Shortest Way Home

Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg (2019) 352 pages

Pete Buttigieg, currently the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, but also a Democratic candidate for the presidency, presents his life thus far in this candid memoir. He's young‒just 37‒and is very service-oriented with a large resume of life experiences (administrative, military, consulting, volunteering) that have all contributed to his skill set. He speaks of his political successes and failures and what he's learned from them. He also speaks about being gay, his decision to come out to his parents and the community at age 33, and how he met his husband. I wanted to read his memoir to see whether I think he'd make‒later, if not in 2020‒a statesman that could make our country move in a positive direction. I recommend this book.

Becoming

Becoming by Michelle Obama (2018) 426 pages

Four hundred pages never flew by so quickly! This memoir by Michelle Obama begins with her childhood on the South Side of Chicago and continues through the end of her husband's second presidential term. I had known some details of her life from her speeches during Democratic conventions, as well as from the media during her time as First Lady, but this telling of her story made me feel even closer to her. An amazing woman with an amazing family...

The Idiot

The Idiot by Elif Batuman, 423 pages.

Batuman's novel of a young woman at Harvard in the mid-1990s has an autobiographical feel. Her main character, Selin, the only child of Turkish immigrants to the US, is a little naive, sweet, hardworking, and little bewildered. Everything, from roommates to professors, and beer and cigarettes are new to her. The miniature portraits of Selin's classes, her classmates, and her professors are funny and bright, as are her curiosity and literal-mindedness
The book is relentlessly cheerful, even in it's saddest moments (Selin, in fact, observes her sadness and wonders about it) The Idiot is sort of an enchanting book. It seems like this should appeal to a wide-range of readers, it's just so good.

A Dual Inheritance / Joanna Hershon 476 pp.

A deceptively simple gem.  Ed Cantowitz, working-class and Jewish, meets Hugh Shipley, Boston Brahmin, at Harvard, and they form a tight bond.  Hugh's fiancee, Helen, though not a student, completes the trio.  They graduate and move apart geographically, Ed, to Wall Street and spectacular success, and Hugh, to Africa and beyond, in search of ways to use his wealth for good in remote health clinics.  Many things happen to these characters - marriage, children, divorce, money made and lost - but in some ways these are incidentals.  Hershon gives us the arc of two lives, grounds those lives in a specific time and place, and makes us care about what happens to them.  Lovely writing.