The audio book of Married Sex: A Love Story is finally available. May Wuthrich produced and directed, Tavia Gilbert read the female characters, I read the description and the narrator’s dialogue. I hadn’t opened the book in months, and I’d blocked the simplest fact — it’s drenched with emotion — and I certainly had no idea that Tavia could take the wife’s pain into the Streeposphere and that my response to those scenes would be to read, through tears, in a voice that cracked, but we decided to keep all of that. If you’re looking for a story about a married couple, some harmless sex and an unexpected aftermath, here you go.

I met Amanda Stern at a publishing party. A few minutes before I had to leave, I was bored. So I asked her, “If I don’t hit on you, can we talk for 10 minutes?” About three minutes in, I knew I wanted to read her novel, “The Long Haul.” Key fact: It was published in 2003, when she was really, really young. As are her characters: The Alcoholic, who’s 20 but looks 17, and the narrator, his girlfriend, who looks 15. The book hits the hipster low points: drugs, rock clubs, chain-smoking, attempted rape, attachments to former shrinks, long road trips. A lot of that life strikes this old fart as appalling. But the themes matter at any age: In a relationship, “what about the future, the long haul?” and “Is life worth living when you’ve let someone else choose the life you’re to lead?” Along the way, there’s wit: “I am starting to love him a total of an hour a week.” And wisdom: “It’s like the day after someone dies, when you see everything as if for the first time, because the world has new meaning without them.” This novel marks the beginning of a writer with a future. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

The headline is from Lord Buckley, but it could just as easily come from the mouth of Chandler Brossard (1922-1993), who was the hippest American writer you’ve never heard of. I’ve read him, but that’s because I knew him. We met at LOOK Magazine — if you were born after it shuttered, LOOK was like LIFE, just with better photographers and a social conscience — when Chandler was 45, with an office and a byline, and I was an 18-year-old summer intern. He had heavy eyelids and an expression of cosmic weariness; he was the most cynical human being I’d ever seen, which, of course, I found fascinating. Chandler’s basic position was that he was a novelist, and a great one, and that this journalism gig was like playing piano in a whorehouse. Naturally, I inhaled his books. I was knocked out. We became friends.

“Who Walk in Darkness” is a street-level account of the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1950s. It was considered the first Beat novel, Kerouac before there was Kerouac, but that’s to date it, and in no way is this book dated. [To buy the Kindle edition of “To Walk in Darkness” from Amazon, click here.] “The Bold Saboteurs” is the story of a teen punk who has the soul of a poet. It’s a book you’d expect Albert Camus to write if he spent a season working in the crew of a young criminal. I’m delighted that Open Road Media, the publisher of my novel, is the e-book publisher of Chandler’s fiction and that “The Bold Saboteurs” is featured in its selection called For the Book Nerd Who’s Read It All. [To buy the Kindle edition of “The Bold Saboteurs” from Amazon, click here.]

Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food
In the introduction, Joan Rivers writes, “Jewish food makes Italian food seem like Lean Cuisine.” Potato pancakes! Jackie Mason jokes! Bagel and a schmear! Ratner’s! Real knishes from Yonah Schimmel!Lox, eggs and onions! Brisket with prunes and raisins! And stories — such stories! My youth comes back to me, my parents’ youth comes back to me, and, come to think of it, my grandparents’ youth comes back to me in this encyclopedia of book, rich in calories, recipes and lore. I worked with Jordan Schaps, the co-author, at New York Magazine, where he was the photography editor. He did great work there. He did even better here. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.] 1576877221

Roberta Kaplan and Lisa Dickey: ‘Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA’
When her wife died, the IRS required Edie Windsor to pay $360,000 in estate taxes. As Windsor has said, if her spouse had been named “Theo” rather than “Thea” she would not have had to pay a nickel. Why was she billed? Because the marriage was legal in Canada but not in New York, where they lived. And why was that? Because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — signed into law by Bill Clinton — prohibited the federal government from recognizing any same-sex marriages. And why is DOMA gone? Because Roberta Kaplan, Edie Windsor’s genius lawyer, sued on narrow grounds. My friend Lisa Dickey co-authored Kaplan’s book, which will be catnip for lawyers and anyone who loves justice.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.

Elizabeth Benedict: ‘Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession’
Short hair, long story. Long hair, ditto. And there are also revealing stories here about Hindu Bengali hair, Hasidic hair, gray hair, pubic hair. And Elizabeth Benedict’s hair: “The older I get, the more attention I pay to my hair, and faced with a scalp full of gray roots, the last thing I intend to do is let nature take her course.” Elizabeth Benedict, author of five novels and “The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers,” has been a Guest Butler. I can attest: Women will find humor, insight and poignancy here.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.

Ernest Beyl: ‘Sketches From A North Beach Journal’
Ernest Beyl, a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, has spent decades among the city’s more exotic citizens. Now he’s profiled its whores, poets, kooks, journalists, strippers, musicians, artists and beatniks in a book that will enrich any visit to San Francisco. Among the profiles: Carol Doda, who danced topless, sporting massive silicone breasts. Says Beyl: “It’s invigorating to live in a city where one of the most prominent citizens was a topless dancer.”
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.

Cara Nicoletti: ‘Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books’
Cara Nicolletti “comes from a long line of butchers.” (Her illustrator is the aptly named Marion Bolognesi). She’s also a reader. Combining her interests, she digs into favorite books, extracts their meals — like the garlic soup from “Pride and Prejudice” and the cherry pie from “In Cold Blood” — and produces recipes that recreate them. I can’t help saying it: a delicious book.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.

Susan Cheever: ‘Drinking in America: Our Secret History’
We are a nation of drinkers — maybe of drunks. The Mayflower was awash in beer, then ran short, forcing a landing in Massachusetts. The colonists, Cheever estimates, spent 25% of their income on liquor. By 1820, Americans drank three times as much as they do today. Cheever: “The interesting truth, untaught in most schools and unacknowledged in most written history, is that a glass of beer, a bottle of rum, a keg of hard cider, a flask of whiskey, or even a dry martini was often the silent, powerful third party to many decisions that shaped the American story from the 17th century to the present.”
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.

Biting my clothes to keep from screaming
taking pills to keep from dreaming
I want to break something important
I want to kick my dad in the shins

heavy boots on my throat, I need
I need something soon I need something soon….

For The New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker) on Car Seat Headrest, click here.

To buy the CD from Amazon, click here.
To buy the MP3 download, click here.
For the tour schedule, click here.

I know Owen Lewis as a psychiatrist (not mine) and a professor at Columbia. His poetry comes as late-breaking news, and the subject of “Best Man” even more so: 23 poems about his brother Jason, who died in 1980, age 23. These poems are blunt, colloquial, rooted in real events. Jason steals Owen’s prescription pad. Owen breaks the phone Jason called on. Jason’s body is “Found After Three Days… Your face running off your cheeks, in rivulets.” But “Best Man” is much more than reportage. In the end, Owen Lewis takes his brother’s years of self-destruction and their inability to connect and turns them into a kind of conversation. And the reader comes to understand how the accomplished healer and his lost brother are rendered… well, not equal, but definitely brothers. The Edward Hirsch lines that begin the book couldn’t be more appropriate: “Look closely and you will see/ Almost everyone carrying bags/ Of cement on their shoulders.” [To buy the paperback of “Best Man” from Amazon, click here.]

It’s not easy to get to Harbour Island. Fly to the Bahamas, take a small plane from Nassau to Eleuthera, then board a boat for the 15-minute crossing to Harbour Island. Once you’re on the tiny island — three miles long, a half-mile wide — there are no cars, only golf carts. Why go to all that trouble? For the pink sand beaches, the total absence of tension, the relatively few rich Americans — and the bonefishing. My friend Elizabeth Howard, who has spent considerable time on Harbour Island, has written a charming story for children about a local girl and the afternoon she gets to spend with a legendary fisherman. And Diana Wege’s illustrations are the next best thing to being there. [To buy “A Day with Bonefish Joe” from Amazon, click here.]

Ella Woodward was your basic 19-year-old English girl — “a sugar monster, and I mean a total addict.” But in 2011, she was diagnosed with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome: “I literally couldn’t walk down the street, I slept for 16 hours a day, had never ending heart palpitations, was in chronic pain, had unbearable stomach issues, constant headaches and the list goes on.” Not the kind of affliction you want when you’re a university student who’s just starting to work as a model. She dared to take a vacation; she came home in a wheelchair. She went to the Web — and returned a gluten-free vegan. She started a food blog; 18 months later, it had 5 million hits. In her book, “Deliciously Ella: 100+ Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Plant-Based, Gluten-Free Recipes,” she counts “goodness, not calories.” If smoothies, mango-and-sesame quinoa, and sweet potato and carrot mash appeal to you, here’s your cookbook. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

One night I was to have dinner at Elio’s with a famous painter who was, in her mid-40s, 8 months pregnant. When I made the reservation, I told Elio that the painter had to be seated promptly. This didn’t happen. After 40 minutes, we walked a few blocks north. Elaine knew without asking that something had gone wrong elsewhere, gave us a great table, stopped by to chat. That’s my Elaine’s story: a tough-talking mountain of a woman who could be kindness incarnate to anyone who created. Okay, you have to create at a high level. You had to be known. Pass those tests, and you weren’t in a restaurant — you were in the club. In the 134 pages of “Elaine’s: The Rise of One of New York’s Most Legendary Restaurants from Those Who Were There,” Amy Phillips Penn collects stories from the regulars and shows them at play, often loaded, in photos by Jessica Burstein. It’s not being there. But it doesn’t suck. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

New song. New CD coming. Counting the days.

When Bill Novak writes a book with a major celebrity, you know about it — he’s the king of ghosts. Sometimes, though, he writes books you never hear about. Private books. In the Times, he tells all.

written and sung by Rachael Price.

I am such a sucker for films like this. Of which there are so few.

If you skipped “Magic Mike” because you thought it was about men who thrill women by humping the air in thongs, you missed a seriously good movie. Its real subject was late-stage capitalism: Mike (Channing Tatum) wants to design furniture, but the economy only wants him to strut his stuff for sexually unfulfilled women. “Magic Mike XXL,” just out, deals with that economy three years later. Mike and his dancer friends are struggling — Mike makes furniture, but he can’t afford to pay for his assistant’s health plan — so they see a stripper convention in South Carolina as their “last ride,” a final burst of creative dancing before they surrender to reality. The movie is light-hearted and generous — these men are uncommonly attentive to plus-sized women — and there’s so much dancing you could think it’s a romp. That’s the surface. But name another movie about “adult” entertainers in which one of them (Matt Bomer) says he’s a “Level Three Reiki healer” and then credibly passes his hands over an injured friend because he is, in fact, a Reiki practitioner. Then there’s the message of the film, which is that dreams have a sell-by date and our lives are much tougher than we anticipated. And then there’s the final close-up of Tatum, who understands that his moment of triumph is evanescent and bittersweet — a portrait of where we find ourselves in this summer of 2015.

Heroes tend not to talk about their exploits, so no one told young Charles Kaiser what his French cousins did in World War II. It was a lot: André Boulloche coordinated the Resistance movements in the nine northern regions of France, and when he was captured, his sisters did all they could. The price was high: As the war was ending, their parents and brothers were taken to Germany and killed. Now, a lifetime later, Kaiser excavates their story. More: in a mere 230 pages, he also offers a capsule history of the war, with telling anecdotes that were new to me. Like: Hitler slept through D-Day. The French police weren’t asked to arrest children, but in 1942 they sent 4,051 to Germany, where they were immediately gassed. Bicycles cost as much as cars. Men pedaled to charge generators to keep the lights on. Heat? A memory. “The Cost of Courage” is well named. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Richard Lewis spent two decades in charge of the Absolut advertising account — he invented those classic Absolut ads. He’s taught Branding at Yale and NYU. You may recall his book, Why Hire Jennifer? Now he’s back, with an equally accessible book: “Pot Luck: Why Marijuana is Today’s Medicine.” Huh? His reason: 23 states have legalized medical marijuana, 4 have gone further and legalized recreational marijuana. And there are hundreds of books. His aim: the simplest and most factual. In 200 pages, with big print, many illustrations and contributions from doctors and patients, he pretty much does that. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Lou Howe is married to my favorite and only stepdaughter, but if I didn’t know him, I’d still be knocked out by “Gabriel,” the film he wrote and directed. Rory Culkin is devastatingly compelling as a damaged kid so desperate to fix his life that he stalks a long-lost girlfriend. “Gabriel,” a little film that launches two careers, is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. The website lists other cities, streaming opportunities and much more objective praise.

Jason Clement is the first engineer to be inducted into the Sony Samurai Society, the most prestigious honor that a Sony employee can be awarded. When someone of this stature creates an app and “Zen” is in the title, I pay attention. Not that I grasp the tech: “Zen Tunes combines Isochronic tones with monaural and binaural beats.” Translation: Zen Tunes lets you create a custom mix of sounds, set volumes individually, and then store your personalized “mixes.” Result: “brainwave entrainment.” Translation: Your brain eases into a deep state of relaxation or sleep. Who would like this? Insomniacs. Travelers. Dreamers. Aficiondoes of the new and cool. Deep dive here.

You pump your own gas. Check out your own groceries. Book your own plane tickets. Essentially, you work for large corporations — for free. How that came to be is the subject of “Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day,” by Craig Lambert. I’m too conflicted to review this book: Craig’s not only a close friend and my editor at Harvard Magazine, but he thanks me profusely — too profusely — in the acknowledgments. I can assure you the book’s a winner because it’s reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review by the estimable Barbara Ehrenreich. To read more about it, visit Craig’s web site. To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition. click here.

“All the Light We Cannot See” was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award and a #1 New York Times bestseller. Despite the praise, I didn’t rush to read Anthony Doerr’s book — the last time I read a 531-page novel the author was Russian and dead. Then I saw this video — and immediately one-clicked a purchase. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.] Sometimes a picture-with–words really is worth more than just words. The Pulitzer committee thought so — “All the Light” won for fiction. Do watch.