What I’ve read this week
THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY by Jennifer Croft
I’m fairly certain I will never read another work in translation without thinking about this strange and wonderful novel about a team of translators who gather in Poland to work on their beloved author’s newest novel (Jenny is the English translator for Olga Tokarczuk’s work). Disorienting in the best way, EXTINCTION has one of those unreliable narrators (or translators or whoever it is who’s telling this story!) who is slowly and then very quickly losing it, and mayhem ensues. If that isn’t enough, the fungi of Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake also make memorable appearances, perfect metaphors for how language both unites and divides us.
DEAD IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA by Venita Blackburn
I picked this first novel up thinking I was getting a gritty but fun neo-noir kind of thing, but DEAD IN LB is so much weirder and more profound than that. It takes place over the course of a week, starting when Coral, a sci-fi writer who’s lonely despite of (or partially because of) the fandom surrounding her big book, finds her brother’s body after his suicide. Overwhelmed by grief, Coral decides not to tell anyone for a little while, posing as her brother over text messages. But here’s the fun part. DEAD IN LB is narrated by the very same narrator(s) as Coral’s novel: the machines who took over the world in a post-Singularity very far future. So we follow Coral’s sad journey through the lens of the all powerful machine trying to study and make sense of the enigma of that was the human being.
SHY by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green
I listened to the audiobook version of SHY read by Christine Baranski and it was perfection. The daughter of composer Richard Rodgers, Mary grew up surrounded by brilliant men — not just her father and his collaborators — she and Stephen Sondheim were tight; she dated Hal Prince for a minute. She was a composer in her own right and an author (Freaky Friday, among others) and seemingly a tremendous party host. Mary, who died in 2021, seems like the kind of woman who would be a nightmare to work for, but absolutely ideal to gossip and drink cocktails with. Jesse Green, the theater reporter for the NYT, in helping Mary’ to write her memoir, really captures her voice and has annotated her bon mots with great wit and care. Delightful! SHY is maybe what Barbra’s book could have been if she’d allowed anyone to edit her or co-write with her (not that I’m complaining).
New to the to-read pile
All are available to pre-order at Bookshop.org
A word about publicity lunches
There aren’t many perks to being a book critic. The books, obviously. But beyond that, staff jobs are on the decline and rates have dropped since I first started freelancing about 15 years ago. I know very few freelancers who earn a living wage covering books. It’s pretty grim.
But there are the lunches. The lunches! When a publishing imprint want to show off a particular author or a particular season of books, they might hold a lunch so that members of the media can meet the authors IRL. Depending on the publisher’s budget, this is likely the fanciest meal I’ll eat all week.
The invite list to such lunches contains editors, staff writers, and freelancers. Most of the people I see at lunches have attended in at least two out of three of these capacities at various times. The media landscape keeps changing; the lunches provide a little bit of stability, community, a bit of a social life. We celebrate together when one of us gets a spiffy new job (and a seat at the table closer to the author — the bigger the job, the more access to the VIPs) and we commiserate when that spiffy job goes away.
The lunches are also a bit of a mind fuck, because of course I don’t want to trade good press for a nicely plated chicken breast and a glass of Sancerre. But I also can’t help feeling more open to reading and enjoying an author’s book after I’ve had an in-person conversation with them or their editor or agent or publicist.
These lunches force us to focus our attention on the books the publishers really want to get behind, and that’s a good thing. My advance reader copies pile can become a bit of an overwhelming blur; anything that helps me differentiate the titles is helpful. That said, I attended a press lunch for only one of my top 10 favorite books of 2023.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want to be open about the way I choose which book to read next. It’s not fair. Most authors don’t get fancy lunches, and many authors don’t want to have to perform for the press. Imagine if Cormac McCarthy had had to sit through a meal with me and a bunch of other NY media people. A nightmare! But it’s also undeniable, given my enormous to-read pile, that making a personal connection is a way to get a book to the top.
Bonkers email of the week
Yes, this publisher is indeed distributed by Simon & Schuster. Nothing to see here. I cut off the name of the poor publicist who had to send this communication because I’m not that mean.
New releases, 4/23/24
Here are the newly published books I’m most excited about this week. I haven’t read most of these yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
REBOOT by Justin Taylor
But wait, this one I read and loved. It has been more than a few years ago since I learned that Justin was watching every episode of Dawson’s Creek for book research. Suffice to say, I was intrigued. But teen dramas are just a way in. REBOOT is a fun yet sometimes deadly serious novel about the nature of fame (and post-fame), the horrors of the internet, the tunnel vision of conspiracy theorists, all with a frisson of climate anxiety and a bunch of philosophical musings. As surreal and funny as the best episodes of Buffy, REBOOT also features a socialist Gowanus bartender who writes overly intellectual explainers of popular teen dramas for almost no money on a culture website. What can I say, I like to see people like me depicted in literature.
PRAIRIE, DRESSES, ART, OTHER by Danielle Dutton
I JUST KEEP TALKING by Nell Irvin Painter
SHAKESPEARE: THE MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT by Judi Dench
YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY by Sasha Vasilyuk
Save the date: this Saturday
Find your local store here.
HA omg maris
as an author and an extrovert, i would LOVE to have lunch with a bunch of book reviewers! because we are all lovers of books, of course. 😍