A son finds himself in hunting down his father’s secret

In 1970 when his father died, Michael Hainey was six years old and too young to ask questions.

His father, Bob, 35, had dropped dead of an apparent heart attack on the street on the way home from his night shift at the Chicago Sun-Times where he was the night slot on the copy desk. He left behind a wife, Barbara, Michael and his older brother, and a secret.

It wasn’t until many years later, still feeling a loss he couldn’t explain, that Michael began looking into his father’s sudden death and didn’t like what he found. He writes his story in a sometimes moving, sometimes frustrating but straight-up honest memoir, “After Visiting Friends.”

These pictures are worth more than words

Though he had a long career as an illustrator of children’s books, Brian Selznick first came to my attention with “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” his huge, beautiful novel in pictures for children.

With that book, he seemed to have reinvented both the picture book and the novel by telling his true(ish) story of a boy who, despite his bleak existence living in the walls of a train station, created something beautiful. Despite its 533 pages, the story isn’t told in many words. Instead, vivid, intimate pictures put the readers at the center of this fanciful, though slightly unfulfilling story.

SPOILER: An amazing tale of survival

 

Some stories are too astonishing to be true, and that’s the case with “438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival At Sea” by Jonathan Franklin.

How do you get so many spoilers in one title? But that’s OK, because you might be familiar with the story. Not too long ago, Salvador Alvarenga was an international sensation, and his face and story, if not his name, were known around the world.

Alvarenga is the shark fisherman who survived 14 months  on his fishing boat, drifting from the coast of Mexico to the Marshall Islands north and east of Australia. That’s more than 5,500 miles, and he did it mostly alone. That he survived at all is amazing, but that he survived with a brain that hadn’t turned to mush is a miracle. That’s why his story was doubted by so many people when he found land. Franklin, a journalist for the Guardian newspaper, spent months researching the story and came away convinced of its veracity. That’s why he wrote this book.

‘Brooklyn’ is better seen than read

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, a book about an Irish immigrant.

Book lovers say it so often it’s almost one word: “yeahbutthebookwasbetter.”

It’s what you say when someone asks you if you saw a particular movie and you want to show what a snob you are. But there’s a lot of truth in that statement. Books usually allow for more internal dialogue, more shades of gray, more ways to understand characters and their actions.

Sometimes it works the other way, though, and the movie is better than the book, able to illuminate motivations and bring charters to life in a way that didn’t happen on the page. A short list of this includes “The Godfather” (what a dreadful book), “The Bridges of Madison County” (dreck both on the page and onscreen, but at least in the movie you don’t have to wade through so much horrid prose) and, now, I add “Brooklyn” to that list.

She’s funny, sure…but someone needs better meds

Jenny Lawson worked in HR and wrote a blog about her crazy life which led to a book deal and a sequel and a lot of money. (I’m not about to criticize this book because I’m jealous, really. Some day someone will read this blog and sponsor it and pay me to review books. Hell, I’d even take payment in free books. It could happen.)

“Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” is undeniably funny and she benefits from having great material. She grew up in rural Texas, poor-ish and raised by two crazy-in-a-good-way parents. Her dad, in particular, is a free spirit who seems to just plow through life with little concern for safety, hygiene and even common sense. Her stories about him bringing home crazy things, like animals—some dead, some alive—can only be related with a wry sense of humor. If she didn’t learn to laugh, she’d be a quivering mess in a padded room.