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When you look back over your life, you notice things that make you say, “Yes. That makes sense.”

You always wondered why you love certain foods, adore cozy smells, or have a way with words – until you learn that your mother loved those foods, your grandfather wore that scent, and your father was a writer once.

Billy Abbott sometimes wondered why he was drawn to certain people and not to others. But in the new novel “In One Person” by John Irving, everything falls into place when he discovers truths about his family.

It was almost fitting, really, that Billy’s stepfather, Richard, introduced Billy to Miss Frost, the librarian.

Richard thought he was ushering Billy into the riches of the library in First Sister, Vermont . Richard thought he was doing something positive for the 13-year-old but the well-meaning introduction was inadvertently apt: Billy had had a mad crush on Richard and upon meeting Miss Frost, he crushed on her, too.

They were his first two “crushes on the wrong people.”

Billy wasn’t sure why, but his aunt and grandmother sneered when they spoke of Miss Frost. Grandpa Harry seemed to like her; maybe it was because he had an eye for the feminine. He was, after all, First Sister’s best-known actor, beloved for playing female parts in the community theatre.

Aside from Miss Frost, Billy was oddly crazy about Kittredge, his school’s best wrestler. Kittredge could be cruel, but Billy wondered what it might be like to receive one of Kittredge’s wrestling holds. He also thought often about Mrs. Hadley, his best friend’s mother, imagining her in a training bra.

As the years passed and Billy fell in and out of love with both men and women, he was careful in bed but not in his heart. He lost so many of his friends and former lovers to AIDS; so many that he nearly lost track.

But one person kept track of Billy throughout his entire life. It was the one person who held the key to a memory that, for Billy, made so much sense…

Though it’s easy to slip into, and though the narrator of this story quickly becomes a friend, “In One Person” is a long book to read.

Author John Irving’s Billy is a storyteller, moving throughout his almost-70 years of remembrances of loves and losses, repeating, revealing, and admitting that he’s getting ahead of himself.  Despite that the dialogue is sometimes cumbersome, it’s also appealing because Irving writes the way people talk.

And talk his characters do: Billy is observant and funny, sometimes disturbing, often achingly sweet, and possessing a wit you’ll start to crave and heartbreak he doesn’t hide. Yes, this book felt long at times, but Irving ’s Billy makes you stick around for every single page.

Much like other John Irving novels, “In One Person” is not a book you’ll want to race through. It demands your time and attention, but you won’t be sorry giving either. If you’re up for a book like that, reading it just makes sense.

You’d like to think you’re a normal person.

You shop for clothes where others shop. You like singing along with the radio (whether you do it well or not), watching TV, hanging with friends, playing with pets, hobbies, and being with family.

One hundred percent, no-two-ways-about-it… normal.

But if you hate TV, never shop, don’t like pets, what then?  Surely, you’re not abnormal?  Either way, author Jordan Smoller says that biology has shaped your preferences and behavior. In his new book, “The Other Side of Normal,” he explains.

Let’s say you have a major phobia about snakes. You thought you saw a snake lurking in the yard once, and the mere grimacing thought makes you jumpy. It’s almost as if they’re looking for you.

Phobic, delusional, and paranoid. That’s you, and Smoller says that’s normal – and, to a degree, abnormal.

“By the latest accounting,” he says, “more than half of all Americans meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder at some time in their lives.”

You can blame that on biology, he says, because much of who you are is hard-wired, brain-wise. Natal temperament affects personality, too, as do childhood experiences, nurturing, and genetics. Circumstance also changes your place on the normal/abnormal behavior scale.

Take, for instance, that snake in the grass.

You may feel disgust that he’s out there (disgust being a biological response), but that feeling might not be as strong if you only saw a photo of him. If your mother let your brother to torment you with a rubber snake, that comes into play. And even if you didn’t see the snake but you observed someone gazing at the grass with horror, you’re biologically wired to face-read, mind-read, trust – and run!

Then again, let’s say you saw the snake and you thought it was beautiful. The biological attraction to beauty might make you pick it up and if it’s just a baby snake, it’s in luck: you’re biologically wired for cute, too.

“The Other Side or Normal” is a little like a single-bed quilt: there are lots of colorful, imaginative patches, surrounded by an equal amount of gray. The bits are sewn together well, but it doesn’t seem to cover things like you wish it would.

I appreciated that author Jordan Smoller uses personal experiences in treating psychological disorders to illustrate how biology contributes to behavior. I liked how he explains psychiatric classifications and their overall relevance to and incompatibility with biologically-based actions. I was astounded by the number of studies he uncovered, and how antiquatedly cruel they seem today.

But “The Other Side of Normal” delves into a lot of brain science, the kind of stuff that’s been written in dozens (if not hundreds) of other similar books. It’s interesting but not unfamiliar, and my biological tendency was to mind-wander.

I think that, if you’re new or absolutely fascinated by brain science, reading “The Other Side of Normal” is an excellent way to occupy your noggin. If you’re familiar with this subject already, though, it might be normal to take a pass.

You are a pretty tame human being.

Oh, sure, you break out sometimes and go a little wild, but overall, you’re no threat to most people. You were domesticated years ago, you know when to hide your claws, and you stopped biting in preschool.  You’re even housebroken.

But uncivilized?  Hardly. 

Menacing?  Never!

Author Kate Bornstein isn’t, either, but there’s a significant group of people that, she says, have labeled her as a “potential trouble source.” In her new book “A Queer and Pleasant Danger,” she explains how she got to be so hazardous.

At four-and-a-half years old, most kids are just learning their ABCs, but Albert Bornstein knew at that age that he wasn’t a boy, so he must be a girl.  He also knew that wasn’t what people wanted to hear, so he never spilled his secret; instead, he grew up wanting to be Audrey Hepburn - and if not Hepburn, there were other choices.

He always loved women. There were so many he could imagine being.

It was mid-1970 when Bornstein – twenty-something, anorexic, altruistic, and seeking spiritual meaning – started a cross-country pilgrimage that landed him in Colorado.  There, while looking for new boots, he found a Scientology center.

He entered… and stayed.

Happy in his newly-embraced “applied religious philosophy,” Bornstein became the perfect Scientologist: charming and silver-tongued, he quickly developed into a top-performing salesman of high rank. Two years after joining the organization, he was married; a year after that, he was a father.

He also began acting upon his girlish urges, but wasn’t bothered by it. Scientology taught that humans were spiritual beings called thetans, and thetans had no gender… so what was the harm in wearing women’s clothing and sleeping with men?  His inner woman seemed unstoppable.

Then, twelve years after joining, when everything came crashing down (due to a still-dizzying misunderstanding), Bornstein was cast out of the community he’d embraced for a third of his life. Feeling bereft, and overwhelmed by his increasingly feminine notions, he sought therapy and a community of a different sort.

What he found was the person she was all along…

There are a lot of adjectives that one can use to describe “A Queer and Pleasant Danger:” snarky, funny, anguished, frightening. Heartbreaking. Brave. Honest.

Author Kate Bornstein worked six years on this memoir that she started for her daughter (whom Bornstein assumes will never read it), and for the teenage grandchildren who will likewise be denied the story because they’re Scientologists and Bornstein is essentially dead to them. What Bornstein doesn’t say about Scientology, in fact, is more chilling than what she does say.

In writing this memoir, Bornstein puts on a certain bravado that doesn’t last in the presence of the vulnerability she often displays. This is a softer, sometimes sorrowful, side of the always-outspoken Kate Bornstein, and I loved it.

Be aware that there are painfully graphic scenes in this book, and some that are brutally blunt. If you can stand those (appropriate-to-this-memoir) paragraphs, though, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger” is a wildly wonderful read.

I also absolutely could not resist this book: “The Rough Guide to The Royals” by Alice Hunt, James McConnachie, Samantha Cook, Rob Humphreys, and Rupert Matthews.

This way-fun book goes way back in time to the earliest monarchs and, of course, their scandals, decisions, ill-fated actions, and good deeds. There are pictures all over in this book, quick-to-read sidebars, and short, page-or-two articles that are meant for many afternoons of browsing.

Though the Rough Guide is about all the residents of Buckingham Palace (and then some), it’s a great companion piece to the Hardman book or alone…

Imagine yourself at age ten.

Life then was relatively carefree. You spent your time riding bike, playing games, and being a kid. Your future stretched for miles; the possibilities were limitless.

Now imagine that you’re 10 years old and the life you dreamed about is suddenly no longer possible. You’ll never have a “best friend.”  You’ll never be allowed to make a happy fool of yourself in public. No more sloppy jeans, shopping sprees, or spontaneity.

Would you chafe under the new rules?

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York did not. She gracefully accepted the mantle of responsibility, and in the new book “Her Majesty” by Robert Hardman, you’ll see how she copes.

Her full name is a mouthful.

Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith is a name that explains her life for the past sixty years, ever since her father died and made her the British sovereign. The name tells you who she is, but not completely.

While many think Her Majesty is traditional, impersonal, and rather humorless, she is, privately, quite the opposite. Queen Elizabeth loves the absurd, enjoys sharp wit, and she’s keenly interested in her subjects’ lives. She’s purposefully modernized protocol by including women on her staff and by changing some long-standing rules to include divorcees and gay citizens. She reads most letters sent to her (but doesn’t send or receive email) and sometimes answers missives personally.

She’s warm but then again, anyone who inappropriately tries “familiarity” with her may be on the receiving end of the “royal stare” that can reduce one to “jelly.”

Yes, it’s good to be Queen but the job has its downsides. Hardman says that Her Majesty doesn’t have a “best friend” in which to confide and is, in fact, constitutionally barred from discussing certain matters with non-officials.

She’s expected to embrace decorum and maintain a certain regal bearing at all times, and it’s her duty to “be nice” to even the most ill-behaved government visitor.

In the past six decades, a lot of trees have died in order to chronicle the lives of the Royal Family. Most of those books seem basically the same.

This one, though, stands out.

Unlike those other books, “Her Majesty” gives readers a warts-and-all inside peek at the private face of Elizabeth the Enigma. Author Robert Hardman doesn’t allow any stuffiness here; his biography of the Queen is lively and, at times, sweetly amusing with a touch of respectful awe. Hardman dishes a bit of light scandal as he delights us with things we don’t know about his subject and her subjects. I liked the way he subtly includes other Royals and Royal matters in Her Majesty’s story, without bogging it down in hard history.

Anglophiles will eat this book up, biography lovers will be charmed, and if you’re both, then you’ll feel quite regal. For you, “Her Majesty” is queen-sized enjoyment.