Dear Wags,

You may recall that I’m teaching a course called Literary Editing & Publishing at American University this semester. Last Thursday, one of my students declared, “I called my mother and told her that working in book publishing is what I want to do with my life. Thank you for this class!”

My immediate reaction was to be thrilled. We’re only in week three of the semester and this student is in the MFA program. Whatever she does, she’ll be great. My next impulse was to heave a mournful sigh. Here was another bright and passionate whippersnapper, yearning to enter a challenged industry where change happens slowly if it happens at all. People who love the book business tend to get their hearts stomped on.

I’ll never forget the time a sharp colleague and I gathered publishing power players together for a trade show exhibit we humbly dubbed The Bookstore of the Future. By the time we finished our spiel, you could hear crickets chirping. These people were too busy hanging onto the present by their fingernails to absorb some starry-eyed vision of tomorrow.

Back then, we were dreamed up a book retailer with different nodes for diverse consumers: An audiobook lounge. An e-book kiosk. A space for book clubs to meet with a curated archive of recommended titles. A play area and library for kids. You get the picture. We hoped to fuse digital and analog experiences to reinvigorate bookstores as community hubs.

More than a decade ago, our audience wasn’t having it. Bookstores seemed to be in a terminal slide. Nobody wanted to talk about brick-and-mortar anything. At the time, they were probably right. Today, as bookstores experience a renaissance and people hunger for gathering places after the pandemic, I realize we weren’t that far off the mark. It’s still a pitiless business, but consumers are engaging with books in all sorts of new ways.

Anticipating change doesn’t mean that most folks will catch up to you. But what would any industry be without bright-eyed bushy-tailed idealists like my student, who want to get in there and shake things up? Even at this late date, there are still optimists who love books so much they want to dedicate their lives to them. Maybe they’re foolish romantics, but they’re my heroes.

It’s not the worst thing if an idea doesn’t stick. The point is to bring it to the table. Like, not a Zoom, but an actual table with brilliant types seated around it. New blood gives me hope that no matter how tech moguls scheme, the simple act of reading is revolutionary. Bring on new generations of storytellers. We can still change the world.

Yours ever,

BKP

Antiquity by Hanna Johansson/tr. Kira Josefsson

Think of Lolita, and then think of all the ways it could have played out differently. That gives you a sense of Swedish writer Johansson’s Greek island tale about a thirtysomething woman lusting after the teenage daughter of her host. 

First published in Sweden in 2021, Antiquity won that country’s Katapultpris and sparked a lot of heated conversations. We’ll see how American readers respond to the novel’s blend of eroticism and the psychological. Johansson uses her Edenic setting to great effect and is more interested in exploring the nature of female desire than hitting a specific target. If you loved Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman or Katie Kitamura’s A Separation, you’ll find much to love — and debate —in this lyrical story of seduction and power.

Float Up, Sing Down by Laird Hunt

Hunt’s Zorrie, a quiet novel about one woman’s life in 20th century Indiana, packed an enormous punch. His followup is a collection of Hoosier stories, all set on the same day in the 1980s in the town of Bright Creek (each tale is named for a member of that community). If the details of their lives seem outwardly mundane (one woman frets about buying paprika for her deviled eggs), Hunt’s incisive prose reveals their humanity and how they are connected to one another. These characters hide secrets, nurse sorrows, and create mischief without straying far from their front porches. An appearance by the Zorrie character from the author’s 2021 book makes it even more rewarding.

Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel, Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston, editors

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron gathered a sprawling cast during a plague; Edgar Allen Poe used the same trope for his short story The Masque of the Red Death. Now 36 acclaimed members of The Authors Guild, among them Celeste Ng, Dave Eggers, R. L. Stine, Meg Wolitzer, and Tommy Orange, have collaborated on a pandemic novel set on a Manhattan rooftop, where diverse characters spin yarns during lockdown. Editor Atwood gathered the contributors (her own contribution is winning), while Editor Preston came up with the framework, in which a building superintendent secretly records these varied tales. The result? A surprising, sad, and rollicking crazy quilt of a book that introduces us to New Yorkers facing adversity with humor and heart.

The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey

The scenario is tried and true: A young woman in the late-Victorian era, marooned on a bleak Scottish farm with her grandparents, yearns for the big city. Lizzie Craig dreams of Glasgow, where she meets tailor’s apprentice Louis Hunter, who can’t marry until his finished learning his trade. When Lizzie gets pregnant, she’s forced to bring the baby back home. Livesey invigorates a familiar tale with gorgeous prose and a memorable heroine who happens to have the power of second sight. A keen eye for detail puts this novel head and shoulders above more fanciful period pieces.

Why We Read by Shannon Reed

How perfect that this author’s name is Reed. Here’s the book that at least two agents and many editors urged me to write. Despite terminal bookishness, it’s not my destiny. Thank goodness it is Reed’s — I’ll be giving her marvelous tome to all the voracious readers in my life. A passion for cookbooks, children’s stories, genre fiction, and more enlivens every page. An author of warmth and brilliance, Reed fell for books as a hearing impaired child. Now she teaches creative writing to lucky students. Plus, she has terrific taste in literature. I’ll be tapping her for ideas.

As host of the award-winning PBS travel series Dream of Italy, Kathy McCabe takes armchair travelers from Lake Como to Scopello. It’s a visual feast starring the most appetizing country on Earth. Her third season is available now on all PBS platforms and kicks off on Create TV on March 21. This time out, we’re roaming Il Bel Paese with tenor Andrea Bocelli, 3-Michelin star chef Massimo Bottura, and delightful Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei. Here are a few things that put the dolce in Kathy's vita. Enjoy her inspirations with homemade pasta and a Negroni.

1. Turn the Lights Back On by Billy Joel. I know I’m not the only one totally verklempt over a new Billy Joel song after 17 long years. The first concert I ever went to was his, on Long Island, in high school. We drove in from New Jersey. “I am 19 again, lying on the living room floor in front of the console stereo with my eyes closed and my parents here again in the other room,” someone wrote on Billy’s YouTube page. It is that feeling exactly.  

2. Europe: A History by Norman Davies. My first love was France, but it was all over when I met Italy, to whom I have been devoted for most of a lifetime. But I’m mixing things up in 2024, filming the new travel series Dream of Europe. The first episode has already been filmed in Annecy, France. I’m headed to five other European countries this spring and summer. I’ve loved rediscovering and rereading this epic tome about the forces that shaped Europe as far back as the Ice Age. Europe fascinates me so completely. In fact, my major in college was European Studies. 

3. Italian Gin: I’m not a big drinker— even of all that Italian wine. When I’m in need of a mixed drink, I usually order a gin & tonic in honor of my late mother. My parents used to joke that my name should have been Gindella because after two devastating pregnancy losses, the doctor told my mom to drink a little bit of gin to hold me to full-term. I know, I know, but it was the ‘70s people! I made it, and I think I turned out relatively okay. Artisanal gin is incredibly popular in Italy. I love drinking Sabatini in Cortona, remember the sun-kissed Amalfi Coast when drinking Malfy, and look forward to trying Ghirlangina when I return to Modena this spring. Cin cin!

Questions and suggestions for BookWag? Please ping bookwag@culturewag.com, and we’ll get back to you in a jiffy.

CultureWag celebrates culture—high, medium, and deliciously low. It’s an essential guide to the mediaverse, cutting through a cluttered landscape and serving up smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. If somebody forwarded you this issue, consider it a coveted invitation and RSVP “Subscribe.” You’ll be part of the smartest set in Hollywood, Gstaad, Biarritz, and Alinea, Chef Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas’ culinary work of genius in Chicago.

“There is always in February some one day, at least, when Wags smell the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.” – Gertrude Jekyll