LIKE A ROLLING STONE: A MEMOIR by Jann S. Wenner (AUDIBLE VERSION)

This was enjoyable to listen to for many reasons. The name-dropping—family vacations with the Springsteens. Private island weekend getaways with Mick Jagger. And the backstories of the many talented editors and writers that catapulted Rolling Stone from a San Francisco rock rag magazine at its start in 1967 to a global music and counterculture bible for much of the five decades Wenner ran the publication. His son, Gus, currently is CEO of the magazine even though Wenner is a minority owner. I knew a handful of the writers and editors at the magazine from my time working there in the mid-1980s. Wenner (his memoir read by actor Dennis Boutsikaris) is a long tale told of inner-circle A-list parties and the drugs taken, lavish meals shared, backstage antics, and vacations all over the world. The interesting parts, when Jimi, Janis, and Jim all perished at the age of 27 to John Lennon’s assassination in 1980, fuel Wenner’s premise for starting the magazine in the first place. What does music give to the world, and the importance of the artists who make it? Although Wenner, in his own words, seems much more interested in politics than music making—the cultural influence of rock n’ roll in mainstream politics is where RS found its sweet spot demographic. Listening to Wenner’s take on the primarily male-dominated business of music celebrity male gazing, Wenner pays little attention to the few female writers on its masthead (although gives a prodigious amount of gratitude to photographer Annie Lebowitz’s skills) and credit to the male editors and writers who kept the magazine relevant even through the disco, hip hop, and grunge eras. Wenner’s ability to find and keep a stable of exceptional writers and editors was his real talent.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

With hints of Little Women trickling into the narrative, Hello Beautiful tells the story of the Padavano family of sisters and of William, one of the sister’s husbands. William opens the novel where we learn he is shunned by his parents after his sister’s death, and basketball fills the unloved part of him. He marries Julia, a Type A personality to William’s indifferent one, and she directs his life in ways he begrudgingly accepts because of his love for Julia’s family. When the marriage falls apart, Julia moves with their daughter to New York City. Julia tells their daughter her father is dead. William falls in love and finds his raison d’etre (no spoiler here). Told from the perspectives of William, Julia, and another sister, Sylvie, Hello Beautiful is a treatise on family and the dynamics of identity and roles taken on. What is poignant about this novel is how it exposes the silences between the characters in such an understanding and realistic way.

Favorite line(s): “We haven’t touched each other,” Sylvie said. “You and I. Do you realize that? We haven’t hugged. Which makes sense if this isn’t real. Ghosts don’t hug, because they would pass through each other. Ghosts just enjoy each other’s company.” Julia smiled at her sister’s whimsy. Sylvie was part of her, and in their separation, Julia had missed these kinds of thoughts. Sylvie was the part of her who walked out of the pages of a novel, who kissed boys for ninety seconds for fun, who talked about third doors and ghosts as easily as she made a grocery list. Maybe she and her sister were ghosts, or hallucinations, or maybe it didn’t matter. Julia was aware that she felt better—happier, more relaxed—than she had in a long time. She was supposed to be in a different city. She was with Sylvie, whom she’d excised from her life a quarter of a century earlier. Julia felt a shot of joy rise through her like bubbles to the surface of a glass. She was free of her real self, of her real life, for a few hours, and when Julia left for the airport a little while later, she and Sylvie both knew—although neither spoke the words out loud—that Julia would return. They’d found a loophole, which allowed them to be together without anyone’s knowledge, which meant this time meant nothing, which meant everything.

SIGNS: THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF THE UNIVERSE by Laura Lynne Jackson

I was gifted this book—I think by one of my daughters. It sat on the TBR pile forever. In the past few months, I’ve had crazy unexplained “coincidences” happen to me—like woo-woo kind of stuff. So I pulled this book from the stack to see if it might have some answers. With any dive into an alternate way of looking at things, the flow of information doesn’t hit unless the gates are open and unmanned. So I took off the shield of disbelief in anything I couldn’t explain and let myself absorb the energy of Jackson’s words. I always leaned toward the belief that there’s something more “out there” (I was raised Catholic for eff’s sake), and now I’m sure of it.

Favorite line(s): This book is a journey toward a new way of looking at our lives. It starts with opening our minds to the possibility of signs sent to us by the Other Side. It moves on to co-creating a language that makes it easier for our Teams of Light to send us those signs. From there, it takes us to appreciating how powerful and life-altering these signs can be. And then we reach the point that can be the most challenging part of the journey—our willingness to trust the universe. The willingness to surrender.

FINDING THE BONES: STORIES & A NOVELLA by Nikki Kallio

Stories of the otherworldly, the terrifying, the snappy coming-of-age hero’s quest amidst the poor decisions of adults, and you have Kallio’s terrifically entertaining Finding the Bones. The title, perhaps, is a metaphor for all that human endeavor aspires to: to figure out where we come from and why we’re here. In these nine stories and a novella, the reader feels the utter terror of waiting for passage to another planet before a meteor hits and wipes out everyone on Earth in Geography Lesson. Who gets to leave, and who stays, knowing death is imminent? In Shadow, one woman’s justification for not notifying anyone of bones she stumbled upon while on a walk in the woods. A bullied eleven-year-old boy who sees a UFO in a farm field while living with relatives and waiting for his mom to come home in the heartwrenching Disappearing. Memory and the effects of war converge in Missing Mary. The powerful story of a mother’s hoarding disease in Resurface. The hunt for ghosts and a murderer in Spirit Box and the novella, The Fledgling, a dual narrative about a woman, Gin, and her daughter, Elena, in the grips of the earth’s solar storms causing cannabilism when infected by the poisonous sun. Gin and her daughter live together under protection from daylight in a walled-off city. Elena teaches ballet virtually, and most interaction with the outside world is conducted by wearing an RRmask that mimics climbing a snowy mountain or standing on a beach in Cozumel. The sun is the enemy, and everyone is awake during the night. Life turned upside down runs thematically through these beautifully rendered stories. 

Favorite line(s): He held it open and the girls plunged out into the night air like fireflies from an opened jar. For a time, they forgot about the game and simply ran between the black pines, letting the cool grass hug their toes, their bodies feeling lighter in the forbidden territory of the night, as if weight were merely a consequence of being seen. They kept up their revelry until the sky started to change from charcoal to the color of Aunt Marion’s hydrangea blooms, until the birds woke up and declared that life was once again under the dominion of daylight.