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Alex Michaelides latest, tales of an NYC maitre d', and more

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The Memo

by Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling
Read it if you’re into: Feel good stories, The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig, quick and fun reads

Jenny Green, stuck at a dead end job and living in Pittsburgh with a boyfriend who she’s pretty sure is cheating on her, has always felt like she missed the memo. Her college friends are beautiful and successful, and she’s never measured up. But what if there was an actual memo, and she really did miss it? When she receives a text telling her to come collect her memo, she gets a chance to go back in time and finally create the life she thinks she deserves.

This book was written by two friends in a Google doc, and the fun they must have had doing it is palpable on every page. It is at once a relatable story of modern life and the constant comparison women feel in the age of social media, as well as a satire about the gamification of life, wellness and success. Hapless Jenny is both frustrating and endearing, while the unique premise and dual timelines make for a breezy, compelling read. You just can’t help but want to find out what happens next. It is not entirely unpredictable, but as with Jenny’s own life, the joy is in the journey, not the destination.

Once Upon a Day

by Lisa Tucker
Read it if you’re interested in: Complex family dynamics, women’s fiction, eccentric characters

Young Dorothea and her brother have been raised by their father and grandmother in an isolated corner of New Mexico, and it’s all they remember. The circumstances — complete isolation with no connection to the outside world — would be strange if they knew any differently. When one day, Dorothea’s brother ventures off on his own to get answers, she follows in an attempt to bring him home. The journey brings her to St. Louis, where she meets a mysterious, grieving cabdriver whose fate soon becomes intertwined with her own.

Once Upon a Day is a story about human relationships: about romance and family, and the things we do in the name of protecting those we love. Tucker comes the closest I’ve seen to depicting characters as real, flawed people: you will not find the stark lines of good and evil here. Dorothea, raised as she was, is a fun protagonist to read as we see the modern world through her eyes for the first time. Naive, innocent and often unintentionally funny, she ties the story together. A dual timeline looking back on her father and mother’s life while she tries to piece together how her family got to where it is keeps the plot engaging. This book is unfathomably dark at points, but ultimately the glimmers of hope are strong enough to shine through.

Your Table is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina,
Read it if you’re into: Keeping up with the latest Michelin starred restaurants, Anthony Bourdain, NYC in the ‘80s and ‘90s

Career maitre d’ Michael Cecchi-Azzolina has worked in the restaurant business for decades, and depicts here what it was like behind the scenes at some of the NYC’s top restaurants in a time when being seen at an establishment meant everything.

An alternative title for this book could be Sex, Drugs and Restaurants, in that order. It’s full of the fortuitous encounters and elbow rubbing htat just don’t exist anymore, and the author perfectly conjures the scene at the time. It’s also chock full of the absolutely insane happenings that could only exist in the pre-HR restaurant world. There’s a lot of celebrity name dropping, and the book is studded with people and places well known to NYC foodies today: Danny Meyer, The River Cafe, The Water Club. In addition to being supremely entertaining, this book will change how you dine as a guest at a New York establishment. Azzolina, for all his fun, is a bit too heavy handed with the star fucking (and the actual fucking), and it gets tired well before the book’s end.

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Poverty, by America

by Matthew Desmond

The author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted, a personal favorite, returns with a slim missive on the causes of poverty in America.

Let me start by saying I absolutely adored Evicted. Let me continue by saying how much I truly, deeply disliked this book. The fundamental premise is that poverty exists in the United States because Americans who are not poor like it and want it that way. An aggressive claim to make, you would think it would be backed up by indisputable evidence. Desmond, however, lays all the failings of American monetary inequality at the feet of those who are not in poverty, not matter how barely they are eking by. He admits that the government has squandered much of the money gathered from taxpayers and earmarked for welfare, going so far as to declare “the American welfare state is a leaky bucket,” but repeatedly cannot fathom why people are so averse to being taxed more for these same programs. This is mostly and fundamentally an annoying, sanctimonious book about the minutiae of the tax system and the oppression of the privileged class (white people), written for guilty liberals who want to do some self-indulgent flogging.

The Fury

by Alex Michaelides

A beautiful former movie star invites her motley crew of friends to a remote Greek Island, where one of them winds up dead.

That sound you hear is the death knell of my short lived love for Alex Michaelides, a brief affair that started when I fell in love with the Silent Patient and ended after failing to be satisfied by a single thing he has written since. The final nail in the coffin is The Fury, a poor man’s Talented Mr. Ripley with a touch of Agatha Christie that appears to have been written in one sitting. In a world inundated with thrillers, you are statistically more likely to be satisfied by picking any other one up at random than reading this book.