I completely forgot about last month’s round-up. We’re 23 days into June so this will be an interesting exercise in whether I actually remember anything about the books I read. Shall we begin?

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksander Solzhenitsyn)
• You’ve Been Volunteered (Laurie Gelman)
• At the Water’s Edge (Sara Gruen)
• The Office BFFs (Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey)
• Glittering Images (Susan Howatch)
• Class Mom (Laurie Gelman)
• Yoga Pant Nation (Laurie Gelman)
• Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)

First off, I thoroughly enjoyed Laurie Gelman’s “Class Mom” series, even though I accidentally read it out of order! You’ve Been Volunteered is actually the second novel (Class Mom is the first), and while I definitely missed some background stuff, it stood well enough on its own that I didn’t realize it was part of a larger series until I had just about finished. These books are funny, irreverent mom-lit centered around the drama of an elementary school PTA and the parents who make it up. They’re fun.

Glittering Images is the first novel in Susan Howatch’s six-book “Starbridge” series. All together they span about thirty years, the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, with a cast of characters whose lives all revolve around the Church of England’s (fictional) Starbridge Cathedral. In Glittering Images the Rev. Dr. Charles Ashworth, a bachelor theologian at Cambridge, is sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury to discreetly investigate the private life of the charismatic and controversial Bishop of Starbridge, Dr. Alexander Jardine. Needless to say, he finds more than he bargained for. Susan Howatch is deeply wise about psychology, spiritual pitfalls, and the healing of psychic/spiritual wounds. Even if they don’t want to read all six novels (which is a commitment; they’re dense) I think that ordained or wanting-to-be-ordained persons would really benefit from reading this and the concluding novel, Absolute Truths.

Here’s a fact: I love The Office (the American version). It’s a perpetual rewatch show for me, something I throw on for background noise or when I need something familiar and comforting. I’ve read most of the books written by cast and crew of The Office, I listened to both of Brian Baumgartner’s Office-centered podcasts, and since mid 2020 I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening to Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey’s rewatch podcast, Office Ladies. It’s lighthearted and chatty, and I like to throw it on while I do chores. It feels like I’m just hanging out with some friends, gabbing about a show we all love. The Office BFFs is their new book, another behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show. Unlike Baumgartner’s disappointing Welcome to Dunder Mifflin (essentially just a transcript of his podcast episodes), The Office BFFs was about 90% new material as far as I could tell, and included a lot of Jenna and Angela’s personal stories and photographs. If you’re also an Office fan, this is a great one.

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen (made famous by her debut novel, Water for Elephants) is set mostly in Scotland during the second world war. American socialites Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off from Ellis’s father’s fortune after embarrassing the family in a drunken New Year’s debacle; determined to redeem himself in his father’s eyes, Ellis brings Maddie and his best friend, Hank, to the Scottish Highlands in the middle of the war. His goal? To succeed where his father failed, in hunting and capturing the famous Loch Ness Monster. Although Maddie is an adult through the whole book, it has a real bildungsroman feel as she struggles to find her place in this new milieu. My one criticism is that by the end of the novel the villain felt a little too villainous — other than that, it was a well-written and engrossing read.

Kitchen Confidential is a crazy look back at the coke-and-booze-fueled restaurant kitchens of the 80s and 90s. It’s funny, it’s grim, it’s fascinating… mostly though, by the end it left me feeling sad, just because of knowing how Bourdain’s life ended. Throughout Kitchen Confidential you get the impression that’s he’s been looking his whole life for — something — but in the end, I don’t think he ever found it.

And last but certainly not least, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn’s fictionalized account of an ordinary day in a Siberian gulag. I first read this novella back in high school; as the books got passed out and we opened them up for the first time, a heavy snow immediately started falling outside our classroom window, which provided an excellent segue into a discussion of the pathetic fallacy. A few images had stayed with me from that first reading, but by and large I was able to appreciate this book with fresh eyes. It felt especially poignant to be reading it against the background of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the kidnappings/deportations and “filtration camps” currently happening in Russia-controlled territories. Plus ça change…