Manhattan Beach, written by Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” is loosely based on the life of one the first female divers for the naval yards in New York City during WWII. It’s a captivating tale and one that highlights how truly hard it was for women to be allowed to do jobs outside “female cultural norms” at that time. Imagine donning a “diving suit” weighing 200 pounds. It was a dangerous and difficult feat, to say the least, but vital to the … [Read more...] about Manhattan Beach

Have you noticed how many books these days are really a bunch of riffs on life? You know, a collection of blogs or short articles with titles such as “When I Meditate” or “I Can’t Get That Penis out of My Mind.” Stuff like that. (You for sure want to know which book has that penis title in it.) I like the idea of writing a book this way. Seems a hell of a lot easier than actually stringing together a coherent, thematically interesting book from page 1 to 300. I’m pretty sure this will be the … [Read more...] about Would Everybody Please Stop?

This is a wonderful and thrilling story of how one man always had a dream of going to Antartica.  As a child who was bullied everyday on the bus by his schoolmates, Andrew found refuge in the hundreds of copies of National Geographic magazines he read as a child. Within the pages of the magazine he imagines himself traveling the world and dreams of working for the magazine one day.  Excommunicated from the Mormon Church and disowned by his family for being gay, Andrew eventually gets his dream … [Read more...] about The Black Penguin

All of us have watched Lesley interview famous people on "60 Minutes."  She's good at that.  But wait till you hear her take on being a grandmother.  Like other moms, she felt guilty over not being there as much as she would have liked for her own daughter.  But Lesley is all in on the grandmother track.  She even shares scientific information about the powerful impact grand parenting has on both the grandchildren and grandparents themselves. … [Read more...] about Becoming Grandma