Regular readers will recall my annual frustration with the flood of new books that arrive in the fall season as if readers are only capable of paying attention to books four months out of the year.
The frustration is rooted in both the difficulty of keeping up with books I want to read and communicating the good news to others about the books I have read. None of these capsule reviews of the following books can do them justice.
You’ll have to check them out for yourselves, which I’m encouraging you to do.
“Now Is Not the Time to Panic” by Kevin Wilson: Wilson has a knack for quickly introducing characters you care for, and then subjecting them to a series of trials and tribulations that will keep you involved without putting you through the emotional wringer. This time it’s 16-year-old Frankie Budge who makes a piece of art that shakes up her small town, which resonates into her adulthood when it appears there might be a high price to pay.
“Sugar Street” by Jonathan Dee: An unnamed man leaves everything from his past life behind, save several hundred thousand dollars in a large folder, seeking to disappear in a small city where no one knows him. Is this self-exile a form of self-punishment? A noble experiment in intentional poverty? What made him run? Dee unspools this multilayered mystery, building toward a climax that promises to surprise.
“Dinosaurs” by Lydia Millet: Starting from a similar place as “Sugar Street,” Gil leaves behind his life in New York by literally walking all the way to a new home in Arizona, where he moves in next door to a family living in a glass house. As Gil heals from the traumas that led to his flight, he becomes entangled with this family and the broader community as he wills himself to come to life, perhaps for the first time.
“Flight” Lynn Steger Strong: On the heels of “Want,” her powerful exploration of the declining educated middle class in America, “Flight” is another domestic drama about three siblings and their spouses who come together for the holidays in order to settle things in the aftermath of the death of the family matriarch. Strong weaves together the stories of the individual characters in a way that makes you appreciate both the difficulty and necessity of family.
“Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos” by Christine Sneed: Chicagoan Sneed’s quasi-epistolary novel about office life told entirely through interoffice memos already received an endorsement from Christopher Borrelli as one of his fall book picks. Let me add my two cents on this clever deconstruction of the madness that lurks under the surface of any office. A clever, funny and quick read.
“Dr. No” by Percival Everett: On an annual basis, Everett seems to deliver a book unlike anything you’ve read before. Last year it was his searing exploration of race and white supremacist violence in “The Trees.” This year, it’s a caper novel, “Dr. No.” In “Dr. No,” Wala Kitu, a professor of mathematics, is recruited by a wealthy billionaire named John Sill who has designs on becoming a Bond villain. The mission: Break into Fort Knox and steal “nothing,” so Sill can gain control of everything. Just about every page has a laugh-out-loud joke, some of which are so clever in their wordplay, they detonate like a time bomb on a delayed fuse 30 seconds after you read them.
You better get going because these books aren’t going to read themselves, and there’s more on the way.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Physician” by Noah Gordon
2. “The Haj” by Leon Uris
3. “The Confessions of Max Tivoli” by Andrew Sean Greer
4. “Gunman’s Rhapsody” by Robert B. Parker
5. “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations” by Ronen Bergman
— Steve G., Highland Park
I think Steve is a good candidate for Larry McMurtry’s epic, enduring classic, “Lonesome Dove.”
1. “Rock Paper Scissors” by Alice Feeney
2. “Lucy By The Sea” by Elizabeth Strout
3. “A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
4. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” by Suzanne Collins
5. “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel
— Anne, Chicago
Short story collections can be a risk with folks, but I see “A Visit from the Goon Squad” as a collection of stories, and given the range of her reading, I think Anne will be captivated by Ted Chiang’s collection, “Exhalation,” because no one else is writing stories like him these days.
1. “No Plan B” by Lee Child and Andrew Child
2. “Squeeze Me” by Carl Hiaasen
3. “One by One” by Ruth Ware
4. “In a Dark, Dark Wood” by Ruth Ware
5. “Slow Horses” by Mick Herron
— Nick T., Chicago
I’m introducing Nick to Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad, the first of which is “In the Woods,” which has the tense plotting and atmospherics that he seems drawn to.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
