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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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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.
Nonfiction

Well Read: November 2019

Feature by Robert Weibezahl

Most readers today know Dorothy L. Sayers as a mystery writer—creator of the golden-age detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane—but in her lifetime she was also renowned for, among other things, her theological essays and a popular translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. But as Mo Moulton tells in The Mutual Admiration Society, Sayers was also at the center of a circle of female friends, formed as Oxford University undergraduates, who became lifelong supporters of one another and their socially progressive work in the arts, academia and the advancement of women’s causes. Moulton’s detailed portrait of these smart, tradition-breaking women highlights not only their lesser–known accomplishments but also the strength they derived from each other at a time when women were only just beginning to demand and receive their due.

When Sayers arrived at Oxford’s Somerville College in the years before World War I, women were allowed to attend the same lectures, do all the same coursework and take all the same exams as their male counterparts, but they were denied an actual degree. (That “privilege” came a few years later, along with the right to vote and other overdue liberties.) Undeterred, Sayers and her female peers threw themselves into their academic and extracurricular pursuits with sometimes giddy abandon. A fluid contingent of six or seven of them banded together to form a writing group they dubbed the Mutual Admiration Society with intentional irony—preempting any outside criticism from those who would invariably accuse them of being elitist or clannish. The young women were all from similar middle–class Edwardian backgrounds, although their political leanings and worldviews varied to some degree. 

After university, the women’s lives followed sometimes concurrent, sometimes divergent paths. Most became writers or scholars, although one became a midwife, child-rearing expert and birth-control advocate. Moulton chronicles their public accomplishments and personal episodes with evenhandedness, including their romantic attachments to both women and men and the small scandals that shaped them individually and as a group. 

What Moulton best accomplishes in this intimate and scholarly book is a re-creation of a world in transition. The Mutual Admiration Society came of age at a vital juncture in history, a time of new opportunity for women (although still limited by today’s standards). Steadfast, these women seized that opportunity and formed what Moulton calls “a profoundly optimistic project”: “Loving one another, they built a kind of family beyond the structures of patriarchy. . . . Offering one another space for reinvention, they helped to change what it meant to be born female in the twentieth century.”

Most readers today know Dorothy L. Sayers as a mystery writer—creator of the golden-age detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane—but in her lifetime she was also renowned for, among other things, her theological essays and a popular translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. But as Mo Moulton tells in The Mutual Admiration Society, […]
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooksArt

Gift books: For the friend with the best dinner reservations

Feature by Thane Tierney

These books jump out of the oven and onto your shelf.

The holidays are galloping upon us like so many overachieving reindeer, and that means many of us are in vapor lock, wondering what to get our gastronaut (please, NOT “foodie”) friends and family. The possibilities run into the thousands, if not millions, but we’ve trekked off the road more traveled to discover some volumes that will surprise and delight.

Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview edited by Melville House
In Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview, the late chef, author, journalist and raconteur, never shy about expressing his opinion, states his case about food: “Well, there’s nothing more political. There’s nothing more revealing of the situation on the ground, whether a system works or not.” His words serve as a good guide through all these books, and in a person’s wider eating life.

Women on Food edited by Charlotte Druckman
Historically speaking, the “system,” especially as it pertains to women in restaurants, hasn’t always worked all that well. While the Irma Rombauers and Julia Childs and M.F.K. Fishers of the world were given wide berth in waxing poetic while guiding homemakers, in the pro kitchens of the world they were often overlooked or demeaned (or worse). No more. In Women on Food, editor Charlotte Druckman enlists the aid of a talented brigade, including the likes of Nigella Lawson, Dorie Greenspan and Julee Rosso, to articulate the state of the food world from a female perspective. As the joke goes, “What do you call a woman chef?” “Chef.” I am in sympathy with the authors in hoping for a day, and soon, when we look back on a book like this and wonder why it was necessary. 

Chicken Genius by Bernard Radfar
Moving from the political to the aesthetic, Japan, perhaps more than any nation, has given life to the adage that “we eat with our eyes first.” And so it is with Bernard Radfar’s Chicken Genius: The Art of Toshi Sakamaki’s Yakitori Cuisine. Aram Radfar’s informative, imaginative photography, alongside the book’s step-by-step recipes and techniques, is a delight to the eye as well as the appetite. It may take you a while to bring your knife skills up to pro level, but this book will aid you at every step, starting with the proper way to disassemble a whole chicken with some degree of craft, and just possibly art.

Delicious Metropolis by Wayne Thiebaud
Speaking of art, let’s turn to Wayne Thiebaud. He couldn’t have grown up anywhere other than Southern California for his canvasses to look the way they do. In Delicious Metropolis, he rolls out a dessert cart overflowing with pinwheel lollipops, pastel-frosted pastries and the promise of an endless summer, not a cloud in sight . . . unless it’s made from whipped cream.

Eat Joy edited by Natalie Eve Garrett
And if every picture tells a story, it’s also true of every recipe, as Natalie Eve Garrett and her contributors prove in Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food From 31 Celebrated Writers. From Anthony Doerr’s hilarious recipe for brownie mix (“Sit on floor. Cut open bag of brownie mix. Add water. Stir. Eat with fingers. Repeat when necessary.”) to Rosie Schaap’s moving tale of her first Passover Seder as a widow in New Mexico, Garrett has gathered not only the “what” of her talented essayists’ relationships with food, but more importantly the tragedies and triumphs behind the “why.”

Vignette by Jane Lopes
If I were able to offer only one book to someone who cares to know about wine, it would be Jane Lopes’ Vignette: Stories of Life & Wine in 100 Bottles. Light and frizzante as a moscato but thoroughly researched, the book walks you through the often confusing world of viniculture with recommendations that will give you the confidence to peruse any carte du vin with authority.

Ruffage by Abra Berens
At a time when many of us are moving toward a more plant-based diet, Abra Berens’ Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables provides a veg-by-veg road map studded with tips, techniques and recipes geared toward getting the most out of the stuff we grow. Sure, you’ve grilled corn, but have you puréed it? Have you ever braised celery? Have you marinated peas? Berens not only shows you how but also explains why you should. It’s not strictly vegetarian, but it does place the plant at the center of the plate, rather than as an afterthought or mere side dish.

As Bourdain says in The Last Interview, “There are no secret recipes. There are no secret techniques. Everything that you learn in a kitchen you are either told, open-source . . . or you have learned it over time, painfully.” With these books, you can sidestep some of those missteps—or just look at the pretty pictures. Either way, you’ll come away with a greater appreciation of the culinary arts, both visual and practical.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and writes extensively on food-related topics both in magazines and on his blog, templeofthetongue.com.

These books jump out of the oven and onto your shelf.
NonfictionChildren's & YAYA NonfictionYAMiddle Grade

Illuminating the past

Feature by Deborah Hopkinson

Three new books for young readers—a work of nonfiction, a novel and a unique memoir—offer fascinating insights into World War II, an era that helped shape the world we live in today.

The seeds of World War II were planted during the aftermath of World War I. Harsh financial penalties imposed on Germany, combined with the devastating effects of the Great Depression, contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. Andrew Maraniss explores the prewar period for young readers in his masterful Games of Deception, which reveals the little-known story of the first United States Olympic basketball team. They competed in 1936, the year basketball debuted as an Olympic sport—and the year the games were held, amid controversy, in Hitler’s Berlin.

Young readers will likely be unfamiliar with much of this history, including the boycott efforts that surrounded the games, but Maraniss is an effective storyteller who skillfully paints a picture of the past by focusing on individual people and evocative details. Along with the players’ stories, Maraniss also introduces ordinary people who became eyewitnesses to history; these include a German Jewish boy named Al Miller who never forgot what it was like to watch Jesse Owens run.

The 1936 Olympics were, of course, a prelude to the horrors to come, and Maraniss follows his story through to the war’s end. Full-page photographs, a bibliography and a timeline enhance the book. A fantastic afterword traces Maraniss’ research process, including his meeting with 95-year-old Dr. Al Miller, who managed to escape Hitler’s Germany.

Alan Gratz’s latest novel, Allies, zeros in on one of the most dramatic military operations of all time: D-Day, the invasion of Normandy. Gratz has previously combined meticulous research with compelling characters and action-packed scenes in bestselling books such as Refugee, Projekt 1065 and Grenade. Allies is no different, as Gratz once again draws readers into history.

The novel opens with Dee Carpenter riding in a Higgins boat through the rocking waves on his way to Omaha Beach. Dee is a 16-year-old from Philadelphia who has signed up for the U.S. Army with a fudged birth certificate. But readers find out something else at the end of the first chapter: “His real name was Dietrich Zimmermann, and he was German.”  

The book also follows Samira, an Algerian girl in the French resistance who is trying to sabotage the German occupation and find her mother, with (she hopes) the help of a fearless little dog. Supporting characters include a Jewish soldier, a Canadian paratrooper and a character based on the famed African American medic Waverly “Woody” Woodson, who was part of the all-black 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on Omaha Beach.

Allies is timely, not merely because of this year’s 75th anniversary of D-Day but also for its contributions to discussions of how individuals, communities and nations can be allies in today’s world.

Like Waverly Woodson, Ashley Bryan was also on Omaha Beach. Now 96 years old, Bryan has published numerous books for young readers, including the Newbery Honor book Freedom Over Me. Infinite Hope is the extraordinary memoir of this hugely beloved figure in children’s literature. Like many veterans, Bryan has never talked about his military service, so his story may take people by surprise.

When his draft notice arrived in 1943, Bryan was a 19-year-old art student who was already familiar with prejudice. One art school interviewer told him his portfolio was the best the school had seen, but “it would be a waste to give a scholarship to a colored person.” With his teachers’ encouragement, Bryan was accepted to Cooper Union, which judged applicants blind. Even this did not prepare Bryan for what he would experience when he joined the Army. “As a Black soldier, I found myself facing unequal treatment in a war that Blacks hoped would lead our nation closer to its professed goal of equal treatment for all.”

Infinite Hope tells the story of Bryan’s journey as a stevedore in the 502nd Port Battalion through mixed media, with large photographs interspersed with sketches, paintings and excerpts from his diary and letters. The result is both an intimate portrait of Bryan himself and a rare insight into the African American experience of World War II and the invasion of Normandy, where Bryan worked nonstop on Omaha Beach unloading cargo in the months after D-Day. Later, while guarding German prisoners of war in France after the war’s end, Bryan realized the Germans were given more respect than black American soldiers. After arriving home in early 1946, Bryan locked his WWII drawings away and rarely spoke of his experiences.

Infinite Hope makes Bryan’s incredible artwork, created in the midst of war, available for the first time. It is a must-read for young people, parents, educators and anyone interested in World War II. Most of all, it is the work of an inspiring American who truly embodies infinite grace.

Three new books for young readers—a work of nonfiction, a novel and a unique memoir—offer fascinating insights into World War II, an era that helped shape the world we live in today. The seeds of World War II were planted during the aftermath of World War I. Harsh financial penalties imposed on Germany, combined with […]
PhotographyMemoirLiteratureFilmArt

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.

NonfictionBiography

Well Read: December 2019

Feature by Robert Weibezahl

An admiring new biography enshrines the great American poet’s formidable work and complex life.

When Elizabeth Bishop died 40 years ago, she was a respected poet with a small core of devotees, says Thomas Travisano, author of the new biography Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop. In the ensuing years, Bishop has come to be recognized as a significant American writer of the 20th century, whose precise, sometimes elusive work is built on technical mastery and filled with lyrical, singular observations. Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society, is an unabashed fan of the poet, but his study, while admiring, is hardly a blind-eyed hagiography. An impressive blend of erudition and enthusiasm, Love Unknown offers an insightful, engaging look into this complex woman’s life and work.

Travisano suggests that much of what came to define Bishop—including her shyness, her chronic health problems, her drinking and, one would surmise, her poetic talent—grew out of two defining events from early childhood: her father’s death when she was only 8 months old and her mother’s subsequent mental breakdown, which essentially rendered young Elizabeth an orphan at age 5. Her upbringing was placed in the hands of both her paternal family in Massachusetts and maternal relatives in Nova Scotia, and this rootless shuttling back and forth most likely played a role in her lifelong wanderlust. As a child, Bishop was chiefly a loner, yet despite the emotional remove of those early years, she became an engaging, if retiring, adult. 

The portrait Travisano paints is one of a likable woman in control of her own destiny, good to her friends, comfortable in her own skin and certainly not apologetic about her eccentricities. Love Unknown is not a juicy tell-all, for Bishop’s life was not scandalous or scabrous. Even her lesbian identity in a less-accepting age seems to have been a fact she accepted and absorbed with little turmoil.

Travisano has spent decades immersed in Bishop’s work, and he beautifully incorporates her poetry and other writings throughout the narrative, finding both its sources and significance. Exploring Bishop’s seminal relationships with other poets, including Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, Travisano considers their reciprocal influences and places Bishop squarely in the context of her time, solidifying her place in the midcentury literary canon. Another friend and poet, James Merrill, famously remarked that Bishop “gave herself no airs. If there was anything the least bit artificial about her character and her behavior, it was the wonderful way in which she impersonated an ordinary woman.”

Bishop was anything but ordinary, as Love Unknown reminds us. And like the poet herself, the peerless poetry she left behind is also anything but ordinary.

An admiring new biography enshrines the great American poet’s formidable work and complex life. When Elizabeth Bishop died 40 years ago, she was a respected poet with a small core of devotees, says Thomas Travisano, author of the new biography Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop. In the ensuing years, Bishop has […]

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