Dare the Sea by Ali Hosseini is a collection of stories by a writer who will lead a discussion soon about another book by an Iranian writer that I read last month. Hosseini’s collection is divided into two parts. In Part I, the stories are set in Iran and feature people struggling to survive. In Part II, the stories are mostly set in the United States and feature Iranian immigrants or refugees. All the stories use beautiful language and touch on emotional moments.
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss. This book is by a professor from James Madison University, but the book has received national attention, and I attended a talk the author gave recently. He recounts the history of bookshops in the US, beginning with Ben Franklin’s press and shop, taking the reader through the story of various specialty stores, the rise, decline, and resurgence of Barnes & Noble, the appearance of Amazon, the beginnings of Bookshop.org. As a book lover, I found it an enjoyable read. It would be a must-read for a bookstore owner.
Descartes’ Demonby Ross Hightower and Deb Heim. Here is the blurb I provided for this book: The questions raised in Descartes’ Demon couldn’t be more timely or more frightening. Is the AI program’s avatar created by a tech wizard a sentient being? And what of the mysterious figments that pop into his world from time to time? Through the lens of dynamic partners Nik and Alix, the novel’s witty and sexy protagonists, these questions and more permeate the narrative, along with corporate hijinks, a bumbling kidnapper, and a cat named Alan Turing. It’s a laugh-out-loud story about very serious issues, and I couldn’t put it down.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan is a complex novel by one of my favorite authors. It’s difficult to write about without giving too much away, but it begins as a story of a literary biographer a century into the future who is researching and writing about a (fictional) prominent poet of the present, looking for clues in various archives and dealing with the catastrophes that have occurred between his subject’s time and his. Ultimately, what I take away from the book is that it can be just as difficult to really know the past as it is to know the future.
Profiles in Service: Peace Corps Roots in American Diplomacy by Ben East is a study of fourteen Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who rose to the rank of Ambassador in the US Foreign Service. I was asked to review the book for Peace Corps Worldwide, and it was probably the best book I’ve reviewed for them. East has done an excellent job of compiling these stories based on oral histories and interviews. It would be excellent reading for anyone interested in American diplomacy. See my full review here.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad won the 2025 National Book Award and was my book club’s selection for March. The author is writing primarily about what he views as the genocide committed by Israel, with support from much of the international community, including the United States, against Palestinians. It’s a personal reaction to a complicated problem, which he denies is complicated. He paraphrases the views of certain politicians (such as Joe Biden) with identifying sources or offering direct quotations. While I recognize the horror of Israel’s atrocities, the book offers no solutions to intractable problems other than “don’t do it.”
