The 9.9 Percent by Matthew Stewart

The author of The 9.9 Percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture is angry. Angry at his grandparents, who lived off a family trust in a Florida enclave, without ever, it seems, generating any societal value or a kind comment to anyone outside their small social circle. And very angry at the 9.9 percent of the title, upper-income folks who do not participate in extreme wealth but, he says, create  entrenched inequality by both benefitting from it and creating systems to exclude others from their little paradise.

He makes a number of excellent points: rich people often forget that they got where they are because of family wealth; rich people channel their energy into making sure their children get into the best universities and lucrative occupations that may exclude other children; rich people use political power to arrange society to suit them. But not all rich people, unlike the ones he portrayed, are clueless and exclusionary–and it seems that simple changes such as a different tax system could go a long way in taming the inequality that rich people may enjoy, but is not inescapable.

*** Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

Written by a physician and researcher, Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind explains how anxiety works, why it can be a good thing, and how to decouple the automated mechanisms that hobble anxious folks and drive their friends crazy.

My only quibble is that the good doctor (having admitted that he was, once, quite anxious) seems intent on reminding us of his exalted position and univeristy affiliation on a regular basis. Maybe there’s a bit of residual status anxiety…

*** The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

If you are looking for a classic mystery set in a grand country house with a set cast of characters, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a gem. Hercule Poirot is the intrepid detective and, beyond the perfect plot twist that ends the book, I particularly enjoyed the perfectly-rendered faulty English only a native French speaker could speak. 

* A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris

Charlie Barnes is in a pickle. He’s ill, alone, misunderstood, and hard for money. Or, is he? A Calling for Charlie Barnes cleverly twists reality and the fiction his son writes, but the problem is that we don’t really care about Charlie because he just does not seem real enough, or interesting enough. At least I could not case enough.

** Becoming Grandma by Lesley Stahl

I found the first 100 pages of  Becoming Grandma: The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting to be a slog, as Stahl seemed wholly unaware of how her experience, as a moneyed, upper-class grandmother able to jet around the country to be with her grandchildren with few constraints other than her still pretty flexible job, may not exactly match that of most grandmothers. But I’m glad I stuck with it as she delved into the evolutionary benefits of grandmothers and  the physical and psychological benefits that grandchildren bring to their grandparents.

* Taste Makers by Mayukh Sen

The best part of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America may be its title. The biographies seem thinly researched and superficially told. The women seem interesting, but their stories left me, well, hungry for more.

*** Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott

Slogging through the almost 600 pages of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City will raise your blood pressure and your sadness meter both, as the heroine of this real story, the unfortunately-named Dasani, tries to mother her seven siblings while her mother and stepfather struggles with various addictions and the not-so-helpful social services of New York City. She even gets the chance to escape and attend a fancy private school, but that’s not quite enough to propel her to a better life. The strength of the story is that it follows her for many years. The author points out egregious problems in the way society pretends to take care of poor children, but could it ever overcome parental failures? We could certainly do better to cushion kids against them.

*** Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood

Murder Under Her Skin is an old-fashioned mystery that takes place in an old-fashioned traveling circus performing in an old-fashioned town. The sleuthing is done the old-fashioned way, with the detectives puzzling out the answers and letting the suspects crumble in the face of the truth. It’s all quite satisfying, if not exactly challenging.

** The Promise by Damon Galgut

The Promise reminded me of Agaat, in both the setting, South Africa, and the bigoted relationships between white masters and Black servants. As in Agaat, a servant is promised property, but will be deprived of it for decades. Unlike Agaat, this story struck me as plodding and predictable, so read Agaat instead.

*** O William! by Elizabeth Stroub

O William! follows My Name is Lucy Barton, but it’s a standalone novel in which Lucy, a now older writer, talks about her ex-husband, William, and eventually goes on a pilgrimage with him to investigate his family’s origins. The beauty of the book, much like the first one, is how the author is able to slowly tease out not only the historical facts of their marriage, but both how they each felt at the time, and how they reflect back on to the past. I wonder how younger people would read it but I thought the book was a delight in showing how interpretations and feelings change over a lifetime.