Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN’s picks for book lovers include Susan Casey's non-fiction celebration of dolphins, and short stories by Pulitzer winner Adam Johnson.
Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins by Susan Casey; Doubleday, 278 pp.; non-fiction
The more you learn about dolphins the more they make you smile … and cry.
They are every bit the gregarious clowns we suppose them to be — joyful, leaping creatures that not only rejoice in riding boat wakes, but bring presents on dates and giggle with abandon. They also are wrenchingly selfless animals, reassuringly touching each others’ fins and bellies when danger approaches, or clustering together to hold up a sick or injured pod mate even at great peril to themselves.
The things we learn in Susan Casey's Voices in the Ocean about dolphins and their singular magic, history, personalities (some aren’t perpetually cheery), patterns, and intelligence (their brains are much bigger than would be expected of an animal their size) are countless.
Voices in the Ocean provides textbook-depth education that is based on Casey’s years of swimming the open seas with dolphins, interviews with leading experts and protectors, and harrowing trips to the nether reaches of the globe where horrific brutalities occur.
Paste BN says **** out of four. “Painstakingly researched and gorgeously written.”
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson; Random House, 320 pp.; fiction
Short stories by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Orphan Master’s Son.
Paste BN says ****. “Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”
Crooked by Austin Grossman; Mulholland Books; 368 pp.; fiction
A video game developer, Grossman has imagined a joy stick-operated Richard Nixon who stumbles into the clutches of both the KGB and an occult group controlled by a kind of Dead Presidents Society steeped in peyote tea.
Paste BN ***. “The journey on which Grossman dispatches Nixon is a fun one, a Merry Pranksters bus driven by Saruman or Sauron in Lord of the Rings.”
The Storm of the Century by Al Roker; William Morrow, 297 pp.; non-fiction
Popular NBC weatherman Al Roker examines the human drama and complex natural history of the hurricane that leveled Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 8, 1900, killing more than 8,000 people.
Paste BN says ***. “A fascinating, multifaceted story.”
A Necessary End by Holly Brown; William Morrow, 386 pp.; fiction
Gabe and Adrienne can’t conceive, and, desperate to be parents, they agree to an “open adoption,” which means their baby’s mother, a beautiful 19-year-old named Leah, will come and live with them for a year before legally relinquishing the child. What could go wrong?
Paste BN says***. A “thoughtful, perceptive novel.”
Contributing reviewers: Sharon Peters, Elysa Gardner, Ray Locker, Matt Damsker, Charles Finch