On My Radar:

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema
by Lindy West
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle’s alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa-WHO IS A LION-to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don’t any of the women in Love, Actually ever fucking talk?!?! 

From Forrest Gump, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Bad Boys II, to Face/Off, Top Gun, and The Notebook, Lindy combines her razor-sharp wit and trademark humor with a genuine adoration for nostalgic trash to shed new critical light on some of our defining cultural touchstones-the stories we’ve long been telling ourselves about who we are. At once outrageously funny and piercingly incisive, Shit, Actually reminds us to pause and ask, “How does this movie hold up?”, all while teaching us how to laugh at the things we love without ever letting them or ourselves off the hook.

Shit, Actually is a love letter and a break-up note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they’re one and the same.

In My TBR Stack:

Primal Calling
by Barry Eisenberg
Pegasus Publishing / Vanguard Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

While rummaging through the attic, high school senior, Jack Davies, is surprised to find his never-before-seen birth certificate, revealing a startling bit of information that changes his life. The story his mother told about his birth, he discovers, is revealed to be a lie, shattering long-held beliefs and the trust he had for her. Jack becomes obsessed with discovering the truth, leading him down a dangerous path. Faced with unanswered questions and confounding obstacles at every turn, Jack finds himself deeply enmeshed in an intricate world of national security and international intrigue. Relationships are tested as his every move is tracked by a group of mysterious people. Who are they? Whose side are they on? Who can he trust? And, most importantly, who will he ultimately become?

In My TBR Stack:

Eris Rising: A Memoir of Finding the Warrior Within
by Courtney Ramm
Acorn Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the author's website:

Warrior’s aren't born, they are forged from the harsh experiences that shape them as they strive to defend what is sacred and true. And geniuses aren’t born either—or are they? Courtney Ramm would know, as she’s one of 229 offspring born from the controversial “Genius Sperm Bank”, a genetic experiment that existed in the 1980s and ‘90s. 

With a predisposition for “genius”, Courtney found herself driven toward success. Following her passion for dance, by the age of eight she was studying at the renowned School of American Ballet and soon thereafter, performing on New York’s greatest stages. At twenty-five years old, she acted upon a strong inner calling to start her own dance company—in Hawaii.

 

Moving across the globe from the concrete jungle of Manhattan to the tropical jungle in Hawaii, Courtney brought along her endless to-do lists and a strong determination to succeed. But one thing was missing from the picture-perfect life she had imagined: a perfect husband.

 

When she first locked eyes with Marcus at a spiritual gathering, she sensed something was off in the uncanny intensity of his stare. But she dove into a relationship anyway, not grasping the graveness and outright danger of the decision.

 

Eris Rising is a story of breaking deep karmic patterns, grappling with the calling of destiny, and changing long-held karma into mission. With the powerful feminine warrior spirit of Eris as inspiration, this memoir shows how it’s possible to move forward after life-altering “mistakes”, and recover the true “genius” within.

On My Radar:

Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing
by Peter Guralnick
Little, Brown & Company
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

It covers old ground from new perspectives, offering deeply felt, masterful, and strikingly personal portraits of creative artists, both musicians and writers, at the height of their powers.

“You put the book down feeling that its sweep is vast, that you have read of giants who walked among us,” rock critic Lester Bangs wrote of Guralnick’s earlier work in words that could just as easily be applied to this new one. And yet, for all of the encomiums that Guralnick’s books have earned for their remarkable insights and depth of feeling, Looking to Get Lost is his most personal book yet. For readers who have grown up on Guralnick’s unique vision of the vast sweep of the American musical landscape, who have imbibed his loving and lively portraits and biographies of such titanic figures as Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, and Sam Phillips, there are multiple surprises and delights here, carrying on and extending all the themes, fascinations, and passions of his groundbreaking earlier work.

IN My TBR Stack:

Flashback Girl: Lessons on Resilience from a Burn Survivor
by Lise Deguire, Psy.D
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

At the age of four, Dr. Lise Deguire suffered third-degree burns on 65% of her body as the result of both maternal and corporate negligence. Against the odds, she lived through the trauma, beginning decades of treatment as a burn survivor…and this is just part of her compelling story.

 

Dr. Deguire brings you into the dysfunctional and tragic world of her family, which includes artistic genius, narcissistic and neglectful parents, eccentricity, and four suicides. Most importantly, she explains her long but ultimately triumphant path towards love, health, and life satisfaction.

​

Some chapters of this gripping life journey focus on early events, including the story of the fire, her years of hospitalization for reconstructive surgeries, bullying, and social isolation. Other chapters focus on her adult life, such as her struggles to find romantic love, being a parent, and her work as a clinical psychologist.

 

The voice of Flashback Girl is warm and engaging. Despite the seriousness of the subject, the tone of the memoir is positive and humorous, without self-pity. This book inspires those who suffer life’s challenges to maintain hope and to keep pushing on despite seemingly insurmountable hurdles. 

In My TBR Stack:

Dying with Ease: A Compassionate Guide to Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions
by Jeff Spiess, MD
Rowman & Littlefield
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

We all know we are going to die, but live as though we don’t believe it. Rather than explore our options and consider the possibilities that can impact our final days, we ignore the idea altogether out of fear. By avoiding the topic of death, we increase the pain and grief we experience at the end of life, and the suffering of those left behind. 

After three decades of caring for the dying, Dr. Jeff Spiess argues that if we honestly face our mortality, we will make wiser decisions, die with less distress, and live the remainder of our lives, whether days or decades, more fully and with less anxiety. Using cultural and religious references alongside poignant narratives, this optimistic work informs, inspires, and challenges our cognitive and emotional understandings of our own lives and deaths.

Dying with Ease contains the practical nuts and bolts information about advance care planning, hospice, palliative care, and ethical and legal issues surrounding dying in America. Dr. Spiess answers such questions as: 

• How can I plan for the last part of my life?
• What options do I have if my suffering is unbearable?
• What do religion and spiritual philosophy have to say about dying?
• What does it feel like to die? 

While dying can be difficult, it can also be beautiful. By learning to relax in the face of death at our current stage of life, we can make wiser and more authentic decisions throughout the rest of our lives-- however long they may be.

In My TBR Stack:

Coronavirus Crash, Money & Survival
by Mike Janko
Bookonmoney.com
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, your livelihood, money and entire way of life have come under assault. "Coronavirus Crash, Money & Survival is a critical and groundbreaking book to help you navigate today's extraordinary and dangerous events and threats.

Because of today's multiple crises, you must drastically rethink how you earn, live, spend, invest, and save, how you think about money, economics, and politics, and ultimately how you and your family will survive the coming decades. No book dealing comprehensively with today's multiple crises, your money, and survival has been written before, so Coronavirus Crash is your must have read for coping and surviving. 

In My TBR Stack:

 My Epidemic: An AIDS Memoir of One Man's Struggle as Doctor, Patient, and Survivor

by Andrew M. Faulk, M.D.

Culbertson Publications

Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

  When young Dr. Andrew Faulk first learned he was HIV-positive, he was devastated for it certainly meant imminent death. Until then, he’d been an outstanding young physician with years of intensive training. That day, without warning, he faced the great divide of his life. Due to the rigors and stress of training, he considered abandoning his medical career. But, instead, he dedicated the remainder of his life to the fight against AIDS, ultimately participating in the care of approximately 50 patients who died, many his own peers, including his partner. Being HIV-positive, Faulk discovered something other doctors didn’t experience—in every patient he cared for, whatever the symptoms, he saw himself. As patients and friends died around him, at any time he, too, could have “stepped off the earth.” Yet with intuition, insight and compassion, he brought peace and comfort whenever possible to those he called “my guys.” After a long silence he recounts those heroic years and tells this, his true story as doctor, patient and survivor.

On My Radar:

Fast Forward, Play, and Rewind
by Michael Oberman
Backbeat Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

The Doors, James Brown, the Grateful Dead, the Sir Douglas Quintet, David Bowie-the list goes on. . . . From 1967 to 1973, Michael Oberman interviewed more than three hundred top musical artists. Collected together for the first time, Fast Forward, Play and Rewind presents more than one hundred interviews Oberman conducted with the most important musical artists of the day.

Along the way, Oberman touches on the influence of his brother, who interviewed the Beatles and other top artists from 1964 to 1967. He also recounts stories from his later career working for the major Warner-Elektra Atlantic recording company and producing concerts for Cellar Door Productions and managing recording artists.

Want to know the true story of how David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust? That and dozens more true tales that might seem like fiction are waiting inside the pages of Fast Forward, Play and Rewind. Each short interview is an invitation for readers to relive (or live for the first time) one of the greatest periods in rock 'n' roll history. 

On My Radar:

Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir
by Peter Frampton with Alan Light
Hachette Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Do You Feel Like I Do? is the incredible story of Peter Frampton’s positively resilient life and career told in his own words for the first time. His monu-mental album Frampton Comes Alive! spawned three top-twenty singles and sold eight million copies the year it was released (more than seventeen million to date), and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in January 2020.

Frampton was on a path to stardom from an early age, first as the lead singer and guitarist of the Herd and then as cofounder — along with Steve Marriott — of one of the first supergroups, Humble Pie. Frampton was part of a tight-knit collective of British ’60s musicians with close ties to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Who. This led to Frampton playing on George Harrison’s solo debut, All Things Must Pass, as well as to Ringo Starr and Billy Preston appearing on Frampton’s own solo debut. By age twenty-two, Frampton was touring incessantly and finding new sounds with the talk box, which would become his signature guitar effect.

Frampton remembers his enduring friendship with David Bowie. Growing up as schoolmates, crossing paths throughout their careers, and playing together on the Glass Spider Tour, the two developed an unshakable bond. Frampton also shares fascinating stories of his collaborative work with Harry Nilsson, Stevie Wonder, B. B. King, and members of Pearl Jam. He reveals both the blessing and curse of Frampton Comes Alive!, opening up about becoming the cover boy he never wanted to be, his overcoming substance abuse, and how he has continued to play and pour his heart into his music despite an inflammatory muscle disease and his retirement from the road.

Peppered throughout his narrative is the story of his favorite guitar, the Phenix, which he thought he’d lost in a fiery plane crash in 1980. But in 2011, it mysteriously showed up again — saved from the wreckage. Frampton tells of that unlikely reunion here in full for the first time, and why the miraculous reappearance is emblematic of his life and career as a quintessential artist.

In My TBR Stack:

Born Under the Gaslight: A Memoir of My Descent Into Borderline Personality Disorder
by Cindy Collins
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

“What will the neighbors think?” “Keep your voice down, or the neighbors will hear you screaming.” I never knew The Neighbors, but, more importantly, they never knew my family. Right next door was a house of horror, and they indeed never knew. This is the story that was carefully concealed from you. This is the story that can happen even if you do grow up with neighbors watching.

From author Cindy Collins comes an unblinkingly honest, poignant, and often heartbreaking firsthand account of what it’s like to live with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) . . . and the pervasive trauma she endured as a child that led to her descent into the dark world of BPD. Gaslighted by her mother—who cultivated an outward appearance of being the perfect wife and mother—Cindy suffered ongoing sexual abuse by multiple family members, abandonment, and cruelty at the hands of the one person who should have loved and protected her most. The resulting fits of rage, extreme thinking, difficulty maintaining relations, and depression would set Cindy on a path of destruction until she finally found the hope and courage to fight her demons.

Chronicling her childhood of abuse, her diagnosis of BPD in her twenties, and her ultimate road to recovery, Born Under the Gaslight is a memoir like none you have ever read before. Offering a rare and insightful glimpse into the inner struggles of someone who lives with BPD, Born Under the Gaslight is a must-read for therapists, others living with BPD, and anyone wanting to understand the complexities of BPD and how to offer practical and emotional support. 

On My Radar:

Out of My Mind: Not Quite a Memoir
by Alan Arkin
Viva Editions
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Alan Arkin has starred on Broadway, TV, over sixty films, and has won almost every acting award in North America.  In this, his ninth published book, with his characteristic wry humor, he digs into his long time search for meaning past the seductive glamour of show business.  By the time he was in his early thirties, his career was in full bloom and he had achieved everything he’d ever thought he wanted, only to find that it was not what he had hoped for. Something was missing, himself. In Out of My Mind, Arkin speaks openly about the existential crisis which brought him from analysis to the serious study of Eastern Philosophy and several teachers who helped him revise his views on almost everything. In this sort-of-memoir, the eighty-six-year-old actor tells of the adventures, which, as a direct result of decades of meditation, shook his conception of reality and brought him to a new, exciting, and expanded view of what is out there, and the endless, mind-boggling adventure into what is possible–not just for himself but for all the rest of us. 

In My TBR Stack:

The Entrepreneur's Faces: How Makers, Visionaries, and Outsiders Succeed
by Jonathan Littman and Susanna Camp
Snowball Narrative Press
Trade Paperback

From the book website:

Are entrepreneurs born or made? The answer is both, as we reveal in this book. Nearly anyone can learn to be more entrepreneurial in their lives and work, and really, why wouldn’t you want that extra innovation edge?

Entrepreneurs come in different types, and with that discovery comes power. Knowing which archetype you are can provide the spark that makes the difference between success and failure. There’s an advantage to be gained in self-awareness. By figuring out who you are, you gain clarity about who you are not. Insights to help you think, adapt and act with heightened speed and purpose as you go through this journey.

This engaging book will help you identify the ten essential entrepreneurial types to propel your professional growth.

On My Radar:

Adventure by Chicken Bus: An Unschooling Odyssey through Central America
by Janet LoSole
Wipf and Stock
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Embarking on a homeschooling field trip to Central America is stressful enough, but add in perilous bridge crossings, trips to the hospital, and a lack of women’s underwear, and you have the makings of an Adventure by Chicken Bus…a tale of one family, buckling under a mountain of debt, who sells all worldly possessions and hits the road.

 

Adventure by Chicken Bus demonstrates how to travel sustainably, but more importantly, how to nurture the next generation of environmentalists and social justice activists by exposing them to the conditions faced by those in the developing world.

From a remote monkey sanctuary tucked into an enclave on the Panama-Costa Rica frontier to the overdeveloped beaches of the Mayan Riviera, we endure chaotic border crossings, infections and injuries, learn about the history of the civil war in Nicaragua, visit UNESCO heritage sites, and hike the ancient Mayan temples of Tikal in Guatemala.

For the sake of safety, we plan our route down to the kilometer, navigating the region by chicken bus, an eye-opening mode of public transportation ubiquitous in the developing world. Along the way we re-connect with each other, re-kindle our commitment to the environment, recognize the privilege into which we were born, and become compassionate global citizens.

On My Radar:

This Thing Called Life: Prince's Odyssey, On and Off the Record
by Neal Karlen
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Neal Karlen was the only journalist Prince granted in-depth press interviews to for over a dozen years, from before Purple Rain to when the artist changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. Karlen interviewed Prince for three Rolling Stone cover stories, wrote “3 Chains o’ Gold,” Prince’s “rock video opera,” as well as the star’s last testament, which may be buried with Prince’s will underneath Prince’s vast and private compound, Paisley Park.

According to Prince's former fiancée Susannah Melvoin, Karlen was “the only reporter who made Prince sound like what he really sounded like.” Karlen quit writing about Prince a quarter-century before the mega-star died, but he never quit Prince, and the two remained friends for the last thirty-one years of the superstar’s life.

Well before they met as writer and subject, Prince and Karlen knew each other as two of the gang of kids who biked around Minneapolis’s mostly-segregated Northside. (They played basketball at the Dairy Queen next door to Karlen’s grandparents, two blocks from the budding musician.) He asserts that Prince can’t be understood without first understanding ‘70s Minneapolis, and that even Prince’s best friends knew only 15 percent of him: that was all he was willing and able to give, no matter how much he cared for them.

Going back to Prince Rogers Nelson's roots, especially his contradictory, often tortured, and sometimes violent relationship with his father, This Thing Called Life profoundly changes what we know about Prince, and explains him as no biography has: a superstar who calls in the middle of the night to talk, who loved The Wire and could quote from every episode of The Office, who frequented libraries and jammed spontaneously for local crowds (and fed everyone pancakes afterward), who was lonely but craved being alone. Readers will drive around Minneapolis with Prince in a convertible, talk about movies and music and life, and watch as he tries not to curse, instead dishing a healthy dose of “mamma jammas.” 

In My TBR Stack:

Family in Six Tones: A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter
by Lan Cao & Harlan Margaret Van Cao
Viking Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In 1975, thirteen-year-old Lan Cao boarded an airplane in Saigon and got off in a world where she faced hosts she had not met before, a language she didn’t speak, and food she didn’t recognize, with the faint hope that she would be able to go home soon. Lan fought her way through confusion, and racism, to become a successful lawyer and novelist. Four decades later, she faced the biggest challenge in her life: raising her daughter Harlan–half Vietnamese by birth and 100 percent American teenager by inclination. In their lyrical joint memoir, told in alternating voices, mother and daughter cross ages and ethnicities to tackle the hardest questions about assimilation, aspiration, and family.

Lan wrestles with her identities as not merely an immigrant but a refugee from an unpopular war. She has bigoted teachers who undermine her in the classroom and tormenting inner demons, but she does achieve–either despite or because of the work ethic and tight support of a traditional Vietnamese family struggling to get by in a small American town. Lan has ambitions, for herself, and for her daughter, but even as an adult feels tentative about her place in her adoptive country, and ventures through motherhood as if it is a foreign landscape.

Reflecting and refracting her mother’s narrative, Harlan fiercely describes the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence, filtered through the aftereffects of her family’s history of war, tragedy, and migration. Harlan’s struggle to make friends in high school challenges her mother to step back and let her daughter find her own way.

Family in Six Tones speaks both to the unique struggles of refugees and to the universal tug-of-war between mothers and daughters. The journey of an immigrant–away from war and loss toward peace and a new life–and the journey of a mother raising a child to be secure and happy are both steep paths filled with detours and stumbling blocks. Through explosive fights and painful setbacks, mother and daughter search for a way to accept the past and face the future together.

In My TBR Stack:

Behind the Red Veil: An American Inside Gorbachev's Russia
by Frank Thoms
Sparkpress

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Behind the Red Veil recounts Frank’s quest to understand the Russian people. He spent his initial twenty-five years as a teacher, during which time he pursued his understanding of Marxism, Russian history, and Soviet Communism. His first venture to the Soviet Union occurred in October 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev’s first year as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In his following six trips, Frank served twice as a US–Soviet exchange teacher of English in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and on his own taught English in schools in Moscow and Alma-Ata (Almaty), Kazakhstan. His final journey, which was to the new Russia in 1994, three years after Gorbachev’s resignation, took him to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.

On My Radar:

Bruce Springsteen: All the Songs
by Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Guesdon
Cassell
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Spanning nearly 50 years of albums, EPs, B-sides, and more, this is the full story behind every single song that The Boss has ever released. Moving chronologically through Springsteen’s long career, expert authors Margotin and Guesdon explore everything there is to know about every single song. 

No stone is left unturned across 670 pages, from the inspiration behind the lyrics and melody to the recording process and even the musicians and producers who worked on each track.

Uncover the stories behind the music in this truly definitive book – a must-have for every Springsteen fan.

On My Radar:

Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock
by Michael Ray Fitzgerald
University Press of Florida
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd helped usher in a new kind of southern music from Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they and fellow bands like Blackfoot, 38 Special, and Molly Hatchet would reset the course of seventies rock. Yet Jacksonville seemed an unlikely hotbed for a new musical movement.             
 
Michael FitzGerald blends eyewitness detail with in-depth history to tell the story of how the River City bred this generation of legendary musicians. As he profiles essential bands alongside forerunners like Gram Parsons and Cowboy, FitzGerald reveals how the powerful local AM radio station worked with newspapers and television stations to nurture talent. Media attention in turn created a public hungry for live performances by area bands. What became the southern rock elite welded relentless determination to a ferocious work ethic, honing their gifts on a testing ground that brooked no weakness and took no prisoners.   
 
FitzGerald looks at the music as the diverse soundtrack to a neo-southern lifestyle that reconciled different segments of society in Jacksonville, and across the nation, in the late sixties and early seventies. A vivid journey into a crucible of American music, Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock shines a light on the artists and songs that powered a phenomenon.   

On My Radar:

Fire in the Straw: Notes on Inventing a Life
by Nick Lyons
Arcade Publishing
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Nick Lyons shape shifts from reluctant student and graduate of the Wharton School, to English Professor, to husband of a fiercely committed painter, to ghost writer, to famous fly fisherman and award-winning author, to father and then grandfather, to Executive Editor at a large book publishing company, and finally to founder and publisher of his own successful independent press..

 
Written with the same warm and earthy voice that has enthralled tens of thousands of fly-fishing readers, Nick weaves the disparate chapters of his life: from the moment his widowed mother drops him off at a grim boarding school at the age of five, where he spends three lonely and confusing years; to his love of basketball and pride playing for Penn; to the tumultuous period, in the army and after, when he found and was transformed by literature; to his marriage to Mari, his great love and anchor of his life.
 
Suddenly, with a PhD in hand and four children, Nick embarks on a complex and thrilling ride, juggling family, fishing, teaching, writing, and publishing, the wolf always at his door. Against all odds, The Lyons Press survives, his children prosper, his wife’s art flourishes, and his books and articles make him a household name.
 
FIRE IN THE STRAW is a love story, a confessional, and a beautiful big-hearted memoir.

On My Radar:

Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series
by James Hibberd
Dutton Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

It was supposed to be impossible. George R.R. Martin was a frustrated television writer who created his bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels to be an unfilmable saga bound only by the limits of his vast imagination. Then a pair of first-time TV writers teamed with HBO to try and adapt Martin’s epic. We’ve all seen the eight seasons of the Emmy-winning fantasy series that came next. But there is one Game of Thrones tale that has yet to be told: the 13-year behind-the-scenes struggle to pull off this extraordinary phenomenon. 
 
In Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, award-winning Entertainment Weekly writer James Hibberd chronicles the untold and uncensored story of Game of Thrones, from the creative team’s first meetings to staging the series finale and all the on-camera battles and off-camera struggles in between. The book draws from more than 50 revealing new interviews, rare and stunning photos, and unprecedented access to the producers, cast, and crew who took an impossible idea and made it into the biggest show in the world.

On My Radar:

The Reacher Guy: A Biography of Lee Child
by Heather Martin
Pegasus Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Lee Child has a great public persona: he is gracious and generous with readers and fans. But Jim Grant is a reticent and very private man. 

This rags-to-riches literary and social biography is based principally on disarmingly frank personal conversations and correspondence with the author since 2016 and privileged access to archival materials. It consists almost entirely of original material, and is the nearest thing the world is likely to get to the autobiography he does not intend to write. 

There are a handful of great Lee Child/Reacher stories that have been recycled over and over again. They are so good that no one has bothered to look beyond them. This book revisits (and sometimes revises) those irresistible stories, but goes back further and digs deeper. The emphasis on chronology, accuracy and specificity is unprecedented.  

The Lee Child origin myth is much loved. But mostly it sees him springing fully formed from the brow of Granada Television. There are glancing references to Aston Villa and the schoolyard, but no one has examined the social and historical detail or looked closely at where Lee really came from: the people, places and period.

This is the first time someone has described the Lee Child arc: from peaceful obscurity in the Yorkshire Dales and Upstate New York to cult figure, no. 1 in America, rock star, celebrity and publishing institution through to backlash, the changing zeitgeist, and intimations of retirement. The analysis of the emotional power and significance of Lee’s work in the final chapters—the themes of happiness, addiction, dependency, loneliness, and existential absurdity—and the first-hand retrospective accounts of his life and second-act career are all exclusive to this definitive biography.

On My Radar:

Is This Anything?
by Jerry Seinfeld
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a twenty-one-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.” 

For this book, Jerry Seinfeld has selected his favorite material, organized decade by decade. In page after hilarious page, one brilliantly crafted observation after another, readers will witness the evolution of one of the great comedians of our time and gain new insights into the thrilling but unforgiving art of writing stand-up comedy.

In My TBR Stack:

Connect: What Everyone Wants, What Few of Us Find...and the Kicker is That it's Right There in Front of You
by Mark Ebinger
Mark Ebinger Books
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

Connection.

More than social status, more than the latest car, the swankest house, the most prestigious career, or the most “likes” on social media, deep down what we all really want is to connect fully and authentically with the other people in our lives. Trouble is, most of us have spent a lifetime cultivating habits and behaviors that keep us disconnected from others, and even from ourselves.

Enter Connect—and just in time. This book offers a road map to reconnection at a time when loneliness in our culture is at an all-time high. Here is the antidote, a step-by-step guide to a more satisfying and meaningful life. Author Mark Ebinger shares personal stories of his own journey to reconnection and shines a light on the truths about human nature that make isolation and disconnection all too easy. And each chapter includes practical exercises you can do to set you on your own path to greater connection, and to keep you on it.

Do you crave deeper connection in your life? Connect will show you the way.

In My TBR Stack:

Collapse 2020: Vol. 1 - Fall of the First Global Civilization
by Bruce Nappi
Book Patch
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Collapse 2020 Vol. 1 digs into the major chaos of Today’s world: climate change, liberal-conservative polarization, gridlock in governments and massive social injustice. It provides NEW understanding for what has and is going wrong. The book presents major new discoveries from over 30 years of unpublished research. It doesn’t just rehash conventional ideas. It explores an entirely new logical foundation for society to understand today’s fundamental problems. Unfortunately, humanity has already gone over the tipping point. Civilization will collapse.

This book presents many breakthroughs: A suppressed report shows climate collapse is just a start. A new theory of the human brain describes “human consciousness” and how the brain produces it. A new interpretation of the “singularity” explains why humanity missed it. A new theory of human language explains the polarization of society and gridlock in governments.

Are you ready to take the next step? This book will take you there!