I’ve never seen or heard an opera before, and I’ve never really been inclined to do so. In Ann Patchett’s “Bel Canto,” though, the author captures the potential opera has to move and alter a person. It made me want to run to the record store to steep myself in Maria Callas and Puccini.

Beyond Patchett’s proficiency for translating the music to the page, “Bel Canto” is a stunning story. The blurring of the line between good and evil is beautifully paced, and although there is a quite large cast of characters, most all of them are well drawn and memorable. The story is wonderfully romantic and tragic — just what I would imagine opera to be.

Rockford flipped to a random page in “The Man Who Tried to Save the World” and read a few paragraphs. Afterward, he told me he didn’t think he could read the whole book. “All that Tom Clancy stuff is one thing when you know it’s not real,” he said.

Scott Anderson’s book about “the dangerous life and mysterious disappearance of” disaster-relief specialist Fred Cuny isn’t fiction, though, and that’s what makes it so frightening and so compelling.