New Book Talk with AnnArbor.com selection for September, with poll for October

Ehrenreich, while being treated for breast cancer, wondered at the myriad pressures placed upon her to “think/be positive,” and in "Bright-sided," she traces the history of America’s quintessentially sunny outlook — from its origins to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude.

The Washington Post offered this review; The New York Times featured this profile about Ehrenreich; and this video features Ehrenreich discussing the “myth” of positive thinking’s influence on your health.

Pollyannas and anti-Pollyannas alike are invited to discuss Ehrenreich's book with us when we meet on September 28. (Mark your calendars!)

In the meantime, consider weighing in on October's Book Talk title.

Our first nominee is "The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean," by Susan Casey (352 pages).

"The Wave" explores the threat and beauty of the world's oceans by focusing on surfers, who risk bodily harm regularly in order to take on waves, and scientists, who are concerned that global warming will create only bigger and more dangerous waves.

GoodReads.com and BookBrowse.com have several advance reader reviews for "The Wave" (the book won't be available in stores until September 14), and BookPage offers this assessment.

Finally, you can check out the book trailer below.

Our second choice is Lisa Grunwald's novel, "The Irresistible Henry House" (412 pages).

Inspired by a real practice in the 20th century - wherein orphanages would loan out "practice babies" to college home economics students as they prepared for motherhood - "Henry" tells the story of a baby who grows up mothered by many women rather than one, and thus explores the experience's impact on both the child and his primary caregiver.

The New York Times offered a positive review of the novel, and Grunwald herself offers this take on how the seed for the book took root.

Lastly, here's an interview with Grunwald on the topic of "Henry House."

For our third option, we're venturing no farther than our own backyard to consider U-M professor Susan J. Douglas' "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done" (368 pages).

Douglas' book - to quote from a Publishers Weekly review found on Amazon.com - "parses music, movies, magazines, television dramas, reality TV, and news coverage to demonstrate how the girl power of the early '90s developed into enlightened sexism: a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. Given women's progress, enlightened sexism assumes, now it's okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women."

NPR offered this review; Time Magazine offered this interview with Douglas (while one of our own intrepid books writers, Leah DuMouchel, offered this Q&A); and though I couldn't embed the video, you can see Douglas discussing "Enlightened" at Nicola's Books on YouTube.

Please take a moment and vote for the title you're most interested in reading and discussing for October (and we'll hope to see you to talk about "Bright-Sided" on Tuesday, September 28 at 7 p.m.).

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.