Kaplan's Plot, by Jason Diamond: A Big-Shouldered Debut

You won't find a more Chicago-ey novel published this year than Jason Diamond's debut, Kaplan's Plot. In fact, Kaplan's Plot is actually two Chicago novels in one -- which makes it as overstuffed with Chicago goodness as a Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza or a walk-off home run at Wrigley Field or a double char dog from the Wiener's Circle. (Sorry, I'll stop now.) 

I got to see Diamond at the Chicago release party for Kaplan's Plot a few weeks ago, at which mentioned he always has trouble with his elevator pitch for this novel when someone asks him what it's about. Though he does it very well, I know what he means now. There is a lot going on this book, and it's not easy to summarize succinctly. 

But here goes: Kaplan's Plot is about a disgraced tech bro named Elijah who returns to Chicago from the Bay Area after his partners were indicted and his company folded. His mother Eve, a semi-famous poet, is dying of cancer and Elijah decides there's no better time than the present to dig into his family's past. That past? A grandfather (Eve's father) named Yitz Kaplan, a Chicago gangster in the 1920s and 1930s operating from Chicago's famed Maxwell Street. So these two stories intertwine -- Elijah learning about Yitz and his secrets, and Yitz's escapades happening in-scene. 

The alternating past-and-present scenes, especially when a character in the present is trying to learn the secrets of the past, is a risky structure. It's difficult to parse out information in a way that makes it still seem surprising and fresh both to the characters and the readers. But Diamond pulls it off here. One thing he does well is make each alternating chapter similar in length -- this may be a personal preference thing, but when I'm reading alternating timelines, and we spend 20 pages in one and then 10 in another, I naturally start caring more about the longer section (and it's a subtle signal the writer does too!). But here both stories are given equal weight, and I think doing so helps make the novel successful. 

Plus, compelling characters, a drama-rich plot with secrets and twisty turns, and getting so many great Chicago details in two separate timelines all make this just a lot of fun to read. Not that Diamond's Chicago cred is in question (he grew up in Evanston), but this post on the Chicago Literary Canon on his popular Substack, the Melt, should quell any concerns. 

So yes, if Chicago novels are your thing -- or you're just a fan of well-written family dramas -- this one's for you. Highly recommended! 

Thomas Pynchon Is Having A Moment. Let's Have One with Him

Happy Thomas Pynchon Day to all who celebrate! Today is the day Pynchon's probably last novel, Shadow Ticket is out and in the world. My review of the novel is up at Chicago Review of Books. Here's a little preview:

Thomas Pynchon would prefer not to be introduced. Which is fine, because by now, on the occasion of the publication of his ninth novel, Shadow Ticket, the 88-year-old famously reclusive writer needs no introduction anyway.

Pynchon is one of only a few members of the pantheon of writers whose names are also adjectives. Orwellian (dystopian). Kafkaesque (surreal). Dickensian (includes orphans?).

Please click over and read -- I had A LOT of fun writing this one. My editor called it "a banger." 😅

So yes, Shadow Ticket is out in the world. And woah boy, this is A MAJOR Publishing Event! 

Here is how I know this is Major Publishing Event: First, a couple bookstores around the city, and in Milwaukee (hello, Boswell Books -- one of my favorites!) where the novel is partially set, had midnight release parties last night. When is the last time you can remember midnight release parties for a tricky literary fiction novel?!?

Second: Let me tell you a quick story about just getting an Advanced Reading Copy to be able to review it. Normally, the process is very easy -- you email the publisher, tell them you're reviewing for a publication, and they send you the ARC. This time, I had to prove the assignment, which meant getting the Chicago Review of Books editor to email the publishing team to assure I had indeed been assigned the review. When the ARC arrived, it was an individually numbered copy. Mine is No. 101 of 192 -- which, what an odd number of ARCs to make! I've been writing about books on the internet for almost 20 years, and I've never seen that before. I thanked the team profusely and told them I'd guard it with my life. 

Thirdly, the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday 10/9, and Pynchon is one of the favorites. NicerOdds -- a British bookmaker -- has him at 11/1 odds (the same as Haruki Murakami, by the way -- either of those two winning would make my week!). Can you imagine our boy Tommy pulling down a Nobel on top of everything else? Would he attend the ceremony?!? 

BUT ALSO! Have you seen One Battle After Another??? The Paul Thomas Anderson film has been making huge waves in the cinephile community -- and it's "inspired by" Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. I have not read Vineland, but I saw the movie last weekend. Verdict: It's worth the hype...and then some. I'm far from an expert film reviewer, but it gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. 

Finally, all this chat about Pynchon has renewed interest in Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow. I spent six months tangling with that novel way back in 2010. I felt like I survived GR, more than read it. Here was a conversation (made up, of course) I had with my boy Tommy on the occasion of finishing that nearly impenetrable novel. 

Now I'm off to rewatch The Simpsons, Episode 10, Season 15 for the 782nd time. "Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!' Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!" 😂

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan: A Sweeping but Intimate 20th Century Epic

Both of my grandparents on my mother's side were born, raised, lived their entire lives, and died in Tiffin, Ohio -- a small town in the northeast about an hour from Toledo. Dick and Dorothy Puffenberger were front and center in my mind as I read Patrick Ryan's debut novel, Buckeye.

Covering a half-century of the lives of two couples and their families, Buckeye is set in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio (though real places I know well from visiting my grandparents, like Findlay, Fostoria, and yes, even Tiffin make appearances). Margaret and her husband Felix, and Becky and her husband Cal are the same generation as my grandparents, so it felt like I was reading a sort of fictional version of the lives of their friends and neighbors.

But even if you're not lucky to have had grandparents who lived in a small town in Ohio, if you enjoy a good multi-generational saga chock-full of secrets, lies, regrets, deception, and drama, you'll dig Buckeye. 

At once sweeping and intimate, Buckeye is about how life even in small town America is not insulated from the effects of massive world events. Beginning with World War II and ending in the 1980s, Ryan tells us the story of the uniquely American 20th century through the eyes of these two couples who become inextricably intertwined. 

One of things that Ryan does well here is making it possible for readers to continue to empathize with good people who make bad decisions. That's such a difficult thing to pull off in fiction -- and especially given how we're programmed these days to write someone off for a single indiscretion. Sometimes good people do bad things. How they respond to those poor choices is the meat of this novel, and Ryan seems to be saying, how they really should be judged. 

My biggest complaint about this novel is that, even at 450 pages, it feels too short. We spend more than two-thirds of the novel on just a few years. But then we sort of do the "fast forward montage" thing and skip ahead too quickly. It felt like there was opportunity to really flesh out the relationships between the couples' kids and give them more room to grow on the page. I'm probably in the minority on this -- no one likes long books anymore. But I felt like this could've been a 900-page masterpiece in the vein of David Wroblewski's Familiaris or Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water. 

Still, what's here is fantastic -- and it's already become a huge word-of-mouth hit. Grab your drink of choice, your coziest sweater, and lose yourself in this story. 

Playworld, by Adam Ross: Parents Just Don't Understand

Playworld, by Adam Ross, is a long, often dense, sometimes directionless novel about a teenage actor’s coming of age in early 1980s NYC. But more so, it’s about adults being constantly and consistently disappointing.

I should’ve loved this — it feels like a throwback novel. There are some Dreiser vibes here, especially An American Tragedy (so it’s likely not a coincidence our character here is named Griffin, which is close enough to Griffiths?). Griffin is tossed along on an ocean of circumstance (naturalism, anyone?), and dealing with issues not of his making and far above his maturity level — a gross wrestling coach, an affair with an older woman, paying for his own schooling, a small amount of notoriety from his acting, etc.

This should’ve worked splendidly, but…it just felt aimless. None of Griffin’s individual issues, which are HUGE DEALS, ever really felt like they were given the weight they deserved. Instead, we spend a ton of time on Griffin’s first age-appropriate crush — which, had that been the novel, would’ve been fine (and the book would’ve been about 200 pages shorter).

The biggest issue in Griffin’s life, however, is how every adult he wants to rely on — teachers, coaches, his fellow actors, and most notably his parents — lets him down. It feels to him like every adult in his life is just playacting at being an adult. Others have compared this novel to a slightly more modern The Catcher In The Rye, but Griffin is not nearly as adept at Holden Caulfield at identifying the phonies. So it’s no wonder Griffin struggles. 

Look, Ross is a magnificently astute writer -- he's really good at crafting long (again, often dense) paragraphs teasing out a single idea. I loved these and often looked forward to them more than the next plot point. And I will definitely read whatever it is he does next (though it's been 15 years between novels, so who knows), but this was a miss for me. 

Five Thoughts Upon the Occasion of Finishing Lonesome Dove

Earlier this summer, I put up a poll on Instagram asking which "dead white guy" book I should read this summer: Lonesome Dove, The Grapes of Wrath, or The Brothers Karamazov. Lonesome Dove won in a landslide! I had no idea so many people -- and so many people from a WIDE swath of otherwise disparate literary tastes -- had read and loved this book. I heard from writers I admire, readers with whom I hadn't talked in months, even an old friend from college -- all said Lonesome Dove was one of their favorite novels of all time.

Parallel to this was another thing I didn't even know about, but soon discovered: Lots and lots of other people were also reading Lonesome Dove. In March, Esquire even published a story titled "Why Is Everyone Reading Lonesome Dove?" The easiest explanation, and these days, the one immutable rule of book trends: When something weird happens, blame TikTok. BookTok may partially explain it, and Larry McMurtry's death in August 2023 certainly helped renew interest, but likely the biggest reason: It's just really freakin' good. BookTok occasionally leads us astray (cough, Colleen Hoover, cough cough), but in the case of Lonesome Dove, it led us to the promised land. And I'm super glad for once to be caught up in good book trend. 

And so in mid-June, I began my Lonesome Dove journey. I spent about six weeks with this novel, whittling away its 858 pages a chapter or so a day. I finished it yesterday. I absolutely loved it. Here are five random thoughts. 

5.  The Lonesome Dove Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is real -- After I started reading the novel, I began to see it everywhere. Sports personality Ryen Russillo posted on Threads just a couple days ago, "Lonesome Dove really picks up after the first 300 pages" (he's not wrong). Host of NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me" Peter Sagal recommended it to someone on Bluesky. I got fed an ad for Peacock with a promo for the late-1980s miniseries with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (not gonna lie, that creeped me out a little). And so, whether it really was, or I was just noticing it more, Lonesome Dove was/is ubiquitous. 

4. The "head hopping": A craft no-no that somehow works here -- McMurtry does something here with his omniscient narrator every writing teacher you've ever had has warned you against doing: Head-hopping. What that means is that sometimes he jumps from characters' thoughts to characters' thoughts from paragraph to paragraph. At first this was a little distracting. You have to pay attention to be sure you know whose having a think now. But eventually you just learn that's how this book is going to be and you deal with it. Pulitzer Prizes won by Larry McMurtry 1, Pulitzer Prizes won be me 0. So who am I to nit-pick?

3. Man vs. nature -- I feel like this is a too-easy comment, but I have to say that I sure would not have made it as a cowboy. Not only do I not like to go more than a day without showering, I hate snakes, bugs, and anything with more than four legs. In this book, there's a scene where a dude dies after being attacked by water moccasins. There's a several-hours-long grasshopper storm. A bull and a bear engage in a fight to the death (which consternated the Chicago sports fan in me). And that's just the tip of the grassy plains. Yikes. No thanks. 

2. It's a very long novel, but it doesn't feel long, and it's deep, but the pacing is just right -- It only took me a while to read, because I was reading lots of other things concurrently. But man, when you sink into this book, you really sink in. Such an amazing adventure. One of my biggest surprises in reading this novel was the depth of character. There is a ton of interiority here! I don't read a ton (any!) Westerns, and the blurb on the back tells you that if you're only going to read one Western, make it this one, and so that's advice I'll probably follow, but I was really impressed by how fully realized these characters feel, especially because there's so many of them, and especially because some of them are women.

1. Gus McCrae is now one of my Top 5 favorite characters in all of literature -- If you judge your protagonists by how much you'd like to have a beer or six in the bar with them, as I do, well then that's why Gus is now in my top 5. The wise-cracking, long-winded former Ranger is as quick with a quip as he was on the draw back in his day. But now that he's older and has hitched his wagon permanently to the irascible Call, he's more about the chat than the chase. And that's just fine. Because this guy is infinitely entertaining. At least to us. Not so much to Call.

A Bookish Scavenger Hunt, or The Time I Almost Lost a Rigged Contest

We booksellers often joke at the bookstore that when someone comes in to ask us for a vague recommendation like "I just want a good page-turning book," we freeze -- like we've never read a book in our entire lives. It's not that we don't have any ideas, it's that we have TOO MANY good ideas -- paralysis by choice, sort of. (To be fair, we do go through the progression -- "what do you usually read? what have you read lately that you've liked?" -- and that usually jars a few ideas loose.)

So when the hosts of the Chicago Writers Podcast, Dan Finnen and Michael Welch, cooked up an idea (there may have been a beer or two involved) to try a video Book Scavenger Hunt version of their popular podcast, and invited me to be a contestant, I was both excited, and terribly, terribly nervous. Would the Bookseller Freezing Phenomenon happen for something like this too? 😬

Here's how it worked. Dan came up with categories, like "the book that would be the best bad gift for your grandparents" and "the most Greg Zimmerman book here" (see how rigged this was!), and Mike and I had to run off to find a book that best fit the category. Then, RoscoeBooks' owner, Erika VanDam, judged which book we picked won each category. 

I am nothing if not a gracious winner. Much credit to Mike, who had to overcome a hostile and unfamiliar environment, a very biased referee, and extremely Greg-friendly categories. 😂 He made it close. 

Watch the whole video below (or at YouTube).

Shelf Lives, Vol. 5: The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

I'm writing this in a bookstore. RoscoeBooks. The bookstore at which I've been a part-time bookseller since November of 2014 -- nearly 11 years. November and early December of 2014 is also when I spent two of the best reading weeks of my life with The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.

I'm not sure there's another book on my shelf that so quickly elicits such strong memories and sense of time and place as this one does. It's almost like one of those scenes in a horror movie when a character accidentally touches a talisman of some sort and the music crescendos and we get a horrifying glimpse into that character's evil past deeds of murder most foul. When I flashback to when the bookstore opened, it's not quite horror movie vibes...but if I'm honest, it's close.

The store opened on November 21, 2014 -- the Friday before Black Friday. We were a small staff of four, plus our owner, who was venturing into the book business for the first time. Only two of us actually had any bookselling experience at all. What could possibly go wrong? 

That first holiday season at the store was pure, unadulterated chaos. The neighborhood was SO EXCITED to get a bookstore, and there was never a moment when we weren't absolutely slammed. Combine that with the fact that we hardly had any freakin' idea what we were doing and those first few weeks in holiday-rush December were weeks that tried our souls. We hadn't yet perfected our system for special orders, and I'm sure there were several disappointed customers who'd ordered books for gifts that didn't arrive in time. We almost never had any of the popular books in stock because they'd sell out as soon as we got them back in. We didn't even have a website yet! 

But we made it. What we lacked in expertise, we made up for in hustle and pure love for the books. For the most part, people were cool. There was an occasional annoyed customer (everyone's frazzled during the holidays), but people understood we had just opened, and were so happy the neighborhood had a bookstore, they were willing to forgive us our sins. We told ourselves in January that that first month was as difficult as it'd ever be. If we'd gotten through that, we could navigate anything. (That turned out to be true until March 2020 rolled around...but that's another story.) 

November 2014 -- a few days after the store opened.

I finished The Bone Clocks (here's my review) on a mid-December afternoon right before an evening shift at the bookstore. I remember I was almost late because when I closed the book, I couldn't move. I was almost sobbing, so sad it was over. But mostly just stunned. How could what I just read have come from another human mind? 

And the book itself? It's bonkers. Just absolutely nuts. It's six interconnected stories set over 60 years centering on the life of one Holly Sykes. There's no easy way to summarize what Mitchell is up to here. Many readers are probably more familiar with Mitchell's breakout smash Cloud Atlas, and this book has a similar vibe. But more. So much more. It's the story of good vs evil on planes of existence only David Mitchell could write. And it's all set in what Mitchell calls his "uber-novel" -- a universe of his recurring characters. 

When I first finished the book, I wrote that it may creep its way into my top five favorites of all time, but I needed some distance before I could make that call. Here we are, 11 years later, and I can tell you it's still there -- still an all-time favorite. And I'm still here, working (and writing) in a bookstore. The Bone Clocks and RoscoeBooks --- two things inextricably linked, both of which I love dearly. 

Pan, by Michael Clune: A Splatter Pattern of Images, Light, and Color

I love it when a book unwittingly (or perhaps very wittingly) describes itself. Here's a sentence from Michael Clune's debut novel, Pan: "Good writing, I came to believe, was the careful, painstaking replacement of each part of the world with a part that looked the same, but was deeper, more mysterious, richer."

Good writing -- which this book decidedly exhibits -- describes the world in new ways. It attempts to take something common and make it extraordinary, to render something recognizable with a fresh veneer, to give readers a new and original way of looking at the world.

No wonder writing is so goddamn difficult. 

In Pan, though, Michael Clune succeeds in doing exactly what his character describes as good writing: He uses an array of linguistic acrobatics to make a story deeper, more mysterious, and richer. A seemingly straightforward plot about a teenager suffering from panic attacks and anxiety and trying to figure out why and how to ease his pain is rendered both recognizable and empathetic, but also completely fresh.

Readers often bandy about the cliché that good writers just see the world differently than normal people. Do they, though? Or are they just able to describe their experiences of the world better than anyone else? 

In fact, that's really what this novel is about: How do each of see the world? How are our experiences, both external and internal, unique or universal? How do we tell? Sometimes something that seems universal might be actually be unique. 

There's the classic color conundrum, which I honestly think about quite a lot. So I nearly fell off my chair when I read this sentence from Clune: "No one knows how color really looks to anyone else. It's the definition of a private experience. All we share are the names." 

Clune then goes off on a long tangent about the color of the sky in Gilligan's Island, which is both hilarious and profound, and an example of the many joys in reading this book. 

Indeed, in total, this novel is a splatter pattern of descriptions of images and light and color literally unlike anything I've ever read. Language in Clune's writing is malleable, formable, turn-able, twistable, and the result is writing so unexpectedly fresh and original, it was hard for me to put this book down. Not because the plot was riveting, but just because I couldn't wait to see what new joys the next sentence would bring. 

Almost unfailingly, the next sentence was surprising. I probably read this book way too quickly -- sometimes I got a little lost in the abstractions. Or maybe they were just too abstract and worked better in Clune's brain than they did on the page? Either way, this novel is truly a singular reading experience.

The Quirk's The Thing: Five Books That Make You Go Hmm...(In a Good Way)

I just finished reading Kate Folk's debut novel, Sky Daddy -- a really fun and funny read, which is successful because Folk is able to keep the main quirk of the novel going throughout the whole book. The main quirk? The protagonist is sexually attracted to planes. I know! But it works. And I was in awe of how Folk MAKES this work throughout a carefully crafted plot about making your way in an absurd world. 

The book got me thinking about other sort of quirky novels in which a character has an odd trait or sexual proclivity or just something generally quirky that you wouldn't think could work for a whole novel, but totally does. Here are five.

Nothing To See Here, by Kevin Wilson -- My go-to summation of this novel that hasn't let me down yet: It's the funniest book you'll ever read about spontaneously combusting children. Very much like in Folk's Sky Daddy, I went into the novel assuming the quirk (some may say "plot device" or "premise") is a metaphor for something, but about two-thirds of the way through the novel, I was having too much fun and gave up trying to figure out what it was.

Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino -- Here, the quirk is that the character is an alien and her sexual proclivity is actually that she doesn't much like sex at all. To read this book, though, is to love it -- and the quirk that the character is an alien and has to report back on the absurdities of humanity, which does manage to work all the way through the novel, is more timely now than ever. 

The Teleportation Accident, by Ned Beauman -- A very deep cut here (in fact, I just discovered as I went to try to link to this book that it's out of print, and that both blew my mind and made me sad), but I love Ned Beauman and if you're looking for something really quirky, really strange, and REALLY EFFING FUNNY, try this book about a dude in 1930s Germany whose quirk is that, against all odds, he just can't seem to get laid. Here's a quote from the book that may help you determine whether or not you'll like it: "Love is the foolish overestimation of the minimal difference between one sexual object and another." Make sense? Good. 😂

Bunny, Mona Awad -- Maybe this books is less quirky and more just "WTF DID I JUST READ?"...but in a good way, yes?  I guess I'm cheating a little here including this book because it could technically be categorized as horror, and then all bets are off regarding quirk. But Bunny is unique enough -- and the "rules" of the novel inventive enough and work well enough all the way through -- that I'd be remiss NOT to include it. (The sequel to Bunny titled We Love You, Bunny, is due out September 23.

Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon -- Slothrop, Pynchon's quirkiest of all quirky characters, gets a boner in the exact spot a rocket is going to land. Why? How? Does it matter? Who effing knows. A decade or so ago, I spent six months reading this book -- and Slothrop's boner quirk is basically the only thing I remember about it. Well, that and there's a chapter narrated by a lightbulb.  

What am I missing here? Give me your favorite novels with a quirky plot device! 

Waterline, by Aram Mrjoian: All Happy Families Are Different

Tolstoy famously wrote "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is, of course, bullshit. Well, the second part is probably right, but the first part makes no sense. What even is a "happy family"? Does a "happy family" require that every member of the family is happy 24/7?  What happens when a happy family suffers a tragedy? Do they immediately become in irredeemably unhappy family? 

Aram Mrjoian's debut novel Waterline is a beautifully rendered portrait of a previously happy family, the Kurkjians, who become an unhappy family when tragedy strikes. 

Brothers Edgar and Karo, live next door to each other with their wives and families in Grosse Ile, Michigan, a small community south of Detroit. When Karo's daughter Mari commits suicide, both families are jolted from their quiet, middle-class lives. 

Mrjoian's portrays each family member's attempt to come to terms with the trauma over the course of a couple months in the immediate aftermath of Mari's death. One goes on a cross-country roadtrip. One finds relief in pot and booze. One, has an affair.  

All the while, the legend of their patriarch Gregor, who escaped the Armenian Genocide and heroically helped save members of his village, casts a contextual shadow over the family's post traumatic resilience. In fact, I'd argue that family legends -- not how families are unhappy -- are what make even happy families unique.

I loved this book -- read it in two days. (I can't help but think I when I read a book so quickly that at some level it must be frustrating to the writer to spend so long writing, polishing, and publishing a novel, only to have it whisked through like a dinner buffet. Sorry, Aram!) Mrjoian writes with subtle humor, deep insight, and sharp wisdom. He's a joy to read, and I can't wait to see what he does next! 

The New Dork Review Best Books of 2025...So Far

I thought it was strange that "best of the year so far" lists started appearing in mid-May this year. What's happening? Way too early! Does Esquire Magazine not know how to count? (Because if you're going to do a mid-year "best of" list, you have to at least wait until the halfway point of the year, right? I know, I know, Old Man Yells at Cloud.) 

But so, now that we ARE past the halfway point of the year, here are my six favorite books of 2025 so . 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin -- I rather like this quote from my original review of this fantastic novel, so here you go again: "The novel is about how to re-carve out your space in the world when you basically have to start from scratch. It's about choosing your friends and the people you love carefully...and cutting out the people in your life who hurt you, even when they're family. Family is a privilege, not a responsibility."

The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison -- One of the highlights of my year so far is this conversation at Chicago Review of Books with Evison about this novel -- his best yet, in my view. This was the first 2025 book I read, and it'd be a massive upset if this sweet tale of a 70-year marriage doesn't wind up on this same list at the end of the year, too.

So Far Gone, by Jess Walter -- Jess Walter, as you know if you read this post, is one of my all-time favorites, and this book feels like something of a "greatest hits" album for his career. In the best possible way.

The Antidote, by Karen Russell -- This is easily the biggest surprised-that-I-liked-it-so-much book of 2025 so far. A multiple narrator, magical realism, historical fiction...that somehow just works amazingly well. Part of the reason it works amazingly well is that Russell writes sentences that leave you breathless. 

Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley -- This is the recommended-to-me book of 2025 that now I can't stop recommending to everyone else. A story about the fraught process of collaborative creation, especially when feelings get involved. 

The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie -- This is the best genre-bending novel of the year so far -- a thriller with the heart of literary fiction. I was so excited to hear Ron Currie was back this year, and even more excited at how great this novel is. 

The Whyte Python World Tour, by Travis Kennedy: Don't Need Nothin' But a Good Time

In John Wray's recent metal novel Gone to the Wolves, there's a scene at a party in late-1980s LA. The characters, who are into death and extreme metal, take in a full room of glammed-out buttrockers and wonder, wouldn't this whole scene just come crashing down if one person were to look around and laugh at them. I mention that now both because that is an absolutely hilarious observation, and because it's a perfect preamble to this review. 

Sure, the 80s glam/buttrock/hair metal scene seems objectively funny in retrospect. But what if there was a method to the hairsprayed, headbanging madness? In Travis Kennedy's hugely fun debut novel The Whyte Python World Tour, we are taken on a wyld ryde with the world's greatest glam rock hair metal band as they quite literally endeavor to change the world. 

Wow, is this book fun...and yeah, a lot silly. 

Our star is one Rikki Thunder, a drummer for a just-hanging-on hair metal band called Qyksand. But Rikki finds his fortunes turn when a beautiful woman named Tawny (if you didn't read her name and, like me, immediately think of this 1987 Whitesnake video, well, I'm sorry your sexual awakening wasn't more fun) enters his life. At first, Tawny seems like a typical 80s metal groupie, prowling the Sunset Strip for her next score. But as Rikki soon learns, Tawny is much more complex. She gets him an audition for the up-and-coming band Whyte Python, which he nails, and the band begins its quick ascent to rock stardom.

But here's the question: Can butt rock really change the world? In the waning days of the Cold War, it just might. Whyte Python whips around the world, playing for rock-starved audiences behind the Iron Curtain, as various intelligence agencies and secret police organizations jockey for control of the band's tour and the hearts and minds of its fans. 

The flap copy for this novel describes it this way: "Crafted on the satirical knife-edge between high suspense and headbanging hilarity." I'd say it very much crosses the line into hilarity -- it's more spoof than satire. But what it does well is make you keep turning the pages to find out what ridiculous goofball scheme these rock stars will get up to next. And of course there's a big twist. 

Unlike Whyte Python's power to change the world, this book may not change your life. But it will leave you with so many good laughs. If you dug the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star or the more recent Netflix movie Metal Lords, which my brother Geoff and only partly facetiously call "the greatest movie of all time," you'll love this book, too.

Like a butt rock song itself, it's pure brain candy -- 400 pages of dumb fun. I had no idea this book was in the world until a few weeks ago when the brilliant Liberty Hardy of Book Riot fame posted about a new novel that's an "80s metal band spy adventure." I freaked the f&*k out, honestly -- talk about a book written squarely in my wheelhouse. And it delivered: What great fun! Bret Michaels even makes an appearance. 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong: Beauty in the Sorrow

The heavy metal band Trivium isn't your traditional heavy metal band. To accompany the band's crushing guitar riffs, frontman Matt Heafy writes poetic, evocative lyrics based on Greek myths, traumatic events from his childhood, and art, war, and history. I love the stories in the band's songs as much as I love their sound.

When I picked up Ocean Vuong's stunning new novel The Emperor of Gladness, it only took a few pages before Trivium's song "Beauty in the Sorrow" became the theme music for this read. Sure, a heavy metal song and a literary novel may sound like an odd pairing. But odd pairings are very much the point of The Emperor of Gladness. A major theme is that we should look deeper into the disparate, and when we do, we can often find commonalities.

Vuong, of course, is also known for his poetic, evocative prose, and though this is the first time I've read him, I suspect this novel is fairly representative of his style. What surprised me about this book, though, is how readable and accessible it is. Sharply crafted sentences. Images that make your jaw drop. But also, characters who are doing interesting things, have fascinating backstories, and interact with each other such that even if there's not much plot, you still read along quite quickly.

The Emperor of Gladness is set in 2009 amidst the Great Recession in a small, drug-addled, rusty town in Connecticut. It's about two sad (indeed, sorrowful) characters who form an unexpected symbiotic relationship which blooms into a deep friendship. When we first meet 19-year-old Hai, he's about to jump off a bridge and end his short, drug-addicted life. But Grazina, an 82-year-old Lithuanian woman, sees him and talks him down. Grazina, who is descending into dementia, knows she needs help and so invites Hai, who has no where else to go either, to live with her. The story follows the two of them as they lean on each other to navigate this confusing world that is stacked against both of them.

If that doesn't exactly sound like a page-turner, I'm here to tell you this novel will surprise you in so many ways. There's a scene set in a slaughterhouse. One set during an amateur wrestling show at a dive bar. And lots of space dedicated to the day-to-day of a crew of fast food workers. Not your usual fare in hyper-literary novels. How does this possibly work?  

It works because it's all so relatable. The novel is about finding support and friendship in unexpected places. It's about sifting through the myths, lies, and misinformation with which we're constantly pelted to find truth. And it's about finding elegance amidst the chaos and sadness of modern life -- the beauty in the sorrow. 

Look for The Emperor of Gladness on lots of year-end "best of" lists, and don't be surprised if it takes home one of the Big Literary Awards, as well.

Shelf Lives, Vol. 4: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Do you remember the book that turned you into a CAPITAL R Reader? What I mean is, do you remember the book that moved you from a casual fan of the printed page to a person deeply in love with books and willing to spend the rest of your life surrounded by them, immersed in them, thinking about them constantly? 

That book for me was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Whole buncha John Irving novels on my shelf.

Many readers can probably cite more than one book, and if I'm honest, I could too -- but Owen Meany is the main one. Owen Meany is a book that came to me at exactly the right moment, as these books tend to do. If you're lucky, you only get a handful of books over the course of a lifetime that do that: Come to you at exactly the right moment, and as a result, literally change your life. 

If that sounds too dramatic, or like a too-rosy or apocryphal interpretation of something long in the past, I assure you it is none of those things. Owen Meany is a book that not only made me a lifelong lover of books, it literally altered my trajectory.  

It was December 2001. I'd graduated from college in May of 2000 and had spent the next eight months working for a catering company, trying (but not that hard) to find a "real" job. Amazingly, magazines or newspapers just weren't hiring new Writing Intensive English graduates for staff-level writing jobs. 

When my money ran out, I had to abandon my apartment in Milwaukee and move back home to Ohio with my parents. I was miserable. Missing all my friends. Embarrassed that my life hadn't started yet. Starting to despair that life ever would start. 

Then I read this book. I loved it so much. It was the first book I stayed up all night reading. I wrote in my reading journal the day after finishing: "Well, I finished this novel at 4am last night and I’ve been thinking all day what to write here about it. I still get the chills when I think about how absolutely awesome it was." 

What those lines lack in profundity or craft they make up for in impact. I still get chills, now, when I read those lines, remembering my state of mind after finishing. Just absolutely destroyed, awed, amazed. 

Owen Meany is a beautifully crafted, heartbreaking story about lifelong friendship. It's a novel about finding your destiny, about identifying what it is you are supposed to be doing, which for me I realized at that moment was trying to find more books like it. And if I couldn't find more books like that one, I knew the quest would keep me happy for however long I got to stay on this floating rock in space.

As importantly, reading this book shocked me out of my life-malaise, and helped me understand I needed to turn things around. Within the year, I'd moved out of my parents house and had my own place in Dayton, and within a year of that I finally got my first job writing at a magazine back in Milwaukee. 

Since Owen Meany, I've read more John Irving than just about any other writer. Though his novels lately have been, um, uneven, I still love the warmth of his prose and his unusual casts of characters. He has a new novel out this fall titled Queen Esther, and I see this as an absolute gift. He's 83 years old now, so who knows which of these books will be his last. 

If you've never read John Irving, I can't recommend Owen Meany enough. I can't tell you it'll have the same impact on you as it did on me. But I can tell you it's a beautiful novel, a beautiful piece of art, and truly a book that changed my life. 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin: On Found Family and Coming Home Again

One of my very favorite subgenres in fiction is the "return to small hometown after extended absence" narrative. There are a million examples, but a few of my recent favorites are Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare, Lee Cole's Groundskeeping, and now, Allison Larkin's wonderful new novel, Home of the American Circus.

Why do these novels work so well? One reason is that the conflict, and therefore the drama, is built in -- how will the characters interact with once-familiar surroundings that either have or haven't changed (usually haven't) while they've been away? The drama is especially rich when the narrator left her small town under mysterious circumstances, and no one, not even the reader, knows why.

That's the case for our narrator Freya in this story. After a run of bad luck as a bartender in Maine, and with nowhere else to go, 30-year-old Freya returns to Somers, New York, to live in the dilapidated home her parents left her when they both tragically died in a car crash the year previously. Not close to her family, including her brutally mean older sister Steena who is the de facto Queen of Somers, Freya reconnects with her 15-year-old niece, Aubrey, and her former best friend, a piano prodigy named Jam (Benjamin) who has also crashed out and is back home. Freya's mission now is to come up with enough cash to pay the upcoming tax bill on the house, decide what her next move might be, and stay out of Steena's way. 

The novel is about how to re-carve out your space in the world when you basically have to start from scratch. It's about choosing your friends and the people you love carefully...and cutting out the people in your life who hurt you, even when they're family. Family is a privilege, not a responsibility. 

The novel is also about the "real" stories behind stories. That is, how are stories told, how should they be told, and which versions of stories should be believed. Whether we're talking about the history books or women who are catfished by powerful and evil men, the first draft is always written by the victors or the more influential, and that's why there should be more than one draft. 

Larkin slowly reveals details about why Freya left in the first place, about her fraught relationship with her parents and sister, and about her soul-saving relationships with Aubrey and Jam. This theme of found family is one she continues from her incredibly great novel The People We Keep (READ IT!), and it's a theme in which she clearly feels comfortable. 

I absolutely love how Allison Larkin writes -- she is sad and sweet and funny and wistful and joyful and she imbues her characters with such an amazing sense of empathy. We want good things for them because we can tell she does too. This novel would make an absolutely ideal book club pick -- so many terrific discussion points. But even if you're not the book club type, it's a novel not to be missed from a writer who is gaining some serious momentum. I cannot wait to see what she does next!  

My only minor complaint about this novel is that noted dog lover Allison Larkin did not include any dogs in this novel. There is a pet rat named Lenny Juice and a temperamental cat named Coriolanus, but no dogs. What the hell?  😅

Have You Even Read Jess Walter, Bro?

This week, I got to review Jess Walter's latest novel, So Far Gone, for the Chicago Review of Books. It's a fantastic novel -- one of my favorites of the year. And as I wrote in that review (please go check it out!), it reminds me of a greatest hits album, "incorporating career-spanning elements of all of Walter’s best fiction: Punchy, hilarious dialogue, long passages of touching interiority, and astute commentary on the absurdity of our current political moment."

As I read that book and then wrote that review, I thought back on all Walter's fantastic books I've read over the years. I've been reading him since 2009's The Financial Lives of the Poets, one of the first books I reviewed when I was a young, bright-eyed book reviewer. The guy's one of my all-time favorite writers -- a writer with whom I just...connect.

To steal an idea, Book Riot does a feature titled Reading Pathways, which gives readers a roadmap to follow to introduce themselves to a new-to-them writer. Let's do Jess Walter! If you've never read him, or if you've only read his most famous book (we'll get there in a second), here is a suggested reading pathway to his roster of novels and stories.

1. Start with the Financial Lives -- This book is a perfect gateway to Walter's work -- one of the funniest sad novels I've read. 

2. Try some short stories -- Walter's two short story collections, We Live In Water (2013) and The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories (2022), are both terrific. 

3. Deep backlist time -- Walter actually published four novels before Financial Lives. I haven't read his two hard-boiled detective novels, Over Tumbled Graves (2001) and The Land of the Blind (2003). But his novels Citizen Vince (2005) and The Zero (2006, a National Book Award finalist) are both tremendous -- both also mysteries, but in both these novels you can see Walter begin expanding his range. 

4. The Cold Millions (2020) -- Walter wades into politics with this early 20th century story about two brothers who find themselves mixed up in the founding of a labor union. It’s part a crime drama, but part a literary thriller, and part social commentary. 

5. Beautiful Ruins (2012) -- It's not a coincidence that Walter's best novel is his most well-known. This book is a masterpiece -- a skewering of the movie industry, a love story, and just a story about how lives are stories. I've honestly never met someone who has read this book and hasn't loved it. This is one of my hall of fame handsells for bookstore customers who come in, especially during the summer, and "just want a good book." 

6. So Far Gone (2025) -- Now you're ready to read Walter's latest. I can't wait for what's next from him!

Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025

This year, hot girl summer will give way to old white guy fall. New novels from Dan Brown, Ian McEwan, Thomas Pynchon, and John Irving are on tap. Can someone get The Franzen on the horn? He's missing the party!

But beyond the old white guys, this fall is absolutely loaded with great new books: A sequel to Mona Award's Bunny, a new novel by the HILARIOUS Patricia Lockwood, and new essays by Zadie Smith. I can't wait! 

Here's my list of most anticipated fall books. (Please note -- all links are Bookshop affiliate links, so when you preorder any of these books from these links, not only do you help these authors, you also help me!)

Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (August 25) -- I read Yellowface earlier this year and LOVED it. So I've definitely wanted to try to take on some of Kuang's speculative fiction, and this novel about two friends descending into hell is perfect. 

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan (September 2) -- This debut novel is a multigenerational tale set in a small town in Ohio. I am myself a multigenerational tale formerly set in a small town in Ohio. Let's go! 

The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown (September 9) -- I'm not going to lie to you, I did the laugh-out-loud-deep-sigh combo when I learned the new Dan Brown -- his first since 2017's Origins -- is 688 pages. That's a whole lot of Langdon! 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai (September 23) -- It's been 19 years since Desai's The Inheritance of Loss captivated readers. This new novel "is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next." This is definitely a winter read for me. 

We Love You, Bunny, by Mona Awad (September 23) -- For many readers, this sequel to Awad's 2019 campus horror hit Bunny, is THE most-anticipated novel of the fall. The way people in the crowd gasped at an event last year when Awad casually dropped into her remarks that this novel was forthcoming...

Will There Ever Be Another You, by Patricia Lockwood (September 23) -- There is not another writer working who is sentence-by-sentence funnier than Lockwood. This new one sounds like a mix of humor and harrowing, though. It's about one woman's descent into...well, not madness, exactly, but something Lockwoodian kind of like it? 

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan (September 23) -- A love poem and a catastrophic nuclear disaster are the apparent tentpoles of this new novel from McEwan, who has been a bit uneven in his past several offerings. But I'm optimistic about this one. 

One Of Us, by Dan Chaon (September 23) -- Woohoo! Dan Chaon does an early 20th century carnival novel! Come one, come all! 

Shadow Ticket, by Thomas Pynchon (October 7) -- One last foray into Pynchon's mind before he heads off into the great Gravity's Rainbow in the sky is an absolute gift. This novel is set in Milwaukee during the Depression. This is my most anticipated book of the fall. 

Dead and Alive: Essays, by Zadie Smith (October 28) -- I will follow Zadie Smith anywhere, and I'll love it: Obscure artists, movies I've never heard of, poets. This collection apparently includes a piece about Philip Roth, so that's fun. 

Tom's Crossing, by Mark Danielewski (October 28) -- There were some odd social media posts from Danielewski (are there any other kind?) late last year teasing...something, and leaving people to speculate that because this is the 20th anniversary of House of Leaves, something related to that was coming this fall. Instead, it's a 1,232 page novel about two friends who set out to save some horses. I'll be honest, I may never read this, but I'm anticipating it anyway. 

Queen Esther, by John Irving (November 4) -- Like Pynchon, every new Irving novel feels like an absolute gift. This one sounds like sort of a prequel to The Cider House Rules. 

Honeymoon Stage, by Julie Fine writing as Margaux Eliot (November 4) -- A story about early 2000s reality TV? Oh hell yes! 

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch. Tell me about your most anticipated books! 

The Antidote, by Karen Russell: Sparkling with Life and Originality

Karen Russell's new novel The Antidote is absolutely freaking brilliant. It's a novel about injustice, which though set in the 1930s Dust Bowl, sparkles with life and originality. Truly, only Karen Russell could've written this novel. 

But let me back up a second: I set sail on this novel with some trepidation. Honestly, when this novel came out, it wasn't one I was seriously considering reading. And despite the many glowing reviews, despite other writer posting quotes from the novel online and breathlessly explaining that this book was blowing their minds, and despite the fact that I've loved Karen Russell's short stories, I still wasn't sure if a 400-plus-page novel about a small town in Nebraska in the 1930s was a wise reading choice. (Also...Swamplandia! -- Russell's first novel -- was reading agony for me.) 

I present all this simply as a peek inside the mind of a sometimes very indecisive, risk-averse reader. 😅 But...it was a risk that paid off immensely. 

The eponymous Antidote in this novel is a character -- her real name is Antonina Rossi, but she also refers to herself as The Prairie Witch. She's what's known in the world of this novel as a Vault -- she takes "deposits" of people's memories, and stores them until they're ready to withdraw them. This helps people sleep at night, basically. But the problem is that during a huge dust storm at the beginning of the novel, somehow The Antidote's vault has been cleaned out. She doesn't know why, and she doesn't know how to get the deposited memories back. This is a big problem, to say the least. 

Why this is a big problem for The Prairie Witch is the meat of this story, which is also about a farmer named Harp Oletsky whose crops are the only ones in the area growing (why!?), and Harp's niece Dell who loves to play basketball ... oh, and a possibly sentient scarecrow. There's a shady and corrupt sheriff (who might remind you a bit of a corrupt contemporary leader for whom justice is a punchline), a possible serial killer, and a Black photographer from Washington, D.C. who finds herself all mixed up in the small-town doings. 

Russell alternates between the points of view of these characters, seamlessly intertwining (hugely important) backstory with present plot, into a story that examines injustice related to Native American land, police authority and overreach, racism, immigrant treatment, and so much more. My go-to line about historical fiction: The best historical fiction echoes clearly in today's world, and this novel certainly does that. 

I've been thinking about this novel for more than a month now, thinking about what to write about it. It won't leave me, and I'm still not sure I'm thinking coherently about it, except for this: I'm pretty sure this is my favorite novel of the year so far. Possibly a new classic. Watch for this on the end-of-year awards lists for sure. If, like me, you have been on the fence, I wholeheartedly implore you to give it a shot. 

Shelf Lives, Vol 3: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

In the spring of 2012, as a fledgling books website called Book Riot was just getting its legs, one of its leaders, Rebecca Joines Schinsky, began evangelizing for a yet-to-be-published thriller titled Gone Girl by a little-known writer named Gillian Flynn. Rebecca repeatedly professed to the Book Riot team and anyone who would listen on Twitter that Gone Girl was destined for greatness.

Was she right, or WAS SHE RIGHT?! Gone Girl published on June 5, 2012, and absolutely exploded. Rebecca is VERY RARELY wrong. 

But here's another strand of this story: Book Expo America, the book industry's (now defunct) annual gathering, was held in New York City June 5-7 that year, and I got to go. It was the first time many of the Book Riot contributors got to meet in person. I remember walking into Javits that first time with my press pass for Book Riot, looking around, and thinking, man, this is the life for me. Surround by writers and books. Talking with book people. This. Is. IT!

But so, Gone Girl was the absolute belle of that ball -- both at the BEA conference generally, and for all the Book Riot contributors specifically. The buzz was palpable. Everyone was talking about it. 

As soon as I got home from that trip, I bought and read Gone Girl my first free moments. (Here's my full review, and here's one quote from that piece if you don't care to read the whole thing: "When I finished this book it felt like my brain had curled up in a ball, mewling, like a kicked puppy.") 

That's my original hardcover copy I'm holding in the photo above. It IS a first edition. Anyone know if that's worth anything? 😅

For the rest of the summer, I couldn't shut up about Gone Girl either. No need explaining here how successful that book went on to be, or how it launched its own cottage industry of copy cat book titles and thrillers with alternating perspectives of unreliable narrators.

Recently, as I began thinking about these books on my shelf that have stood the test of time, I realized how crucial both Gone Girl, and Gone Girl Summer, have been in my life as a reader, writer, and general book nerd. That book and that summer were a turning point for me. Writing for Book Riot, and being surround constantly by book people, was what I knew I wanted to do. The worst advice someone ever gave me was don't do what you love professionally because it'll ruin it. That summer is when I realized how absolutely asinine that idea is. 

It took a minute, but now here I am: Working at StoryStudio Chicago, a nonprofit where I'm constantly surrounded by talented writers and amazing books; working as a bookseller at a local indie; and working as a daily editor at the Chicago Review of Books. Life is good, man. Always good to remind yourself of that when it's true. Thank you, Gone Girl Summer. 

Support Indie Presses That Lost NEA Funding: Open Letter Books Edition

Last week, The Chicago Review of Books published a tremendous tribute to indie publishers and literary journals who lost their National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding. 

If you hadn't heard, a few weeks ago, the Trump Administration summarily canceled millions of dollars in funding to dozens of arts organizations -- money that had already been awarded, and that these organizations had counted on as part of their 2025 budgets. Why were these grants canceled? No good reason, really, and certainly not fiscal conservativeness -- the NEA's budget represents 0.003 percent of federal spending, basically a rounding error. More likely, the grants were canceled because fascists hate art. Art reminds them of how unimaginative and joyless their lives are.

Anyway, now, there are dozens of extremely worthy literary organizations doing amazing work that need our support. Americans for the Arts has a great page explaining what you can do to help.

But I wanted to highlight one of personal favorites indie publishers here: Open Letter Books. Open Letter Books is a nonprofit that publishes works in translation from writers from all the world. The organization actually recently sort of merged with Deep Vellum Books, though Open Letter continue to operate as its own entity. 

Deep Vellum is running a "replace our NEA grant" fundraiser and you can support them that way. Or, you can buy books! Need some recommendations? Here are six of my favorite Open Letter books!

6. Street of Thieves, by Mathias Énard -- This was the novel that kicked off my Open Letter love. I found this thanks to a bookseller shelftalker at an indie bookstore (57th Street Books) and I absolutely loved it. It's the coming-of-age story of a young Moroccan kid named Lakhdar, a lover of books, who, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, begins to see the world as the oppressive place it is.

5. Zone, by Mathias Énard -- Full disclosure: I haven't read this yet, but it's the thrilling story -- told in one long sentence -- of a "spy" traveling by train from Milan to Rome and reflecting on his life.

4. American Fictionary, by Dubravka Ugresic -- Oh man I love this book from the fierce and funny Croatian writer Ugresic, god rest her soul. In these short essays "the comforting veil of Western consumerism is ripped apart as the mundane luxuries of the average citizen are contrasted with the life of a woman whose country is being destroyed." If you read and enjoyed Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, this is similar but much more biting.

3. Fox, by Dubravka Ugresic -- A episodic, dreamlike, possibly autobiographical meta-novel about a woman trying to escape her hometown. This book is filled with literary trivia, details about how stories become stories, and plenty of Ugresic's signature wit.

2. The Invented Part, by Rodrigo Fresán -- The first in a trilogy by Argentinian writer Fresán, this strange, post-modern, all-but-plotless novel consisting of a series of set pieces about the literary life, about inspiration for writers, about how readers understand fiction, and the Kinks, Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Wuthering Heights, and a lot more. 

1. Four by Four, by Sara Mesa -- From Spanish writer Mesa, this unsettling novel is a little like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, with a little The Secret History, and a sprinkle of the movie Get Out. There’s a sinister undercurrent of something nefarious happening, and everyone but the narrators seem to know what it is. 

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon: To the World Wide Web...and Beyond!

My head hurts, and I'm tired. It's like I'm hungover. Pynchon-blitzed, as it were. Here's a thing I don't recommend: Reading 150 pages of Pynchon in one day. That's what I did yesterday, and I had the absolute strangest dreams last night, and as I write this the morning after finishing Thomas Pynchon's 2013 novel, Bleeding Edge, I'm not sure if I'm awake or still dreaming. 

Pynchon is a madman. A comic genius. A brilliant writer. Maybe a kook? (Did you ever hear the conspiracy theory that the notoriously elusive Pynchon is actually the Unabomber?)

Look, when you pick up a Pynchon novel, you have to expect to be by turns amazed, frustrated, immensely entertained, bored, confused, tickled, and awed. Thankfully, most of these are the reasons why I read, and that's why I picked up this book. 

Why now? Because Pynchon is publishing a new novel (and almost certainly his last) this fall titled Shadow Ticket, and I wanted to remind myself what he's like (and also maybe I'm just a little bit of a reading masochist). This is my third time reading Pynchon. I still have Gravity's Rainbow PTSD, but I absolutely loved Inherent Vice.

Bleeding Edge is definitely more Inherent Vice than Gravity's Rainbow. It's a zany caper about New York City in 2001, before during and after the tech boom and bust in Silicon Alley, and before, during, and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Pynchon seems to think these two are connected, though not in a conspiracy theory way, more in a thematic way -- that they both were the end of an age of innocence and excess (innocently excessive? excessively innocent?), and that they both resulted in fundamental changes to this American life. 

The story is actually about Maxine Tarnow, a fraud investigator, who is tipped off to some shady dealings by a start-up called hashslingrz and its tech bro CEO Gabriel Ice. Then a guy who was skimming money from hashslingrz's skimmed money winds up dead, and Maxine now has not just a fraud investigation but a murder mystery on her hands. Then Maxine gets a mysterious video of some guys on the roof of a NYC building practicing with a Stinger missile launcher. Then 9/11 happens. How the hell are all these things connected?

Or maybe they're not. Maybe everything is totally random. Who knows? At least there's some good Pynchon Puns.

Lemme give you an example. Maxine's son Ziggy is watching a movie when she comes back to the apartment one evening. It's the (fictional) 1990 film Scooby Goes Latin!, in which the Scooby-Doo gang travels to Columbia to bust a dirty DEA agent mixed up in a drug cartel. "And I would've got away with it, too," he complains, "if it hadn't been for these Medellin kids." God dammit, that's funny. 

Is the madcap plot and these puns and clever-alities (a Pynchon-esque non-word?) enough to keep you turning pages? Just barely, I think. Yes, I'm glad I read this but knowing what I know now having finished it, I'm not sure I'd read it again. This book is like tasting a whiskey you're not sure you like, but keep drinking anyway. 

"How Can I Be Brave?": An Interview with Samira Ahmed of Authors Against Book Bans

I have an interview piece up today on the Chicago Review of Books and I humbly implore you to read it; not because I did anything spectacular, but rather because my interview subject -- Samira Ahmed, a Chicago author and one of the national leaders of the group Authors Against Book Bans -- is an absolute force of nature. 

I've been writing about books on the internet for 17 years, and I've interviewed dozens of authors in that time, and I can tell you Samira is one of my all-time favorite interviews. 

The piece is part of Chicago Review of Books' Reading Your Resistance series, and in the interview, Samira talks about a topic near and dear to all of our hearts: Fighting back against book bans. 

Samira is as passionate as she is inspiring. I literally got choked up during one point in the interview, as Samira talked about how the current administration is emboldening book banners. Try this quote on for size: 

"Authoritarians hate art and they hate books for a few reasons. For one, art shines a light on truth. Books shine a light on truth. And when you ban books, when you censor books, when you control what information people are allowed to have, you can create an ignorant populace. Books and art allow us to be fully realized. Authoritarians want to oppress us. They want us to feel downtrodden. But art gives us hope."

Another highlight is Samira's anecdote about one of her own books being "soft banned" in a rural red state school district because "there are no Muslims or Indians here." She said her first thought was "You have books with dragons in your library, but there’s no dragons at your school either." But the truly inspiring part of this story is the teacher who wanted her students to read Samira's book asked Samira, "How can I be brave?" Samira talks about how that question has stuck with her. 

Let's all be brave. Let's fight back! Read the full interview here. 

Dream State, by Eric Puchner: A New Take on the Multi-Generational Family Saga

Normally, you hear "multi-generational family saga" and your thoughts go to a novel starting around World War II and finishing up in present day. Eric Puchner's new novel, Dream State, is not that. Instead, it starts in 2004 with a wedding, and traverses 50 years forward, obviously well past our current moment. 

This allows Puchner to explore the "what-ifs" of these characters' lives, all amidst the backdrop of impending climate catastrophe in rural Montana, the novel's idyllic setting. 

It is so close to working. That is to say, most of it works. Parts of it don't, quite. 

The story is about a group of friends who sort of flit in and out of each other's lives over the 50+ years of the story. But it starts with a terrible betrayal. On the day that Cece and Charlie are supposed to get married at his family's home in Montana, Cece has a change of heart, and instead winds up with Charlie's best friend, Garrett. And we go from there. 

The first half of this novel reminded me of Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs, one of my favorite novels of the last 20 years or so. It's about reconnecting with friendships formed in the crucible of college. I saw a post just today, actually, from a college student: "Dear Future Child, I wanted you to know I haven't found your mother yet, but I have found your Fun Uncles." That's how a lot of male friendships in college are -- definitely how mine were and still are. And that's largely how they're portrayed here. Garrett and Charlie, of course, reconcile (that's not a spoiler) and Charlie and Cece maintain something of a friendship as well.

Cece and Garrett build a life in the small Montana town. Garrett works for the state, studying and tracking wolverines and climate change's tragic effect on their habitat. Cece opens a bookstore in town. 

This novel will always be memorable to me for the "bookstore scene." Here's what happens: Cece convinces a famous author to come read at her small store in the middle of nowhere. But there's a thunderstorm that night, and Cece accidentally takes a sleeping pill and falls asleep during the event, and no one has shown up anyway. It's as cringe as cringe gets, but so relatable if you're in the bookselling world -- like all your worst fears about events come to life in this scene. This scene forms the basis for a major plot hinge, however, which sets the stage for the second half of the novel.

The second half to me -- as we go forward into the future in several-years-at-a-time-intervals, and the characters are wrestling with wild fires and heat waves and erratic weather and the other effects of climate change -- wasn't quite as successful. Time moves much more quickly and we sort of lose touch with the characters. In the first half, we get to know them so well because we spend several hundred pages on only a few years. In the second half, we only check in on them periodically. It was a risky strategy that didn't quite pay off. But it reads quickly and you're never bored. It just doesn't quite have the same emotional impact the first half of the novel did. 

I've been thinking about this book for several weeks, trying to parse what I think about it, whether to recommend it or not. It's definitely a unique take on the multi-generational novel, and Puchner is a talented writer who is adept at keeping things moving. So give it a shot, if for no other reason than I need someone to discuss it with. :)