Books like Beautiful Revolutionary — picked by fans

Raven is the best, most comprehensive, and most thoroughly researched book on Jim Jones, Jonestown, and Peoples Temple. Reiterman is a fine investigative journalist who was part of a group to visit Jonestown, Guyana in November of 1978. The visitors included, among others, eight members of the press; Congressman Leo Ryan and his aide Jackie Speier; and thirteen representatives of the “Concerned Relatives,” their own name for the group. Every member of the group had defected from the Temple in San Francisco. Only some of these visitors—Reiterman and a few of the other journalists, Ryan and Speier, and a small number of the group of relatives—were finally and reluctantly admitted in by Jones, on the stern advice of Jones’s lawyers. The Concerned Relatives were there to see if—as they strongly suspected—those in Jonestown were being held against their will. The journalists wanted to find the truth about life in the… show more.

Layton escaped, at great risk, to try to prevent the tragedy of Jonestown. Her book is the best book yet to read to see Jonestown and Jim Jones through the eyes of a survivor. Layton entered Jonestown (as did most of Ron’s and my students) later than early settlers, when the situation was getting more and more dire as Jones was deteriorating. 

Twenty-four at the time, Layton accompanied her mother, who believed Jones could cure her cancer. As Charles Krause says in the foreword, “Debbie quickly realized that she and the others had been deliberately deceived: Jonestown was essentially a concentration camp in the jungle.” Layton had been in the church since she was a teen. Jones had immediately recognized her intelligence and energy, and eventually made her one of his inner circle. When she left, he declared her a traitor. The book is fascinating and well written.

In 1988, I watched a TV special marking the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Jonestown. Did the producers ask who the dead were? How they’d found the People’s Temple? What they’d hoped for when they’d joined? If so, the answers didn’t stick. Nothing stuck but the heaps of corpses in lurid Technicolor—scenes from a horror film misfiled in real life. No wonder I sealed that story and others like it in a pit marked “evil,” “madness,” “them.” 

In this book, Scheeres shows that many entered the People’s Temple seeking what life outside had so far denied them: comfort, camaraderie, and the chance to serve what seemed a worthy cause. She shows how some fought to survive. She returns a throng of “them” to the ring of human understanding.

A nonfiction book that reads like a novel; I loved this book because it gave context to one of San Francisco’s darkest days. On November 27, 1978, California suffered a terrible blow as its beloved mayor, George Moscone, and its first openly gay Supervisor, Harvey Milk, were assassinated.

With its infamous ‘Twinkie defense,” the assailant, Dan White, attempted to convince the city that he was temporarily insane. I loved learning about the behind-the-scenes politics.

I wish I had read this memoir long before I moved to Japan. Otowa married her U.S. college sweetheart and found herself transported to a small town near Kyoto, where she plopped down into the traditional hamlet her husband’s ancestors founded. In the town of Otowa, she becomes the matron of the heritage home of 350 years.

She writes beautifully about traditional Japanese life, folk traditions, and seasonal rituals, all of which bound her to her home, which she considers a living, breathing entity. A beautiful tribute to a house. 

A flat-out clinic on how to infuse humor in mystery! Author Catriona McPherson is hilarious, both in person and on the page.

I am continually amazed by her ability to create fully realized characters, like series star Lexy Campbell, who read so true on the page while being laugh-out-loud funny. Oh! And I also greatly admire the plotting of each terrific installment in this long-running Last Ditch Mystery series.

To me, the discovery of a top-notch series is a gift that keeps on giving. I hope this one keeps it up for a long time.

John Steinbeck wrote the Working Days... journals while writing The Grapes of Wrath.

The intent of the journal was to establish a schedule, including a completion date for the novel. What he reveals about his self-doubt is tonic for any writer who is haunted by the same malaise.

Here is the entry for June 18, "…I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty to it… If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time."

Sometimes, I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity…John Steinbeck’s honesty and humility remind me that self-doubt is a part of the creative process.

I sometimes read entries from … show more.

This was a hard pick because I could easily have chosen any of Joanne Bischof’s other books.

She writes with such excellence and depth of feeling that you bond with the characters and go through their trials alongside them. I chose The Gold in These Hills over her other equally loved books because I read it with tears streaming down my face. The theme of restoration after loss and betrayal resonated with me. Deep despair gives way to soul-stretching hope.

Beautiful, quotable prose stuck with me long after I finished. If you want a novel about second chances that speaks deeply to the heart, give this one a try.  

This is an incredibly intricate book, braiding many strands together to tell the story of people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.” One thread tying it all together is Stone Telling, a young girl caught between her mother’s rich tribal life and the militaristic city life of the man who is her father. She tells him, “I am a woman, and make my own choices,” but learns that is not the case in the land of the Condors. Her story illuminates two of the many ways to be human. (I’m re-reading this now.)

An introductory chapter describes our greater Bay Area climate and its microclimates. The plants listed are ones that will thrive in the region with a minimum of summer water. The glory of the book is in the photographs by Saxon Holt, which include close shots for identification and wider shots that will inspire you to combine plants handsomely in your garden.