What inspires the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter? Her first picture book, “Tori and the Muses,” offers an answer. In an email interview, she shared how her gently rebellious mother made her a reader. SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? “Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals,” by Jamie Sams and … Read more
The chief executive of the BLT restaurant group is “Jewish and kept kosher and he loved to show up at the restaurant with a wad of bills so thick it actually hurt to watch him.” The food guide pioneer Tim Zagat is, without explanation, “rotund, grotesque.” It’s the early aughts and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is repulsive, … Read more
Chris Moore, a British artist who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Charmouth, on the southwestern coast of England. … Read more
“Brother Brontë” is like that mythical sub sandwich with literally everything on it. There are tangential joy rides into Jazzmin Monelle’s other novels, such as “I Was a Teenage Brain Parasite” (one of the great wish-I’d-come-up-with-that titles) and “Ghosts in the Zapotec Sphericals” (which features a Borges-like protagonist, the blind director of the Biblioteca Nacional … Read more
THE ANTIDOTE, by Karen Russell On the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order challenging birthright citizenship, a right that has been enshrined in the United States Constitution via the 14th Amendment since 1868. Defending the order in the Supreme Court days later, Trump’s Justice Department cited an 1866 … Read more
THE NEXT ONE IS FOR YOU: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the I.R.A.’s Secret American Army, by Ali Watkins When it comes to understanding the Irish, it helps to take the long view. The Ulster Plantation of 1609, intended to replace native Catholic Irish residents with Protestant settlers from Scotland and England, initiated … Read more
But even before NPR’s first decade was over, its lack of political, socioeconomic and racial diversity was apparent. “Young, brainy, upper-middle-class, politically liberal, artistically adventurous and typically white, the NPR archetype was taking shape,” Oney writes. In cramped edit booths, staffers cut lines of cocaine and engaged in trysts. Oney celebrates the culture of free-spiritedness, … Read more
WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, by Alissa Wilkinson We go on needing Joan Didion. The aloof gaze; the Scotch and cigarette chic; the crestfallen scrutiny of America, of life. Whatever combined in her, we seek it over and over, in a way that seems only to be intensifying since … Read more
THE HUMAN SCALE, by Lawrence Wright There is a verse in the Talmud that reads “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the world.” This assertion is echoed in Islam. In the Quran, it is written, “If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the … Read more
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s installment tests your knowledge of long-running squabbles between writers (all of whom happen to be dead, so no one can jump in with the last word). In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer … Read more