Notes on a Life

by Eleanor Coppola

Eleanor Coppola’s new book, “Notes on a Life,” is like a peaceful stream; the words flow mellifluously through the mind, gently lapping against the emotions of the human soul. The delicate prose and graceful vignettes of this stirring memoir recount the triumphs and struggles of the notorious Coppola family and their extraordinary journey through life.

“Notes on a Life” was created from a selection of vast notebook entries Coppola made dating back to the 1970s. Containing the sentiments and varied contradictions life brings, “Notes” depicts her tempestuous years of sorrow and depression following the tragic death of her son. Yet, through Coppola’s sensitive, observant eyes, we also see the fame her husband garners as he creates movie history, the exquisite joy of family, and the beauty that exists in creating and appreciating art. As in her earlier memoir, “Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now,” Coppola’s new work is infused with subtle eloquence. Though she lives in Napa with her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, she has become more elusive since she began touring nationally to promote “Notes on a Life.”  GT was able to catch up with Coppola during her whirlwind tour, which will find her at the Capitola Book Café at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 28.

GT: WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO FINALLY PUBLISH THIS BOOK?

ELEANOR COPPOLA: Well, my mom always wrote these notes on index cards and we said, “Oh, Mom. You ought to edit those and compile them.” She never was quite ready to do it and then she got too old. She’s 99 now and never did it. My notes began piling up and up and I was concerned about what my kids would do with them. I wanted them brought together for something that would be relevant to more than just myself.

GT: HOW DID YOUR FAMILY FEEL ABOUT THE PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK ABOUT THEIR PERSONAL LIVES?

EC: I showed the manuscript to each member of my family. My daughter said it was well written and that I should publish it. Of course I clipped a few details they didn’t want included, but I thought that actually made it better.

GT: WHAT IS THE STORY OF THE BOOK’S COVER PHOTO?

EC: It was taken when we moved to San Francisco in 1969. We were enthralled with San Francisco. It was taken by my brother in Golden Gate Park. We’d go there for family fun on Sundays and we liked riding the bicycles built for two. We enjoy all aspects of the city.

GT: IS YOUR HUSBAND SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR LITERARY CAREER?

EC: Francis is so busy with his own work that he’s glad for me to have something. He’s congratulatory but not particularly involved, like a lot of husbands.

GT: IN THE BOOK YOU ARE ALWAYS TRAVELLING AND EXPLORING THE WORLD. WHERE WILL YOUR NEXT JOURNEY TAKE YOU?

EC: Right now my husband is working on a project in Argentina so I’ve been there three times. My daughter lives in Paris so I go there to visit her. I was traveling in Belize in January and then traveled on a textile adventure with friends and always to Napa in between. I have to get extra pages for my passport.

GT: DO YOU PLAN TO WRITE ANY MORE BOOKS?

EC: I plan to continue writing in this fashion. It’s just felt right over the years. Maybe I’ll do “Notes” part two.  I like taking photographs but books can include sounds or smells or conversations. Writing is a simple, straightforward documentation of experiences.

GT: HOW OFTEN DO YOU WRITE IN YOUR NOTEBOOKS?

EC: It’s very sporadic. Yesterday I was having lunch in a café when something came to me that I wanted to write down so I wrote at the lunch table in my notebook. I write on the back of envelopes, napkins, a scrap of paper in my purse. I don’t feel like a writer because I don’t sit down at my desk each day to write like some of my writer friends do. I feel a little bit like I’m cheating because I don’t have an orderly practice. But it’s a practice I’m continuing and drawn to do.

Eleanor Coppola

GT: WHAT PROJECT ARE YOU WORKING ON NEXT?

EC: I have a Circle of Memory art exhibit going to Salzburg this summer. It was in the south of France and we got invited [to Austria] this summer. When you do something like that in a foreign country it’s always complicated. I also have a series of drawings that I can’t wait to get back to in Napa when the book tour is over.

GT: IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND RE-LIVE ANY PART OF YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

EC: I’m a person who doesn’t wallow in the past and doesn’t cling to it. I think an important value in life is to live in the present. That is something I learned from my son’s death and the most profound experience of my life. It taught me to not dwell on the past and made me keep my focus on the present because we don’t know what will happen even one hour from now.

GT: HOW INVOLVED ARE YOU IN YOUR FAMILY’S WINERY?

EC: I live behind the winery on the winery property, that’s where my home is. The winery is very much a part of my life and I’m involved in the retail aspect of it. We also have another winery in Sonoma we’re refurbishing. There are innumerable responsibilities involved. This week I’ve had to resolve what each person in the winery wears, their uniforms.

GT: HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO SANTA CRUZ?

EC: Yes. Last time I was there was for a memorial of a wonderful friend, Ed Carrillo an art teacher at the University there. I appreciate the beautiful casualness and artsy aspect and literature [of Santa Cruz]. I always think of it as a place that’s interested in the arts, fresh ideas and innovative thinking, and of the beach and all than is involved in the beach area. I’m looking forward to visiting on my book tour there.

5-Factor Fitness & 5-Factor Diet

Harley Pasternak

It’s lunchtime and I’ve got less than an hour to exercise. Seven minutes after arriving in the gym, I’m ready for my Five Factor Fitness routine. Say what? Five Factor Fitness? Yet another diet and fitness book? Well, yes. And no.

Sure, “5-Factor Fitness” and “5-Factor Diet” are of the diet/fitness genre of literature, but the books and the philosophy behind them are by no means of the “fad” variety.

Let’s take a look.

“Five Factor Fitness” was released in 2004. Written by Hollywood trainer Harley Pasternak, who trains celebrities like Halle Berry, Alicia Keyes, Eva Mendes and others, the book offers a simple approach: Work out five times a week, in five-minute time blocks. It starts with five minutes of intense cardio (I prefer jump roping). Then it moves into five minutes of a targeted weight-lifting section, then another weights section, then a five-minute abdominal routine, then five minutes of cardio. (If you have more time, you can tack on extra cardio at the end.) Pasternak outlines a daily routine for you with photos. Sounds simple, huh? It is. And, it’s effective. I’ve been personally doing the routine for about a month and I’m seeing some differences in my body.

The book goes on to explain Pasternak’s simple approach to eating: Five meals a day that mostly take five minutes to prep and cook. (One key is cutting out flour products and instead choosing things like Ezekiel bread and Ezekiel tortillas, so as to not boost one’s glycemic index.)

In “5-Factor Diet,” Pasternak takes everything to the next level. The book adds more daily exercise routines (to mix things up), a more extensive health and nutrition information section, and a vast recipe area. Breakfast, two snacks, lunch and dinner are all covered in the book. Pasternak even plots out your meals for four weeks, so you know exactly how to shop and what you’ll be eating.

For the busy person who wants to be (or already is) committed to health, the 5-Factor style of fitness and diet is easy and doable. There’s nothing “faddish” about it. With Pasternak’s guidance in either book, you’ll be eating solid, healthy meals (that won’t leave you hungry), plus you’ll see results in your body within a few weeks. Personally, I’m hooked.

Example breakfast recipe from p. 121 (“5-Factor Diet”)

Open-Face Egg and Bacon Sandwiches

2 strips turkey bacon

1 ? cups egg whites

4 slices whole grain bread, toasted

? cup shredded nonfat cheddar cheese

1 ? cups diced, seeded plum tomatoes

Salt and cracked pepper to taste

Cooking oil spray

Microwave the turkey bacon strips for 3 minutes or until crisp. Set aside.

Whisk together the egg whites, salt, and pepper. coat a nonstick skillet with cooking spray and heat the skillet. Add the egg white mixture. Cook and stir about 1 ? minutes or until the egg whites are set.

To Serve: Spoon the egg whites on the toast. Top with cheese, turkey bacon, and diced tomatoes.

Servings: 2

NOTE: If you can’t find nonfat cheddar cheese, you can substitute shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese.

Dear American Airlines

By Jonathan Miles

The plight of travelers stranded in airports rings all too true to our frequently flying ears. With zillions of flights delayed, cancelled, or worse, “Dear American Airlines” by Jonathan Miles is a fortuitously timed novel illustrating the bane of the existence of modern day air travel.

Meet Benjamin Ford. A middle aged, recovering alcoholic, chain smoking, Polish translator, flying from New York to California to attend his estranged daughter’s wedding. Grounded at O’Hare airport for hours upon end, he pens a strongly-worded letter to American Airlines, originally to express his monumental dismay at the airline industry’s buffoonery and to demand a refund, but which meanders into obstreperous tirades about his life, his family and his regrettable past. Born to a Southern monomaniacal mother and Polish Nazi prison-camp-surviving father, Benjamin grew up in less than ideal circumstances. He becomes a father in an equally dismal environment, turns to drinking, and loses his family entirely. Now, in his later years, he and his Polish live in-caretaker attend to his ailing mother, who constantly bombards him with post-it note messages proclaiming his lifelong shortcomings, ultimately causing his midlife meltdown in the hard plastic chairs of O’Hare International Airport.

Benjamin’s vociferous musings illuminate bleary eyed businessmen scarcely aware of their geographical location while blissfully gulping gin and tonics at the airport bar, an elderly women mindlessly playing a handheld slot machine to keep her sanity whilst traveling to see her bedridden husband, and myriad other wayward travelers tossed together like a colorful salad in the purgatorial confines of the labyrinthine concourses of O’Hare International. 

“Sprawled ‘round me is a crowd of temporary refugees waiting, waiting, yawning, drumming fingers on kneecaps, asking cell phones what they did to deserve this, rereading The Da Vinci Code to keep from having to stare at the carpet. Even the million-miler business travelers have run out of steam — the suited laptop jockey beside me is playing a version of solitaire on his computer and the way he’s sighing and petulantly flicking his fingerpad leads me to believe that this is his last refuge of mental and/or physical activity. Airports are usually so fluid — people moving like fish in schools. But movement is scarce here tonight: stragglesome wanderers, looking purposeless and disattached, strolling for the sake of motion. Mothers are unduly snapping at children. Middle-aged men are learning to use the unexplored features of their digital wristwatches. A semi-punished lot, all of us; imprisoned within a pause, desperate to ascend.” The preceding excerpt is only a smidgeon of the airport bashing treat in store for disdainful airline customers and armchair travelers alike.

Fluctuating from vivid portraits of the airport terminal in his currently stranded circumstances, reminiscences of his dysfunctional life and fictional jaunts into the Polish novel he is translating, “Dear American Airlines” is at once zany, insouciant and delightfully written; epitomizing the cliché of a book being lauded as laugh-out-loud.

The predicament of this marooned traveler combine with hilarity and wit to produce this light and airy, yet deliciously cunning summer read; particularly titillating if you happen to be enjoying it from a faraway airport of your own.

Food 2.0:Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google

Charlie Ayers

Of all the relationships we maintain in our lives, I’m going to take a wild guess and say the one that gets the shaft most often is our relationship with food. Had we only been lucky enough to have been born the children of Julia Child, a stock of basic and well-balanced, but tasty and adventurous, recipes would surely have been administered (or so I imagine) along with other such rudimentary knowledge, the alphabet, multiplication tables and so forth. But alas, no such luck. Some of our parents cooked for us, some of them had all of the local restaurants within a three-mile delivery radius on speed dial. Some of us ditched class to become devout foodies in college, while others gave up on dining hall mystery meat and took to eating cereal three times a day.

It’s that last group I’m worried about—those of us who, released into the wild, post-gradation, can step into a supermarket and draw a blank. Before you know it, you’re pushing 30, thinking it’s perfectly normal to eat takeout burritos while leaning over your kitchen sink. Friends and family try to help, but what’s needed here isn’t a couple of quick fix, cheap and easy recipes, it’s a comprehensive food philosophy.

Chef Charlie Ayers lays out such a food philosophy in his cookbook “Food 2.0.” But Ayers’ isn’t just any old “how-to-eat” guide, because as is revealed in the second half of his book’s title, “Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google,” Ayers isn’t your average chef. Chalk it up to the two-headed genius that is Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google), but in seeking to maximize the excellence and productivity of their employees, those crazy guys ditched the whole idea of continuing the beatings until morale improves, in favor of pampering their employees with, (among so many other things), free, fresh, healthy, planet-friendly power food.

Ayers, who began his career catering for the Grateful Dead and other Bay Area bands, came on as Google’s 53rd employee. He describes his critical task of providing: “fast, unfettered access to clean, healthy, delicious foods” to “nourish the bodies and brains and spirits” of the employees who would inevitably propel the fledgling start-up to its status as a multi-billion dollar company. The buzzword here is brainfood. What’s going to keep your mind sharp and engaged and your body healthy and strong? The answers are delivered via Ayers’ concise and conservational advice amidst huge, lush, color photographs of cornucopian ingredients and super-tasty dishes.

The first part of the book is devoted to making “smart choices”—when to eat raw (how about a chef who’s not afraid to leave a good piece of food alone?), how to avoid the pitfalls when buying organic (how far did it travel?, is it swaddled in packaging that does more to harm you and the environment than it helps?), how to snag a sustainable fish so fresh and unburdened with toxins you could eat it raw, and when to buy local, which is pretty much always. (Maybe this is cheating, as Ayers lives in the Bay Area, but so do we, so no harm done.)

Part two gives the lowdown on building a smart pantry, which may be of particular interest to those looking to nip in the bud the daily habit of hitting the store for that evening’s dinner. Here you’ll find the dish on how to toast and grind your own spices, a list of essential grains, nuts, seeds, oils and vinegars (“the unsung hero of flavor,” says Ayers) to have on hand, provocative recipes for flavor cubes and homemade condiments, as well as Ayers’ proud declaration that he does indeed eat and cook with carbs.

Ayers saves the best for last with nearly 150 pages of “smart recipes” from one of four, common sense categories: “start my day,” “take a break,” “pick me up” and “winding down.” While the breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes offer an eclectic and savory spread (I can personally vouch for “Beet Salad with Sheep’s Cheese and Olives” (pg. 163) and the “Butternut Chilijack” (pg.194)), I was particularly interested in the “pick me up” category—foods meant to jolt your average American cubicle slave from his/her post-lunch, soporific slump. These creative, easy-to-prepare snacks are a godsend for anyone whose boss has yet to read the recent scientific literature extolling the virtue of mid-day mini-naps.

Ayers and Google parted ways in 2005, but word is the chef plans to open a healthy fast food restaurant in Palo Alto this year. For more information, visit chefcharlieayers.com. 

Baby Love, Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence

by Rebecca Walker

In her book “Baby Love,” Rebecca Walker writes honestly and eloquently of the many feelings and beliefs she has carried over the years about becoming a mother.  The subtitle of her book: “Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence” together with her main title telegraphs the denouement of her story: namely, that her ambivalence, her pervasive reluctance to have a child, takes a decidedly positive turn at some point in her story. Walker’s change of heart is not a simple matter and she shares the complex and often subtle experiences that ultimately change her. The book is written as a diary in a style that is informal and pleasantly conversational.

Walker also covers many topics, such as working versus motherhood, her fears of having a baby, her indecision (once deciding to have it) as to where to have it (at home or in a hospital), the complexities of relationship, so many more—none of them new issues, to be sure, but pondered over thoughtfully from their potentially differing aspects, and we are invited to ponder them with her.

I was impressed by her willingness to share her vulnerabilities, to reveal the lessons she has learned over time such as her tendency to “mother” others, to shower others with the emotional support that she herself craved and had not received as a child.  She credits Glen, the man with whom she would eventually have her child, for much of her increased understanding about herself, for his help with her moodiness, her depression, her sometimes disabling insecurities.

The author makes no secret of her antagonistic relationship with her own mother (the author, Alice Walker).  Not an easy thing: to display one’s deep and continuing hurt by a famous mother for all the world to read. In the very first chapter of her book, Walker reveals her mother’s astonishing indifference to her announcement that she is pregnant, an indifference and often outright nastiness that continues to be sprinkled generously throughout the pages of this book. 

Her book is not without humor such as the passage where she describes herself as: “freaked out” while shopping in the maternity department of a shop with “… haggard-looking mothers being dragged around by whiny, unruly kids …” She calls Glen and laments “Am I going to be trapped behind a stroller for the rest of my life, at the beck and call of some badly behaved toddler screaming for his sippy cup?”  Perhaps this scene amuses me only because it brings back my own similar feelings of so many years ago.

I never fully understand Walker’s change of heart as suddenly upon the page I come upon her pleasure over being pregnant, and later, her euphoria over her son who has become everything to her, her euphoria over motherhood, which she now feels she can embrace wholeheartedly while still accomplishing great things, a concept that I, being of her mother’s generation, continue to question.

She writes of the maturity that comes to her with the experience of pregnancy and motherhood, of her willingness “… to walk through fire” for her son.  She talks of what it feels like to become a mother without having had a proper mother: “… what becoming a mother without a mother feels like.”

Walker names her son Tenzin, after Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the  Dalai Lama, a name I suspect, will not easily be accepted by his peers, not to mention an impossibly high standard to lay on any child.  But then again, I think, Why Not?  Who knows what this child will accomplish?

Walker’s desire to be true to herself informs every page of her writing. I hope she is writing the continuing chapter of her life from the point where “Baby Love” ends.  She is a skilled writer, a human being eager to live her own truth, and she has hooked my interest in the continuing flow of her life.  I have my wallet out to buy her next book.

The Innocents Abroad

by Mark Twain

In the mid-1800s, the very novelty of going to Europe was still an exciting enough concept in America that day-by-day travel narratives of France and Italy could captivate and wow armchair readers. Just one such book, however, has endured the test of time more gracefully than the rest. Though useless today as a guidebook, its longevity comes as a product of the pen, humor and wit of Mark Twain.

“The Innocents Abroad” was Twain’s account of a month-long cruise in 1867 in which he and several dozen other Americans traveled on the Quaker City from New York City to the Mediterranean Sea. Many shore expeditions and overland journeys bring hilarious episodes to the pages, throughout which Twain portrays himself as something between a naive American innocent and a sophisticated product of the young yet proud United States.

In Twain’s day many now-illustrious locations of Europe were marvelous hives of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance. Twain has a knack for turning such elements into colorful, often laughable scenery. Just outside Rome, Twain notes, “This Civitavecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin, and ignorance we have found yet . . . These alleys are paved with stone and carpeted with deceased cats and decayed rags and decomposed vegetable tops and remnants of old boots all soaked with dishwater, and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it.”

Clearly disapproving, Twain rails against the Catholic Church for allowing such poverty and for hoarding untold wealth within magnificent, gold-glittering cathedrals while “half of that community hardly know from day to day how they are going to keep body and soul together.”

Throughout Europe, Twain observes ghastly communities of deformed humans, and in Milan, he says, “the crop (of dwarfs) was luxuriant.” But he calls Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) “the very heart and home of cripples and human monsters both.” In this town, writes Twain, “a beggar has to have exceedingly good points to make a living . . . and a mere damaged soldier on crutches would never make a cent. It would pay him to get a piece of his head taken off and cultivate a wen like a carpet sack.” 

Graceful France takes the highest ratings from Twain. In Italy he sees as a blend of beauty and slum-stricken poverty. Greece is a collapsed illiterate wreck. But the Holy Land is utter Hell. Barren, sunburned and desolate, it bears no semblance to its descriptions in the Bible. In Jerusalem he and his mates, journeying for a week on horseback, find “rags, wretchedness, poverty, and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Muslim rule more surely than the crescent flag itself.” Beggars swarm, they scream for money and they stink, complains Twain. 

For 500 pages, Twain describes Europe’s and the Middle East’s many faces of humanity, but no demographic so irritates the author as his own travel companions. They praise fine statues and museum galleries with quotes plainly stolen from popular guidebooks of the day, and worst of all is their appetite for stealing artifacts and even chiseling pieces from such monuments as the great sphinx. Here, in Egypt, is where the story peaks and ends, in the face of a staring, timeless countenance which Twain compares to what one may feel “when he shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.”

And on the face of the sphinx clings a lowly American, hammering away for a “specimen” to pocket and take home. Thus ends “The innocents Abroad,” framing Americans as a young and overtly arrogant breed coming to terms with a world far older and wiser than them. A century-and-a-half later the reader may wonder if anything has changed.

What They’re Reading

Local hotshots tell us what pages to turn

George Blumenthal, Chancellor UC Santa Cruz

The Book: “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)”  by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

What He Thinks: “I could say that it is a great manual for chancellors, but in truth this book contains many insights about why people act as they do. Their discussion of cognitive dissidence and why people are often unwilling to consider different views can be a great help in dealing with people.”

Sharon Skold, Friends of the Library

The Book: “Where are You Now” by Mary Higgins Clark

What She Thinks: “I really like light mysteries in the summer. This book was a typical, wonderful mystery with a beginning, middle and end. They don’t all have that! There was character development and a logical conclusion, which makes it enjoyable.”

Fred Keeley, County Treasurer

“Islam: A Short History” by Karen Armstrong

What He Thinks: “It provided me with a very well researched understanding of the origins and history of Islam. In so doing, it helped me understand better what is going on in the world in regards to issues in Iraq, Iran and other parts of the world.”

Ryan Coonerty, Mayor of Santa Cruz

“Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder

What He Thinks: “It’s a true story about a doctor trying to provide medical care in Haiti. But it’s more than that; it captures the human condition in a way that I’ve never read in a book before. It was powerful.”

Brian King, President, Cabrillo College

The Book: “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely

What He Thinks: “It is an interesting book about how frequently humans do things not rational, but predictable. It’s a psychology of economics. I read it when I was stuck in an airport.”

How to judge a book by its cover … and still respect yourself in the morning

We all do it. The difficulty is making a book decision when the selection is vast, at a proper bookstore, and not already predigested to the #1 bestsellers at airports or grocery stores or those bastard stepchildren masquerading as proper bookstores in the mall. Add in the days when the big word-of-mouth machine has failed, when not a single friend or family member has made an interesting book recommendation in months, and the act of choosing something to read can become overwhelming. With about 200,000 new books published every year in this country alone, how does one find the cozy gem that will chase away sweltering heat, drown out screaming kids on the beach, or simply smother real life’s everyday stress?

Step 1— Decide how you feel about the last three books you read.

Not the last three books you liked, but the last three total, including the ones you didn’t finish because they were no good. Too many of us fall into a genre trap and never climb out, and summer is a time for literary experimentation. Were the last three all advice on getting ahead in business? Mystery novels? Recommendations from McSweeney’s? With books you didn’t finish: why not? Were they too far beneath or above the level of language that gives you enjoyment? Too long? Full of clichés? Full of idiotic characters? Just full of it, period? Recognizing what kind of books you don’t like is the biggest step to making bold purchasing decisions that don’t end badly.

Step 2—Go to the bookstore, find a book you loved on the shelves, and take a big step to the side.

You should still be in the right section, but now there’s a whole new set of spines in front of you. There’s nothing wrong with devouring the entire oeuvre of the author you adore, of course, but if you hadn’t already tried that route (or become bored with it), you wouldn’t be in this position. Look for spines that match your favorite book. Yes, color scheme, typography, and even the book’s publisher do count. Even though today’s publishing houses are megalopolies, they all have created dozens of small imprints designed to reach a target audience. If one of those imprints put out a book you loved, chances are they’re trying to target you. Don’t be bashful, and don’t be picky. Look all the way up and all the way down. Grab the first five books that look similar to your favorite and make a little stack in your arms. Make this stack before you examine the covers too closely. The trick is committing to holding the books. Otherwise, you’ll get the dreaded blank shelf stare, and be perpetually frozen by the choices as your mind starts to rack itself for sure bets buried deep in the memory, only to find that the memory is screaming back, “I don’t have any!” Truly, the stack of books in your arms will keep you from going insane.

Step 3—Compare the books to each other.

Sift through the stack gazing at the front covers. Immediately identify the best and worst just on gut instinct. Again, don’t think about what you do and don’t like—just compare the books to each other. Put the worst, most obvious misstep back on the shelf, and put the best-looking book on the bottom of your stack. With the remaining three, flip them over and read the backs, gleaning anything you can from the descriptions, author bio, and ecstatic blurbs by reviewers and other more famous authors. Keep the one or two that appeal to you, and put at least one more book back on the shelf.

Step 4—Grab a bookstore employee.

And here’s the key part of the process. The best way to find a good book is by word of mouth, of course, and the bookseller has the best word, and the best mouth. But, having worked in a bookstore, I can aver that the previous three steps will help you avoid the most common mistake people make when looking to a stranger for reading advice. “What do you like?” the employee will invariably ask. “Oh, everything,” says the unprepared customer. Death.

Instead of saying, “Oh, everything,” show them your two or three books and ask if they’ve heard anything about them. Also mention the last good book you read (remember step one?), and toss in the last book you hated. By giving the employee four or five titles to go on, you’re more likely to spark an idea in their head—even the most diligent bookseller hasn’t read everything—while guiding them to your tastes. When given the “everything” line, booksellers default to either their personal favorites (probably good, but not guaranteed to tickle your fancy) or, yes, it’s true, books that are selling well (indicating virtually nothing about quality). This way, you’ll at least have the footing for a better conversation about books.

Step 5—Take the plunge.

By now, you should have your two or three random choices, and at least two more recommendations from the employee. Pick a favorite from this selection. It might be your initial favorite grab from the shelf, or the employee’s most enthusiastic recommendation, or just the one with the sexy cover. It doesn’t matter. By this point, psychology studies show that just the act of handling the books will make you more inclined to purchase one of them, and you should! Most of the time, this distillation process will lead to you finding a book you haven’t heard of before, but will enjoy. And even if it fails, you’ll be armed with another piece of information for step one next time.

There are hundreds of millions of books in this world, which means, even with pessimistic statistics, that there are millions of books out there that you will like. Be bold, and go discover one.

Final tip: don’t try this online. It just doesn’t work. Trust me.

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