As David Sibelius boils the lobsters for the annual dinner he hosts for his graduate students at the Boston Institute of Technology, his 12-year-old daughter, Ada, observes him with a sense of foreboding.

“Let’s Not Do That Again” is a political comedy of manners that reads like the love child of Page Six and a long episode of “Veep.”

In “Went to London, Took the Dog,” Nina Stibbe, author of “Love, Nina,” delivers a funny-sad portrait of midlife.