Promise me Dad A year of hope, hardship, and purpose

ARTEMIS By Andy Weir. Read by Rosario Dawson. (Audible Studios.) Dawson's nuanced voice takes us to the moon in the second novel by the author of "The Martian." UNCOMMON TYPE By Tom Hanks. Read by the author. (Penguin Random House Audio.) The Oscar-winning actor brings to life his debut collection of 17 loosely linked short stories. THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE By Mark Twain, with Philip Stead and Erin Stead. Read by Keegan-Michael Key, Philip Stead et al. (Listening Library.) The comedian and producer (and one half of the dynamic Key and Peele) narrates a previously unfinished and unpublished manuscript by Mark Twain, newly completed by the husband-and-wife children's book team behind the Caldecott Medal-winning "A Sick Day for Amos McGee." THE BOOK OF DUST By Philip Pullman. Read by Michael Sheen. (Listening Library.) The Welsh actor transports us into the fantastical parallel universe of Pullman's latest Y.A. trilogy, in which everyone has an inner daemon. PROMISE ME, DAD By Joe Biden. Read by the author. (Audible Studios.) The former vice president delivers his candid, heartfelt and inspiring memoir of losing his son Beau to cancer while facing political challenges foreign and domestic. & Noteworthy "O.K., I'm a nerd. I loved THE ODYSSEY from my first encounter in ninth-grade English class (the Robert Fitzgerald translation). The great questions of survival, cunning, treachery, exploitation and parental and marital love have never failed to transfix me, in whatever translation (Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fagles). But Emily Wilson's, the first into English by a woman, is a revelation. Never have I been so aware at once of the beauty of the poetry, the physicality of Homer's world and the moral ambiguity of those who inhabit it. Don't miss reading her enlightening translator's note, which explains how seriously she took up the challenge posed a few lines into the first book: 'tell the old story for our modern times./Find the beginning.' She wrestled with contemporary questions of feminism and colonialism without imposing them on the values of Homeric Greece. Her decisions to discard flowery conventions, and to limit herself to the number of the lines in the original poem, produce a version both fleet and vivid. Read for all this, but mostly to savor lines like these: 'he plunged into the sea and swooped between/the waves, just like a seagull catching fish,/wetting its whirring wings in tireless brine.'" -SUSAN CHIRA, SENIOR EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT FOR GENDER, ON WHAT SHE'S READING.

*Starred Review* In 2013, Joe Biden's son, Beau, was diagnosed with stage IV brain cancer. A vibrant man in his early forties, Beau was diagnosed at the height of his professional and personal powers. As attorney general for the state of Delaware, Beau was on a political path that could have taken him to the state's governor's mansion and, ultimately, the White House. A husband and father of two young children, his family's future was even more essential to him than his civic responsibilities. And, of course, as the son of vice president Joe Biden, Beau's relationship with his father was the epitome of symbiotic closeness. Set against the backdrop of the final years of his vice presidency, Biden's memoir of his son's battle with cancer is a spare yet sturdy chronicle of how one family, one very public family, coped with the reality of a monumental health crisis as privately and seamlessly as possible. Having endured the deaths of his wife and daughter when he was 30, Biden knew the galvanizing sorrow that awaited his family and the gnawing anticipation of repeating that smothering pain was something Biden struggled to keep at bay.Biden weaves the narrative of Beau's decline with the global events that equally required his attention. Violence in the Ukraine and Iraq mirrors the combative forces taking over Beau's body. For every battlefield skirmish lost, there was an equal fight against an aggressive tumor. For every diplomatic dustup, there was a backsliding on Beau's road to recovery. Biden is that rarity among politicians, a man of his word. So when Beau implored him to stay engaged with his life's work, there was no doubt that Biden would continue to meet his commitments and accept new challenges. Given its dual focus on his political accomplishments, some may see this memoir as a preamble to a future presidential run. To do so would be to diminish its intent. Written without an ounce of self-pity, it serves instead as an homage to a man Biden admired above all others and offers a passionate ray of hope to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one with the reassuring message that there is, indeed, a way through their grief.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2018 Booklist

America's 47th vice president revisits his son Beaus's 2015 death from cancer while burnishing his own political capital in this heartfelt but not uncalculated memoir. Biden (Promises to Keep) begins in late 2014, when his son Beau fought a harrowing battle with brain cancer through deepening disability, fleeting rallies, and experimental treatments. Biden tells this tragic story with genuine pathos, but in between the family gatherings and hospital vigils, he spotlights his central role in coping with public crises, including Russia's incursion into Ukraine, ISIS's rise, and domestic flare-ups of racial violence. Biden emerges as a statesman both steely-eyed ("I don't think you have a soul," he tells Vladimir Putin) and dependable ("'Joe,' said the new prime minister of Iraq, 'I need your help'") while he expresses sympathy for ordinary folks; he even gives a policeman's widow his private phone number to call when she feels sad. Threaded throughout is Biden's agonized vacillation over a 2016 presidential run, complete with encomiums to his fitness for the presidency and an outline of the platform he would have run on had he not decided against it. This sincere recollection of loss intermittently feels like a 2020 campaign biography. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.