Delmio.com Sidetrips

This beach book is the kind of quick, absorbing read that goes down as easily as a glass of iced lemonade (double sugar) after a day in the sun. But that’s not to say author Jan Goldstein doesn’t try to insert some serious issues into the bathos. At book signings, Goldstein has learned that the novel resonates with readers whose lives have been touched by Alzheimer’s and those raising teen-agers, he says.
“Many people who come are moms and wives who are caught between the crunch of taking care of a parent or taking care of a teenager,” Goldstein says.
His protagonist does both while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat from California. In the waning days of his primary campaign, candidate Teddy Mathison is summoned to his boyhood home on Nantucket, where his estranged mother, Kate, is dying from Alzheimer’s disease. Worse, Mathison is forced to take along his sullen teenage daughter, Zoe, who despises her father for abandoning her.

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Everyone is weird.
That’s what John Ortberg writes in Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.
He doesn’t mean just a little off-center, slightly quirky or a bit of flake.
He means all of us have a very weird side that can make us hard to love. If you don’t think so, just wait until you get to know us better.
Ortberg cuts against the grain in Christianity that sometimes claims once you have given your heart to Christ, you not only are “saved” into the kingdom of God, your problems seem to fly away like angels heading for the clouds. In fact, being a true Christian sometimes means even more heartache because now we have to really deal with the goofballs around us.

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For Thomas L. Friedman, it’s not a fancy turn of phrase to declare “The world is flat.” It’s unvarnished fact.

That said, if his updated version of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is, indeed, an accurate warning of the life ahead, it is a volume worthy of every American’s attention.

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder.
Mitch Albom rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live.

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Sweet, savage and haunting, Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones takes readers into a tragic corner of the world in a coming- of -age story like no other.

The novel takes place in a village on the real island of Bougainville, just north of Australia. Part of Papua New Guinea since Colonial times, the island’s residents rebel during the 1990s period in which the novel takes place. Civil war rages around and, finally, within an island village. Rebels battle soldiers trying to re-establish New Guinea’s sovereignty over the island.

Only one white man, Mr. Watts, stays on the island during the conflict. He is a New Zealander married to a local woman named Grace. Because the white teacher has fled along with the others, Mr. Watts offers to reopen the village school. His only tools are the wisdom of the island women and a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, which he begins to read aloud to the children.

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Rick Dockery has found himself in a tight spot. A backup quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, he ends up on the field when the two QBs in front of him get hurt. Spotted with a nice lead and a chance to propel the Browns to the Super Bowl, he manages to lose the game anyway and gets a concussion to boot. An angry and drunk mob of Browns fans tries to storm the hospital where Rick is being treated, and it becomes abundantly clear that Rick’s career in Cleveland, and probably the NFL, is over. Grisham takes a side trip from his famous legal thrillers in Playing for Pizza, a story that harnesses the author’s other passion: sports.

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The Da Vinci Code took the literary world by storm, though the movie, well, not so much so. It brought gnosticism to public awareness and suggested something unspreakably evil was going on. And how about Tom Hanks’ hair? It certainly had its fans, and it had a few detractors as well. See for yourself. CLICK HERE

In this charming tale of a pet pig, Sy Montgomery weaves the stories of the healing transformations – hers and others – Chris effects in his legion of fans. “This huge, adored pig,’’ she writes, “who had given so many people delight, was proof that no matter what nature or history hands you, with love, anything is possible.”

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The story of John Bul Dau’s childhood and early adulthood could be summarized by this prophesy: “This will be a black-haired time.” Which means: None of the people in Sudan will live long enough to have gray hair. Reading God Grew Tired of Us cuts through any desensitization and brings those feelings of sorrow and happiness, of pain and love, back into focus again.

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The life and circumstances of the central character of A Far County, the second novel of Daniel Mason, are undoubtedly alien to most of its readers. Isabel is a teenager in a Third World country that has been traumatized by drought, civil unrest and poverty. She also has a preternatural ability to see “further” than others - a sixth sense that sometimes frightens and confuses her. But author Mason leads readers into Isabel’s external and internal lives with expert skill, allowing a quick embrace of her circumstances and spirit.

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