With our international correspondent Sara Tieman back in the States for a visit, the Book Club scheduled a quick get-together to discuss some of the latest books they’ve been reading.

John Williams (weekdays 10am-2pm, including The Noon Business Lunch, plus the Mincing Rascals podcast)

The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World by Tilar Mazzeo.

Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling by Danny Funt.

Keep an ear out for my interview with both of these authors coming to a radio near you soon!

Steve Alexander (agribusiness reporter)

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
This is one to savor, and I highly recommend you get the audio book which is beautifully told through 14 narrators.
It’s a novel told in the form of about 170 letters, postcards, and emails that Sybil Van Antwerp sent or received in her mid-to-late 70s. Writing letters was a habit she started as a child because of the thrill she got when people wrote back. She never stopped. It’s her preferred mode of communication and anyone who wants to be in her life must accommodate her, including a neighbor across the street.
We learn about her life through the letters; her triumphs and her tragedies, one of the latter a devastating incident which remains an undercurrent throughout the book.
Sybil is a bit of an old grouch, and she uses letters to air her grievances.  She also uses her letter writing as a confessional, which adds to the intrigue when she receives a series of anonymous, threatening letters which culminate with acts of contrition and forgiveness.
The themes will probably hit home with older people who’ve had their own wins and losses to rehash over the years, which may be why it will stay with me for a while.

1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
You’d think that the business reporter for a major market radio station would have enjoyed this extremely well researched and told story by the CNBC news anchor Sorkin, but no. As I read his accounts of the events leading up to the stock market crash in 1929, I found myself saying, “Oh, the same thing’s happening today. The same types of greedy con men are pulling the same kinds of shenanigans.”
Aren’t we supposed to learn from…  oh, never mind.

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
This is a smart novel about responsibility — taking it and shirking it — in the age of A.I. It’s nicely constructed around a fatal traffic accident in which an autonomous minivan and an oncoming vehicle. A family of five in the minivan survives. An older married couple in the other vehicle do not. And that’s the basis of the book’s title: who, or what, is at fault.

Steve Bertrand (host of Steve Bertrand on Books podcast, recently retired after over 40 years as a WGN Radio news anchor and reporter)

Judy Blume: A Life Mark Oppenheimer
In one of the most anticipated books of the Spring, Mark Oppenheimer writes about the American Icon who helped generations of us grow up and about how her personal life directed what she wrote about and when.
It wasn’t easy. Blume had several books turned down before success. Surviving in a stale marriage, submitted Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret to long time editor Dick Jackson. It’s where she found her voice.
Her racy adult book “Wifey” made her rich but many advised her not to publish it.
Blume talks little about her shot second marriage but Oppenheimer flushed out the story.
He also writes thoroughly about the pressures she’s endured as thousands of her readers reach out to her for help.
This is a highly readable booking about a literary star you don’t know as well as you think.
Oppenheimer talks with Steve on this week’s Steve Bertrand on Books podcast.

The Feather Wars…and the Great Crusade to Save America’s Birds James H McCommons
The Feather Wars delivers an account of the almost unfathomable destruction of America’s bird populations in the late 1800’s Gilded Age. Passenger Pigeons, which are now extinct used to migrate flocks hundreds of miles long, darkening cities for up to 12 hours as the flew over.
“Egger” would raid nesting birds eggs to serve in restaurants. This is before the chicken industry had grown enough to satisfy demand.
But the biggest factor in the wanton slaughter was the fashion industry. This was the time it became fashionable to place feathers in women’s hats and the demand was nearly unmeetable.
Some estimates say Florida lost 95 percent of Its wading birds.
When the fashions changed, so did the birds’ prospects.
The destruction saw a rise in opposition with group’s such as the National Audubon Society.
Endangered birds can be saved.
Canada geese, which were nearly extinct, are thriving. Bald Eagles have endured.
But McCommons argues birds are under a growing threat.
He points to glass, pesticides and cats.
Cats up to 3.7 billion birds a year.
He says the threat from turbines can be lessened by placement.

Sara Tieman (promotions & public relations manager emeritus and station book club international correspondent)

At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010) – Bill Bryson
I love Bill Bryson’s books and writing style. He blends humor with information so seamlessly that his non-fiction books are always a delight to read. In At Home, he takes readers on a room-by-room tour of his home, a former rectory in Norfolk, England. He discusses the history of each room, what it took to get the comforts we enjoy in our modern homes, and the radical changes that occurred in the 19th century. Bryson writes “…whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over – eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famines, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment – they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers.” A few of the more memorable revelations include these: hallways were once the whole home and are now relegated to a mere pathway linking rooms together and how great an impact the foods of the Americas had on the rest of the world.

84, Charing Cross Road (1970) – Helene Hanff
This sweet, lovely and bittersweet book is an exchange of written correspondence between New York based writer Helene Hanff and central London antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co. from 1949 to about 1968. Helene writes to request the rare books she’s after and while the exchange starts formally (even with Hanff coming across as rather demanding), it deepens into friendship with Frank Doel and the bookselling staff. It is delightfully old-fashioned, this exchange of books and money through the mail crossing the Atlantic. Helene even sends the staff Christmas gifts when she learns of the ongoing shortages from the aftermath of World War II. There’s the promise that they will all meet one day in person. I went there in person to see for myself, finding the bronze plaque recalling that once upon a time, a bookstore once stood there.

The Correspondent: A Novel (2025) – Virginia Evans
Oh, I loved this book about an older woman and the slow reveal of her life and personality through a string of letters. There are no chapter breaks here, just letters and emails penned or received by Sybil Van Antwerp to her brother, best friend, former colleague’s young son, writer Joan Didion, neighbor, and a university president, amongst others. Sybil, a divorced and retired lawyer, is a bit prickly around the edges and she’s keeping secret a major degenerative health issue that will eventually put an end to her lifelong letter writing practice, something she admits has been an obsession since childhood.
Interwoven is a continuous letter she writes but never sends. When Sybil starts to receive anonymous threatening letters, she’s forced to confront events from her professional and personal life. There are truly heartbreaking moments within these letters as she experiences reckonings with her grown children, loved ones and herself. I felt a range of emotions toward Sybil throughout, a testament to a memorably written character.

Broken Country (2025) – Clare Leslie Hall
This is a sad one – it’s part love triangle, young love, lost love, class disparity, grief, family, tragedy, the choosing of a life and love, and the consequences of decisions. Beth once had dreams to be a writer but now lives a no-nonsense life with her husband Frank, working alongside Frank’s brother Jimmy, on their family sheep farm in the Dorset (English) countryside. Beth and Frank’s life is marked by tragedy with the accidental death of their son Bobby and shadowed by Beth’s girlhood love affair with a wealthy neighbor named Gabriel, and Jimmy’s drinking. When Gabriel returns to his family home with his son Leo in tow, a series of events leads to a fatal shooting. The story unfolds through the past, present and future.  If you’re looking for an uplifting novel, this one isn’t it. It was a big, splashy title from 2025 and worth the read if you find yourself searching for a darker, brooding storyline.