Living With a Wild God (Barbara Ehrenreich)

The author as a mature woman, veteran of marriages and illnesses and careers, looks back at a quest she began at age 14 to understand the real nature of the universe. Raised as a staunch atheist, she wondered what the purpose of life and the universe could have beyond reproduction and death. Was there some ineffable, inexpressible Other that gave the world its real nature? For most of her life, Ehrenreich has been subject to what can only be called mystical experiences, in which language and human labels are leached away, leaving only pure sensations and a strong sense of Presence. This book is her attempt to describe her experiences as accurately as she can and to determine what they might mean. My professional background and my scientific inclinations lead me to something like this: brain circuitry developed for the purpose of recognizing and predicting the behavior of the intelligent social creatures we lived with (other people) sometimes overshoots, leading to pariedolia and, in the case of temporal-lobe epilepsy, a strong sense of oneness with the divine. Ehrenreich dismisses these explanations too glibly, I believe, lumping them in the category of "mental illness." I will grant her that no evidence disproves the existence of Others that are invisible to any rational scientific investigation and can't even be approached in a rational linguistic frame, but I don't accept that she has provided any actual evidence in favor of its existence either. No matter--the book is a fascinating look at the really big questions, and will provoke anyone to think deeply about them.

Mudhouse Sabbath (Lauren Winner)

Winner is a committed Christian who converted from Judaism, and offers in this short book a series of meditations on what the practices of Judaism can offer to Christians. Not in the realm of theology, but in how to bring faith into one's everyday life. For example, she doesn't advocate literally keeping kosher, but does argue that such a practice helps us think about what and how we eat as part of our relationship with the world and with God. The strict observances of the Sabbath, forcing one to disengage from the busy world and direct one's thoughts to the life of the mind, can bring mindfulness and calm to our frantic lives. I was particularly moved by the chapter on mourning and grief, with the detailed pattern imposed on the grief-stricken that allow for a gradual reclaiming over the span of a full year of the life one has lost with the loved one, supported at every step by the entire community. There is a lot of truth here that i was happy to learn about.

The Suicide Index (Joan Wickersham)

The author circles through the thoughts, feelings, actions, and images relating to her father's death decades ago from suicide. The book is truly structured as an index (the chapter titles are in outline form, alphabetized), which fits with her overall theme of trying to make sense of her father's action, to give it some kind of rational form. Wickersham doesn't try to dodge the unpleasant responses of everyone involved, looking squarely at how her image of her father shifted, how her mother struggled to regain her balance, how hard it was to talk with her young son, how survivors of suicide connected to share their silent grief. The book confidently finds the line between honesty and bitterness, between love and sentiment, as the author acknowledges the ambiguity of her situation and the lack of real answers. Highly recommended.

El Deafo (Cece Bell)

A charming story, told in graphic novel form with everyone as anthropomorphic bunny rabbits, which is a fictionalized memoir of the author's childhood growing up with a profound hearing loss. It is, as she emphasizes in the afterword, only one person's story of one way to be deaf, and her strong desire to fit into the hearing world and resist learning sign language will probably earn the ire of many in the Deaf community. I appreciated the honesty of the story, though, including the angst of difficult friendships, budding crushes, and struggles to fit in. We all have things that make us different, some more than others, and we all struggle to find our way in our complex social world, so her story is not that different from anyone's. I recommend it, especially for someone who is or has a child with anything that can be labeled as a disability.

Orange is the New Black (Piper Kerman)

The book on which the Netflix series is based contains virtually no sex, drugs, or violence. Kerman was a rebellious young woman who got involved briefly in the drug trade after college, once carrying drug money for her girlfriend who arranged transport for the ring. She got out of the business quickly and went on with her life, but five years later the feds caught up with her, and then five years after that she was in a minimum-security Federal women's prison. What I found most striking about her story is that there was almost none of what I would have most feared, but was still worse than I dreamed. She was never attacked or even threatened, physically or sexually, though there were occasional moments of harassment. The only drugs she saw people using were those handed out by the medical staff at the prison. Until the last few weeks of her stay she never actually wore orange or shackles. Still, the system was brutal, demeaning, and dehumanizing on a level that seems carefully calculated. I was moved by this view of what life was like for her on the inside, and almost want to try the recipe for prison cheesecake.

The Other Wes Moore (Wes Moore)

This is a memoir and a biography, telling the stories of two men named Wes Moore.  Both were black, both lived in the same neighborhood in Baltimore at the same time, both grew up in single-mother households, both had scrapes with the law at an early age, both struggled in school. Their lives diverged wildly, though; the Wes Moore who authored this book became a military man, a Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, a happily married man, and a nationally-known speaker, while the other Wes Moore will live out his life in prison for murder. What happened? How did the author's life get turned around and set back on track, while the other kept spiraling further and further down a dark path? The book offers many possibilities: one father abandoned his boy while the other died unexpectedly, one mother was never able to complete college while the other was a college graduate, one dropped out of failing inner-city schools while the other was able to attend private and military schools. Ultimately, though, there are no clear answers. This book is a thoughtful look at the questions, opening our eyes to the complexity of the situation and the difficulty of finding the answers. Highly recommended.

After Visiting Friends (Michael Hainey)

In this memoir, the author describes his search for the truth about his father, who died when he was only six. Although the people and events are drawn clearly, there seemed to be missed opportunities to bring the story to life. Pages and pages were devoted to detailing the interviews with people who had little to add to the story, but there was not enough about two core people: the author and his mother. We see both of them from the outside, from a distance, and never get to know either of them well. Though the author describes how the loss of his father colored his childhood, there was nothing much about his current life; he mentions a girlfriend in passing, but we are never told about this relationship or about anything in his professional life aside from pursuing the investigation. This made the story seem distant and passionless.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends (Rob Lowe)

In this memoir, Lowe tells how he knew he wanted to be an actor from age 6, and fought single-mindedly to make that happen. He writes fairly openly about his difficulties with relationships and with alcohol that led to a downward spiral, and about the redemption that turned his life around. There is a great deal of name-dropping, but this is to be expected from someone whose middle-school friends included Charlie Sheen and Sean Penn. Aside from a disconcerting tendency to switch from past tense to present, the writing is quite good. He describes drunken evenings with his gang of friends, living for weeks in Paris with a princess, and other debaucheries without avoiding them but also without sensationalism or meanness. It is a good look at a life most of us will never know.