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Audio: July 2019

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

Starred review
Beth O’Leary’s debut novel is a cute, cozy work of British pop fiction that’s hard to put down. After a bad breakup, Tiffy moves in with Leon, a nurse who works the night shift, because he only needs his flat during the day. She can’t afford her own place in London, and he needs the extra cash for his brother’s legal fees. They share a bed at opposite hours but don’t meet for months, communicating through notes left around the apartment. Tiffy publishes craft books, and she throws a bit of quirky chaos into Leon’s orderly apartment and life. The Flatshare (9.5 hours) switches perspectives between Tiffy and Leon, with narrators Carrie Hope Fletcher and Kwaku Fortune providing their voices. Fletcher and Fortune each do their own versions of all the characters’ voices, as heard from Tiffy’s or Leon’s point of view, which takes getting used to but totally works. It’s a sweet, charming love story.

Part memoir, part pop culture criticism, Mr. Know-It-All (10 hours) is one of those books that you definitely should listen to on audiobook over reading the printed book. Director and screenwriter John Waters is a fantastic storyteller and spends much of his time these days giving talks across the country. My favorite parts of his new book are when he digs really deep into tiny niches of popular culture, breaking down the teenage death pop songs of the 1950s and ’60s and suggesting, “Aren’t all country songs novelty songs in a way?” Waters also gives great background on his guerrilla filmmaking career and reveals how he convinced studios to give him funding after so many box-office misses. He even provides details about some of his movie pitches that never got made. I’m still holding out for the mod Hairspray sequel!

You don’t have to be a fan of the HBO series “Veep,” which A Woman First: First Woman (6 hours) is based on, to enjoy listening to it. Although a familiarity with the show will add to the experience, you just need a healthy sense of humor about American politics. In the show, Selina Meyer serves as vice president before becoming president for a term, and she is running for president again when this book is set. Julia Louis-­Dreyfus is hilarious as Selina, who reads this (clearly ghostwritten) book about her life and passes off the boring bits to her dutiful personal aide, Gary, who is played by Tony Hale. Autobiographies have become de rigueur for anyone considering a run for office, and this book does not go easy on the genre. It’s a shockingly funny takedown of political self-
importance and a biting satire of the political memoir.

Starred review Beth O’Leary’s debut novel is a cute, cozy work of British pop fiction that’s hard to put down. After a bad breakup, Tiffy moves in with Leon, a nurse who works the night shift, because he only needs his flat during the day.…
Science Fiction & FantasyRomanceNonfictionFictionAudioMemoir

Audio: August 2019

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

★Waiting for Tom Hanks
In this charmingly sweet romance from Kerry Winfrey, a lovable aspiring screenwriter named Annie Cassidy is obsessed with Nora Ephron movies and finding her own Tom Hanks. To Annie, Tom Hanks—the star of several of Ephron’s most beloved romantic comedies—represents her dream man. He’s an everyman who believes in love at first sight and maybe even lives on a houseboat à la Sleepless in Seattle. In contrast, Annie lives with her Dungeons & Dragons-loving uncle, and her dating prospects are looking grim. When a movie production takes over her neighborhood, it brings with it several men who vie for her attention. Will she end up with the grip who checks all her boxes, or with the handsome movie star she keeps bumping into but couldn’t possibly have a chance with? With fun, engaging narration from Rachel L. Jacobs, Waiting for Tom Hanks is a pure delight from beginning to end.

Out East
Out East is a memoir about one summer in the Long Island beach town of Montauk, where John Glynn, his friends and some loose acquaintances go in together on a summer home. Glynn feels like the odd man out in a group mostly populated by women, gay men and Wall Street bros. But as feelings develop for one of his new friends, it turns out he might fit in better than he thought. Glynn has a knack for details, is skilled at place-setting and displays a true love of language, which he deploys effortlessly. It’s a small, personal story about Glynn figuring out who he truly is over one wild summer of weekends away from the city. Michael Crouch lends an earnestness to the narration. As focused as the story is, he makes everything feel big and new.

The Lesson
A strong debut from Cadwell Turnbull, The Lesson does what all the best science fiction does: It uses the supernatural to reveal something true about our world. The book is set in the U.S. Virgin Islands five years after the Ynaa, an advanced alien race, arrived to study humans. The Ynaa live mostly peacefully with humans, at least for the time being. Most people are willing to put up with the occasional killing at the hands of the Ynaa in exchange for their science and medicine, but eventually enough is enough. Narrators Janina Edwards and Ron Butler do a fantastic job setting us in the islands, and their accents draw extra attention to the colonial elements of alien invasion that mirror our own history. It’s worth a listen for anyone with an interest in sci-fi.

★Waiting for Tom Hanks In this charmingly sweet romance from Kerry Winfrey, a lovable aspiring screenwriter named Annie Cassidy is obsessed with Nora Ephron movies and finding her own Tom Hanks. To Annie, Tom Hanks—the star of several of Ephron’s most beloved romantic comedies—represents her…
NonfictionMemoir

Home and hurricanes in New Orleans

Feature by Robert Weibezahl

Reaching far beyond the boundaries of memoir, Sarah M. Broom revisits the world of her childhood, decimated by Katrina, as she searches for the meaning of home and family.

Sarah M. Broom’s evocative, addictive memoir, The Yellow House, is more than the story of a girl growing up, or of her sprawling African American family, or even of the eponymous shotgun house where they all lived. It’s more than the story of her native New Orleans in the years before and after Katrina. This capacious work captures more than the particulars of a place or a state of mind. It infiltrates the very state of the soul, revealing a way of life tourists never see or, as the destruction of the hurricane and the post-storm neglect would underscore, pay any mind.

The youngest of 12 children born over a span of 30 years in a blended family, Broom begins this story with her clan’s circuitous journey to New Orleans East, a once sparsely populated outland that grew in population and promise when, at the height of the Space Race, NASA began building rocket boosters there and other industries followed. Broom’s father, Simon, who worked maintenance at NASA, died when she was 6 months old, and her mother, Ivory, was left to fend for herself and the children still living in their yellow shotgun house that Ivory had bought for $3,200 in cash when she was 19.

By the time Broom was born, NASA and much of the industry had all but abandoned the blighted area. Despite chronic financial struggles, Ivory proudly strove to keep up appearances. Indeed, one of the most fascinating features of the narrative is Broom’s subtle exploration of class distinctions within the African American communities of New Orleans.

When Katrina hit in 2005, Broom was grown and gone—working at a magazine and living in Harlem—but she has assembled the often-harrowing testimony of her family members who survived the cataclysm. Sacrificed by the powers that be, the largely black neighborhoods in New Orleans East suffered devastation. In the aftermath of Katrina, when the ruins of the Yellow House are deemed in “imminent danger of collapse” and slated for demolition, Broom realizes that the house “contained all of my frustration and many of my aspirations, the hopes that it would shine like it did in the world before me.” The house, she comes to see, held more than the memory of her father or the past. It sustained the very concept of home. And she understands that without the physical structure, she and her family are now the house.

The Yellow House is a lyrical attempt to reconstruct home, to redraw a map that nature and a heartless world have erased. The melodies of Broom’s prose are insinuating, its rhythms as syncopated and edgy as the story she has dared to write. With a voice all her own, she tells truths rarely told and impossible to ignore.

Reaching far beyond the boundaries of memoir, Sarah M. Broom revisits the world of her childhood, decimated by Katrina, as she searches for the meaning of home and family.
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Book Clubs: September 2019

Feature by Julie Hale

★The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling
Lydia Kiesling explores themes of immigration and family in her debut novel, The Golden State. Daphne, whose Turkish husband has been denied entry into the United States, is raising her infant daughter, Honey, alone in San Francisco. Cracking under the pressure of single parenthood and looking to escape her stress-filled life, she decamps with Honey for the California desert. Once there, Daphne drinks more than she should and meets her neighbors—Cindy, who’s a secessionist, and elderly Alice. But then her connections with the pair take a threatening turn. Told over the course of 10 days, this is an unflinching portrait of motherhood and its many challenges. Kiesling is a perceptive, compassionate writer, and she brings a remote part of California to vivid life in this accomplished debut.

Small Animals by Kim Brooks
When Brooks left her 4-year-old son in the car while running a quick errand, the police were alerted and she became embroiled in a protracted legal battle. Brooks recounts her experience in this fascinating mix of memoir and reportage on contemporary parenting.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
Suffering from memory loss after a car accident, Virgil tries to reconstruct his past in the tightknit community of Greenstone, Minnesota. Enger’s many fans will savor this bittersweet chronicle of Greenstone and the charming people who call it home.

Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
This powerful memoir recounts Smarsh’s upbringing on a Kansas farm, reflecting on the past and probing the economic and social causes of poverty in America.

Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Vargas, who is Filipino, learned of his undocumented status at the age of 16, when he tried to get a driver’s license. With a reporter’s instinct for detail, he writes about the challenges of surviving as an outsider in America.

★The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling
Lydia Kiesling explores themes of immigration and family in her debut novel, The Golden State. Daphne, whose Turkish husband has been denied entry into the United States, is raising her infant daughter, Honey, alone in San Francisco. Cracking under the…

NonfictionFictionMemoir

Book Clubs: October 2019

Feature by Julie Hale

★ All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
In her stirring memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung hopes to find the Korean birth parents who gave her up for adoption. Chung was raised by a white family in small-town Oregon, and in this beautifully crafted book she recounts her struggle to fit in as an Asian American. After graduating from college, she decides to investigate her past and possibly contact her biological parents. On the cusp of becoming a mother herself, she hears from her biological sister Cindy, who tells her the disturbing truth about their complex past. Already aware that she was a premature baby and that she has two sisters, Chung learns her birth parents claimed she had died. Chung touches on timeless themes of family and identity while crafting a fascinating narrative sure to spark lively book club discussions.

Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III
As he nears the end of his life, Daniel Ahearn hopes to be reunited with Susan, his daughter, whom he hasn’t seen since the long-ago night when—driven by jealousy—he murdered her mother. Dubus presents an electrifying portrait of a broken family in this unforgettable novel.

Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay by Phoebe Robinson
Bold, insightful and funny, Robinson’s terrific essays offer fresh perspectives on feminism, body image and the dating world. 

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Ernt Allbright; his wife, Cora; and their 13-year-old daughter, Leni, are initially enamored of their new surroundings and resilient neighbors in rural Alaska. But when Ernt becomes increasingly violent, the Allbrights find themselves in danger of losing everything.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
The fortunes of the intellectual Knox clan decline after work opportunities dry up. Rewind to the 1870s, and science teacher Thatcher Greenwood also experiences setbacks due to his progressive ideas. Kingsolver’s compassionate rendering of everyday people struggling to gain purchase in a changing world is sure to resonate with readers.

★ All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
In her stirring memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung hopes to find the Korean birth parents who gave her up for adoption. Chung was raised by a white family in small-town Oregon, and in this beautifully…

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionYA FictionYAMemoir

The Hold List: October 2019

Feature by the editors of BookPage

It’s the time of year when pumpkin spice suddenly flavors everything. But what if autumn were distilled into a book? The mixture of crispness and warmth, the thrill of possibility, the bittersweetness of change—these books are pure pumpkin spice.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Lake Michigan on a cool morning, a well-worn copy of Moby-Dick, a lazily draped scarf worn to a beloved college class—this is pumpkin spice latte territory. Chad Harbach’s debut novel is a philosopher’s playhouse, a literature student’s carnival and a baseball fan’s last hurrah of the season. It’s the story of shortstop star Henry Skrimshander and the many intellectuals in his orbit at Wisconsin’s small Westish College. Cute literary jokes abound (Henry’s last name is an obvious nod to Melville and scrimshaw), and meandering passages are capably balanced by thrilling baseball scenes. There’s angst and romance as well—always best in autumn—and a cheeky sense of humor that looks so good with your fading summer tan. —Cat, Deputy Editor

I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
First of all, what’s more autumnal than the words of Nora Ephron? (Think “bouquets of newly sharpened pencils.”) But I love this collection in particular because it’s the last book Ephron published before she died. Every time I read I Remember Nothing, I cherish it more urgently because I know I’m approaching the end of her expansive but finite body of work. (Oh, for a thousand more charming observations about seer­sucker napkins!) I think this makes it a perfect book for fall, which is the season for lapping up every drop of beauty we can before it’s gone. Poignantly, the last essay in the book is a list called “What I Will Miss,” and it includes: fall, a walk in the park, the idea of a walk in the park and pie. —Christy, Associate Editor

Possession by A.S. Byatt
This supremely meta, deeply romantic bestseller is a lot. But its dual narratives—a doomed romance between Victorian poets and the modern-day scholars who stumble upon their story—offer some sublimely cozy pleasures for a very specific type of book nerd. If your ideal autumn involves prowling through Victorian letters while a storm rages outside, taking baths in crumbling old manor houses and sighing over love thwarted and love gained, Possession is the book for you. And for those who miss school (but not its over-caffeination and assigned reading), A.S. Byatt’s awe-inspiring creation of not only the work of two poets but also the modern scholarly commentary surrounding them will scratch that essay-writing, argument-crafting itch—sans the all-nighter. —Savanna, Assistant Editor 

Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar
Scalding, flavorful, and unapologetic, this poetry collection invites readers to scrutinize its speaker’s struggle with alcoholism, desire, and mental obstruction. The reader is welcomed into madness, ardor, misery and silence, but this is not our madness, our sadness, or our experiences. We may not have experienced alcoholism, but we are allowed to smell the same odors, hear the cacophony of a bar and call out to the speaker’s hope. This collection taught me that poetry is never about the reader, but is ultimately an act of generosity. I thank this book for the warmth it gave me, for I needed a comforting drink to withstand its multiclimatic world. Ultimately, I found myself warm enough—and secure enough—to ditch my cup. —Prince Bush, Editorial Intern

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
If your perfect walk through autumnal woods—fallen leaves in fiery hues crunching beneath your boots, the scents of mist-damp soil and October’s chill filtering through the air—comes with the sense that something is hiding behind every tree, waiting just ahead at every crook in your path, something not sinister but curious about your strange mortal ways, then may I suggest settling down with An Enchantment of Ravens once your latte has chased your chill away? Full of tricksy fairies, a delicious slow-burn romance and plenty of wit and literal Whimsy (the name of the village where Margaret Rogerson’s characters live), it reads the way autumn feels, deep down in your bones. —Stephanie, Associate Editor

It’s the time of year when pumpkin spice suddenly flavors everything. But what if autumn were distilled into a book? The mixture of crispness and warmth, the thrill of possibility, the bittersweetness of change—these books are pure pumpkin spice.

The Art of Fielding by…

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5 audiobooks to feed your pop culture diet

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

From lowbrow to highbrow TV, from comic books to rock ’n’ roll, here are five audiobooks to feed your pop culture diet. Whether your ears are tuned to licentious behind-the-scenes stories or erudite critiques, there’s something for anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the last century.

Bachelor Nation, written and read by Amy Kaufman
This is an absolute must-listen for anyone who’s ever watched “The Bachelor” and wondered what goes on behind the scenes, and for anyone curious about the tricks employed by reality TV. We learn how producers use editing to tell whatever story they want to tell, no matter what was really said. Any casual viewer knows how petty the contestants can be, but this book reveals just how ruthless the people behind the scenes can be, too. If you ever audition for the show, never reveal your fear of heights, unless you want to be the one selected for the sky-diving date. Whether you love the show or love to hate it, the juicy, tell-all nature of this audiobook makes it hard to press pause.

I Like to Watch, written and read by Emily Nussbaum
Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker, shares a collection of essays that treats television with respect, acknowledging it as the art form it has become. Twenty years into what many call TV’s second golden age, this is the perfect time to look back on the pivotal shows like “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and even “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” all of which set TV on the path it’s on today. She delves into the difficult question of the #MeToo era: Can we still consume art by bad men? I found myself nodding along to the whole audiobook. It’s a thoughtful, opinionated collection of essays and a masterclass in critical writing.

Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, written by Joe Hagan, read by Dennis Boutsikaris
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s life makes for a fascinating lens through which to view the changing music- and magazine-publishing industries in the later half of the 20th century. He created legends, cementing John Lennon’s legacy as a rock god and building up the mythology behind rock ’n’ roll and the 1960s as a magically creative time. He lifted up the careers of Annie Lebowitz, Cameron Crowe and Hunter S. Thompson. He’s also a total narcissist, and this book pulls no punches. He puts profits over friendship time and again. He’s a successful business mogul, but at what cost? Joe Hagan had incredible access for this book and doesn’t hold anything back.

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, written and read by Glen Weldon
This book tracks the history of Batman from his origin as a Shadow knock-off, created to compete with Superman, and through all his permutations in comics, movies and cartoons. Author Glen Weldon posits that the most essential part of Batman is his pledge: When his parents are murdered, he vows to defend the defenseless. The adaptations that have ignored this part of his character are the ones that fail to connect with readers and viewers. Weldon draws a distinction between male and female fans: Male fans complain, make death threats and beg creators for the version of Batman they most relate to; female fans create their own versions, with stories they want to hear, using the characters they love in fan fiction. Weldon is a dynamic narrator, adopting New York and Scottish accents when quoting comic book authors. His “mad fan” voice is particularly skewering.

My Life as a Goddess, written and read by Guy Branum
Writer/comedian Guy Branum uses pop culture as a framing device for his memoir. As a kid, he watched old TV shows to learn about the world. His essay “The Man Who Watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is a beautiful portrait of his relationship with a father who didn’t quite understand him but was proud of him. He does a line-by-line breakdown of “Bohemian Rhopsody” by Queen, interpreted as a coming-out tale that shines a whole new light on the song. Branum’s repeated line “and then I remembered, I am a Goddess” is an inspiring mantra that will boost any listener’s self-confidence. He has a way of throwing out biting asides that make this audiobook that much more fun than the book.

From lowbrow to highbrow TV, from comic books to rock ’n’ roll, here are five audiobooks to feed your pop culture diet.
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Gift books: For the film buff who dreams in black and white

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

A glamorous person deserves a glamorous present.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life: They usher readers behind the scenes and offer a bit of dish, a lot of insight and plenty of glam Old Hollywood fun.

The Hollywood Book Club by Steven Rea
Steven Rea’s The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars is filled with black-and-white photos of actors from Tinseltown of yore reading at home and on set, poolside and at kitchen tables. The stars’ artful poses and occasional sly grins keep things interesting, a la Gregory Peck looking up from To Kill a Mockingbird. Film critic and photo archivist Rea’s witty captions add color and context. He explains the meaning behind the featured books and offers insider details (Edward G. Robinson collected French Impressionist art; Bette Davis’ husband wanted a divorce because she read too much). This fascinating dive into Hollywood history is a splendidly starry way to add to your TBR pile.

Letters from Hollywood by Rocky Land & Barbara Hall
Rocky Lang and Barbara Hall know movies. Lang, son of a studio executive, is a producer, director and writer; Hall is a film historian and archivist. Their compendium Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking is an excellent reference and engrossing exploration of American film from the silent era through the 1970s. Letters to and from famous actors, directors and more (Bela Lugosi, Katharine Hepburn, Claudia McNeil, Irving Berlin, Tom Hanks) are augmented by photos and other ephemera. Film buffs will revel in flipping to favorite luminaries, checking out surprising pen pals, admiring vintage stationery design and pondering the vanished art of writing letters. As Peter Bogdanovich writes in the foreword, “What a great idea!”

The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Basinger
At the beginning of The Movie Musical! Jeanine Basinger writes, “I was raised on musicals, and I love them.” That affection is evident in this 650-plus-page master class and love letter to the form and its practitioners. The author, a film historian and author of 11 other film books, takes readers on an edifying journey through the evolution of Hollywood musicals, from “the arrival of sound” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer to present-day extravaganzas like Bohemian Rhapsody (and La La Land, which she Does Not Like). She offers insight on what makes a musical, reveals the ways in which art and business collide and assesses the appeal of everyone from Gene Kelly to Diana Ross to Channing Tatum. Devotees will delight in revisiting beloved films—and making a list of musicals to watch ASAP.

Home Work by Julie Andrews
In this follow-up to 2008’s Home, Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton dive into Andrews’ movie-making era, which began in 1962 when Walt Disney offered her the lead role in Mary Poppins. In Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, the authors bring us along on Andrews’ thrilling movie star journey with fascinating revelations about films like The Sound of Music, Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Andrews’ second husband Blake Edwards’ 10 and That’s Life (the latter was their final film together; he died in 2010 after a 41-year marriage). Andrews was initially insecure in front of the cameras, but that soon gave way to using stage-honed instincts to inhabit characters from the outside in—via costumes and wigs, as well as, say, giving Ms. Poppins stiffly turned-out feet “to punctuate the impression of Mary’s character when flying.” Andrews shares diary entries, too, as she muses on the perpetual tug-of-war between family and work; the depression that plagued so many colleagues, including Edwards; and memorable trips abroad. Home Work is a multifaceted and absorbing 20-year tour of Hollywood through the eyes of one of its most beloved players.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life.

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Audio: December 2019

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

★ Medallion Status
In his laugh-out-loud new memoir, Medallion Status, John Hodgman navigates his new life as a former celebrity, as he discovers that he’s less famous than a pair of Instagram dogs. He explores his obsession with achieving higher levels of loyalty status to his favorite airline and shares the private spaces he’s been admitted to, including a party where a man who walked on the moon feels unworthy of attending,  a top-secret lounge at the airport and his favorite fancy Hollywood hotel. He also shares places he’s been prohibited from entering, including a Scientology center said to contain a bottomless pit and Mar-a-Lago. In this excellent memoir full of astute moments of nuanced observation, Hodgman explores his myriad interests, from extinct hockey to ska, which inform his unique perspective. This is definitely one you’ll want the audiobook for, as Hodgman’s delivery really helps his jokes land. There’s also one line in the memoir that Hodgman can’t bear to read aloud; you need to hear the A-list celeb he brings in to read it.

Make It Scream, Make It Burn
Leslie Jamison’s essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn cover a wide range of topics. In the opening essay, “52 Blue,” she talks about a whale whose call is twice as loud as all other whales in the ocean, and about his human devotees who have ascribed their own meanings to his call, projecting loneliness or heartbreak onto the whale and creating stories about his life. In other essays, Jamison learns about people living through the video game Second Life, about a photographer who spends 20 years traveling to Mexico to photograph the same family and about her own experience of becoming a stepmother and buying the wrong Frozen doll. Jamison reads in a direct, matter-of-fact voice, underscored with a tinge of longing. Her narration emphasizes the melancholic but hopeful tone of the book.

Now You See Them
Detective Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto return in Elly Griffiths’ fifth Magic Men mystery, Now You See Them, set in mid-1960s England amid battles between gangs of mods and rockers. When an American matinee idol comes to town and one of his biggest fans goes missing, Detective Stephens is on the case, but his wife, a former detective, gets ideas of her own for how to solve it. As more young women disappear, the race is on to find the kidnapper in this light mystery with a fun setting. With a background in British theater, James Langton brings his acting chops to the narration. His proper English accent is well suited to the material.

New audiobooks from John Hodgman, Leslie Jamison and Elly Griffiths make for excellent listening.
NonfictionFictionAudioMemoir

Audio: January 2020

Feature by Anna Zeitlin

Three recent stellar audio releases.

★ The Witches Are Coming
The titular feminist rallying cry of The Witches Are Coming echoes throughout Shrill writer Lindy West’s latest collection of essays, which explores personal stories and pop culture through the lens of our current political reality. West has a wonderfully dry wit, and her biting narration makes her essays even funnier. Just the way she reads the chapter title “Is Adam Sandler Funny?” had me laughing, and then she goes on to explore not only Sandler’s jokes but also their impact on a generation of men. In another essay, she describes attending a conference by Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, Goop, which she approaches with an open mind, allowing folks to have fun with their crystals, then points out the class disparities of the wellness industry. West brings humor and her resolutely feminist perspective to each topic.

Me
Elton John reflects on his life in Me, looking back on his youth as a poor boy in a broken home, his years as a struggling musician and eventually his life as a rock legend and humanitarian. He speaks with distance and clarity about his bulimia and addictions to cocaine and alcohol. He finds humor in those dark days, like the time Andy Warhol showed up at John Lennon’s apartment, and Lennon and John had to pretend they weren’t home so Warhol wouldn’t capture their piles of cocaine with his famous Polaroid. John’s friendly rivalry with Rod Stewart pops up throughout the book, as each takes great pride in sabotaging the other and gloating over his successes. John is ready to retire from the road and wants to spend more time with his family, but he clearly isn’t done creating. He reads the beginning and end of the audiobook, with Taron Egerton taking over the bulk of the narration. Egerton recently played John in the biopic Rocketman, and he easily jumps back into the role, providing a dynamic narration filled with earnest enthusiasm.

Nothing to See Here
In Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, Nothing to See Here, Lillian leaps at the chance to help her former best friend, Madison, despite past betrayals. Madison is married to a wealthy Tennessee senator, and when his ex-wife dies, he takes in their two children. But the thing is, these kids burst into flames. Lillian drops everything to become their governess and help Madison raise these weird fire children. This bizarre, captivating novel questions what makes a family and satirizes Southern gentility and politicians. Marin Ireland does a great job with the narration, creating unique voices for each character that reveal their personalities, even the young children’s.

Three recent stellar audio releases.
★ The Witches Are Coming The titular feminist rallying cry of The Witches Are Coming echoes throughout Shrill writer Lindy West’s latest collection of essays, which explores personal stories and pop culture through the lens of our current political reality. West…
FictionMemoir

Book Clubs: Matters of the heart

Feature by Julie Hale

Recommending four stellar book club reads that focus on the complications of love.

Lauren Groff’s electrifying, acclaimed novel Fates and Furies chronicles the vagaries of romantic passion through would-be actor Lotto and elusive Mathilde—a picture-perfect pair who meet in college and marry young. Through sections told from the perspective of each partner, the novel tracks the ups and downs of their 24-year union, and the two narratives powerfully play off each other. Mathilde’s secrets will surprise readers, and the book has a headlong momentum that suits its subject matter. From start to finish, it’s a thrilling look at the risks and rewards of love.

Mary Parsons, in debt and contending with health problems, is hired as part of actor Kurt Sky’s Girlfriend Experiment in The Answers, by novelist Catherine Lacey. Kurt aims to find a formula for the ideal romantic relationship, so he partners with women who have been prompted to display certain traits, such as Maternal Girlfriend and—in Mary’s case—Emotional Girlfriend. Mary is soon swept up in Kurt’s strange drama, and the narrative that unfolds is a disquieting and provocative exploration of the logistics of love.

Ian McEwan’s novel The Children Act tells the story of Fiona Maye, a respected judge coping with both a failing marriage and a difficult legal case. Nearly 60, Fiona finds herself at odds with her unfaithful husband while she grapples with a judgment involving a young Jehovah’s Witness, who, by forgoing medical treatment because of his religion, may die. This thorny ethical dilemma will provide fodder for book club debate. McEwan’s portrait of Fiona—an assured, confident figure who hides her vulnerability all too well—is wonderfully complex, and he presents a sensitive portrayal of a marriage that has reached its last chapter.

Poet Maggie Nelson reflects on gender, love and the nature of modern marriage in her remarkable memoir The Argonauts. Nelson, who is married to the transgender artist Harry Dodge, writes with candor about her experiences as a partner and new mother. Chronicling Dodge’s testosterone treatments and the process of her pregnancy (which involved in vitro fertilization), Nelson reflects on the changes in her understanding of partnership and the meaning of family. Rich in ideas, her book is a fascinating excavation of matters of the heart.

A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale selects the best new paperback releases for book clubs every month.

Recommending four stellar book club reads that focus on the complications of love.

Lauren Groff’s electrifying, acclaimed novel Fates and Furies chronicles the vagaries of romantic passion through would-be actor Lotto and elusive Mathilde—a picture-perfect pair who meet in college and marry young. Through…

Science Fiction & FantasyNonfictionFictionYA FictionYAMemoir

The Hold List: A love letter written to me

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Greek to Me by Mary Norris

Mary Norris is sort of my idol. A grammar virtuoso, with a storied career editing some of the greatest writers of the last 40 years, and she studied Greek? In college I minored in Koine Greek, an ancient language so systematic that translating a sentence often feels like solving an algebra problem. In fact, my love for the precision of Greek led me to my current occupation as an editor. Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen is so suited to my interests that reading it makes me physically giddy—but I assure you that people with fewer than 18 credit hours of Greek to their name will also find plenty to love here. Norris is a sharp-witted, word-perfect narrator, and her wells of knowledge are as deep as they are lyrical. Anybody with a reverence for words will bow down to this book.

—Christy, Associate Editor

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

I’m a simple woman with simple tastes, and if a book can be genuinely described as a “romp,” I’m probably going to like it. Scott Lynch’s debut novel is a romp set in a fantasy version of Venice populated by con artists, gangsters and a cranky priest/mentor named Father Chains, so I was contractually obligated to love it to pieces. Our titular hero, a snarky trickster who’s very bad with a sword but very good at swindling people out of their money, decides to continue his most ambitious con yet, even though the mysterious Gray King is killing off members of the criminal underworld. Irrepressibly funny even as it goes to some very dark places, Locke Lamora’s heart is pure gold, albeit a bit crooked.

—Savanna, Assistant Editor

Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds

Throughout life, I have lost many things. Many of those things cannot come back, and many of those things have been people. Every time I return to this collection, I am susceptible to a sense of longing. Every loss becomes current again, even the things I’ve recovered: The one that got away is getting away, the neighborhood I left is leaving, the dead in my family are dying. In my own poetry, I am open to returning to any point in my life, even the most heartbreaking. I love longing and reading about longing. Sharon Olds’ obituary for her marriage brings about feelings I share and enjoy taking notice of. I have found an abundance in loss, and I think, more likely than not, it can unite and bring about something else, or someone else—that someone else possibly being a better me.

—Prince, Editorial Intern

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

I was 7 years old the first time I heard a pennywhistle. It was on a Chieftains cassette my mom played in the car. Something about that music—the plaintive whistle, the lumbering bagpipes, the sprightly fiddle, the pulsing bodhran—called to something deep in my bones. That same call sings in Maggie Stiefvater’s award-winning novel The Scorpio Races, a salt-soaked, wind-whipped ode to the way a fast horse at a flat-out gallop can feel like flight and freedom. The story is set on a small fictional island off the coast of Scotland you’ll be shocked not to find on a map. If you’ve ever experienced the bittersweet desire to visit a place that feels real but isn’t, the next boat for Thisby leaves on the first page of The Scorpio Races.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger

I moved away from Minnesota when I was 11, so I can’t claim any ownership of its lakes and woods beyond my earliest memories. But almost better than those recollections is the Minnesota that lives in my imagination, and Leif Enger has contributed to that vision in no small way. Minnesota is a heavenly and forbidding landscape, this I know to be true, but I’ve never had a chance to understand the people who choose to live in such a cold place. Enger’s stories give me a little bit of that, and his third novel finds the members of a small town doing their best to cultivate some collective healing. The reader is looped in to their process through Virgil, who’s attempting to reclaim his life after a car crash. Like the kites flown over Lake Superior by an elderly character, the heart can’t help but lift.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

The Hold List features special reading lists compiled by BookPage staff—our personal favorites, old and new. 

When a book finds its ideal reader, it feels like the best kind of magic—as if the author has written a love letter straight to you. Though these books are loved by many, we accept them as the perfect gifts that they are.
NonfictionMemoirFilm

Eight memoirists share which parts of their true stories will be hardest to believe

Feature by BookPage contributors

In celebration of Memoir March, we asked the authors of eight groundbreaking memoirs what readers will love about their life stories—and which parts are even stranger than fiction.

author photo of Dolly AldertonDolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love

Dolly Alderton recounts her many mishaps—including a drunken evening when she thought she was in Oxford, not London—through essays, satirical emails and recipes. Alderton isn’t afraid to share unflattering moments or to laugh at herself, and readers may find solace in realizing they aren’t alone at the party. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
I am happy about how truthful it is—which makes it uncomfortable for me to read back sometimes, but it’s a really honest account of an ebullient, rocky, unpredictable period of my youth that a lot of people go through, and I wrote it truthfully.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book? 
Someone who is after riot and revelation in equal measure from an imperfect antiheroine. 

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
That I took a taxi across 100 miles at 4 a.m. Both me and my student bank account overdraft wish that was a made-up anecdote.

 

Barry Sonnenfeld, author of Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother

In this funny, wry and thoroughly entertaining memoir, the legendary cinematographer and director does more than name-drop or recall Hollywood vignettes. Barry Sonnenfeld is, above all, a storyteller, and while his own journey from a skinny, French horn-playing kid to a successful director drives the breezy narrative, he takes time to bring supporting characters irreverently to life. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
That people tell me they laughed out loud reading it.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
Readers looking for a surprisingly good time. Or a sad time. Anyone interested in films and how they ever get made.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
There are so many unbelievable but true things: Being paged at Madison Square Garden during a Jimi Hendrix performance; surviving a plane crash; surviving my mother’s cooking; being bar mitzvah’d in a Catholic church; selling M.C. Hammer my ’62 Lincoln Continental; becoming a successful director.

 

Erin Khar, author of Strung Out

Any book about addiction is actually a book about feelings and the lengths that people who are suffering will go to avoid feeling them. Erin Khar’s memoir is a compassionate account of her illness and will surely be the gold standard for women writing about heroin addiction. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
What I love most about my book is the way readers have told me they connect with the story. For people who’ve struggled with addiction, it helps them feel seen, feel less alone. For people who have not experienced addiction, it helps them understand addiction in a way they hadn’t before.

Readers have also told me how much they found they could relate to, and that surprised them. I love that! I wanted the narrative to reflect a human experience, to present addiction not as an aberration but as a human condition, one that 2 million Americans struggle with. Reframing how we view addiction will go a long way in helping people.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
Definitely memoir readers and fans of addiction and recovery narratives. But beyond that, anyone who is interested in understanding what is at the heart of the opioid crisis.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
I think it’s hard for people to believe that I was able to hide my addiction for as long as I did, but the people who were closest to me were absolutely shocked when I went to rehab. In my teenage years, I didn’t display the “warning signs” of addiction. I got straight A’s in school, participated in lots of extracurricular activities and had plenty of friends. We have ideas about what a drug addict looks like or acts like, but the truth is addiction can happen to anyone, can look like anyone.

 

Alex Halberstadt, author of Young Heroes of the Soviet Union

Beginning with childhood memories of his parents’ troubled marriage and divorce, resentment toward his absent father and embarrassment over grandparents who made no effort to conceal their foreignness, Russian American author Alex Halberstadt slowly pulls away the curtain draped over his family’s unhappiness. What he finds is startling: a grandfather who served as a bodyguard to Stalin, and who became known to Halberstadt as a fragile man who still wrestles with the truth of the atrocities he at least witnessed, if not perpetrated. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
One of the themes my book deals with is the relationship between personal lives and the larger currents of history, and what I love is the way my book braids together personal stories with episodes from Russian history while telescoping back and forth in time. For me, nonfiction is always most compelling when it’s grounded in the specifics of people’s stories.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
I think my book would particularly appeal to readers interested in family stories, 20th-century history, Russia, the Holocaust, immigration and intergenerational trauma.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
My grandfather was very likely Stalin’s last living bodyguard and for years operated as a double agent, splitting his loyalties between Stalin and the head of the Soviet secret police, Lavrenty Beria. Some days it seems unbelievable to me, too.

 

Evan James, author of I’ve Been Wrong Before

The ragged ways we fall in and out of relationships are at the center of these dazzling autobiographical essays, as Evan James ponders the complexities of love, lust, sexuality and longing against the backdrop of his world travels. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
I love that I set out to write a lighthearted book of comedic personal essays and that, over the course of years spent tinkering with them, I upended many of my own assumptions about myself and my loved ones in the process. As I say in one essay, “We settle for so little knowledge of each other.”

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
A reader with an open mind and a sense of curiosity about life in all its absurdity. A reader who wants to have a laugh while reading about world travel, past lives, psychic mothers, drag queens, drugs, dating, ghosts, day jobs.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
Readers might find it incredible that I’ve had so many fascinating love affairs—or that I was, apparently, Lord Byron in a past life.

 

Philip Kennicott, author of Counterpoint

Philip Kennicott’s engrossing memoir explores his impressions of his late mother. But even more than these grief-stricken reflections, it is Kennicott’s intimate insights into the way Bach’s music speaks to all our lives as they wind their way toward our inevitable deaths that makes this book an unforgettable triumph. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
I thought I was going to write a book about Johann Sebastian Bach and his magnificent keyboard work “The Goldberg Variations,” but as I started writing, it became a book about my mother and the grief I felt when she died almost 10 years earlier. I wasn’t expecting that. I’m an art critic who writes for a daily newspaper, and I try not to use the first-person voice too often. But the process of writing this memoir kept drawing me ever deeper into memory and forced me to think about what had been a complicated and difficult relationship. I kept wondering, can anyone possibly be interested in this? When I was finished and showed the manuscript to a few people, they said it was the family part they enjoyed most. That was a relief, because I struggled to weave together anecdotes about my childhood and the original idea for the book, which was a memoir about learning how to play a complex piece of music. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. If we really dig into the emotions we feel in the present, we find that they have deep roots in our past. Writing about Bach, and my struggles with his demanding music, inevitably led me back to some of my earliest memories, to a time when my mother and I used to make music together. It refreshed things that had been buried for a long time, mostly in a good way.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
If you took music lessons as a child or are studying an instrument as an adult, I think you will love this book. And I hope readers who are interested in memoir and have a general curiosity about music will find something of interest here. I tried to write about music in ways that are specific but not technical, and to explain why Bach’s Goldberg Variations is one of the enduring masterpieces of Western music. But this is also a book about something we all know or will know in life: the pain of losing someone close to us. As I write in the last chapter, grief brings us meaning, it makes life more intense, and it makes us impatient with silly, trivial things. It binds us to other human beings. I hope those things are of universal interest to readers.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
There’s a chapter in my book about a month I spent alone in an old house practicing the piano and reading. Except for a few trips to the grocery store, I saw no one during that period, and the isolation was seductive. I realized after a few weeks that I was thinking more about my mother than I had at any other point in my life, thinking about her more sympathetically and working harder to piece together who she had been and why she had been so unhappy. It was an emotionally volatile few weeks. And one day, as some of the darker clouds in my head were lifting, I went on a long walk and heard a strange flapping in the grass along the roadside. It was a bird caught up in some kind of netting or plastic. I managed to free it, and it flew away. I thought, what a cliché. And then I thought, well, it happened, and it is the sort of story my mother, who was a passionate bird-watcher, would have loved. So I included it in the book.

 

Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings 

Cathy Park Hong offers a fierce excavation of her hardships as an Asian American woman living and working as a poet and artist. Historical traumas and cultural criticism are woven through this erudite collection of personal essays on family, art history, female relationships and racial awareness. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
I love it because it’s my most honest, vulnerable and bravest book to date. It’s also my personal intervention against what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls the “single story,” which is basically the same tired racial narratives that we hear over and over again that comfort us rather than makes us rethink how we perceive others.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
I’m writing directly to Asian Americans, rather than writing about Asian Americans to a white audience. But I think so many people would enjoy this book: other people of color, immigrants, women, millennials, the curious-minded, people who don’t mind being challenged.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
That I had a brief and unfortunate foray into stand-up comedy.

 

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Children of the Land

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s powerful, poetically infused memoir adds a soul-searing voice to the canon of contemporary immigration narratives. Undocumented as he crossed over the desert into California as a child, temporarily blind from the stress, he grows up riddled with the shame of his family’s invisibility. (read the full review)

What do you love most about your book?
I love that I was given the freedom to cordon off sections, or chapters, or even single scenes as complete units in their own right and, more so that they are all of different sizes. Something special happens when text is placed alone in a sea of blank space like a tiny island made of language.

What kind of reader do you think will most enjoy your book?
I don’t think I could say who will enjoy my book most, but perhaps I could say who might get the most out of my book, and for different reasons. I am not afraid of critics looking from the outside in (I can shut away that noise) but rather of disappointing people who share similar experiences with me.

What is one thing in your book that’s true that readers may think you made up?
I think it might be difficult for readers to accept how little healing there is in the book, and they may think I cherry-picked only the most emotionally difficult parts of my life with the belief that it would automatically translate into empathy for the reader. I truly wish that were the case, that somewhere out there, I’m living a life where I’ve moved on and put all of this behind me. I was always keenly aware of presenting joy that is at times enmeshed with grief.

In celebration of Memoir March, we asked the authors of eight groundbreaking memoirs what readers will love about their life stories—and which parts are even stranger than fiction.

author photo of Dolly AldertonDolly Alderton, author…

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