Researching biography is a thrill of discovery, as well as an exacting task. A favorite is the story of legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn singing a hymn at the funeral of little Cokie Boggs's pet chicken.
Susan, Linda, Nina and Cokie is full of colorful anecdotes about these women, some from decades ago. Previously she wrote Radio Shangri-La, about media culture in the Kingdom of Bhutan Ray and Joan, about McDonald's founder Ray Kroc and his philanthropist wife and Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN and the Making of 24-Hour News. A Brooklyn native now living in Los Angeles, Napoli has worked as a journalist and a documentarian. Lisa Napoli 's fourth book, Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie (Abrams, reviewed below), is the story of the "founding mothers" of NPR set during the emergence of public radio and second-wave feminism in the 1970s. Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams But part of the fun of any vacation is browsing a bookstore or two-and building a book stack that will amuse and entertain while I'm away and provide good memories when I take it home. I'd packed other books in my bag: a Sara Paretsky mystery, Sonali Dev's foodie love story Recipe for Persuasion. To fuel my creativity, I found a green-covered book of Writing Memoir prompts, part of the "Lit Starts" series from the San Francisco Writers' Grotto (Abrams Noterie, $12.99). I also bought Tiffany Francis-Baker's memoir, Dark Skies (Bloomsbury Wildlife, $15), in which she visits eerie English hillsides and Nordic nightscapes to explore humanity’s complicated relationship with darkness. Norton, $15.95) to complete my Robert MacFarlane collection in it, MacFarlane takes readers to the haunting paths of Dorset and the East Anglian coast. Sometimes my brain craves compelling nonfiction-either set in the place I'm visiting, or somewhere entirely different. I eyed several other lighthearted novels before settling on Beth Morrey's The Love Story of Missy Carmichael (Putnam, $17), whose title character (and her dog, Bob) stole my heart. I imagined myself in England, baking fig pastelitos, with Laura Taylor Namey's wonderful YA novel A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow (Atheneum, $18.99).
Traditional beach reading, of course, involves feel-good plots, charming characters and perhaps a bit of romance. On my most recent visit, I found a handful of literary treasures-an excellent range of beach-reading options to suit any mood. San Diego is one of my favorite destinations: in addition to palm trees and fish tacos, it has great bookstores. This long pandemic winter had me thinking about books set in sunny places-or books I've picked up while visiting warm locales.
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