← The Book Review
The Book Review
A Summer Book Recommendation Bonanza
00:43:40
From doppelgängers to dark academia, the Book Review editors share some of their most-anticipated titles.
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- [00:00]
A
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. For a limited time, when you get a new Apple card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to 250 daily cash. New AirPods Pro and up to $250 daily cash back. Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval, limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at Apple C.O. airPods
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B
Book Review listeners hi, I'm Wesley Morris. I host a show called Cannonball and I'm here to let you know that Cannonball is gonna be live at the tribeca Festival this year. I'm gonna be on stage with Cynthia Nixon, which is very exciting. And we're gonna talk about, yes, that Cynthia Nixon. And we're gonna talk about some great art about New York City and the show. We're gonna do it Friday, June 12th at 6pm I'll say it again, Friday, June 12th at 6:00pm and you can get your tickets right now as I speak@tribecafilm.com audio that's Tribeca film.com audio can't wait to see you there. Please come join us.
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C
Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the Book Review from the New York Times. I know that there is an official, astronomically based beginning to summer, the solstice and all that stuff, but it is after Memorial Day, everyone. And as far as I'm concerned, it is summer. And what do we all like to do in the summer? Sit inside, get out of the sun, find an air conditioner, read some books. But what books should you read this summer? That's what we are here to figure out. I have called in some fellow editors from the Book Review to assist me to go through the next three months and call out a few things that we're all excited about. Jumana Khatib, you came back.
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D
I'm here.
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C
Hello.
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D
Hello.
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C
MJ Franklin, host of our monthly book club discussions. Hello.
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E
Howdy. And happy summer.
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C
Happy summer.
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D
We're all summer birthdays in here.
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C
Summer birthdays are hard.
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D
They're terrible.
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C
Yeah. It has made me not like my birthday.
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D
I hate my birthday.
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C
No one was ever around to celebrate it.
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D
Thank you.
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E
Likewise. My birthday is usually over Memorial Day.
- [02:14]
C
Oh, do you have plans reading plans for the summer, M.J. oh, of course.
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E
I always like to treat the summer as like catch up time we have to work. But like in my brain, it's still school mode, summer vacation. And like, when else am I gonna have time to read that giant 700 page novel. When else am I gonna have time to read this classic? But then I like to be outside in the grass reading something fun and frothy. And Gilbert, you're scowling at me. But within us there are two wolves. One monkish one that wants to read a classic and one that wants to read a crazy thriller in a hammock.
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D
Is he gonna have the bald spin?
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C
Inside me there's one wolf that is the inside wolf.
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D
Inside wolf.
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C
Shumana. How do you like to spend your summer reading time?
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D
I prefer to be on the outer cape.
- [02:59]
C
The getting specific here.
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D
The sort of forearm of the flexed bicep from the elbow up. Anyway, I'm going to read Anna Karenina for the first time this summer.
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E
Ooh, I actually bought that too.
- [03:11]
D
No way, buddy.
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E
Ready?
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D
Yeah. You have my number.
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C
Why? What is in the air? Why is Anna Kurt Endo? I don't know.
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E
For me it was just that I feel like I've just read a bunch that references it and it's been something that I've been meaning to read. But when am I gonna have time to get around to it? This summer.
- [03:27]
D
I think this might be a Rachel Cusk summer for me because I think that she's been overshadowed by the outline trilogy.
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E
Tbd Gilbert, what kind of reader are you in the summer?
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C
So I. I feel like I've said on every summer episode that we've done that this is the summer that I'm gonna read mid. I've wanted to read Middlemarch for years. Summer seems like the time. It's quite a large book. So I'm just gonna put this intention once again out there into the world. This will be the summer I read it, whether or not it actually happens. Tbd we are going to go through June, July and August, all of us, and talk about books that are coming out, books that we are excited about. And I am going to start. James Ellroy. He is one of America's most famous crime writers. He often writes a trilogy of books about a decade in American history or set around a character. He wrote the Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. This new one, which is called Red sheet, it's out June 9th. It starts right around Halloween, 1962. The Cuban missile crisis has just finished and it stars this character, Freddie Otash, who is sort of a corrupt cop in la. There's corruption, there's crime, there's communists. He has a very particular style and if you're not used to it, it takes a minute to get in. And it's very possible that you just will not like this very masculine, punchy, staccato way that he has of writing. But if you do like it, this is, this is the money right here.
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E
Where would you recommend someone start with James Elroy. I feel like he's written so much, I'm intimidated.
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C
I think you should start with Ellie. Confidential. It's probably one of his most famous in part because there's a well known movie that was adapted from that book, but it captures what he's doing. Again, a lot of books set in la, a lot of books in sort of the intersection between police work and criminality. He has a fascinating backstory if you want to read a memoir. He wrote a memoir called My Dark Places, which was his attempt to try to figure out the death of his mother. His mother was murdered when he was 10 years old. And so this event has sort of hung over his life the entire time. I think he's pretty convinced that's why he is obsessed with crime and has written all these crime novels. So I would say start with La Confidential or My Dark Places.
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E
Interesting. Thank you.
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C
You're welcome.
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D
I'm gonna mention Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Grier. This is also on sale June 9th. So Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer for his novel Less, which was about this sort of hapless middle aged novelist named Arthur Less who would travel the world rather than attend or even think about his ex's wedding, which is deeply relatable. There is a sequel, Less Is Lost. This is a new universe. So this follows a recent graduate who goes to Italy with the sort of hope of becoming an archivist. And it sounds a little Arrested Development, sort of on the Italian Riviera, if I'm being honest, because this kid, he's sort of feckless and whatever and we don't know his name until the very end. So I'm not gonna spoil that. He gets there. There's this sort of grand dame, you know, this 92 year old baronessa whose every whim he sort of has to cater to. There's a cast of characters that are living on site, an artist and a sort of randy older guy, and chaos ensues and there is a romance that blooms midway. I think also this sounds a lot like Greer's own life because first of all, he splits his time between Venice and San Francisco, and Venice does play a part in this novel. But more to the point, Greer was the director of a writing residency in Tuscany that was owned by a baronessa. So he has worked for a baronessa and one of his duties was caring for her incontinent pug. And there's this great memory. I think he was the one who decided the pug needed diapers, which no one was really ready to do. But there's a great quote from our profile of him where he says, margaret Atwood's coming over, and we just. We can't.
- [07:46]
E
Incredible. Simply incredible.
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C
I feel like a book set in Italy in the summer. Like, that just feels very on point.
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D
It's aromatic. I mean, I can smell the cypress tree. Not the pug. I can smell the cypress trees.
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E
I have a really fun one, too. They All Fall in love at the end By Hailey Blassingame. You mentioned relationships. This is relationships plus mess. It's a new entry into a growing subgenre of polyamory literature. At the start of the book, there's this couple. The relationship is already open. We follow an MFA student named Kat. She is in an open relationship with her boyfriend Jay, who lives across the country. Kat lives in D.C. jay's best friend also lives in D.C. but hates cat because he saw how upset Jay was when they opened the relationship. But then, plot twist, they have a romantic spark. That's tricky because he has a girlfriend, Nia, but plot twist, Cat has a spark with Nia, too. Second plot twist isn't that good. It's perfect for the summary.
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D
Does everybody know there's a new Ann Patchett novel coming out?
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E
She's back.
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D
It's called Whistler. I'm going to really try not to whistle on this podcast.
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C
Y don't know how to whistle.
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D
You don't?
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C
Nope.
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D
Have you ever tried?
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C
Nope.
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D
So you don't know if you. You don't know if you don't know?
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C
I'm not going to try now. I just, I've never whistled in my life.
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E
I was definitely about to peer pressure you into trying on my.
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C
Don't bully me into whistling. What is Whistler about?
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D
This is really good. Classic and Patchett territory. So we're at the Met, a woman and her husband, and there's a slight age gap, which I think does kind of matter. She's in her 50s. Her husband's like, maybe closer to 70. They're walking around. He notices that there's a man that's sort of following them. And it turns out that this older man and the woman actually know one another because he was one of her stepfathers. Her mom, I think, was maybe not quite like Zsa Zsa Gabor levels of, like, husband cycling, but, like, had a lot of husbands. But this was A stepfather that really meant something to this woman. So they reconnect, and it turns out that, like, they still have that kind of spark and that bond. And the novel is really just about that year that he was married to her mother.
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C
And there's a horse on the COVID Yes.
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D
Important to me, that seems like a naked bid for, like, horse girl money.
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C
I have read 95% of this book.
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D
What do you think?
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C
You know, without reviewing it? Because one of our critics will write about this. It's something I don't read that often, which is a book about how kindness and goodness are necessary in the world. And I found it just to be soothing at this particular moment.
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E
I felt similarly about Ann Patchett's previous book, Tom Leet. That book also had a soothing quality to it. She's just a good storyteller.
- [10:43]
C
When we say soothing, I feel like it shouldn't indicate that there's not skill. I don't know that it's easy to write a nice book or a book with nice characters.
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E
I would argue it's harder because tension animates stories. And so if you lower the temperature, how do you create a compelling story? Not everyone can do it, but Aunt Patrick can.
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C
It definitely has made me think. If I need to connect with a stepfather who I haven't talked to in a while, what do you think?
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D
I. Oh, call him.
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C
Yeah.
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D
I mean, do as I say, not as I do. I think let's just leave it there.
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E
I have another book that is radically different because this book is weird, surreal, hallucinatory. When you hear those words, do you, like, get your guard up or are you intrigued?
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D
Oh, I'm down.
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C
I'm both at the same time.
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E
That is actually perfect because this book plays with pairs and doubles and doppelgangers who all riff off of each other and all that stuff. This is as if by Isabel Widener. It's about two strangers, each struggling in their lives for their own reasons, who discover that they're doppelgangers and then switch lives. For better or for worse. That's the easy setup. And already we're like. We have the surreal conceit of the doppelgangers. Overall, though, it's very trippy, because you can tell this is just a writer having fun inventing. For instance, at the core of the book is a show called People Live. People Die. People Live as if they were already dead, where a detective, A. Smith, spelled S M, Y, T, H, E, is hired as a detective to watch another man, B. Smith, spelled S, M, I, T, H, but B Smith is hired to watch A. Smith. And then there is C. Schmidt, who is A. Smith's partner. And then B. Smith has an estranged wife named D. Smith.
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C
Am I getting too clever vibes here? Like, convince me I'm not so no,
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E
it's not too clever by half. That is always. I always get nervous about that. It's really inventive and fun. It is a little clever, but not too clever.
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C
Got it.
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E
And I think that is actually Widener's strength. They are an author. I think everybody needs to know they're this up and coming. Surrealist. Kafkaesque gets used to describe them often. These books are so strange, so smart, so fun. You do have to be in a particular mood for them. You do have to have a high tolerance for being destabilized. But they're so rewarding and as if I think is one of the more playful in the bunch.
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D
Mj, as a twin, what is your stance on doppelgangers?
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E
I love em. They're great. Being a twin is truly simply the best. It's great.
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C
And you're an identical twin?
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E
I am an identical twin. My brother lives just across the park from me.
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D
Love it.
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E
We see each other all the time.
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C
Last question about this. Do you ever mess with people?
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E
Not intentionally. I have far too much anxiety for that.
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C
I'm gonna talk about a nonfiction book coming out in June that is about the Kennedy assassination which took place, as we all know, November 22, 1963. Did either of you have a JFK assassination ph or was that just me?
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D
Silence in the studio.
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C
I was obsessed with the JFK assassination when I was 9, 10, 11 years old.
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D
Nine, yes.
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C
My grandfather took me to see the Oliver Stone film JFK when I was 10. But I'd already been reading a bunch of books about the JFK assassination and watching documentaries and really trying to figure out like, who did it. Um, I didn't figure it out.
- [14:36]
E
I like the idea that nine year old Gilbert Cruz is on the case. He's going to crack it.
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C
I remember taking up my grandfather's. He had an old typewriter and typing my theories on a typewriter and putting them in an official looking folder and being like, I think it was the Cubans.
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D
It's an amazing montage for when they make your life into a movie.
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C
There is a book coming out called the Housewives Underground. The untold story of the women who made the JFK assassination. Our most enduring mystery. This is by Caitlin Tiffany. Tiffany is a staff writer at the Atlantic. A few years ago she wrote a Book called Everything I Need I Get from How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It. And so this is a very, very different topic. But the project of this book is fascinating. President Kennedy gets assassinated less than a year later. The Warren Commission puts out this report, this very large report, and it says, as we all know now, the report says Lee Harvey Oswald was the person. He was the lone assassin. He did this on his own. No one else was involved. But in the mid to late 60s, there were a bunch of people said, this doesn't sound right. And Tiffany's book focuses on three women who decided to do their own research. Right. They read all thousands and thousands of pages of the Warren Commission Report. They went to Dallas and they interviewed people on their own to try to get more information. One of the women found a way to illegally screen the Zapruder film, which is the only film that was taken of President Kennedy's assassination. I'm very excited for this. This is firmly in my interest zone. If any of you want to watch JFK with me, I haven't seen it in several years. It's a three hour movie, but I will host a screening.
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D
All right. I'm a little nervous to admit how much I like this book because the premise is horrifying. This is Nebraska by Monica Datta. This is a wild book I think has been like 20 years in the making. If you look it up, you'll see that it's compared to the Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and the Loneliness of Sonja and Sunny. It's insane. So don't listen to that because if you go in expecting it to be like either of those books, you're going to be kind of disappointed or just baffled. So this is the story of the Chatterjee family. The book opens when father meets the adult children at the prison where the mother has been incarcerated for years. It's on what they think is her parole date. Obviously they haven't kept in great touch while she's been locked up. And so they go, they've like had it written down in their date book, like, mom, parole today. And so they get there and it turns out she's long gone and they won't tell her family where she's gone. Incredible hook, right? I mean, incredible hook. Okay. Now the reason that she was incarcerated was because she killed her youngest child who had, like, profound disabilities. Okay.
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C
There's a lot going on here. Yeah.
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D
The book ends up this wild tale. It's a story within a story within a story. Because every single page of this close to 500 page novel has a footnote. Sometimes a long footnote, sometimes a short footnote, sometimes the entire page is a footnote. Because this story has been assembled from the like, personal journals of a like French Canadian psychoanalyst who knew the entire family. Yes.
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E
This sounds so extremely my ish.
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D
Thank you mj.
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E
I am so in.
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D
Thank you mj.
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E
Wild story with a meta twist to it with the footnotes. Yes, yes, yes, yes it is.
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D
Just because the footnotes take you in crazy directions where it's like, okay, we're going to have like a paragraph about like why Bengali vegetarians are intrinsically linked to neoliberalism and the Imperial project. And then we're going to sort of riff on like a Swedish butter scandal. And then sometimes the footnote will just be like, good God man, get yourself together. Anyway, it's a romp. It's kind of a terrifying novel that needs to be said.
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C
Yes, Gilbert, a terrifying romp is what you're saying.
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D
Yeah, sort of like what I think like Sleep no More is like, wow,
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C
that's a reference I have not heard in a very long time. Coming up after the break, a ton more summer book recommendations for you.
- [19:22]
A
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. For a limited time, when you get a new Apple card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to 250 daily cash. New AirPods Pro and up to $250 daily cash back. Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval limitations in spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more at Apple Co AirPods all aboard.
- [19:49]
F
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A
Evan Marks tells the story of a woman who's become so good at dating she no longer believes love is meant for her. Set against the glamour of Manhattan nightlife and elite consulting culture, it begins as a sharp and entertaining portrait of dating, ambition and city life before unfolding into something much deeper. Witty, provocative and unexpectedly profound. It's Sex in the City meets Milan Kundera Vesper by Evan Marx, pick up your copy today.
- [20:51]
C
All right. It is time to move to July.
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D
I don't have any July books, so it's the two of you.
- [20:58]
C
It's guy time. Okay.
- [21:03]
D
July's guy time.
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C
Okay. I want to talk about genuinely, one of my favorite authors who has a book coming out in July. It's not like a swerve. Everyone knows who he is. This is Colson Whitehead, very famous author. He has the third book in his Harlem trilogy coming out. This one's called Cool Machine. All of them star a character named Ray Carney. He owns a furniture store, but he's also. He dabbles in crime. He is a fence. Sometimes he takes stolen goods from people and then sells them over here. Sometimes he gets involved in heists. Each of these three books is set in a different decade in New York City and in Harlem. So the first One was the 60s, second one, 70s, and cool machine. This last one is set in the 1980s, the decade in which I was born in New York City. I'm very excited to experience it through Whitehead's eyes. He's just a great writer, right? He can do anything, obviously. He's won two Pulitzers. He can write literary fiction. He can write a zombie novel. He can write nonfiction. He's done these crime novels now, and he is also New Yorker. And each of these books so far has just been an incredible evocation of a time in New York.
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E
Can we do some podcast psychoanalysis? Gilbert, I noticed that all of your recommendations, all the books you're looking forward to are set in the past.
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C
Yeah.
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E
What's that about?
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C
I don't like these days, you know, Extremely.
- [22:33]
E
I can't argue with you.
- [22:34]
C
There's a reason people like historical fiction. Of course, the past was difficult in different ways. We like to imagine, oh, it was so much nicer living in the past. Oh, the forties, everyone wore hats. I love the music, but it sucked to live in the 40s, you know?
- [22:51]
E
But if you have a novel that can distill the past in an entertaining way, it sounds like Gilbert Cruz is in.
- [22:58]
C
I think that novel's called Cool Machine, and that is by Colson Whitehead.
- [23:01]
E
I have a crime story as well, and mine is the Mortons by Justine labrullastier and Scott Westerfeld. The short pitch, a scheming family of filthy rich assassins. Bum, bum, bum.
- [23:17]
C
Wow.
- [23:18]
D
Into it.
- [23:18]
C
Do you even need to say anything
- [23:19]
E
else onto the next book? No, it's about this college student, Jessica, who is one of the youngest members of this wealthy family called the Mortons she attends Hellshire College, which is the elite's playground. And she is the elite of the elite. At the start of the book, she has an assignment. She has to kill her cousin. And so she proceeds with the assignment. Oh, I should mention the assignment came from her grandmother family inviting. And she's trying to figure out what signal have I sent intentionally or unintentionally, is there a target on my back? Her friend, who also comes from a wealthy family, is about to lose all of her money. It's a whole thing. But I want to stress the bullet points. Crimes, assassins, dark academia.
- [24:09]
C
This is so surprising. I'm really into this. Yeah, I'm so intrigued. I want to read this immediately.
- [24:14]
E
It's the hot crime summer.
- [24:16]
C
I'm going to talk about a book that I don't think has any crime, but it is by the author of one of my favorite books from the past few years, Daniel Mason. He wrote a book a few years ago called North Woods. It was one of our top 10 books of 2023. And it was just incredible. It was an amazing story. It's a book that's set on a plot of land, essentially hundreds of years set in this house, on this plot of land. All these people come in and out. There are all these different stories, and all the stories are told in different ways in different formats. He has a new book coming out in July called Country People. And it sounds very different, but I loved the way that Daniel Mason was able to write about New England as part of America that I'm sort of in on this one, which is set in Vermont. You have a PhD student. He's been working on his dissertation too long. Too long. This is why I never went for a PhD. It just seemed like it could be endless. He and his family moved to the wilds, the woods of Vermont. His wife is there, she's accepted a one year professorship. And there in Vermont, he meets all these eccentric people. And then maybe he realizes he's also an eccentric person, as are we all. And I'm not. I may have said it on this podcast before. I'm not really into books that like, try to be funny or like, everyone's like, oh, that book is so funny. I very rarely laugh when I read a book, but a few early reviews of this book really seem to underline the humor. Normally that would be a turnoff for me, but I just cannot underscore how much I loved North Woods. And so I'm into this one. It has a great cover, just like north woods had a great cover.
- [25:45]
E
It's always fun when you have that author where you're like, I'm in. I will follow where you lead. And it sounds like Daniel Mason. Is that with me?
- [25:50]
C
Absolutely. And I haven't done it yet, but it made me want to go back and read it. A couple of the books that he wrote before. Country People by Daniel Mason Gilbert.
- [25:59]
E
I hear you trying to pivot from crime. You try to guide the ship somewhere else, but I'm turning back. We're back at crime. I have a book that's so good and happens to be about crime, and that is Fixer Child by Hong Ang. This is a reissue of a book that came out in 2001, and it's being reissued by this new imprint, Outsider Editions, which is through Doubleday. It's part of their launch slate of releases. They're releasing a bunch of older books that fell out of print that they think deserves more attention for Fixer Child. Do you know the phrase be gay, do crimes?
- [26:33]
D
Hell, yeah.
- [26:34]
C
Never heard of it.
- [26:35]
E
But it was a big Twitter meme for a while. Just be gay, do crimes. That's what this is. This follows a gay sex worker who gets enlisted in a revenge scheme by a struggling writer who is hoping to embarrass his father in law, a literary titan in the vein of of Philip Roth. The father in law's success makes the writer feel bad about himself, his career, his life, and he decides this father in law has got to go down. So he enlists this hustler to disguise himself as a feng shui expert, infiltrate New York's elite, and incriminate them in a variety of ways. It's gay revenge chaos. But it's also a satire on, like, New York's upper crust and literary types.
- [27:18]
D
I'm so into this. I'm so into this.
- [27:22]
E
That's what you love to hear when you give a book recommendation.
- [27:24]
C
I'm gonna tell you about a new book by the author of one of the scariest books I've ever read. This is a book that's coming out in July. It's called Biological War. Annie Jacobson published a book called Nuclear War. I'd been meaning to get to it, but I didn't pick it up until last summer. I was in Chicago. I visited this amazing bookstore. I was like, all right, this is what I'm reading on the plate ride back. I read a lot of horror. I watch a lot of horror movies, read a lot of horror books. This book, Nuclear War, was terrifying. It presents a minute by minute and sometimes even second by second account of what would happen if a rogue nuclear missile was fired at the United States, how each corner of the American government would respond, how much we could do, which is not that much what would happen. It's basically how the world can. And in the span of like a couple hours, it really messed me up. And this book, I think is gonna do the same. But I gravitate towards that experience. I want to know how biological war is gonna end all life as we know it.
- [28:28]
D
Is it gonna change anything about how you live your day to day life?
- [28:31]
C
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I live every day to the fullest.
- [28:36]
E
I have one really quick book I wanna shout out because I know very little about it, but it's also an author that I'm like, they're writing it. I'm in. This is We Were Forbidden by Jacqueline Hartman. You may remember Jacqueline Hartman from her book I who have Never Known Men, which was reissued recently and has become this big TikTok trend. It's also just an incredible book, very haunting. It's a dystopian novel that is completely unsettling. Jacqueline Hartman also has another novel that was translated into English recently, Orlanda, which is a romp of a gender swap novel that is inspired by Orlando by Virginia Woolf. This new one, We Were Forbidden, is a collection of three novellas. The Hartmanaissance continues. We'll find another name for that, but
- [29:23]
C
like, we'll workshop it.
- [29:26]
E
But Jacqueline Hartman has a new book. I'm sad.
- [29:28]
C
Okay. Summer has to end eventually and I think we're gonna move to August Shumana. You just have so many books that you wanna talk about in this month here.
- [29:37]
D
I really.
- [29:37]
C
Including the aforementioned Rachel Cusk.
- [29:40]
D
Yes. Okay. All right. New Rachel Cusk. All right. This is called Life of M. Gilbert. You'll be thrilled. I think this is 200 pages.
- [29:51]
C
Oh, God.
- [29:52]
D
I know somebody's been listening to this podcast.
- [29:54]
C
That is the right.
- [29:55]
D
The right length, as I said. I do think that Rachel Cusk has been. She's been writing for a very long time. And I'm delighted that the Outline trilogy, which is beloved and revered and sort of like, you know, everybody was like, she's doing something new with the novel. Like, that's exactly, you know, that merits attention. However, Rachel Cuttsk had a very rich writing life before the Outline Trilogy. And I think that this new book is kind of a return to that form. So that excites me. So the premise of this. Mj, you're gonna. This will tickle you because it's about a doppelganger there's a child actor who's now an adult. But like not in my head. I picture like female Ron Howard, but I think that's like not the right association. So Ron Howard's daughter moving right along. So basically this person agrees to participate in a biography. But the writer of this biography not only knows nothing about this individual, her subject, which is unusual for somebody who has been in the public eye since childhood, but they totally resemble each other, which is nuts. I don't think I could be comfortable with that also. Cause I don't resemble anybody else on earth. So I'm excited for non Outline Cusk. Something new.
- [31:18]
E
If you're keeping score at home. It sounds like the trend of the summer. The themes of the summer. Crime dives into the past. Doppelgangers.
- [31:26]
D
Doppelgangers. Doing crime would be something.
- [31:28]
E
I also have an August book. This is the Amateur by Chris Bojalian. This isn't straight up crime, but there's intrigue. This opens with a prodigy golfer. She's practicing. She hits a stray ball. It goes to the practice net, it flies. It hits a high school caddy in the head and kills him. It seems like this horrible, horrible accident. But then people start getting suspicious. The golfer starts spiraling and just intrigue builds and builds and builds.
- [32:07]
C
It sounds very summery.
- [32:08]
E
Yeah.
- [32:08]
C
Yeah. My town has a country club and I constantly think, is one of these balls gonna hit me in the head or like hit my car? I'm very paranoid about stray golf balls.
- [32:18]
D
Do you have a helmet?
- [32:21]
C
Not that I wear when I'm walking.
- [32:23]
E
It's like. Yeah. New anxiety unlock.
- [32:26]
D
Yeah. Okay. I have another book in a classic summer reading mold. This is a coming of age story by Chang Rae Li, whom I adore. Such a. Such a beautiful writer. So this is a tender age. And I think this draws on his own childhood a little bit, which is always interesting territory. This is very evocative. This is 1976 and it follows a young Korean American boy named JG and this is all set during the summer he turns 11. So at home he's really doted on and cherished by his parents, who I think are more working class immigrants. And then outside, he just sort of runs wild with this feral gang of neighborhood boys. Just in basketball courts and parking lots and playgrounds. And I remember what that felt like. And I have no hand eye coordination and was certainly not affiliated with any neighborhood packs of kids. But. But so then he goes to summer camp and that is where an event happens that changes everything. You know, he's Such a good storyteller. Different than Ann Patchett, but, like, just as rich and immersive. So that is a Tender Age by Cheng Rai Li.
- [33:44]
C
Can I talk about a piece of nonfiction that I am. I think I'm stealing from Jumana, but I'm just going to do it.
- [33:50]
D
If you steal the Jackal, I'm going to kill you.
- [33:52]
C
All right, forget it. I was going to steal the Jackal. No, no, no. Okay, okay. I like the movie the Jackal. I thought earlier.
- [33:59]
D
Is it actually Carlos?
- [34:00]
C
It's called Carlos. Yeah. Five hours. That is the equivalent of a 700 page book right there.
- [34:05]
D
Yeah. Okay. Okay. I don't normally talk about nonfiction, but I do have some nonfiction I'm quite excited about. And I was thinking earlier to myself in the spring, man, I wish there. I'm not even kidding, man, I wish there was an actual biography of Carlos the Jackal. Late night Wikipedia thing, thinking this is just not nourishment. So now Joby Warrick, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, has answered my pleas. He has a biography called the Jackal. And this is the story of the Venezuelan revolutionary Carlos the Jackal. Ne Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. What a life. He grew up with Marxist Leninist affiliations throughout his life. He also really loved the limelight and sort of is prone to a lot of these statements of grandiosity. So he was part of the raid on the OPEC headquarters in 1975. He hijacked a plane, held people hostage. I mean, it's like really the checklist of, you know, international Marxist, Leninist terrorism.
- [35:15]
C
It's an incredible story. And I actually. I didn't know about this one, and I am immediately excited about it. I know him primarily through the film. There's like a five and a half hour miniseries that you can now watch as a film from the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Read the book, watch the movie. I'm excited for this one.
- [35:36]
D
Does anybody else have another August book? Wow. Okay. I'm gonna stay with nonfiction. This is something that I think will appeal to everybody in this studio and hopefully at home. It's a work of New York City history, which I always enjoy.
- [35:51]
C
Yes.
- [35:51]
D
And it's about an underexplored period of life flourishing in Manhattan. Awesome. Okay, so this is called A Moment in the sun by Shane White. So this is in pre Civil War Manhattan, and Shane White really tells us the story of this period through some rather memorable characters. I didn't know that most of New York City's oyster men at the time were black.
- [36:17]
C
Hmm.
- [36:17]
D
I knew about Thomas Downing. He was the one that started letting women come into oyster bars so long as they were accompanied by their husband. Charles Dickens ate at his oyster. Fascinating characters and I like that this is a history that's really reclaiming an era in time that I think it skipped over and is totally rich and fascinating. So that is A Moment in the sun and the title comes from a quote by W.E.B. du Bois.
- [36:45]
C
We've mentioned so many books and yet as we all know working at the Book Review, there are like hundreds and hundreds of more books coming out this summer. I'd love to go through a quick lightning round in which we just mentioned titles, the authors and what month they come out. We're going to do this real quick, like after the break.
- [37:13]
A
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- [38:12]
A
Bermuda Vesper by Evan Marks tells the story of a woman who's become so good at dating, she no longer believes love is meant for her. Set against the glamour of Manhattan nightlife and elite consulting culture, it begins as a sharp and entertaining portrait of dating, ambition and city life before unfolding into something much deeper, witty, provocative and unexpectedly profound. It's Sex in the City meets Milan Kundera Vesper by Evan Marx. Pick up your copy today.
- [38:43]
C
I'm going to start by mentioning a book that comes out in July. It is called A Sudden Flicker of Light, A Revisionist History of Movies. It's by David Thompson, who has written dozens and dozens of books of film criticism, and his new book is Putting forth this Theory. We've all said movies are good, but what if movies are bad? I'm intrigued.
- [39:04]
E
I have rabbit, fox, tar by PC Verone this is a debut novel that comes out in June and it's about this predominantly white town in the middle of a local election that gets derailed when suddenly a mysterious black woman appears one day. She's sitting on the garden wall, not speaking to anyone, watching. She enamors this town and then things go from there.
- [39:26]
D
I have the Au Pair by Teddy Wayne coming out in June. It is a thriller about one of the scariest things imaginable which is a bruised male ego. This is about a novelist who peaked early in his in relative obscurity, now hires a Norwegian 20 something to come look after his kids. Chaos and even death ensues.
- [39:52]
C
Land by Maggie o' Farrell is out in early June. Maggie o' Farrell had a big year last year and the beginning of this year she was co nominated for the best adapted screenplay Oscar for Hamnet which is based on her 2020 book about Shakespeare. And then some things happen to his family. This is a new one. It takes place in Ireland in the mid-1800s, right in the aftermath of the great famine there. There's a man and his son, they're working for the British, the hated British, surveying land for the crown. And then some other stuff happens.
- [40:26]
E
I have Sublimation by Isabel Jae Kim this is also out in June and this is buzzy science fiction. It is set in a world where whenever you cross a border you create a clone or an instance of yourself that lives the life you would have lived had emigrated. But when clones reunite in touch, they merge back into one. The novel follows a series of clones, each grappling with reintegration. And at the start of the book a clone who's been living in New York is summoned back to Korea and her instance there has plans to reintegrate.
- [40:56]
C
Are clones just doppelgangers? Oh, you're.
- [40:59]
E
No, you're right.
- [41:00]
D
No, no. Wrong.
- [41:02]
C
No.
- [41:02]
D
All right, I also on that note, Cloud Thief by Nathaniel Rich this is oh, everybody knows how much I love the Italian job and Ocean's 12 specifically. So this is a heist novel starring a disaffected climate journalist and a con artist slash hacker whose mark is a data center in Oklahoma, allegedly home to the world's biggest repository of knowledge and secrets.
- [41:29]
C
This is a great idea. It is not too early to have anti data center fiction. I'm sold.
- [41:36]
E
I have Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay. Also on sale in June. Great horror writer, great science fiction writer. This is about an aimless young woman obsessed with video games who's given an Impossible job using futuristic tech. She needs to pilot a man who is brain dead. Or is he? Because we also get chapters from his perspective. We see he has a lot of brain activity, though he's uncertain who he is, where he is, and what's going on around him. And it's how their stories intertwine on this kind of deranged road trip.
- [42:06]
C
I have a piece of nonfiction that comes out in early July. This is you won't get free of stories of mothers and daughters. It's by Rachel Aviv. Rachel is one of the great New Yorker writers. Her book Strangers to Ourselves, I don't know if the both of you recall, was one of our top 10 books of 2022. And this is one of those collections where they take a bunch of pieces that were previously published and put them all in and add one new piece and make it feel real. The thing I always say when someone describes it that way is, yes, but did you read all seven of those pieces when they were in the New Yorker? And if you haven't, this is probably a good thing to own. The only thing I would say about this is it comes out in early July. Mother's Day just passed. It seems like there's a real Every day is Mother's Day, a real missed opportunity.
- [42:51]
D
Every day is Mother's Day.
- [42:53]
E
My mom, who got every year when I was in elementary school, a chicken noodle soup book. Do you remember those? Oh, yeah.
- [43:01]
C
For the soul.
- [43:02]
E
For the soul.
- [43:02]
D
For the soul.
- [43:03]
E
For every type of soul. For the mother's soul. If there was a chicken noodle soup, I was like, perfect. Mother's Day gift.
- [43:11]
D
I have yet another novel about surreal life and the unstability of memory. This is Awake Awake by Fiona Mosley, coming out in August. I'm a big fan of Mosley. Every book of hers feels very different, and I think that's a real achievement. This one too, is strange and unexpected, and I didn't quite know what to do with it. So the premise is a writer moves back to her hometown, she's tending bar. She's flooded with memories that she knows are impossible. And this comes early on in the book, so it's not ruining anything, but like the memory that she has somehow received is that her Jewish grandfather killed Hitler and Britain covered it up to protect her and her family.
- [43:54]
E
I have Triage by Claudia Rankine. It's the return of Claudia Rankine. Enough said. I know very little about this one other than that I love Claudia's previous books, Citizen and Just Us. I'll read whatever she writes, I think this is about a pair of friends, but it's a blend of fiction and nonfiction. It's illustrated, but the galley I had didn't have illustrations in it, so I don't know what they're doing. I will read whatever she writes. That's Claudia Rankine. That's out in August.
- [44:19]
C
Citizen, one of the 100 best books of the 21st century, according to the New York Times.
- [44:23]
E
It's great. And then just us is also phenomenal as well. Read Claudia Rankine.
- [44:29]
D
You know who else I think you should read is Pamela Kohloff, who's one of my favorite journalists working today. She's got a new book coming in July called Catch the A True Story of Murder, Deception and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. So this is a wild story. Basically, this guy named Paul Skalnick, when he was an inmate, he would claim that other prisoners had confessed to him and then work with prosecutors to help them land convictions. And he really, it sounds like he was not super scrupulous about caring if he embellished or inflated things. And the issue really came to a head when a Vietnam vet was linked to the murder of a 14 year old girl. And Skalnick's retelling of his quote unquote confession landed this man on death row.
- [45:15]
C
That doesn't sound great.
- [45:17]
D
All right, I actually have another one. This is called Helpless by Jessica Knoll. It's coming out in July. Noel is the author of really unsettling thrillers. Like her last one, Bright Young Woman, was a bestseller. So if you know her name, that's probably why. So the premise of this one is, after their former professor dies, two college exes are back on campus. It was a rather acrimonious breakup. She destroyed his heart and wants to make amends. So they have a conversation and he ends up drugging her drink, kidnapping her, and holding her captive in his cabin for a period of time. It's like Misery, but with your ex. Then as they're together, parts of their history start to take on, like, sinister new feelings.
- [46:07]
E
That sounds intense.
- [46:10]
C
We started with crime, we ended with the thriller. We talked about doppelganger so many times and we just went through a ton of books that are coming out in June, July and August. MJ and Jumana. We did it. Once again, mj, thank you for joining. Thank you, Joumana. Always a pleasure.
- [46:26]
D
Thank you.
- [46:34]
C
The book review is produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy Pearl and Patricia Sulbaran. It's edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Original music by Dan Poppy and Elisheba itu Special thanks to Dalia Haddad. We want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an email @thebookreviewytimes.com I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening.
- [47:04]
A
Vesper by Evan Marks tells the story of a woman who's become so good at dating she no longer believes love is meant for her. Set against the glamour of Manhattan nightlife and elite consulting culture, it begins as a sharp and entertaining portrait of dating, ambition and city life before unfolding into something much deeper. Witty, provocative and unexpectedly profound. It's Sex in the City meets Milan Kundera. Vesper by Evan Marx. Pick up your copy today.