Book Passage President Elaine Petrocelli often appears on the Bay Area's KGO Radio 810 Ronn Owens Show to discuss current books. The shows feature engaging conversation and excellent reading recommendations! You may view & purchase the books from Elaine and Ronn's discussion list below:
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Holiday Picks!
The Ronn Owens Show, December 19-20th, 2019
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Three old friends, now in their 60’s, gather on Martha’s Vineyard. Lincoln, a real estate broker, has six kids. Teddy is the publisher of a small scholarly press. Mickey is a wild and somewhat famous rock musician.
They talk of their time as hashers in a sorority house at the small college where most of the sorority girls didn’t know their names. But, there was one girl who hung out with them—and they all fell in love with her. Although she was engaged to a rich guy, she joined them after graduation for a long weekend at the Vineyard. Then she disappeared.
All these years later, they are trying to figure out what happened.
During WWII, when Noah was a little boy, his mother sent him away from their home in the South of France to be raised in the New York. Now, Noah is a widowed, retired professor and he has given himself an 80th Birthday present: in a couple of days, he’ll be travelling to France to find out why his mother didn’t immigrate with him. Was she working in the Resistance? Was she a Nazi collaborator?
Then he gets a phone call from a Social Worker with the New York City Child Services department. She says that Noah’s nephew and the nephew’s wife are in prison because of a drug deal. Their 12-year-old son is going to go into a dismal group facility unless Noah will take him. Noah hardly knows this kid, but he does end up taking the boy in and they travel together to find out what Noah’s mother was really doing in France.
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In this thrilling suspense story and brilliant portrait of Putin’s Russia, Martin Cruz Smith once again pulls back the icy curtain on Russian politics, revealing corruption and lawlessness. Smith’s darkly humorous and skeptical investigator, Arkady Renko, is concerned about his journalist girlfriend, Tatiana, and the dangerous situation she walked into when she decided to profile an eccentric oligarch. Arkady manages to get to the part of Siberia where she was last seen, but he must rely on a motley crew to uncover the truth and save those he loves.
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Get out the life boats! Dave Eggers is about to take you for a cruise on the great ship Glory.
The ship’s beloved captain must leave and he’s replaced by a man with absolutely no experience, no ethics, and no interest in nautical navigation or maritime law. He’s often said that he doesn’t like boats and that he’ll shake things up. One day, a famous pirate who is revered by the new Captain comes on board. The Captain especially loves the way the pirate looked riding a horse without a shirt. Although The Captain and the Glory is hilarious and absurd, it rings true in scary ways.
Leave it to the author of The Tipping Point to show us that when we meet people and make quick conclusions about them, we are likely to be wrong. Police officers thought African American academic, Sandra Bland, was a drug dealer because she was driving in an upscale neighborhood. The CIA sent a group of handpicked intelligence operatives to spy on Cuba, not noticing they were actually agents for Castro. Bernie Madoff succeeded as a “sociopath dressed up like a mensch."
Gladwell tells us not to be cynical, but to slow down when forming opinions about people we are meeting.
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Tom Brokaw was in his early thirties when NBC plucked him from their LA affiliate to cover the White House. Watergate was just getting going, and Tom was there as denials and cover-ups were exposed. In The Fall of Richard Nixon, Brokaw puts us “in the room” as Nixon’s inevitable impeachment and removal led to his resignation, bringing us an important personal window into the unravelling of Nixon’s White House. This is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to understand what happened then and how it compares to now.
100 years ago, George Halas, the coach of the Bears, caught a train to Ohio and created a league made up of teams from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and New York. Early football players didn’t have helmets so they grew long hair thinking a thick shock of hair would protect their heads. Divided into four quarters, this book is the “must have” gift for football fans. No matter what you think about football (personally I detest it), you can’t help but admire many of the heroes, and especially our own Jerry Rice.
We could open a store solely with books about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We’d include all the RBG stuff we already sell at Book Passage—such as RBG Socks, Judgemints, RBG finger puppets, our RBG action figures, and lots of books about Justice Ginsberg—but we wouldn’t be able to feature a memoir because RBG won’t write one. Maybe she’s too busy writing dissents.
Instead, she sat down with esteemed biographer, constitutional law professor, and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Jeffrey Rosen. In her forthright style, Justice Ginsberg answered Jeffrey Rosen’s wide ranging and probing questions. The result is a fascinating look into RBG’s world.
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In 24/6, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain eloquently argues the merits of taking a break from technology, particularly smartphones, one day a week—a practice she refers to as "tech Shabbat." Shlain suggests that coexisting with technology in this balanced way will make readers more creative and productive. She explains how she, her husband, and their two teenage daughters put away screens from Friday night to Saturday night. They invite friends over for dinner, bake bread, and sleep late—all things that allow them to recharge and regroup. Included is a simple, easy-to-follow guide for implementing her tech Shabbat with advice on picking a day and strategies for different lifestyles and family sizes.
Shlain is also open about how difficult disconnecting can be and shares some of her own slips, yet always encourages trying again because she believes that "we all have a profound need for stillness, silence, and days of reflection away from the noise. Letting your mind have back its most reflective mode lets you see the best way forward."
Bolstered with germane facts about neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and the history of the concept of a day of rest, this is an excellent cross between instruction and memoir.