Staying Fit
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The month’s big reads
The biggest of the big? My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand. The long-awaited memoir from Streisand, 81, finally arrives on Nov. 7, with the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner opening up about, among other things, her early hopes to become an actress, famous friendships (including Marlon Brando), 25-year marriage with James Brolin and spectacular career as not only a singer but an actress on stage and screen. Vanity Fair offers a sneak peek in its November cover story.
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And in the novel Day by Michael Cunningham (Nov. 14), the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel The Hours focuses on a family — Isabel and Dan, their two kids and, until he leaves for Iceland, Dan’s younger brother — stuck (and unraveling a bit) together in their Brooklyn home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The audiobook is narrated by actress Julianne Moore.
Also: Michael Connelly’s Resurrection Walk (Nov. 7) brings back Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller and retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch; and The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose (Nov. 28) is a sequel to 2022’s huge bestseller The Maid (a movie starring Florence Pugh as maid Molly Gray is reportedly in the works for next year).
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Be-Better books
Among the notable new self-improvement/mental health books is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks (Oct. 24). Making others feel valued, heard and understood is the “one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization or society,” Brooks writes, with advice on how to do so, including “things like how to be a great conversationalist, how to disagree well, how to ask for and offer forgiveness, how to break up with somebody without destroying their heart,” he noted in a PBS NewsHour interview. “These are just skills.”
And coming soon: Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You by Phil Stutz (Nov. 28), the subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz who’s known in Hollywood (to his purported chagrin) as the psychiatrist to the stars. Here he offers thoughtful advice for better mental health despite (or even because of) life’s inevitable pain. It comes 10 years after his popular 2013 book The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity and Willpower — and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion, written with Barry Michels.
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