I just finished reading a fascinating book that I couldn’t put down, Nine Lives by Dan Baum. It was my choice and I hosted my book group last week to discuss it. The book reads like fiction but it is real life. For a writer who is not a native New Orleanian and who was on assignment after Hurricane Katrina (or “The Storm” as natives say), he really captured what it is like to be from and to live in New Orleans. His profile of nine people: several who lived in the Ninth Ward, the wife of a famous Mardi Gras Indian, a prominent lawyer, to a transvestite in transition,…