* Season of the Witch by David Talbot

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love recounts the social history of San Francisco from the Summer of Love through the 1980s in somewhat breathless chapters full of details on where people lived, the names of their offsprings, and what they wore, whether or not it’s relevant to the story. With the exception of a few chapters, it feels like a 6pm newsreel, full of political corruption, crime, and dashed expectations. I also understand that the author chose to focus on pop culture but it’s strange to read a book that covers a significant chunk of time that somehow manages to never mention any of the economic or scientific changes during that period, of which there were many! I finished the 400+  pages but only through diligent application.

*** A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

I have not always been a fan of Jane Smiley’s books but I thought A Dangerous Business was convincing and well thought-out. It stars two women working as sex workers in Gold Rush Monterey, California. They are trying to solve crimes (and they do) but the best part for me was the depicting of frontier life from the perspective of strong-willed women and no, it did not feel overly anachronistic.

* The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

The Parable of the Sower stars a California in crisis, having run out of water and populated by roaming, desperate gangs preying on formally middle-class folks now huddling in fortified neighborhoods. Guns are the law and escape to the North seems impossible as Oregon has closed its borders. Despite it all, freeways are still there, there’s a presidential election, and the National Guard seems to also exist, doing what we do not know.

The heroine will take a band of survivors northwards and save women and children on the way. It makes no sense and the entire setup makes no sense. Why would anyone subject themselves to a story with gruesome deaths and violence, and no hope to boot? Read literally any other book reviewed on this blog instead of this one.

* The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie

Having hated the author’s The Portable Veblen, it’s not that surprising that I thought that The Dog of the North was an incoherent mess, again, despite its memorable off-the-wall characters and adventures. The good news was that it led me to reading The Dog of the South, which turned out to be peopled with quixotic characters and highly improbable settings like this story–but with a sturdy structure and arc, which makes all the difference. Pick that one instead.

* Who Killed Jane Stanford? by Richard White

Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, was pretty obviously murdered while visiting Hawaii. A century later, Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University attempts to reconstruct the events, highlights the reasons why the fledgling university exerted so much pressure on the police to keep the affair quiet, and shows how spectacularly successful it was at hiding the crime of a famous and rich woman. This is a tedious history, delving into sanitized archives and attempting to discern patterns that were long ago willfully obscured. The most interesting part of the book, for me, was the story of the birth of the university, funded by profits made on the back of taxpayers for one thing, and intended to be a liberal-arts institution, as opposed to the research institution across the Bay, UC Berkeley.

** Members Only by Sameer Panda

In Members Only, the hero, Raj, has a very bad week. He makes a racist comment at his (very white) tennis club and he is attacked by students who feel that he is anti-Christian. And instead of  apologizing, taking the high road, and backing away from controversy, he loses it and soon finds himself on administrative leave, banned from the club, and in a serious health crisis. It could be an apt parable but I found it hard to believe that a middle-aged man would crumble like this. Perhaps that’s the whole point?

** How Much of These Hills Is Gold by Pam Zhang

How Much of These Hills Is Gold follows two orphans in the Gold Rush years of the American West who pick their way through a hostile climate and even more hostile residents who can’t abide their Chinese origins. Dreams and symbolism figure strongly along with tigers (really!), which made it difficult for me to get into the  well-crafted family story but it felt arms-length to the end, which is not ideal for a novel.

** The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander

The intertwined stories of successive owners of the same piano in The Piano are strangely compelling, probably thanks to the strong female characters with unusual lives. Still, I felt that the story was too forced, too unlikely, too constructed to really flow, and, in parts, read more like a compilation of careful research (on interesting topics including music, Russian emigres to the US, Death Valley) than a story one may actually embrace and believe. You may be more trusting and charitable than I am.

** On Sunset by Kathryn Harrison

On Sunset is a delightful memoir of the author’s childhood, being raised by her grandparents as her unmarried mother lived nearby and seemed responsible enough, but not, apparently, to raise a child. Her grandparents had unusual lives. Her grandmother, born in an Iranian Jewish family, grew up in Shanghai there her father was a wealthy merchant. Her grandfather grew up poor in England but spent time working in Alaska before marrying late in life.  She tells of growing up in a mansion, the furniture of which gets sold off to pay for necessities, while proper manners and decorum are observed at all times. I loved the description of her relationship to her grandfather, who is kind and wise and generous, as perhaps only someone who grows up poor can be.

*** Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen is a memoir and book-length argument in favor of immigration reform. The author was sent to the US at age 12 to live with his (documented) grandparents with the hope of a better future. Things worked out well for him: he attended a good high school and was able to take advantage of generous financial help to attend college, but proper paperwork proved elusive and a talented journalist finds himself with no legal avenue to regularize his situation — although, interestingly and despite (or perhaps because of) his fame, he has not been deported. I would have preferred more of a focus on his personal history and less political commentary, but it’s important to show how productive individuals are left in limbo because of decisions made long ago by their parents.