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The Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior
Journalist Kendzior, freaked out by changes in American culture and politics, combined with climate change and Covid, starts taking her family around to as many states as time and her budget allows as a reminder and demonstration that there are good people everywhere.
This impassioned mix of travel literature, political analysis and history told mostly from two lane highways in flyover country hits hard - I don’t think I’d ever appreciated the impact of overturning Roe v Wade on an individual, fertile woman until I’d read this. As bad as things documented here are, and taking into account how they’ve only gotten worse since this was published in April, there is humor here nonetheless, reasons to hope and fight for change. And you’ll likely want to hit the road yourself.
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The Doorman: A Novel by Chris Pavone
Chicky Diaz works as a doorman for a luxury Central Park West co-op in this Tom Wolfesque examination of Manhattan society in the immediate post-Covid era.
Intersecting story lines combine Chicky’s social strata with some of the building’s ultra-rich residents. This book was not at all what I was expecting, which was a read it and forget it airport bookstore thriller: it’s so much more, in the same way that Richard Price’s recent Lazarus Man goes far beyond genre conventions into social commentary. Negative reviews on Goodreads from readers that want Pavone to stay in his lane didn’t surprise me, but I’d rather read something with this heft, and applaud the author’s courage in this change of direction. Note that this is still a thriller – but pulp, it’s most definitely not.
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Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
A workplace memoir charting a loss of idealism at Facebook, from the optimism of its role in the Arab Spring to when it was largely responsible for Trump’s first electoral victory, with horrifying stops along the way for their in the Rohingya genocide and collusion with the Chinese government to spy on, and censor, its citizens.
Author Wynn-Williams joined Facebook as their first real director of global public policy; a New Zealand born lawyer and diplomat, her naiveté and optimism is easy to laugh at now, for those that don’t remember the initial euphoria widely shared that the internet, and social platforms, could change the world for the better. A now sadly predictable account follows of a toxic workplace rife with sexual harassment, racism, nepotism, hypocrisy and above else, respect for the bottom line above all else.
Wynn-Williams convincingly makes the point that FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg could have gone in a different direction – towards good – and still been one of the richest men in the world, but simply didn’t bother, obsessed instead with his own vanity projects and sudden whims. Sandberg doesn’t come off much better; as many suspected from when Lean In was first published, it’s easier to do so when you’re already obscenely wealthy and have a staff to take care of your children and various homes, and that it’s one thing to speak truth to power when you are the power than it is as an employee desperate to hold onto your health insurance and mortgage.
The most notable thing about this book may be how readable it is. So much of the content is horrifying (if unsurprising) and yet it’s a fun, fast read that would be as well suited to a five hour plane ride as a new Michael Connelly or Emily Henry book. The author starts things off with being attacked by a shark while on a family camping trip, and I continued turning pages in a blur straight through to the end. Unless you’re a CEO or a COO yourself, this a fast read with wide appeal.
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Fever Beach: A Novel by Carl Hiaasen
Sometimes called the inventor of “Florida Guy Noir,” Hiaasen’s novels are something like margaritas, Jimmy Buffett music, a conch sandwich and flip flops in laugh-out-loud print. The fact that he wasn’t tarred and feathered years ago, in the predominantly Republican-leaning state he has always called home, would seem to indicate humour works like some sort of invisibility cloak, or that bipartisanship is not dead (at least when it comes to novels).
Fever Beach is more of what we’ve come to expect from Hiaasen, which is to say a zany sun soaked caper that skewers racists, corrupt politicians, the willfully ignorant and those who would pave paradise to put up a parking lot. He isn’t breaking any new ground here, but given current political events in the US, this is exactly the sort of lampooning satire required to laugh instead of rage against the news cycle for a change.
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An argument by the MSNBC host and author that the most precious resource in the world today are not diamonds, oil or gold, but our attention.
I’ll admit that when I included this in an LBI Bestseller list, I was simply going through the motions: noted, well reviewed author? Check? 100k print run? Check. Big 5 publisher with a marketing budget to promote this? Check. But it never occurred to me that I’d actually want to read it myself, assuming it was just another “cellphones, Facebook, Tik Tok bad” sort of screed.
But then I heard the author on CBC... background noise turned into something I stopped to pay attention to, and later became a hold at my local library. And I’m glad I did, because even though a lot of this is familiar, Hayes has crafted an extremely interesting, readable book that easily held my attention for the two sittings it took to devour it. Now it has me reevaluating where I put my attention, not only how, but for how long.
This would be a great Non-Fiction book club pick – I can’t stress enough how enjoyable this was to read, despite the distressing subject matter.
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