The #1 Dad Book: Be the Best Dad You Can Be—in 1 Hour by James Patterson

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Just in time for Father’s Day, which is probably NOT a coincidence, James Patterson has a little book of advice about how to, well, be the best dad you can be.  It’s both a light-hearted and serious look at the best way to parent.  Patterson says not every suggestion will work for every parent, but he does give easy tips and things to think about.  It’s like having a nice chat with someone whose been there, done that, and here are the highlights of what he’s learned.

One tip I thought was interesting was the suggestion to talk to male friends about being a dad.  Patterson points out that men talk about all sorts of things from business to sports when they get together, but it’s also good to be able to talk about parenting—even if it’s just to vent.  There might be a new perspective from other fathers dealing with the same thing.

Another one I liked was about choosing a name for offspring which involved saying the name out loud many times to decide if it’s really a name that you like, day in and day out, in joy and in frustration. 

He also lists books on parenting and explains why he chose these particular titles.

The book is sprinkled with quotes from fathers, mostly not famous ones, which give insights or tips. 

Finally, he has 17 items on a checklist of things to look at and think about, distilled from the book.  He doesn’t expect everything will work for every dad, but if even a few of these resonate then the time spent with this book will be worth it.

I liked the friendly tone of the book and the simple suggestions.  There were a number of things worth thinking about and not just for parents: some of them are just ideas for human beings.

New in April: Non-Fiction

 April is turning out to be a big month for books!  While there is a lot of good fiction on the publishers’ calendars, there are some very interesting non-fiction books a well.  Here are a few of them:

Dame Judi Dench, the wonderful British actress who has delighted audiences with her performances in movies including a turn as M in the James Bond series, turns her attention to her stage work. In Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, she offers insight into the Bard’s plays as well as anecdotes about her roles in them.  According to the publisher, this includes having a live snake in her wig and cavorting naked (albeit painted green) in the countryside.

 Doris Kearns Goodwin is known for her insightful, well-written books on history.  Her newest book, An Unfinished Love Story, is a very personal look at America in the 1960s, when her husband Richard worked for leaders such as Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy.  The book came about as she and her husband began sorting through boxes of papers from that era during the last years of Richard’s life, bringing a mature assessment to both people and events.

Anne Lamott brings her insight to one of our basic emotions in Somehow: Thoughts on Love.  It’s not just romantic love under consideration here, but platonic love, family love, and spiritual love.  

Erik Larson is well known for his riveting non-fiction that has readers turning pages as if reading a thriller.  The author of Devil in the White City, Isaac’s Storm, and In the Garden of Beasts turns his attention to the American Civil War in his new book, The Demon of Unrest.  Larson examines the time between Lincoln’s election and Ft. Sumter which the publisher describes as “a political horror story.”

 

Author Salman Rushdie survived an assassination attempt in August 2022, when a knife-wielding assailant stabbed him several times. In Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, his publisher tells us that Rushdie “reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.”

 

James Patterson is known for his many, many, many fiction books, but of late he has turned his attention to non-fiction, writing about true crime, combat veterans, police officers, nurses, and more. His latest non-fiction title is The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians and I have to say that several staff members are really looking forward to this one!

The Last Days of John Lennon by James Patterson with Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge

 

Reviewed by Kristin

As a Beatles fan, I’ve read quite a few Beatles biographies over the few years (okay, decades) since I became infatuated with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Hunter Davies wrote The Beatles: The Authorized Biography back in 1968, and although I didn’t read it till much later I still enjoyed it. In recent years, the best one I’ve read is Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1 by Mark Lewisohn (reviewed here.)

James Patterson just had to get his name on a Beatles biography also, tackling the time before Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon on December 8, 1980.

The title is a bit misleading. Sure, Patterson and his co-writers/co-researchers Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge delve deeply into the mind of Chapman the murderer. The authors switch between chapters detailing what Chapman was doing in the days leading up to the murder, and then moving back in time all the way to the early days of the Beatles. If you have never read anything about the Beatles, this work might be a great overview (with an emphasis on John’s history.) However, having quite a few Beatles books on my personal shelves, I didn’t learn more than one or two new facts.

If you are a true crime aficionado, you might also be a little disappointed because the authors don’t go too deeply into the blood and gore of the murder. The seeming calm that Chapman displayed is rather creepy though; he claimed that during his time in jail leading up to his trial he never slept better in his entire life.

As many other people have questioned, I can’t help but wonder how much writing Patterson himself does on his co-authored books. I found an article that says he often creates extremely detailed outlines, up to 80 pages or more, for his collaborators who then flesh out the book. Does this launch their careers? Or simply sell more books with the Patterson name? Patterson has donated millions of books to schools and millions of dollars to schools and independent bookstores, so I have to applaud him for his commitment to literacy.

I recommend this book only to readers with a casual interest in the life and death of John Lennon, or to die-hard James Patterson fans. We know the latter exists, or we wouldn’t have so many shelves dedicated to his books.

Alex Cross’s Trial by James Patterson & Richard Dilallo

Reviewed by Kristin

A new James Patterson book?  (Must be Tuesday.)

James Patterson is such a prolific writer that many readers find it hard to keep up with his publishing schedule.  Because he is such a popular author, I finally made the time to begin the Alex Cross series.  Even though it is not the first in the series, I spotted Alex Cross’s Trial and decided to give it a try.  As it turns out, this is a historical account “written” by the fictional Washington D.C. police detective Alex Cross, about events that transpired in the racially charged South during the early part of the twentieth century.

Ben Corbett is a white, Southern-born lawyer fighting for the poor and oppressed in Washington, D.C.  His wife Meg would rather he work his way up the ladder of a more prestigious area of the law, but Ben is summoned to the White House by none other than Theodore Roosevelt to investigate rumors of lynchings in the south.  At great risk to himself and perhaps to his family, Ben travels back to his hometown of Eudora, Mississippi.

Abraham Cross, great-uncle to Alex, is living in the muddy African-American community called the Eudora Quarters  If something happens in the Quarters, Abraham or his granddaughter Moody are sure to know about it.  Abraham accepts Ben into the community, although holding him at arm’s length in some ways.  After all, even if President Roosevelt sent this white man to investigate the local state of affairs, Abraham still must be a little wary.

Violence erupts from the already simmering state of racial unrest, and Ben is called upon to support the prosecution of a legal case against the White Raiders—several white men charged with attacking members of the black community.  If this was not a precarious enough position for a local boy who had run off to lawyer in the nation’s capital, the judge appointed to preside over the trial is Ben’s father, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett.

I found this book to be a great place to jump into the Alex Cross saga.  Currently at twenty-four books and counting in this series, James Patterson writes fast paced dramas.  With the telling of this story, Alex Cross attempts to pass on to his children what his grandmother, the famed Nana Mama, had passed on to him.  If you prefer to start with the very first Alex Cross book, come to the library and check out Along Came a Spider.

Nevermore: Fabulous Fiction!

Reported by Ambrea

This week, our Nevermore readers picked up a variety of fiction, ranging from a dire, post-apocalyptic future to the trenches of World War I to the glittering and gritty skyline of modern Los Angeles.  We started with Wool by Hugh Howey, which begins with Holston—a citizen of the silo, one of the few remaining safe havens left in a newly inhospitable world—who suddenly finds himself desperate to leave, desperate to go outside.  Like others before him, Holston’s wish is granted and he’s allowed to leave with the caveat that he will clean the windows of the silo with a clump of wool and then disappear forever.  For those who leave the silo are doomed to never return.  Our reader said Wool was surprisingly good.  She enjoyed the story, but she also enjoyed the fact that Howey used an older narrator, a man of average strength and skill, an unassuming hero for an unexpectedly complex novel.

Our readers abruptly switched gears with A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith and dived into the wilderness of antebellum Florida.  The story begins with Tobias MacIvey, who arrives in Florida to start a new life with his wife and son, and ends nearly a century later with Solomon MacIvey.  Considered a “sweeping story…[filled with] rich, rugged Florida history,” A Land Remembered encompasses not just the experience of one family as they seek to tame the land, but the entirety of the region.  Our Nevermore reader had nothing but praise for Smith’s book.  She said the author did an excellent job in fabricating his novel, pulling in extraordinary descriptions of the land, the people, and the time period and interspersing his prose with historical facts that made his writing both believable and enjoyable.

Next, we explored The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernières.  The McCosh girls—Christabel, Ottilie, Rosie, and Sophie—grow up in the countryside, spending their days in carefree camaraderie with the Pendennis brothers—Sidney, Albert, and Ashbridge—and the Pitt boys, Archie and Daniel.  But their lives abruptly change with the start of World War I.  Suddenly, the Pendennis brothers are caught in the trenches, Rosie and Ottilie McCosh are working as nurses along the front lines, Daniel becomes a fighter pilot, while the others are scattered to the far sides of the continent, each telling their stories as the war unfolds and a new world emerges.  For our reader, The Dust that Falls from Dreams was a surprisingly good book.  It had the qualities of an epic, encompassing several characters over a number of years, and it had a way of drawing the reader into the story that was enjoyable.

Our readers also explored Last Words by Michael Koryta.  Markus Novak, an investigator for a defense firm in Florida, has spent the two years since his wife’s murder looking for answers to no avail.  Now, with his job on the line, he’s investigating a cold case in Garrison, Indiana—where, much to his surprise, he discovers that the supposed murderer, a man by the name of Ridley Barnes, has asked to reopen the case.  Left with no choice but to investigation, Novak digs into the case only to discover that nothing is as he expected in the small farm town of Garrison.  Our reader said he really enjoyed Koryta’s latest novel.  Although he was unfamiliar with Koryta’s work, he was pleased with his newest book and highly recommended it to our group.  He also noted (with a laugh) that Last Words featured a sociopath, which harkened back to Nevermore meetings where our members discussed The Psychopath Test and The Sociopath Next Door.

Last, our readers discussed Private L.A. by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan.  Jack Morgan is the founder and director of America’s top investigative firm, known only as Private, and he’s dead set on conquering each and every job his investigators encounter.  Together with Justine Smith, his partner and sometimes girlfriend, Jack Morgan looks into the disappearance of Hollywood’s greatest power-couple only to discover the truth is not what it seems.  Our reader was thrilled with her audiobook choice.  She really enjoyed listening to the story, enjoyed seeing the mystery unfold, but she also loved the fact that Patterson actually incorporated real celebrity personalities.  He digs deep into Hollywood to seamlessly inject his story into the real world, creating a whodunit with a little intrigue and a little suspense and lots of twists.