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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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Self-HelpFamily & Relationships

The good side of getting older

Review by Marsha VandeBerg

Jimmy Carter is getting into the act of promoting positive aging. In his 12th book, The Virtues of Aging, the former President joins America's luminaries on this increasingly popular topic in exuding confidence in the good life after 65 and exhorting each and every one of us to follow suit.

All should decide on a life path which, above all, centers on giving us a purpose, quality relationships, and a disciplined exercise program. We should see our lives as expanding, not contracting, writes Carter, who at age 56 left the White House and Washington.

He and his wife, Rosalynn now enjoying their second 50 years of marriage returned to Plains, Georgia, where he writes they struggled to find their place again in the world away from the political spotlight and outside the frenzied Washington beltway.

After months of uncertainty except when the concern was returning their peanut farm to prosperity, the Carters established the Carter Center in nearby Atlanta as the focus for pursuing their multiple interests.

From this enviable vantage point, the Carters together and individually convene meetings on favorite topics of national and international import, participate with hammer and pliers in Habitat for Humanity (building houses for those who are less well off), and maintain an interest in promoting international citizen exchange through the Friendship Force.

Paraphrasing a verse from the Old Testament, Carter tells his readers to forget caution and take a chance.

The Virtues of Aging is a virtuous (sometimes saccharine sweet) book written by a virtuous man. The author's approach is down-home and conversational. He might preach on occasion ( Social Security laws must change. )He also might meander, but never far from his readers who feel as if they are sitting across the kitchen table in Plains.

We almost see him blush when he deals all too briefly with the subject of sexuality and aging, reminding us painfully of his admission of experiencing lust in his heart. In a chapter entitled "What Is Successful Aging?,"  Carter writes, You may be surprised to learn that I think one of the most important [goals] should be our own happiness. Well, not really. But read this short and sweet book anyway. It's written to the point, which is this: go experience life, even though you've crossed the threshold of 65.

Marsha VandeBerg is a writer in San Francisco and founding national editor of a magazine for readers who are 50 and older.

Jimmy Carter is getting into the act of promoting positive aging. In his 12th book, The Virtues of Aging, the former President joins America's luminaries on this increasingly popular topic in exuding confidence in the good life after 65 and exhorting each and every one of us to follow suit. All should decide on a […]
Religion & Spirituality

An unorthodox look at religion

Review by Emily Abedon

She doesn't preach. She says the two best prayers she knows are "Help me, help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." And the amount of swearing she does would make a trooper blush. But in her latest work, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott shares such poignant tales of her journey toward a relationship with God that even non-believers could find their emotions stirred.

Don't fear that she drained some of the poison from her pen to enter God's good graces. Lamott's trademark honesty, sass, and mettle are in full command in this collection of autobiographical anecdotes. She may be among the most sharp-tongued Christians you ever come across. For instance, she describes a right-wing Christian novel as, "paranoid, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic propaganda—not to put too fine a point on it." But she is also unapologetically religious, describing herself as, "about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus fish on the back of my car."

The Lord leads her, not just through bulimia, drug-abuse, and the death of beloved friends, but through stage fright, traffic jams, and toddler tantrums. She often calls on a higher power via quickly scribbled notes placed in a cardboard box or ashtray to be read at God's convenience.

You better believe Lamott's wicked sense of humor is a godsend. She is the queen of the quirky metaphor. Only she could compare yelling at her doe-eyed young son to "bitch-slapping E.T." In Lamott's hands, God becomes Sam-I-Am, from Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham; her little boy in a pink wet suit becomes a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Pee-Wee Herman; and her pale, flabby thighs become beloved aunts.

Fans of Operating Instructions, her journal of her son's first year, will recognize many of the people who helped Lamott steer through the "swamp of fear and doubt" that characterized her life for many years. Also familiar is the writer's biting self-deprecation on topics as diverse as her child- rearing ability to the size of her aging rear end.

Her story is riveting because it runs the gamut through the depths of sadness, fear, and anger, and the heights of joy, peace, and awareness. Yet Lamott refrains from glamorizing her conversion. There is no evangelical underscore. Though it is subtitled "Some Thoughts on Faith," Traveling Mercies is really some thoughts on life. Lamott doesn't tell you how to live yours. And she doesn't claim to have taken the wisest paths getting through her own. She merely speaks of where she has been, and shares what she calls the profoundest spiritual truth she knows, "that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway."

She doesn't preach. She says the two best prayers she knows are "Help me, help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." And the amount of swearing she does would make a trooper blush. But in her latest work, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott shares such poignant tales of her journey toward a […]

Taste

Like the enormous layered pasta pie that starred in the 1996 movie Big Night, Stanley Tucci’s new memoir is a gastronome’s delight.
NonfictionNatureHumor

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Review by Alice Cary

There’s no denying that Nick Offerman is one of America’s more intriguing celebrities. The man who made Ron Swanson famous in “Parks and Recreation” is also a touring comedian, saxophonist, professional woodworker and author of books like Paddle Your Own Canoe and Good Clean Fun. His latest is Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, which Offerman has subtitled in his frequently reflective, self-deprecating style: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside. And boy does he.

Offerman divides his observations among three very different adventures, all devoted to exploring his relationship with America’s landscapes and past. He’s an entertaining raconteur and prone to digressions (Sirius Radio commercials that annoy him, for example, or his irritation with people who don’t make eye contact as he jogs past). The result is an undeniable immediacy, as though readers are spending the day hiking right beside him.

Offerman’s first quest is a culture lover’s dream: He spent a week in 2019 hiking in Glacier National Park with his “bromance partners,” author George Saunders and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. The pals have great discussions about nature, America’s deplorable treatment of Indigenous and Black people, and the writers Wendell Berry and Aldo Leopold, two of Offerman’s heroes. There are humorous missteps as well, bringing to mind Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, although Offerman’s descriptions of the glorious trails will leave readers ready to make a beeline to Glacier.

Nick Offerman narrates the audiobook for ‘Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.’ Read our review.

The second section examines farming and land use, framed by repeated visits to Offerman’s friend James Rebanks, an English sheep farmer in Cumbria, England, and author of the ecological books The Shepherd’s Life and Pastoral Song. Rebanks embraces a robust, self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle that Midwestern-born Offerman admires and is thrilled to jump into. As always, his enthusiasm is contagious. 

Finally, Offerman and his wife, actress Megan Mullally (whom he clearly worships), set off in the fall of 2020 in their newly acquired Airstream trailer on a COVID-19 road trip to explore places like Sedona, Arizona, and the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s fun reading about these two actors on the road, facing everyday issues and sometimes-humorous misfortunes. Offerman’s frequent solo hikes during this trip offer him a chance to ramble (and rant) on a variety of subjects, many of them political.

Laced with humor, intellect and fierce passion, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is an entertaining getaway to a variety of unexpected American vistas.

Readers of Nick Offerman’s latest work of comedic, ecological greatness will feel as though they’re spending the day hiking right beside him.
NonfictionAudioEssays

Carry On

Review by G. Robert Frazier

​​You know those motivational posters that hang in your place of work? The ones with the simple messages about teamwork, friendship, success and excellence? Carry On (2.5 hours), the new audiobook from late, great civil rights icon Representative John Lewis, is like that—only better, because his aphorisms are punchy yet never cliched, and you can take his inspirational words with you and play them anytime you need a lift.

Actor Don Cheadle narrates each of Lewis’ 43 short essays with clarity and passion, knowing just where to put the right amount of emphasis. While Lewis was unable to record the audiobook himself, Cheadle more than succeeds in embodying the congressman’s message of hope.

Ruminating on topics that range from justice and conscience to hobbies and humor, Lewis has blessed us with a timeless collection of wisdom and knowledge from a lifetime of “good trouble” in his nonviolent quest for equality. “A good day,” Lewis tells us, “is waking up and being alive.”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print edition of Carry On.

While John Lewis was unable to record his essays himself, Don Cheadle more than succeeds in embodying the congressman’s message of hope.
NonfictionFood & Drink

Truffle Hound

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

A single whiff of a truffle can be nearly intoxicating. Depending on the variety, the inhaler might detect notes of garlic, fried cheese and gym socks (white truffles) or pineapple and banana (a young Oregon black). And one person sniffing may find those aromas enticing, while another might not understand the fuss.

Those fragrances, and the allure of the fungi that produce them, left James Beard Award-winning food writer Rowan Jacobsen (A Geography of Oysters) drunk on truffles and determined to learn all he could. Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of not only truffles but also the stories of people who hunt and sell them. 

The result is Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World’s Most Seductive Scent, With Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs, an engaging work that blends history with travel and food writing. Jacobsen follows his nose and curiosity across Europe and back to North America, while considering studies that extend even farther. He meets hunters and farmers whose livelihoods depend on the elusive tubers, and along the way he challenges truffle myths. For example, they grow far outside of the Mediterranean region that’s most often credited for them.

Jacobsen delves into the sometimes twisting history of this food, as well as into the science that makes truffle farming possible. Even as he examines the fungi’s complex history and analyzes questions about who gets access to truffles, Jacobsen’s writing remains accessible, unlike the costly object of his desire.

Truffle Hound is a compelling story, but Jacobsen doesn’t leave readers empty-handed when the tale ends. The book also includes a glossary of truffle types, resources for acquiring your own truffles and recipes for after the decadent fungi arrives. It’s an appropriate finish to a delicious book.

Intoxicated by truffles and determined to learn all he could, Rowan Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of this elusive, decadent fungi.

The Writer’s Crusade

Journalist Tom Roston outlines the story behind Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, and the wartime trauma that inspired it.
NonfictionMemoirAnimals

The Speckled Beauty

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Sit down, pull up a chair (or pick a spot under your favorite tree) and smile as Rick Bragg spins his mesmerizing tales of life down South with characteristically wry humor and wisdom. A paean to his terrible good dog, Speck, The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People offers a knowing and humane meditation on the devotion of a man to his dog and a dog to his man.

Bragg first found Speck among a pack of strays eating trash in the middle of the road; when he approached the pack, the other dogs scattered, but Speck lingered, and so Bragg took him in. Speck’s mismatched eyes—a light brown left eye and an almost solid blue-black right eye—“did not ruin his face; they just made him look like the pirate he is.” Bragg wasn’t looking for a dog when he found Speck, and even if he had been, this isn’t the one he might have expected. “I had in mind a fat dog,” he writes, “a gentle plodder that only slobbered an acceptable amount and would not chase a car even if the trunk was packed with pork chops.”

Yet, this dog—who chases cars, drinks from the toilet and rounds up jackasses—has a story, and Bragg tells it with all the “exaggeration and adjustment” of a rattling good storyteller. Bragg weaves his own stories of health challenges and his brother’s cancer diagnosis throughout Speck’s journey, as the two take care of each other in the wilds of rural Alabama. Bragg concludes that Speck “just wants some people of his own, and some snacks, because a dog gets used to things like that. . . . And, when the weather turns bad, he wants someone to come let him in, when the thunder shakes the mountain, when the lightning flash reveals that he was just a dog all this time.”

The Speckled Beauty takes its place beside Willie Morris’ My Dog Skip, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ animal narratives and William Faulkner’s dog stories—as well as all those short tales of devoted dogs in Field & Stream—confirming once more Bragg’s enduring artfulness and cracking good ability to spin memorable, affectionate tales.

The Speckled Beauty confirms Rick Bragg’s enduring artfulness and cracking good ability to spin memorable, affectionate tales.

The Right to Sex

Amia Srinivasan’s book about sex and consent is invaluable for readers interested in intelligent, clear and nuanced analysis rather than hasty clickbait.

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