Listen to Book Reviews

Sometimes there’s nothing like listening to a review to pique my interest in an author or book.  One excellent source for listening to book or author reviews is National Public Radio (NPR).  Here are a few reviews from KQED’s The California Report that may convince you to read the book and enter your name in the Adult Summer Reading Game.  The links will take you directly to the site for The California Report where you can click on the audio link to listen to a brief review by a local book critic. 

Bay Area Authors

 Beth Lisick:  Helping Me Help Myself
Summary: “A lighthearted analysis of the multibillion-dollar self-help industry traces the author’s year-long experimentation with the empowerment and self-improvement philosophies of such names as John Gray, Richard Simmons, and Suze Orman.”
Book Review: “Helping Me Help Myself”: The California Report | The California Report

David Thomson:  Try to Tell the Story
Summary: “One of the most celebrated film critics and historians presents the story of his first 18 years, growing up an only child in south London in the 1940s and 1950s.”
Book Review — David Thomson: The California Report | The California Report

 
Tobias Wolff:  Our Story Begins:  New and Selected Stories
Summary:  “Combines ten original works with twenty-one classic tales that chronicle the unexpected revelations that occur in the lives of characters ranging from a teacher abducted by a student’s father to an attorney taking a difficult deposition.”
Book Review — Tobias Wolff: The California Report | The California Report

Books that take place in the Bay Area

The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
Summary: “ Photographer Abby Mason’s life is changed forever by the disappearance of the young girl with whom she had been walking on a cold and foggy beach, and her desperate search for the truth behind the child’s vanishing.”
Book Review: Michelle Richmond’s “The Year of Fog”: The California Report | The California Report

Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase
Summary:  “Describes an epidemic of bubonic plague that erupted in turn-of-the-century San Francisco and the efforts of scientists to contain the disease, discover its source, and eradicate it from the city.”
Book Review: The Barbary Plague: The California Report | The California Report

Audiobook Options

The Adult Summer reading game is going strong with several winners to date.  Perhaps some of you are already winners and looking forward to finding new suggestions or maybe you’re ready to try your hand at winning.  The game ends August 15^th, which leaves plenty of time to start a new book or finish the one you have in your hands.  For those of you who are finding it hard to find time to read, don’t forget to give audiobooks a try.  I love listening to a good audiobook while I’m gardening or walking the dog. 

Below are a few Bay Area authors you’ll find both in book format and in audiobook format. 

I’ll start with one of my favorite Bay Area authors, Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Path of Minor Planets, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, an exquisitely sad love story and his most recent bestseller and critically acclaimed, The Story of a Marriage. 

        

 

I don’t think it’s possible talk about the talent of the Bay Area without mentioning Khaled Hosseini.  Author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s haunting tales take place in his native Afghanistan with all too human characters that resonate with his readers.   The fact that The Kite Runner spent more than two years on the New York Times Bestsellers list and was later made into a movie is a tribute to his talents. 

   

 

In keeping with authors whose characters and situations remain with us long after we put down the book, or our audio headphones, let me add Daniel Mason to this group.  Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner and A Far Country.  In The Piano Tuner, Mason takes us from 19^th Century London to Burma.  The New York Times wrote that Mason’s “powerful prose style and his ability to embrace history, politics, nature and medicine within a fully imagined 19th-century fictional world would be notable in any writer…”

   

These are just a few of the Bay Area authors you’ll find in audiobook format.   Not having time to sit down and read shouldn’t stop you from playing our Summer Reading Game.

Introducing Dianne Day

Another local mystery writer from the Bay Area, Dianne Day! In this case, historical mysteries. Fremont Jones is a young feminist from Boston. She escape the confines of Boston Society and lands in San Francisco. The four books that take place in and around the bay area occur around the time of the great earthquake. So they are historically interesting as well as intriguing mysteries.

Request books by Dianne Day here.