Book Recs for the World-Weary!
Dear Wags,
Distressing things keep happening. Wallowing in a destructive information ecosystem won’t improve matters. Recent events remind us that platforms that hyped themselves as virtual town squares are in an irrevocable slide. Your “feed” became Love Canal because that’s exactly how it’s designed to work. If agitation is your thing, scroll away, but a digital rage spiral is sound and fury signifying ugatz.
BookWag’s Bethanne Patrick is on assignment with Viking River Cruises this week. Luckily, she filed this week’s recommendations while drifting down the Danube. Her publishing insights, as always, are excellent. So is our advice to abandon those nasty algorithms at customs. Happy reading.
Viele Grüße,
Bournville by Jonathan Coe
Decades ago, I read a book that surprised, delighted, and challenged me. Jonathan Coe’s fourth novel, What a Carve Up, combined a family saga with savage political commentary. His subsequent books were excellent, if not quite as stunning. His latest, which involves the Cadbury chocolate dynasty, is an engaging return to form. The candy empire began in Bournville, a village on the outskirts of Birmingham, and was founded by Quakers, which made their approach to capitalism a bit sweeter. Protagonist Mary, an octogenarian with a bad heart, looks back on a life from World War II through the global pandemic. Coe — now published by the crackerjack Europa Editions — is a virtuoso storyteller, spinning a rich yarn that about the humble people who made modern Britain. It’s a superb read.
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The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
Tan’s latest novel is already long-listed for the Booker Prize. Here, the acclaimed Malaysian author crafts lush and literary examination of British imperialism, taking inspiration from the W. Somerset Maugham story “The Letter.” Maugham based his tale on a 1911 incident in the expatriate community in Penang, in which a woman named Ethel Proudlock shot a man she claimed made a pass at her. The truth was more complicated, and mired in racism. As a closeted gay man whose life was plagued by financial and relationship woes, Maugham understood secrets. Tan uses the same events to illustrate how colonialism warped everyone it touched.
Mundy’s 2017 bestseller, Code Girls, celebrated women who worked (sometimes secretly) as code breakers during World War II. Her followup traces the history of women at the CIA, from the end of World War II to the present. Backed by a trove of reporting, the author depicts how female agents were frustrated by a profoundly sexist culture at the Langley, yet managed to transform America’s spy apparatus all the same. Indeed, an informal sisterhood within the CIA was key in tracking down Osama Bin Laden. It makes for a compelling real-life thriller.
A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel
Mantel died in 2022, and this book by the beloved author of the Wolf Hall trilogy was published posthumously. Despite the title, this isn’t quite a memoir but a collection of her outstanding journalism. Among the 70 pieces gathered here are “Royal Bodies,” Mantel’s famous essay about the British monarchy, moving essays about her health problems, and musings on pop culture (Dame Hilary had a few thoughts about When Harry Met Sally). The anthology is a reminder of a bracing talent, gone far too soon.
Everything Is Not Enough by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström
When people worry a sophomore novel won’t match a sparkling debut, they’re talking about the writing. But I fretted that Ákínmádé Åkerström’s next book wouldn’t match her title of her first. After all, In Every Mirror She’s Black (2021) is irresistibly catchy. Fortunately, her new novel delivers on all fronts. This story of three women of color—Kemi Adeyemi, Brittany-Rae von Lundin, and Yasmin Çelik— making it in modern, multicultural Sweden, is a deft tale of outsiders working their way in. Their struggles and successes reveal how much Europe and North America have changed.
Popular Science
Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep by Kenneth Miller
Fact: Nobody’s getting enough rest. Miller understands that—and a whole lot more—about sleep science. Until the 1920s, sleep was written off as a weird barrier to human productivity. Nathaniel Kleitman, a Russian Jewish émigré, changed all that by founding the first sleep lab at the University of Chicago. In time, sleep research was revealing mysteries about the dreaming brain, and drawing important connections between sleep and our health. That transformed a discipline on the academic fringes into a global obsession. Miller tells the stories of the rebels changed our understanding of sleep while explaining just what happens when we nod off. It makes for a stimulating read. —Wesley Dodds
