Daniel Goleman: A Force for Good

Daniel Goleman, the bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, is a scientist who has been collaborating with the Dalai Lama for many years. I think it is interesting that the Dalai Lama is not pushing people to become Buddhists, but rather encouraging them to become more compassionate human beings, whatever their beliefs. I also think it is interesting that this book is taking on global social issues. The time scale is definitely longer than one generation in which to witness the positive changes we would all like to see in the world. The Dalai Lama thinks that changes in how children are educated will be very important to the way things develop into the future.

Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's

Would our lives be easier and happier if we were not carrying around with us ideas about right and wrong? Truman Capote seems to create such a character in Holly Golightly. Yet all is not as it seems. And nothing continues the same, as the story develops fascinating twists and turns.

Mario Vargas Llosa: In Praise of the Stepmother

Called by many an 'erotic' novel, I don't feel it is sexy. The family's young son in the story is said to be 'innocent,' yet he is an expert seducer at a young age. The father of the family spends an hour each night in the bathroom taking care of his aging body, and here again everything is not as it seems. Some say the novel is 'wickedly funny,' yet I never laughed.

Is this book about a boy's precocious sexuality or about something else? What is this lively small novel really about? We'll never know, because the author never quite tells us.

Wait a minute! I have changed my mind about this book. The boy is pictured on the front cover as a baby, but what if he is really 15 or 16 years old, as indicated by the fact that his father will be giving him a motorcycle on his next birthday? That would change things. That would put an entirely different slant on the boy's presumed "innocence."

The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. He is mainly known for political and journalistic works.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a person of high literary accomplishment and the author of Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, and The House of Mirth. Ethan Frome is a grim tale about the impossibility of finding love, beauty, kindness, or generosity in America, locked as it was into heartless Puritanism. Massachusetts in winter is the perfect setting for this tragic tale.

Edith Wharton, A Biography, by R.W.B. Lewis, is also well worth reading.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

The main character of this novel, a 72-year-old Lebanese woman, worships writers. Every year she translates a favorite book into Arabic, then stores it away. Her work has never been read by anyone. She is divorced and has no children. She is on the outs with her family and has no friends. In the midst of social upheaval, her life is dedicated and disciplined, almost monastic. The book is surprisingly lively and absorbing.

“A paean to the transformative power of reading, to the intellectual asylum from one’s circumstances found in the life of the mind.”—LA Review of Books

Junot Diaz: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

As an English major and a cultured person, I found it hard at first to like this book. It is violent. It is written in a mixture of English and street Spanish. In other words, it is vulgar and full of slang. Yet it is so good at narrating the stories of the people in the Dominican Republic and later, Dominicans here in America, that it won me over and I had to say, "Wow!" This book won the Pulitzer Prize.

Here Is New York by E.B.White

Even though it is decades old, this little book is a gem of wisdom about New York City. For example, E.B. White says New York gives us two gifts: the gift of privacy and the gift of loneliness. He has certainly hit the nail right on the head!