LIT: A MEMOIR, Mary Karr
Best book I’ve read so far in the young 2010. The author of The Liar’s Club and Cherry continues to amaze. I’m recommending this book to client’s of mine who are interested in addiction and recovery. Provocative and jagged in sections, but ultimately a soothing balm that relays possible pathways in negotiating the 12 steps. I found this book to be beautifully written and exquisitely moving.

In A Perfect World, Laura Kasischke
Another apocalyptic landscape, perhaps a feminized version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Laura has such mastery in portraying the internal landscape of her characters and a poet’s eye for the natural world. When it all goes wrong you can’t help but be captured by this book. This one kept me up at night.

My Germany, Lev Raphael
Lev’s best book (not that I’ve read them all, but he agrees). The son of holocaust survivors, the author tells the story of his parents with bruising detail. In the second part he tells about his own becoming, his rapprochement with his Jewish heritage, and his coming out. Finally, Raphael details his book tours in Germany (hence the title) to discover his own relationship with the places and people of Germany.

Lush Life, Richard Price
If you are a fan of The Wire you shouldn’t miss this book. Price wrote some episodes of the HBO series as well as several other crime novels. This one is set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the neighborhood becomes a character as vivid as any person in this story. The clash of overlapping cultures between kids in the project, gentrified hopefuls who all have screenplays but work in bars, Chinese, Jews and cops. Overriding themes of family and dreams and dreams that are crushed. A brilliant and entertaining ride.

Black Cross, Greg Iles
This is the first book I’ve read by Iles and I’ll be back for more. I’ve been telling friends that it’s a kind of a cross between Schindler’s List and Guns of Navarone. It’s a quick read for a thick book. A page turner. Taut.

Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century, Gary Giddins
This tome collects many of the articles written by Giddins in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Giddins served as one of the primary ‘talking heads’ for Ken Burns special on jazz. His writing is superb, his topics (if you are a jazz fan or an aesthete) are compelling. Why isn’t jazz dead? he asks at the end of this opus. The preceding 600+ pages give us more than a hint of an answer.

This is a very busy season!

From June 20th-27th I will be attending (and co-coordinating) the Peninsula Writers summer retreat at Glen Lake in northern Michigan. This will be the fifth time I’ve attended this conference and each year has been a little different, but always wonderful. We have our largest group yet, 37 writers!

Our keynote speaker this year is Laura Kasischke. Laura is a novelist and poet extraordinaire. She has been highly celebrated, won numerous awards (most recently the Guggenheim for poetry!), two of her novels have been made into films and is a best seller in France. I’ve known Laura for, I think, over twenty years. I had known her for at least a couple of years before she showed me her poetry, before she’d even been published. It has been an honor to watch her career blossom. The very last time I saw her we were watching Allen Ginsberg perform Howl in Ann Arbor. I’m really looking forward to seeing her again and hearing her read and talk about her writing.

From July 8th-12th I will be traveling to Montreal to speak at the International Policy Governance Association Conference. I’ll be presenting my ideas an work with Board of Directors and businesses on the Solution Focused Process, a model that combines therapy and coaching techniques with the world of governing systems. I combine systemic, narrative and solution based models to address challenges and enhance strengths for organizations.

I’ll be introduced by my old business partner, Susan Siers Stratton Radwan.

The Montreal trip also happily coincides with the Montreal Jazz Festival!

For more information on the Montreal Conference, look here:

http://www.policygovernanceassociation.org/conference_09/sponsors.html

On July 16th-17th I will be teaching a course for the Michigan State University’s Summer Institute in Traverse City, Michigan. This is the first Summer Institute by MSU and is being done in conjunction with the efforts of Monkey Business Consulting as well as several other MSU instructors. I’ll be teaching a two day workshop on weaving Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies into your clinical work. This workshop is designed for people in the helping professions but would probably be of interest to anyone interested in the science of change. I always do this workshop in a manner that leaves audiences touched, moved and inspired. Really looking forward to it. I’ll follow up with a book signing at Horizon book store in Traverse City on July 18th at 3p.m.

For more information on the MSU Summer Institute, look here:

http://socialwork.msu.edu/ceu/glsi.html