Posted 10:30 a.m. Friday, April 11, 2025
Man of Leisure, Volume Two: Part Two
“Reality is a fiction with unlimited budget”—Herman Diaz, Trust
Book Club Thursday at the Majak residence, and the whole house (me, I’m the house) buzzed with activity: furniture dusted, carpets vacuumed, plates and silverware set out for desserts and snacks. Our coffee maker got to come out of its hibernation and sit prominently on a kitchen counter as the book club filtered into our living room for a couple hours.
The book club was mostly made up of contemporaries of my father. You know the type: men of enlightenment with suede patches expertly sewn onto the elbows of their sportscoats.
My mother, for her part, never raised much of a stink about the club’s exclusionary nature, probably because she was too busy with her own two book clubs. The fact that my father’s book club tended to pick the dullest things to read for alleged fun did not hurt, either.
Not that my mother’s book clubs took things lightly. Quite the contrary, actually. While my father scribbled questions to lead discussions, my mother did the same while also constructing visual displays with the precision of a student about do an English class book presentation that counted for half of their final grade. I think it’s a safe bet there are not a lot of people who have a cardboard diorama of an Italian villa sitting around their basement as assembled by someone with a doctorate.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, the book club. The attendees filtered into our living room of tasteful yellow textured walls and pleated curtains and made themselves comfortable in chairs borrowed from around our living room table. There were all the usual suspects of professors, active and retired, a newspaper publisher, etc. along with a special guest in the form of the rector of our church.
I lingered around a bit in the kitchen to hear the group start their discussion and to see if the Father would bring the same energy he had at the pulpit to our living room. As he spoke and I observed the slowly glazed over expressions of some of the men listening, I quickly realized that the Father had indeed brought the same energy of his sermons, which tended to be more dense theological lectures instead of impassioned exhortations, to the book club that Thursday night as he did on Sunday mornings to the same politely mixed results.
After everyone left, I came up from the basement and helped tidy up/wash dishes with my father to find out the verdict on the Father’s presence. The jury of his book club peers had returned with a swift and unanimous decision.
“I don’t think they are going to ask the Father back,” my father confided.
“You’re excommunicating him from your book club?” I asked.
“We’re Episcopalian,” my father said, drying a plate. “We don’t excommunicate. We just politely rescind invitations.”
Decades later and a week or two into my time at the hospital, I was sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable reclining chair, reading a book a coworker had kindly dropped off for me. When you’re a known reader and hospitalized, the world becomes your interlibrary loan. The book, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, had garnered much attention from several nurses who spoke rapturously about it to me. I, for my part, had found the book’s charms elusive at the present but continued reading mostly because I could only watch so many Food Network competition shows (have you truly lived until you’ve cried ugly tears over a contestant winning with their grandma’s recipe for chicken cordon bleu? I think not).
As I breezed my way through the book, there was a knock on the door and before I could fully say, “Come in” there was a cheerful looking man with a priest’s collar on standing in my room. When you’re in the hospital after almost dying, the last thing you want is a religious figure sprung on you.
“Oh god, am I dying?” I muttered to myself, followed by, “Do they give last rites to Episcopalians?”
I was, in fact, not dying, the Father explained to me. It turned out he had been sent by an old Sunday school teacher of mine who had read about my hospitalization online and felt that a near death experience might have tipped the amateur missionary scales in her favor to get me back in the pews.
“I was part of the children’s choir and an acolyte,” I sighed, hiding my book under my blanket as I was unsure the church’s current stance on witches. “I’ve done my Protestant tour of duty.”
Undeterred, the Father then asked me if I wanted communion.
“Oh,” I said lightly, “I’m a recovering alcoholic so, you know, no wine for this diva.”
Unflappable to his priestly core, the Father laughed and then soon left, imparting some kind words about a speedy recovery. before I returned to The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.
“Oh, did you finish this yet?” the night nurse asked later that day, turning the paperback book in her hand.
“I did,” I replied.
“What did you think about it?” she explained. “I thought it was cute. I also thought it was slow going at first but picked up towards the end.”
“That’s how I felt,” I agreed while propping myself up with pillows. “What did you think of that ending?”
“It was crazy!” the nurse excitedly said. ‘What did you think?”
And there on the sixth floor of Gundersen, nestled among the hospital beds and IVs, in the midst of sadness and loneliness and fear and stress, there we were, a book club of two. Amen.
11. The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor by Keegan-Michael Key, Elle Key
Synopsis: A humorous nonfiction study of the history of sketch comedy, tracing its roots back to ancient Greek days to the up to minute viral sensations on social media.
Review: Hold for laughter. When it comes to a book about sketch comedy, it’s very hard to argue with Keegan-Michael Key’s credentials: a cast member of MadTV and then a co-creator and star of the Comedy Central series Key and Peele with now-acclaimed director Jordan Peele. Along with his wife, TV producer Elle Key, Key has taken their successful podcast and put it in book form as they detail the roots of sketch comedy all the way back to ancient Greece and up to our current times of sketches going viral on various social media platforms. Smart, informative and, most importantly, hilarious, this is a quick read that will expand your brain while tickling your funny bone.
12. Trust by Hernan Diaz
Synopsis: A roman a clef novel, an unfinished autobiography, a finished memoir and a secret journal converge together in this metafictional historical novel that purports to tell the life of a Depression-era tycoon and his wife.
Review: I could tell you a lot about Hernan Diaz’s book. I could go on and on about the various narrative forms put together a larger picture about wealth, fame, and the flexibility of truth. I could tell you about how I felt so sure about characters in one section and would promptly have all my assumptions obliterated in the next section of the novel. I could tell you that reading this novel was like watching someone do a tightrope walk between two of the skyscrapers pictured on the cover. I could say that and a lot more but instead I’ll just say READ THIS BOOK.
13. Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Synopsis: Best friends (and former girlfriends) Bobbi and Frances befriend charismatic writer Melissa and her actor husband Nick. What could go wrong? Except everything.
Review: Smartly written and expertly paced, the central four characters are deeply flawed characters I was intrigued to spend time with as their relationships shift and change over the course of the novel. No dragons are slain. No mysteries are solved. But this novel kept me compelled the entire time as sometimes the human experience of falling in and out love, romantically and platonically, can just be as thrilling.
14. Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories by Kate Atkinson
Synopsis: A collection of loosely interconnected short stories that include tales about a dark cloud causing death, the misadventures of a worker on a soap opera, and even a few fairy tales.
Review: As a whole, the collection of short stories kept my attention as they each reveal to be more than what they may initially appear to be and the way the stories connect to each other in often surprising ways is better of the fun and why I recommend reading all the stories in the order they are presented in the book so you don’t miss any of the literary Easter eggs Atkinson has hidden within many of them.
15. Finlay Donovan is Killing It
Synopsis: Divorced writer Finlay Donovan, financially struggling with a baby and a bastard ex-husband, has just accidentally landed a new lucrative deal: hired contract killer.
Review: The fun start to the Finlay Donovan series, this book is a light, fluffy read that doesn’t go quite as far with its premise as I would’ve hoped, at least based on this initial book. Still, I would recommend this book for those wanting to pass the day with a charming little misadventure.
16. World Within a Song: Music that Changed My Life and Life That Changed my Music by Jeff Tweedy
Synopsis: A nonfiction book authored by the frontman of Wilco; the book follows Jeff Tweedy’s life as seen through 50 songs that had a great impact on his life.
Review: Picture it. UW-River Falls. The early 2000s. Yours truly is an undergraduate in his hipster infancy when Wilco releases their massively influential album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I make liking it, along with the likes of the White Stripes and The Strokes, my main personality outside of chain smoking and watching Sex and the City. So, a book of song recommendations from frontman Jeff Tweedy is basically scientifically engineered for me. But how is it? Honestly, it’s a very clever approach to do a memoir as the songs and their personal meaning to Tweedy do a lot to get to know him as a person and artist while really expanding my Liked Songs Playlist on Spotify.
17. The Mysteries by Bill Watterson, John Kascht (illustrator)
Synopsis: A folk tale for adults, the story details what happens when a king sends out knights to capture the elusive Mysteries that have been causing havoc.
Review: Penned by the creator of Calvin and Hobbes and featuring illustrations from famed caricaturist, this picture book is a short read that is long on interesting interpretations you can make on what exactly is going on in the kingdom.
18. The Pages by Hugo Hamilton
Synopsis: Told in the first-person perspective voice of a book that was nearly destroyed by the Nazis, the story details what happens when a woman goes to Berlin, book in hand, to figure out the map etched in the back of it.
Review: There is nothing quite as daring for an author than to pen a novel with a high concept. What if can’t sustain the conceit for the whole story? What if it comes off dumb? What if it’s accused of being too clever for its own good? Those are all things that plague a writer and probably plagues a reader when they read the back cover summary. “It’s a book narrated by a book?” says the reader with a bit of healthy suspicion. Well, I’m here to hopefully put those suspicions aside as The Pages is a deftly written book that is a whole lot more than a quirky framing device. A book-narrating-this-book concept brings needed levity to the serious subject matter without sacrificing any of the gravitas of the proceedings. It is a book I enjoyed while reading and then greatly admired when I sat back and reflected on it after I was done.
19. The Perfect Amount of Wrong: The Rise of Alt Comedy on Chicago’s North Side by Mike Bridenstine
Synopsis: A non-fiction look at the alternative comedy scene of the 1990s and early 2000s of Chicago that gave rise to a bevy of comedy stars while also creating a vibrant/chaotic scene.
Review: To be a comedian is to be willing to die a million times on stages big and small in order to make a life for yourself. Long before Marvel deals, Netflix specials, and general acclaim, most of your favorite comedians were toiling away in various comedy scenes and this look at the alt comedy scene in Chicago in the late 90s/2000s. Clashing egos, boisterous camaraderie, and fond memories pepper this collection of stories that is more of a loose connection than a singular driving narrative. A must for those who love the inner workings of any creative field.
20. Still True by Maggie Ginsberg
Synopsis: Lib and Jack married Wisconsinites who find their lives uprooted by the arrival of several people: a secret figure from Lib’s past, a new friend for Jack, and a married couple trying to muddle through their new surroundings.
Review: “Residents of a smalltown muddling through life while harboring secrets” is quite the potent premise. It is probably why people keep writing those stories and people keep reading them, because at our core we are all just gossipy folks exchanging stories with each other over white picket fences. So where does Still True fall into this grand tradition? I would say it lands somewhere squarely, pleasantly, perfectly okay-ly in the middle.
Want more "Man of Leisure"?
Volume One, Column One: Once Upon a Time...
Volume One, Column Two: Life, Death and the Pages In-Between
Volume One, Column Three: The Summer I Turned Pretty Sober
Volume One, Column Four: (101) Books of Summer
Volume One, Column Five: Ever After
Volume Two, Part One: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Reader
Volume Two, Part Three: Scary Essays to Tell in the Dark