The Book Club: ‘Burn Book’ is a fascinating and disturbing read about the tech industry

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven Penguin Family dynamics propel this fast-paced novel The Samuelson family in Altadena Calif endures an unwieldy casserole of experiences and emotions for more than years starting in the s Don t let the humor lull you The pivotal event is the accidental death of their son at he is a continuing presence in their family In a fairly brief novel Huneven garnishes the story with surprises detailing her characters with precision and a sure hand My favorite is Phil the dad but the entire family is memorable primarily due to their foibles Huneven is an author I ll read again stars out of Neva Gronert Parker Burn Book A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher Simon Schuster Burn Book A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher Simon Schuster A fascinating and disturbing read about the tech industry from journalist Kara Swisher who has interviewed virtually all the players and continually served as a prophet prodder and source of annoyance to tech s bulk famous CEOs Swisher doesn t hold back describing Zuckerberg as the world s largest part dangerous man and Elon Musk as one of its the greater part evil Swisher is prescient cheeky funny brilliant This is a keenly written memoir and a canary in the coal mine A crucial read stars out of Jo Calhoun Denver Birding to Change the World A Memoir by Trish O Kane Harper Collins For the first years of her life consumed by a highly demanding career as a human rights journalist Trish O Kane barely noticed birds But then she stumbled into a volunteer teaching job at a women s prison and soon landed a paid teaching job at Loyola University in New Orleans She fell in love with her new house and neighborhood near Lake Pontchartrain but within weeks Katrina hits Over the next scant months surrounded by a devastated natural world she clings to each sighting of a solitary bird and becomes an accidental birder letting her newfound appreciation for these survivor birds heal and refuel her To pursue a PhD in natural information she moves to Madison Wis where her apartment borders the locally beloved but threatened Warner Park teeming with birds She ll need her background in activism and social justice her talent for teaching and her newfound passion for birds to fight this fight stars out of Michelle Nelson Littleton The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich HarperCollins The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich Harper On a snowy night in North Dakota seven high school football players leave a party and take a late-night snowmobile ride down a hill and into the freezing Red River A year later Gary Geist the quarterback and a member of the town s preponderance prominent family is still reeling from the consequences of that night He finds solace in Kismet a former goth girl classmate and member of the Ojibwe tribe who is just beginning her adult journey with college in mind not an early marriage Besides Kismet already has an even younger boyfriend named Hugo who also wishes to claim her as his own This love triangle is at the heart of this somewhat disjointed tale of three families trying to make it through the recession without losing their homes their farms and their sanity Like plenty of contemporary novels The Mighty Red addresses issues of conservation and context change where over-farming the land and using deadly pesticides to produce more sugar beets threaten to divide the farming region stars out of Karen Goldie Hartman Westminster The Counterfeit Countess The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth B White and Joanna Sliwa Simon Schuster This book is based on an unpublished memoir augmented by interviews letters documents and photos that corroborated the unlikely story of this Jewish woman who aided and rescued countless Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II It not only affirms the heroine s belief in the value of each human life but also illustrates the human ceiling for both goodness and evil while offering a testament to mercy and hope stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver