Out of Ideas

But filled with recommendations!

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I find myself out of ideas this week.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’m curious about this week, including two essays published at The Cut that had lots of virtual tongues wagging online.

The first was by Charlotte Cowles, the publication’s financial advice columnist who shared the unbelievable series of events that led to her putting a shoebox with $50,000 inside in the back of a car, after she’d been targeted by a group of scammers.

The twists and turns of the story make for a riveting reading experience, as the scammers manage to override every single one of Cowles’ doubts, starting with a phone call telling her that her accounts had been compromised, and ending with that shoebox full of money.

The audience’s primary reaction to the essay seems to cycle from disbelief (How could that happen?) to judgement (I would never let that happen.) to fear (What if it happened to me?).

The other essay was by novelist/essayist Emily Gould, titled “The Lure of Divorce,” and while the piece about getting scammed out of $50,000 is more immediately arresting, what Gould is up to in her piece is more interesting to me as a reader and writer, and invokes a number of different cultural hot points that map how different audiences come at a piece from different angles. I think I have some things to say about the disturbing tendency of some readers to respond to attempts at interesting and true expression by leading with their moral as opposed to their aesthetic judgement. Emily Gould is a terrific writer and requires no defending from me, but it’s an interesting and well-told essay. Because she is an excellent writer, and because she writes about her life, Gould has long shown a talent for drawing attention to herself and her work, and I think this can drive some writers toward feelings of jealousy.

I had some notions of exploring the double standards that women are sometimes held to when they write about their lives, particularly when they are as forthright as Gould is in her work, but gathering those thoughts, working through them, and then saying something even marginally coherent seems beyond me at the stage I find myself with this stupid book.

Yes, I am at the stage where I am calling it “this stupid book,” even though deep down I’m quite pleased with how it’s turning out. It’s just that I’m at a moment where I’m maxed out on my brain’s capacity to wrestle with the many moving parts going into the revised version. Shifting from using my brain to work on that problem to a totally different subject just isn’t in the cards this week.

But! This means that I can go ahead and work through a good chunk of my backlog of recommendation requests so people aren’t waiting weeks and weeks to hear what they should be reading. I’ll get to those after this week’s selection of links.

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I pay tribute to the venerable Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California, which is for sale to a new owner after operating for 140 years in the hands of a single family.

As I worried over in a previous newsletter, the so-called “Science of Reading” movement that has resulted in canned curriculum produced by educational mega-publishers that relies on decontextualized excerpts, seems to be unconcerned with addressing the importance of motivation in reading.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction Announced its longlist. This is a picture of it.

LitHub has a list of 23 new books that were released this week.

Via McSweeney’s this week, “The 25th Annual Conference of Women Mentioned in Rock Lyrics” by Lisa Borders.

Recommendations

1. Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo
2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
3. The Latecomer by Jean Hannf Korelitz
4. Be Mine by Richard Ford
5. The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Paul D. - Berwyn, PA

For Paul, I’m recommending an all-time classic WMFUN. I’m talking about A Fan’s Notes by Fredrick Exley.

1. Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy
2. Trust by Herman Diaz
3. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
4. The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Tom W.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, a mesmerizing work of history, science, and imagination looks like a good fit for Tom.

1. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
2. I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
3. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
4. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
5. Galatea by Madeline Miller

Helen N. - Austin, TX

Emily Gould’s Perfect Tunes, a novel about a woman of talent and ambition facing the challenges of single motherhood is a snappy and emotionally potent story.

1. South to America by Imani Perry
2. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
3. Trust by Hernan Diaz
4. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
5. Dalva by Jim Harrison

Foss K. - San Clemente, CA

This is a book that I think most people don’t know or remember, but I found it a sharp and funny novel of intrigue sort of a cross between Graham Greene and George Saunders, so this should be interesting to Foss. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer.

1. Spare by Prince Harry
2. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
3. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
4. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
5. A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

Karen R - Beverly Hills, CA

I think Karen will enjoy Sigrid Nunez’s sly and moving novel about a woman’s relationship with her dog, The Friend.

1. Hamlet by Shakespeare
2. Heads by Jesse Jarnow
3. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
4. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
5. Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind by Mike Jay

Bryan P. - Warfield, Berkshire, England

When I see someone who has sought out both Pynchon and Paul Murray, I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity to recommend one of my sleeper favorites of the last 10 or so years, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor.

Alrighty, that has just about cleaned out the inbox, excepting a few I’ve held back to make sure I have a sufficient supply going forward.

Get busy filling up that inbox!¹

I do recommend everyone read both of those essays I’ve linked above. You won't regret it. Tell me what you think in the comments.

Back to the old book revision mines. I’ll be here one way or another next Sunday. I hope you’ll join me.

JW
The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $23.80.