One of my favorite summer reads was Wild, by Cheryl Strayed which I got from my neighbor, Sally, a dedicated backpacker who knows the Pacific Crest Trail. I’m no endurance hiker but I do share Sally’s tastes in books and was fascinated by Wild’s fearless trekker.

After that I read The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. It was our book group’s choice for this month. I have some questions about the story, like maybe it was a bit too structured, but I can’t wait to sit under my friend’s redwood trees and sip wine and talk about horticulture and homelessness.

Book club choices, the staff suggestions at independent book stores and friends’ recommendations are the main ways I build my pile of must-reads. One of my favorite things to do with friends I haven’t seen in a while is to catch up by wandering the aisles of a book store and chatting about we’ve been reading.

Newspaper book sections used to be a reliable way to read about new authors and titles. Not so much anymore. You can find best seller lists in newspapers but thoughtful  reviews written in pull-out sections you keep on the kitchen table for a week are pretty rare. The only remaining metros with special review sections are the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times.

Online, you can find all kinds of people talking about their favorite books, like my friend Trish Collins’ blog, Hey Lady! Watcha Readin’? at heylady.net.

But now we have to worry about authors faking their own book reviews on the internet, according to a Chicago researcher who found that some even big-time authors have been writing their own glowing raves, using a pseudonym. Not only did they gush over their own books, they slammed their competitors.

I asked around to see where some heavy readers find their next books. Joan, an author who confessed her tastes usually run to the  “arcane, obscure and off-puttingly lofty,” is reading What There Is To Say We Have Said, the letters between William Maxwell and Eudora Welty.  She read about it in a literary magazine. But an equally enjoyable find was Richard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” which she picked up in her gym’s locker room.

I spotted a woman at a house party who was deep into Joanne Harris’ The Girl with No Shadow. Same characters as Chocolat, she said, which made me look at it longingly. She gave it to me the next morning at breakfast. I gobbled it up and passed it on to a Francophile friend.

Of course recycling books doesn’t do much for an author’s royalties but it does build the fan base.

Alison, a professor and librarian, discovered The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes when she saw it plastered across a window at the Harvard Coop. Gayanne can be  seduced by what’s on a book cover which is how she discovered Nothing Daunted, The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden, taken in by the photo of “two women on horseback in Abercrombie & Fitch tweed riding suits.”

Urban farmer Diane counts on NPR’s Fresh Air reviewer Maureen Corrigan. Toni, a poet and financial consultant, had to read the highly-touted novel The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides “just to see what the fuss was about” after reading a Times review.

And then there’s the joy of  getting hooked on an author even before you read her words. Sue Miller and Diane Johnson talked about writing one year at the Sonoma County Book Festival. I became a groupie that day and have read everything they wrote before and since.

That stuff doesn’t happen on a Kindle.

(Speaking of meeting authors, for those who live in the Bay Area there’s a great opportunity to have a new book adventure at the Sonoma County Book Festival happening this Saturday, Sept. 22 at Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa. Go to socobookfest.org for the schedule.  And, see you there!)

I’ve been wondering what we will talk about this summer as we travel across our divided country. Part of the joy of vacation is meeting new people, striking up conversations with strangers on ferry boats and in coffee houses. Or catching up with far-off family and friends you haven’t seen for years.

But what do we bring up after we say, “How you doing?” It’s a minefield out there.

Conversational etiquette used to call for avoiding the subjects of politics and religion. But in this scrappy environment almost all roads lead to one or the other.

The weather would normally be a safe topic. Who can argue which way the wind is blowing, but what causes it is something else.  Say something like “Nice day, but a little off for July, don’t you think?” and you could prompt a big debate over climate change. You might add something like, “We are really messing up the planet” and find yourself facing off with a local who thinks all scientists should be fired and it’s all in God’s plan that the polar bears learn to swim better.

Shall I assume by the flag on your T-shirt you are my kind of American?  Or the other kind?

You might innocently open a newspaper on a park bench next to someone who hates the media. You might ask a stranger where he gets his news and if he said, “I watch Rachel” would you give him a high-five or roll your eyes? And if she said, “O’Reilly’s my man,” would you get up and walk away?

We can get on Congress for having no interest in reaching across the aisle but apparently Greater America has a similar paralysis of cooperation.  We don’t agree on who should get married, who should have children and who should decide when they should have them. We don’t even agree on birth control which we thought we had long agreed on.

A Pew Research poll reported that as a country we are at near historic odds.  Democrats are more to the left and Republicans more to the right than in recent history and there’s a big wash of independents in between, and who knows what they’re thinking.

If we mapped our vacation route by stereotype think of how many disagreeable places we might have to avoid. Can’t go to that anti-immigrant state. Or the one where they let you bring guns into the bar.  Whoa, isn’t this the state that wants to kill Planned Parenthood? Is this the one owned by Big Oil?

Yeah, and I live in a state where everyone grows pot in the zucchini patch.

Oh people, can’t we get along? Probably not likely, especially not this year. Americans are said to be more polarized along partisan lines than at any time in the last 25 years.

If you don’t like unions or think Citizens United is dandy I’m not sure we have much more to say. And if I tell you I listen to NPR and I’m really rooting for the nuns am I going to lose you?

And while we can agree that theses are hard times for most of us you may think it’s my guy’s fault and I think it’s your guy’s fault. And you think my guy has to go. And I think your guy will make it worse.

So, read any good books lately?

When I first read that Judi Dench and Maggie Smith were in a movie about pensioners going to India I started to worry. Then a couple of discerning friends saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and came home raving.

Still, I needed to know how the film portrayed older people. You know, people like us? Would we want to be them? What I meant was, would you call the characters adorable (ick) or attractive (yay). Were they getting a little daft?

Were they airbrushed and stretched to the max?  Or had they stopped obsessing about their necks?

Hollywood is not known for being respectful, let alone real, about older people. It’s like movie makers want to disassociate themselves with getting old. Like, they couldn’t possibly relate.  So every time movie characters are said to be of a certain age, I expect to squirm.

I want them to be romantically inclined but not desperately randy. I don’t want them to all be Senior Olympians but I don’t want them to all  need a hand to cross the street.  And please don’t let them be timid. Or terribly cranky.

I don’t want them to wear rubber shoes and granny panties.  I want them to be hip and wise, not petted and pathetic.  I want to laugh with them, not at them.

It’s all about PR. You don’t want people in your same time zone making aging look bad.

Shortly into Marigold my friend whispered, “I like that they have their own faces.”  The actors, in their 60s and 70s, have been around for a long time. As have their faces and bodies.   You can hope that younger people might look at those creases and gray hair on the big screen and get the idea that this is what naturally happens in the normal life cycle. Not just to their grandparents but to fine and famous actors. And that’s okay.

Then you have the Marigold characters, people who’ve been disappointed in life and facing some scary unknown, but are trying to cope. Or as Judi Dench’s Evelyn says, to not just cope, but thrive.

Another good line: “If everything works out in the end and things haven’t worked out, it must not be the end.”  At least it trumps, “Life is short and then you die.”

Some call it The Big Chill for Geezers but what’s wrong with that? I’d love to have those people over for a house party.

After I turned off my ageist radar I relaxed with the story. I was particularly struck by how kind some of the characters were. Wouldn’t it be nice if you became more compassionate the longer you lived on the planet?

The big challenge in getting older, of course, is not to panic, which isn’t easy because there are a lot of things that can go wrong. But a lot that can go right, too, even without proper planning.

If the retirement savings go to hell and the pension goes bust and they kill  Social Security maybe we could move to a run-down palace in Jaipur where the locals  seem to like Americans.  And, I might add, where the fashion is far from fuddy-duddy. Those long scarves and dresses over pants are rather flattering on the mature body. And seem just made for hopping on a motorcycle.