We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Their lives appear to be eerily interconnected—and the narrative Jeff spins blurs the lines between fiction and reality. We hadn’t been friends, exactly, barely acquaintances, but Jeff was one of those minor players from the past who claimed for himself an outsize role in my memories. I just want you to keep in mind that what we see, what we think we see, I should say, is always changed by the words in our heads,” the narrator of “Panorama City” says in a message to his unborn son. He put one in front of me, announcing that he’d found a nonalcoholic brew, and that he wasn’t sure if I drank them, but he thought it might make things feel more ceremonial—that was the word he used—for us to catch up over a couple of beers, alcoholic or not, for old times’ sake.

Rarely does an audio book keep me up, I usually doze off spending my morning hours trying to figure out where in the book to begin again. Once stagnant, Jeff becomes fixated on the person he will learn is Francis Arsenault, a notorious, high-powered art dealer in Beverly Hills. Francis Arsenault Fine Arts was located in Beverly Hills, Jeff recounted wanting to see the stranger whose life he saved.There is some interesting discussion of Jeff’s internal response to his altruistic act and whether he needs or deserves reward or recognition, plus a well-drawn picture of the art world and its wealthy and often amoral milieu, including some neatly-turned descriptions. But Jeff can't let go of the events of that traumatic day, and he begins to feel compelled to learn more about the man whose life he has saved, convinced that their destinies are now somehow entwined. I wanted him to be good, though, I wanted to feel that I had done a good thing not only for him but for all the people he came in contact with.

I’d said it before and meant it every time, but people always took it as an expression of false modesty. I trailed him through the terminal, his soft-leather briefcase and fresh-looking roll-aboard making me wish I’d replaced my scruffy backpack with something more adult. A fascinating contemporary twist on the classic ‘as told to’ novel, like Lord Jim and much of Somerset Maugham, which strands two old accquaintances in an airport VIP lounge==with a slight flavor of a Mr. In college I’d never seen him in nice clothes, only ripped-up jeans and weathered T-shirts worn inside-out to obscure whatever was written on them.If I had been reading a physical copy and not the audiobook on my commute, I imagine I would have given up.