Books: 757

Late Bloomer Baby Boomer: A Collection of Humorous Essays About Being Gay Back in the Day and Finally Finding My Way
Steven Millikan
$25

Millikan, having retired after sixteen years teaching–and thirty sober–here shares some things he has learned along the way. Gay, yet hopelessly naive, he became a stand-up comedian seeking the glamor of gay life, while from childhood acting the role of class clown. “My unique sense of humor began as it does for many,” he writes, “as an emotional void in childhood.” This collection of essays details difficulties inherent in a legacy leaving a shy gay youngster who’s been indoctrinated against being gay. Millikan decries the rift between older gays and younger generations­­–ageism takes its toll. Amidst the humor and wisecracking Milliken also reveals the sadness, loss, what-ifs of missed opportunities; sometimes from the unkindness of others, very often from one’s own self. 

The Garden Next Door
Collin Pine Ill. by Tiffany Everett
River Horse Children’s Books
$18.99

Combining three of children’s favorite subjects–mystery, solution and nature-Collin Pine weaves these threads into an introduction for young naturalists. Why does their neighbor’s next door garden have a profusion of plants, insects, and wiggly creatures while their own yard is barren of these delights? Tiffany Everett’s renderings of the neighbor’s profusion is a firm yet gentle introduction to the youngsters of how they, too, can turn arid into oasis and create amongst new plantings a habitat for butterflies and beetles, snakes and salamanders, frogs and toads that they can watch by day, and twinkling fireflies at night that never enter their own dark yard.  Pine has a degree in environmental science and lives in Oakland with husband, Noah Whitehead (see interview p XXXX)

From Sweetgrass Bridge
Anthony Bidulka
Stonehouse Publishing
$16

One summer night, young Billie Jo and her new beau Robby McAllister, set a blanket out by the Sweetgrass Bridge anticipating canoodling and maybe more…when Robby, spooked by “noises”, packed and fled. About this time, beloved indigenous Saskatchewan Roughrider quarterback Dustin Thompson, disappeared, later discovered drowned beneath Sweetgrass Bridge. Struggling PI Mary Bell is hired by a family member to find out what happened. Suicide? Murder? Mysteries deepen, especially those in our prickly P.I.’s personal life, and her ongoing transition to Mary Bell. With a tip ‘o the hat to Bobbie Gentry, Bidulka recasts those sinister doings on her Tallahatchie span into modern day murkiness in Livingsky. Bidulka deftly melds murder, humor, and the past’s festering wounds. It’s never past, you know. Bring on #3!

Barney Miller and the Files of the Ol’ One-Two
Otto W. Bruno (forewords by Hal Linden & Max Gail)
BearManor Media
$55 hard/$45 soft/ $7 ebook

Many enjoy social media “Fans of” groups, “The Marx Brothers,” “PG Wodehouse, and sitcom “Barney Miller,” which premiered nearly a half-century ago. Hal Linden (Capt.B. Miller) says of their audience, “You plugged into the ‘Funny.’ As actors we plugged into the ‘real’ and let the ‘funny’ happen.” At 500-plus pages, dozens of illustrations, and extensive episode guide, the book is a treasure trove for fans old and new. Denizens passing through included Kenneth Tigar (Harvard ’64) as Jesus, but the humor came not from mocking an individual’s delusions but from the reactions of the detectives with the flotsam washed up upon their shores and the interactions among their own unique personalities. The show’s integrity holds. Have go-to show, star, film? Search BearManor’s Media.com vast library.

Change
Édouard Louis tr. John Lambert
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
$27

Louis’s fifth autobiographical “novel” that debuted with “The End of Eddy,” continues with the young man’s life after he has escaped his sub-poverty level family in their bleak, industrial village in northern France. Determined to change everything from his name to his inward and outward appearance, he wins a scholarship to the Lyceé in Amiens, then on to Paris and beyond. But since everything is new, each brick of the new façade has yet to become the new man. Even writing, when he follows mentor Didier Eribon in Paris, fails, until he regroups and begins to grow up, and become himself, supplying the mortar to hold those bricks. One is irritated, yet empathizes; near the end, Louis reflects that “I hated my childhood and I miss my childhood. Is that normal?”

TattooYou: A New Generation of Artists
Phaidon Editors with an Introduction by Alice Snape
Phaidon
$59.95

An astonishing, large-format volume featuring 75 current artists from around the world and 700 images of their work extensive biographical material on each. The cover, imitating old-fashioned marbled paper, but is, like two stunning inner plates, microscopic images of tattooed skin. Black, femme queer, self-taught Obsidian Bellis uses “hand-poking” and machine, noting, “I know [now] how I define community and what I want to see;” Alberto Lelli’s colorful, avant-garde style draws widely from classical and modern European art; Camila Fuentes accents American Traditional iconography with elements of Japanese styles with startling results; Ian Damien’s dark designs, whether traditional Japanese, blackwork or geometric, pop with occasional bursts of color merging with the wearer’s very self. A unique view into today’s tattooists’ lives and their living tapestries.

Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
Uché Blackstock, MD
Viking
$28

Raised by their physician mom, Uché and twin sister Oni expected to become doctors–and did. After Harvard, they attended Harvard Medical School. Their vigorous, athletic mother died early of leukemia at 47. The daughters launched medical careers. This memoir is a tribute to her mother, Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock, and to explain the urgency of her current role as physician and thought leader on bias and racism in health care;  founder and CEO of Advancing Heath Equity. Her mother wrote, “In looking back, I believe that many of my negative experiences were as a result of race, not sexism,” and while neither dismisses the “sluggishness” of women’s progress, Blackstock examines the ongoing cycle of racism and the losses incurred by both physicians and patients.

On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the U-rooting of America
Abrahm Lustgarten
FSG
$30

The numbers have been coming in for some time; former sun-seeker home owners in our own country are home-bound during lengthier rising summer temps. Many poor, unable to move outdoor workers or in climate-vulnerable occupations–face immediate risk. Rising, lengthier heat spells affect farming and agriculture, lowering yields, killing some crops altogether. Current and coming trends are the migration of peoples, industries and crops to hold sustainability. It’s a matter of economics at bottom; who can afford to relocate, what happens to those who can’t; are some northern destinations (eg. Duluth) already getting warmer. Lustgarten predicts the next 30 years will see 13-100 million Americans potentially moving. And, there’s the rest of the globe, and the world population that just keeps expanding. Already too late?