It’s been 110+ degrees here and I’ve been hiding in places with A/C because I’m trying to avoid an electric bill for $47K next month. This means lots of time at the library and movie theater. Luckily a couple of good movies are playing.
Photo: Jonathan Prime
I’ve seen Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again twice now and laughed both times, cried both times. I found it better than the first because it resonates more emotionally and deals with slightly more complex issues.
My second viewing was at an uncrowded matinee so I got up and danced in the aisle and surprisingly wasn’t kicked out by theater employees. If you need a burst of joy (who doesn’t?) and a dash of Colin Firth (again, who doesn’t), I highly recommend seeing it. Best to go in knowing as little as possible and just let the sunshine and music wash over you.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Mission: Impossible–Fallout is also quite entertaining. The action is breathtaking and so visceral, if you wear your Fitbit while watching, you might see a million steps recorded afterward.
The death-defying stunts provide an adrenaline rush you get to experience while safe in your seats. The plot is a bit confusing (lots of physics…or something) but it doesn’t matter. The acting is good and there’s even a softer side to Ethan Hunt. This is the rare franchise that has improved as it ages.
Which movies have you enjoyed recently?
In this emotional sequel to 
Antiracist educator and author of the term “white fragility,” Robin DiAngelo succinctly explains white people’s defensive reactions and how they impede necessary discussions about race.
I love short stories. Possibly more than novels, which, if you’d asked ten years ago, I would’ve said was impossible.
Jock Serong’s On the Java Ridge is devastatingly brilliant and the best work I’ve read this year. I cried. Twice. I am not a damn crier.
Armstrong is becoming perhaps our greatest television historian, following Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted and Seinfeldia. She is now taking on the HBO blockbuster Sex and the City.
A woman walked into a mortuary to plan her own funeral, and hours later was murdered in her home. Wha? Did she know she’d be murdered? Or was it a freak coincidence?
Romy isn’t quite sure where she went wrong. Now serving two consecutive life sentences, Romy examines her choices, starting in her wild and neglected childhood, and how her choices may not have been choices at all.
I admit it—I was sucked in by the promise of swearing. But there is much more to Kimberly Harrington’s essays than motherhood and swearing, and you don’t have to be a mother or a swearer to enjoy the hell out of them.
A young woman administering communion to house-bound parishioners sends her already spinning life off on a dangerous trajectory when she begins following a mysterious man.
How It Happened by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown, May 15)
The first page of this departure from Connolly’s Charlie Parker series is a photocopy of a Los Angeles court document. It signifies a name change from Arthur Stanley Jefferson to Stan Laurel. For the rest of the novel, Laurel, one half of the legendary comedic duo Laurel and (Oliver) Hardy, is referred to only as He.
My favorite humor essayist is back with this collection that finds him musing on mortality, as he’s nearing the age his mother died of cancer, and still processing the suicide of his sister Tiffany.
Ex-New York Congressman Steve Israel couldn’t have been more timely with his sophomore novel, Big Guns. A major gun manufacturer is threatened by a call for a national ban on handguns, so the company brings in its top lobbyist to convince the government that every citizen should be legally required to own a firearm.
This heartwarming picture book is beautiful in every respect. The young girl narrating the story finds empowerment wearing her mother’s headscarves. The acceptance of those around her—her friends, teachers, and especially her grandmother who isn’t Muslim—encourages the child to be proud of her identity.
Set in a semi-apocalyptic future in the town of West End, Barnes paints a haunting portrait of a town stripped to its bones and the lives of its few remaining residents. Residents of the bordering town of South End may seem better off, but their existence is filled with traffic, plastic homes, and a hunger for material things.
By age nine, Tyler Wetherall had lived in thirteen houses in five countries on two continents, yet she still believed her father simply had “business problems.”
I love books where women reinvent their lives in some way and emerge strong or stronger.
In Kelley Armstrong’s This Fallen Prey, third in the Casey Duncan series (after 
In her highly moving memoir, Sarah McBride, the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, invites the world into her struggle to not only become her true self but also fight for the rights of others like her.
This delightful picture book reads to the rhythm of the Mary Had a Little Lamb nursery rhyme in order to celebrate smart girls.
Los Angeles Times staff writer Amy Kaufman uses her insider knowledge and snarky love of the reality-television franchise to fill a whole book with details about The Bachelor, from tryouts through post-season fallout. Lest you think this is all fluff, Kaufman addresses the history of dating shows and delves into more complex issues of feminism and dating culture.
Harley McKenna has shot a man, buried a mother, and plotted revenge, but her most defining characteristic is being the only child of Duke McKenna—widower, gun runner, and meth dealer extraordinaire. Harley plans to take over the family business, but not before she transforms it by whatever means necessary.
Detective Inspector Joona Linna put serial killer Jurek Walter, aka the Sandman, behind bars years ago, so why are people who had tangential connections to Jurek still dying? Joona will have to confront his most terrifying nemesis again if he wants the living nightmares to end and to save one of Jurek’s victims.
Mick Herron’s standalone This Is What Happened begins in medias res, with 26-year-old Maggie Barnes hiding in a bathroom in a high-rise building during a dangerous spy mission.
While in college, John Fowler spent a year as a research assistant for Dian Fossey at the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda. People close to Fowler wanted to know what it was like to work with the great primatologist memorialized in Gorillas in the Mist.
Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington’s story of institutional racism, junk science, and a broken criminal justice system is a difficult one to read, but incredibly important. Their history of Mississippi racism is mortifying, and the ways it still exists today are equally horrifying.
After unexpectedly inheriting a homestead in remote Alaska, Ernt Allbright moves his family to the Kaneq wilderness. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from his time as a POW in Vietnam, Ernt begins to unravel during the long nights in a hostile landscape.
An attractive redhead with sunburned shoulders sitting in a bar in Delaware in the middle of a summer day. A handsome man approaches. They strike up a conversation, the start of something that soon escalates and spins out of control.
Jack Pellum is a former police detective in Michigan whose life was shattered when his wife, Olivia, was murdered 18 months earlier.