Finally, the 3rd Chapter in summer reading….and an intriguing, smart, amusing and quirky list it is. We’ve got Controller Laura Chick, DA Steve Cooley, Attorney General Jerry Brown, City Council Member Ed Reyes, gang advisor Dr. Jorja Leap, and Tell Zell’s the honorable Mr. Inkstained Retch.

There is the public school contingent, LAUSD board prez, Monica Garcia, and teachers union prez A.J Duffy.

And just to make sure the literary LA folks are represented, we have LA Times Opinion Editor Nick Goldberg (who makes a case for reading Anthony Trollop on the beach). And novelist/author Rachel Resnick—who has a wild and wonderfully-written memoir coming out this fall called Love Junkie (and a good recommendation or 2 for you now).

Both Jerry Brown and Joe Domanick thought that pre and post WWII-era Historian and theorist, Louis Mumford, was just the ticket for poolside. (What’re the odds?) And there were a couple of Graham Greene lovers in this batch.

Interestingly, it was both Steve Cooley and Jerry Brown who couldn’t stop with only one book. (In fact, Cooley was cheerily enthusiastic about four books [I only included 3] and, I suspect, would have easily gone further. Jerry too.)

As a reporter, I don’t think I’ve ever asked a question of public officials that so many people seemed, not only willing, but eager to answer.

And that’s a very good thing.

LAURA CHICK, Los Angeles City Controller

I know that Lisa See has a new novel out, Peony In Love, but I actually just finished her earlier book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I loved it for many reasons. This book opened up a whole new world , taking me on a great adventure in ancient China. It also has terrific character development and I feel like I really got to know them.

Above all this is a phenomenal story of the tremendous strength of women.

STEVE COOLEY: District Attorney, City of Los Angeles

Well one book I read recently that I thought was extremely well done and insightful was called The Criminal Justice Club. It’s written by a retired deputy named Walt Louis. He recounts is time in the criminal justice system in LA county. He spends a lot of time documenting what he asserts are the failings of the media in reporting on the criminal justice system, especially the Los Angeles Times.. I read it and couldn’t put it down.

And Hollywood Station and Hollywood Crows by Wambaugh. They’re sort of a one two punch, one is a continuation. Hollywood Station is very funny. Hollywood Crows is a little darker. They’re right up to the minute.

EDMUND G. BROWN, JR., California Attorney General

You could read Bad Money, by Kevin Phillips. It’s about the confluence of oil dependency, financial debt and leverage and the takeover of the financial sector from manufacturing.

Also, The Condition of Man by Louis Mumford. I’m just reading it. It’s from 1944, and it’s hard to get but it’s very interesting. It’s a classic. It’s about how we plan. How we live together.

NICK GOLDBERG: Opinion Editor, The Los Angeles Times

There is no author whose books are better for lazy, fun, utterly engaging summer reading than Anthony Trollope. He wrote so many nearly perfect books that it’s hard to choose among them, but if I had to recommend just one it would be the first one I ever read: “The Last Chronicle of Barset,” the story of the Reverend Josiah Crawley and the (very minor) crime he is alleged to have committed.

A.J. DUFFY, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles

I don’t get much time to read. But I haven’t read Catch 22 in ten years. I’d like to read it again. It’s such a great book. It shows the whole hypocrisy of war. How we’re one world, but we take money out of one pocket and put it into another pocket to fight ourselves. It’s a great, great book.

DR. JORJA LEAP: adjunct professor of social welfare at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, advisor on gangs and youth violence for the National Institute of Justice

For a fun summer read, Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller. This is the ultimate summer book. Part great rock gossip, part social history and enough feminist psychology to lend some insight into everything from what women want to why Hillary failed. A great read and some hidden learning!

ED P. REYES, City Councilmember First Council District

I recommend “The Power and the Glory,” Graham Greene, which I read while a student at UCLA. No matter how bad things are, or how badly you may find yourself, there’s always something good about you. There’s a lot to an individual if you do the right thing.

MONICA GARCIA: Board President, Los Angeles Unified School District.

I’m reading, The Search for a Civic Voice, by Kenneth C. Burt. It’s about how Latino communities have worked with the political system. It’s such an amazing time, but the challenges are so great that we have to have a historical perspective of what the struggles have been, to encourage us and inspire us to continue.

RACHEL RESNICK: novelist/author (Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick and Love Junkie: A Memoir, to be released in November)

Books that resonate, that one would suggest for summer, or any time…? Giacometti: A Biography by James Lord. The Palace at 4 a.m., to the spookily attenuated figures that made him a preeminent profiler of existential unease. Lord astutely chronicles this transformation, and the evaluation of Giacometti’s formidable personality is notable for its sensitive delineation of his ambivalent feelings toward women. Without scanting the sculptor’s tragic view of life, the author also inspires exhilaration with his portrait of a man who was always true to his art.

Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison is another—but somehow I’m not able to quickly sum up why…

THE INK STAINED RETCH: LA Times reporter, creator/blogger, TellZell.com

Here I will surely disappoint. I don’t do much book reading. I’m a news guy, through and through. However, I did recently reread Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, about a CIA agent trying to foment democracy in Vietnam. Man, the parallels to Iraq were outstandingly weird.

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TO READ ALL 22 RECOMMENDATIONS: For Part 1 click here, Part 2 , here.

I know I promised it’d be Monday for more book recs. But, it seems I lied. It will be Tuesday, not today.

The deal is, I promised I’d wait for one more person whose book choice I won’t get until later today.

(Hey, more book recommendations are never a bad thing.)

Next Book list on Monday—fer sure.

It’ll feature the book recommendations of: LA District Attorney, Steve Cooley: California Attorney General Jerry Brown; LA Times Opinion Editor Nick Goldberg; Tell Zell’s Inkstained Retch; LA City Controller Laura Chick; UTLA President A.J. Duffie; LAUSD School Board President Monica Garcia….and more.

In the meantime: For Part 1 click here, Part 2 here.)

Here’s round two of our late summer reading recommendations (which, by the way, have been a lotta fun to gather).

Today:

—Sheriff Baca tells you exactly which book can help change your life…..

—Zev Yaroslavsky picks the ultimate tome to read by the pool while fashioning public policy….

—Novelist/writing prof/blogger Tod Goldberg recommends smart, entertaining reading for hot days.

(Plus there’s more from an LAPD Deputy Chief, a well-known criminal justice writer, and an oft-quoted LA community activist.)

Tomorrow we’ll have round three, which will include District Attorney Steve Cooley, LA Times Opinion Editor Nick Goldberg and others.

Overall, it’s a varied list. But there is one thing everyone had in common: They all believe books really matter.

(NOTE: For Summer Reading List Part 1, with Connie Rice, Fr. Greg Boyle, Dennis Zine, David Ulin & Marc Cooper, click here.)

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1. SHERIFF LEE BACA (Sheriff of the County of Los Angeles)

“The most important book I’ve read? The Denial of Death By Ernest Decker

“Reason: This book has all the core ingredients for the purpose of life.”

2. DEPUTY CHIEF SERGIO DIAZ: Chief of Central Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department

“I just started on Broken Paradise, a novel by an LA-based, Cuban-American writer, Cecilia Samartin. [Chief Diaz is also Cuban American.] It’s the story of two upper middle-class girls who are cousins and who are separated by the Castro revolution. One relocates to Miami and the other stays in Cuba. So far, very compelling writing. I’m not much of a fiction reader but Cecilia’s writing was recommended. (My wife Letty just finished another of Cecilia’s books, Tarnished Beauty, which takes place in a very different context. That one is about a Mexican girl with a disfiguring defect who comes north to LA to get treatment. She really liked that one.)

3. ZEV YAROSLAVSKY: Los Angeles County Supervisor

The book which has become my bible in the making of public policy is The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman. Her assertion that folly is a perverse persistence in a policy that is demonstrably unworkable, should guide decision-makers in every walk of life, especially in government. I have long recommended this volume to newly elected officials, and I refer to it constantly as a reminder of the “do’s” and “don’ts” in decision-making.

4. TOD GOLDBERG: novelist and short-story writer (Living Dead Girl and Burn Notice: The Fix among others), blogger, and head of the UC Riverside’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts

Something about the summer always turns me toward crime fiction —perhaps the pool just isn’t the appropriate place to ponder the existential conundrums of humanity — but since I live in the hottest place on the planet (I’m pretty sure La Quinta has recently moved a few inches closer to the sun), I often look for summertime reads that will cool me down, at least metaphorically. With that in mind, I recommend Daniel Woodrell’s brilliant novel Winter’s Bone. Set in the winter mountains of the Ozarks, it begins with the vision of frozen meat hanging in trees and only gets more troubling as the novel’s 16-year-old narrator, Ree Dolly, searches for her bail-skipping father in hopes of saving the family house. But, of course, it’s far more than that as Woodrell sends Ree on a knight’s quest that is alternately brutal and poetic. Since Woodrell is that rare writer who doesn’t care about genre, he’s just writing the stories that move him, and Winter’s Bone is a stunner. Plus, it’s about twenty degrees throughout the entire narrative, which is good when it’s 120 outside…

5. JOE DOMANICK: journalist, author (To Protect and Serve and Cruel Justice), Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, and at the Center on the Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

I’ve got two:

1) The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro. Simultaneously the best written biography, most compelling work of public policy and the greatest book ever written about 20th Century New York City when the Big Town was the capital of the world. The perfect study of how genius is corrupted by the arrogance of power.

2) Interpretations and Forecasts by Lewis Mumford. In this collection of essays — on the New England transcendentalists, and on Melville, Aquinas, Marx, the origins of war, urban architecture, the excess of the gilded age, the advent of a world culture and utopia — Mumford writes like a great 19th Century poet about America’s cultural history and antecedents. His essay on Thoreau is sublime, placing him in the context of the coming industrial age, as he looks back on all Thoreau told us we were going to lose as a result.

6. NAJEE ALI: LA activist, founder, Project Islamic Hope, blogger

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama is my choice.

Obama’s book gave me insight into his political vision and platform. It reads as a political blueprint for a future run at the Democratic nomination for the White House. We all now know how that story ended! I think it’s even more important to read now as we go into November. It helps, as I re-read it now, to give a much more serious look into his thinking.

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THE BE CONTINUED….