My friend Jenn recommended this book to me and loaned me the hardback edition. While I have not read other books (yet) by the author, Percival Everett, I have seen American Fiction, a fantastic movie based on his book Erasure. This book is based on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but this time, the story is told through […]

I picked up this book while visiting my friends Sheri and Brooks. I love my book-reading friends. There’s always a book that you see or something they recommend. Malibu Rising is a recently published book (2022), and a best seller, written by the same author who wrote Daisy Jones and the Six, which. became a […]

My friend Heather recommended this book after I published my Summer Reading blog post in the Summer of ’23.  Any book by Anthony Doerr is worth reading, so I jumped in. (All the Light We Cannot See is so worth reading and re-reading, and the Apple TV Mini-Series is outstanding!) The book is a bit […]

One of my son Dawson’s favorite topics is how many things had to go just right for him to come into existence. What if I had not moved to California from Arkansas? What if I had never moved to Southern California? While I don’t believe in the idea of multiple universes (way too complicated), and […]

I found this book when I was surfing the net and looking for a new fiction book to read. I was not disappionted. James McBride writes a mystery/love story/tale of America focusing on a “Chicken Hill,” a community on the outskirts of a small Pennsylvania town. The book features disenfranchised blacks and Jewish immigrants, their […]

My friend Bill recommended this book – he thought it was a perfect summer reading book. I’ve heard about it hundreds of times, but I’ve never read it. I’m glad I did, and I agree wholeheartedly, Bill – this is a great summer reading book. Jack and his growing and suspect group of friends travel […]

OK. I love this book. It’s one of the few books I’ve read where, after I finished it, I immediately began reading it a second time. I’ve written about it in two separate blog posts, and I have many friends who have read it and loved it after I suggested it to them. It’s a […]

I can always read a John Grisham novel. This one is not a legal thriller, though there are lawyers involved. I’m not sure JG is allowed to write a book without mentioning the word lawyer. Part of his contract of something. Anyway, it’s about a down on his luck NFL quarterback who needs a new […]

I bought this book because I loved Roland Merullo’s Breakfast with Buddha, and I love golf. Not nearly as impactful as the Breakfast book, but light and enjoyable. The idea of deities caring about sports such as baseball and golf is a so far fetched in my book, but again, fun to read. My favorite line: “I should […]

I picked up this book again when a friend of mine undertook an up-and-down the Pacific coast motorcycle ride (actually, it was a Malibu to Bend, Oregon and back motorcycle ride). I read it back in high school and remembered many parts of it, but I wanted to read it again with him. As I […]

This was a book that my wife Jill was reading for her book club near their Halloween meeting. Although I’m a fan of science fiction, I’m not much into the Werewolf/Vampire genre of books. I certainly appreciated Lupin the werewolf in the Harry Potter books, but this book focuses entirely on it. I hate to […]

A thoroughly enjoyable bio-tech thriller of a book. Gene therapy and the search for immortality all wrapped up in a who is the really bad guy thriller.    

If you liked the Fall of Giants (I did), then you will like this one too. The same families in the first book now witness the rise of the Third Reich, World War II, and all of the surrounding events of the 30s and 40s. A great page turner. I look forward to reading the last book in the trilogy […]

I read this book after the How To Do Nothing book, and it actually fit in quite nicely. This is a beautiful story of a young woman who raises herself, without parents, siblings, or friends, on the Carolina coast. All she does is pay attention and appreciate everything that is around her. With the help […]

My dad recommended this book to me. It’s a combination of science fiction, sixties mentality and utopian society thinking that had me going back and forth between wanting to stop reading the book but also wanting to see the full evolution of the thinking of Mr. Heinlein. The hero, a Martian, tries to (1) adapt to our […]

Continuing my “summer of satire.” This is a book on MBUSD reading lists that I had never read, but had always meant to. It is not the most uplifting of books. The hero is crazy, the aliens question our focus on linear time, and the insanity of war rips throughout the book.    

From rural living to the search for Buddhist meaning in India. If you have read the Power of Now and you liked it, you may find this book meaningful as well. Even if you do not find it meaningful, it does provide a window into Buddhist culture that most school books do not.    

I “read” this book via an audiobook. I love audiobooks when I am traveling, but for some reason, not while commuting. I listened to this one as I drove up and back from visiting my son up in Sacramento. It’s a historical fiction book, but it is based on research and in my mind, highly […]

This was recommended to me by my father. It is a story of a 70+-year-old cowboy and war veteran whose main occupation was going around Texas and other western states reading citizens the news that they cannot get otherwise. It was a time when literacy was very low and news publications could not be accessed […]

This is another book on the Mira Costa reading list that I had not yet read. It deals with difficult family issues, coming of age, race and rural living. I can see so many ways to use the book in the classroom, and I know it is powerful enough to spark thinking.    

This is a book my wife read with her book club. It’s not my typical read. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner which means it’s pretty “literature-y” for my tastes. I know, not a very good thing to say. In spite of all that, I loved it. It’s an insightful tale of a middle-aged man in […]

I know it’s summer when I’m reading a Michael Connelly novel. It’s not great literature, but it’s always fun. This is his first legal novel. By the way – Mick Haller – our lawyer hero – is not a “Lincoln lawyer” because he works in the traditions of our 16th president. He is called that […]

I don’t get a chance to read much non-fiction, but when I do, there’s not much better than a Barbara Kingsolver novel. My wife read this one for her book club and I jumped on it once I heard it was Barbara Kingsolver. It’s a fantastic book set in the first half of the 20th […]

I just finished reading this three part series that young adults are crazy about. I can see why. It’s a bleak vision of our nation in the future, and it is a teenager who gives hope to the world. I loved it. Keep in mind, I do love the fantasy books like the Lord of […]