in the Vermont Country Store catalog, and the potential effect it would have on her husband’s libido. She says he would rather come home and catch her in a pyramid scheme than in that robe.

Ellis nails the one-liners in this short string of folksy anecdotes, as when she describes garage-sale regulars as “people who want to profit from your poor life decisions.” She used to wear all black to her poker games because “I myself am a pop of color,” which is shown to be true in stories about accompanying friends to have a baby or to get Botox in possibly illegal circumstances. She and her husband don’t drive (“yes, we will wing it in a zombie apocalypse” but having never owned cars, they “are not confident drivers’’), and as such have collected many comical stories involving public transportation, such as taking long bus rides to casinos. She distrusts technology (“The cloud is tech talk for something Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg invented to store your political preferences, porn searches and high school reunion pictures”) and invents descriptions of her friends when storing their contact information in her phone; rather than John or Mary, for example, they are the “the grifter,” “the puzzler,” “the saint” or “the zookeeper.”

In short, she’s your zaniest friend, on steroids and on her third drink, still possessed of the presence of mind to write everything down.

The collection, however, doesn’t rise to Sedarisian heights, however, because it’s too frothy. David Sedaris is one of the greatest humorists working today because there is a point to everything he writes, no matter how hilarious. There’s not much of a point behind these stories than to make us laugh, or to mildly rage. Ellis’s mother used to tell her, “Helen Michelle, you’re not for everyone,” although she’s probably for everyone who spends more than seven hours a week on Twitter. Hers is a particular brand of humor, for the perpetually caustic with short attention spans. The title notwithstanding, the book packs light and wants a bit more baggage. C+

Book Notes

Can a funny title alone sell a book?

Probably not if the content is wretched, but some publishers seem to be lapping up bad puns these days. Witness the success of the Chet and Bernie mystery series by Spencer Quinn, which features narration by a dog and titles like Scents and Sensibility and (reviewed here recently) Tender is the Bite.

The mystery genre seems especially prone to punnage, given that there is also an “undercover dish mystery series” by Julia Buckley that includes the titles The Big Chili, Pudding Up With Murder and Cheddar Off Dead.

Then there’s the Avery Aames mystery series built entirely around cheese that includes the groan-inducing titles To Brie or Not To Brie, As Gouda as Dead, The Long Quiche Goodbye and Days of Wine and Roquefort. (Aames also has a novel entitled Cheddar Off Dead, and Connecticut author Korina Moss has a Cheese Shop mystery coming out with that title in the spring of 2021, indicating that publishers like bad puns so much they’re willing to reuse them.)

Perhaps most impressive is the “Bought the Farm” mystery series by Ellen Riggs, if not for its punnage, just for the sheer volume of words.

Riggs’ titles include the forthcoming How to Get A Neigh With Murder (for now, only available on Kindle pre-order), and the previously published Dogcatcher in the Rye, Dark Side of the Moo, Till the Cat Lady Sings, Twas the Bite Before Christmas and Swine and Punishment.

For a more erudite look at puns and why we love them, check out John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises (Avery paperback, 240 pages).

Pollack, a journalist and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, knows something of which he writes, having won the O’Henry World Pun-Off competition in 1995. Yes, that’s a real thing. This year’s contest is scheduled for Oct. 23. Check it out at punoff.com.

Featured photo: Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light.

Category: Books

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

The Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson

I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, by Blythe Grossberg

Chasing Eden, A Book of Seekers by Howard Mansfield

The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel, by Martin Walker

Harrow, by Joy Williams

Mellencamp, by Paul Rees

Water, A Biography, by Giulio Boccaletti

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis

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