 Illustration by Emma Roulette for The Washington Post | The official start of summer is June 20, but we're that friend who can't resist reading ahead. Our special summer books section just went live, and it's a whole beach blanket of hot titles. I have to confess: I love summer reading lists — their outrageous eclecticism, their freedom to take risks. They have such a different tenor than the Best Books of the Year lists, which terrorize us for weeks throughout the fall and then march into print with Solomonic responsibility. Here, whether you're looking forward to lazy afternoons in the park or you're packing up for a cross-country drive, we've got recommendations for every reader and listener. And thanks to many of you who helped out by offering your own suggestions.  Can you teach these novels without causing a Republican governor to panic? (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Vintage; Vintage; Balzer + Bray; Atheneum) | Kraken 2.0. To hear the hysterical claims of right-wing politicians, you'd think critical race theory were the greatest threat to American freedom since fluoridated water (perspective). As public policy, this is poppycock; as political theater, it's genius. In less than a year, the GOP has discovered an obscure academic perspective, strategically misrepresented it and used it to drown out constructive discussion of systemic racism (story). In short, critical race theory is Ronald Reagan's Cadillac-driving welfare queen transformed into the next boogeyman for a new generation of cynical politicians (story). The recent bans on "divisive" teaching in Oklahoma, Idaho and Tennessee public schools show how critical race theory is being used as a straw man to avoid acknowledging endemic racial divisions. And Republicans in Texas are working to pass a law that reads like The White Man's Fragile Feelings Protection Act. Their bill prohibits even considering that anyone "should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex." It gets worse: Texas social studies teachers who dare to discuss current events or controversial topics must "strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective." Imagine how that moral vacuity could play out in the classroom: "Good point, Johnny, but let's also examine the positive side of a mob smashing into the Capitol and hunting down the vice president." For history and social studies teachers — and textbook publishers! — these absurd limits on free speech and intellectual inquiry will be a legal landmine. And it won't be long before school boards have to deal with complaints about novels that make some parents "feel discomfort." Opponents of literature that examines racist elements of American society will have yet another tool to challenge books by Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison — any author who might risk leading a student toward critical thought.  Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, painted by their brother Branwell c. 1834. | The ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine are restless. Sotheby's has announced plans to auction off a fortune of literary material by the Brontës. The sales, which will begin in July, include a volume of poetry handwritten by Emily that shows Charlotte's revisions, a first edition of "Wuthering Heights" inscribed by their father to their housekeeper, and letters written by their tragic brother, Branwell. (Emily Brontë's gifts keep giving.) These documents are part of "a library of astonishing riches" assembled by a mill owner about a century ago. Not everybody is excited to see the Brontës' work sold off to the highest bidder where it might once again vanish behind the closed doors of a private collector. Like Jane Eyre, the Brontë Society is crying, "Unjust! Unjust!" A statement posted online says, "The Society believes that the rightful home for these unique and extraordinary manuscripts, unseen for a hundred years, is at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where they can be enjoyed by visitors, explored by scholars and shared with Brontë enthusiasts around the world for generations to come. . . . We need to look beyond the narrow commercialisation and privatisation of heritage and work together to protect and share what we all value." Today the society is sending a letter to Members of Parliament urging them to 1) "ensure that public institutions have a fair chance of acquiring items of national interest when they come to market" and 2) establish "a robust framework of regulation to safeguard items of national literary heritage in private ownership." Unsurprisingly, Sotheby's is not thrilled to be cast as an agent of what the Brontë Society calls a "calculated act of heritage dispersal." A spokesperson for the auction house told me there could be positive aspects to the upcoming sales: "When material like this is acquired by collectors abroad, it often ends up on public view, as an ambassador for British culture." And striking a note that will horrify the completist mindset of curators everywhere, the spokesperson suggested that, well, England already has so much! "Britain is very well endowed with great autograph material by the Brontës, notably in the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which contains the world's most comprehensive collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters and early editions, and also in the British Library." Reader, I parried him. "Does Sotheby's feel any particular responsibility for the public and scholarly preservation of materials?" "The material announced for sale, though always in private ownership, has all been fully published," Sotheby's spokesperson said, "and the contents are therefore freely available to those interested in the Brontës." Brace yourself, Heathcliff. You and Cathy might be temporarily separated yet again.  Author Sam Riviere (Photo by Jonathan Daniel Pryce); Catapult; audiobook narrator Thomas Judd (Photo courtesy of Thomas Judd) | Just breathe! I've resigned myself to the fact that many literary authors aren't using quotation marks anymore. But this month, I read a book that doesn't use paragraphs. "Dead Souls," a satirical novel about the publishing world, is 300 pages long without a single break in the text (review). Until they're gone, you really don't know how much you rely on those periodic indentations, like little benches placed along the path of the story. Sam Riviere employed this odd format "for reasons of velocity," he tells me. "There is something sustaining and addictive about it, and it seems to enable sudden changes of topic or scene without ceremony – it's the monologue as tirade." But then he adds, "I felt a bit sorry for the audiobook narrator." Yikes. Just imagine. . . . In fact, the audiobook narrator, Thomas Judd, admits to feeling a bit daunted when he first got the job. "I anticipated it being a significant challenge and finding it very draining," he tells me. "No chapters, no paragraphs!" Happily, he discovered that the novel is so brilliant and hilarious that narrating it was a joy. "I had to stop so many times because I kept cracking up!" But even for a trained Shakespearean actor like Judd, who's narrated more than 160 audiobooks, the text of "Dead Souls" proved tricky to speak aloud. "I definitely had moments where I started a sentence and then it would gradually dawn on me that it didn't finish until two thirds of the way down the page, so I did run out of breath a fair amount!" The key for him was understanding the novel's stream of consciousness. "It was actually quite liberating to let the text carry me that way," Judd says. "The only practical issue was figuring out when to stop for the day."  (Charlesbridge; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Dragonfly Books) | Children's book author Grace Lin recently felt the spike of anti-Asian racism in the most heartbreaking way. "My daughter returned to in-person school," she says. "And during her first week at lunch, another classmate said that the Chinese caused the coronavirus and that they hated Chinese people." Lin describes that experience — not an uncommon one in America's long history of prejudice against Asians — in her introduction to a new virtual exhibit from the Eric Carle Museum. "Asians, Everyday," featuring illustrations from 26 picture books and personal statements by the artists, has been curated by Lin to celebrate the ordinary lives of Asian Americans. It's a joyous way to replace "stories of Asians as perpetual foreigners with real stories of Asians who share our common thread of humanity," Lin says. The online exhibit sports an easy, elegant design. In addition to showcasing a bounty of artistic talent, it functions as a great list of suggestions for parents, teachers and librarians (view here).  James Fugate and Tom Hamilton, co-owners of Eso Won Books in Los Angeles. (Photograph by Bruce W. Talamon © 2021 All Rights Reserved.) | Eso Won Books, a Los Angeles bookstore specializing in books by and about African Americans, has been named Bookstore of the Year by Publishers Weekly. For more than 30 years, Eso Won Books has built its success on knowing the business and its readers. James Fugate, who co-owns the store with Thomas Hamilton, tells me, "When Tom and I formed Eso Won, it was to bring books to community events and conferences, and we carried a large selection of titles. People also found that both Tom and I read the books we carried and could make recommendations." Like most retailers, Eso Won was initially closed by the covid-19 pandemic. "But then came the murder of George Floyd," Fugate says. "Black businesses were pushed as places to support — not just bookstores but all types of business. That outpouring of support transformed our business." Suddenly, the store was completely overwhelmed with orders. "We had to shut down our website for days and our phones for months." Now they're answering the phone again and trying to get back to normal life. "Sales are okay," Fugate says. "Nothing like last year, but we are doing okay."  Etching of a printer at work, by Jost Amman c. 1568; Polity; Kindle Oasis Graphite (Photo courtesy of Amazon) | I've been slowly working my way through "Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing," by the British scholar John B. Thompson. At 500 pages, it's an extraordinarily comprehensive and revealing study of what Thompson calls "a technological revolution that is as radical and far-reaching as any that came before in the long history of the human species." Thompson starts with Andy Weir, an amateur writer who finally gave up trying to get published and started posting his science fiction stories online. But through the new alchemy of the Internet, Weir's "failure" led to his first best-selling novel, "The Martian," which was later adapted into a movie starring Matt Damon. Alas, fame and fortune are not the typical rewards for self-published authors, but "The Martian" offers Thompson a striking example of the way technology is transforming the old practices of storytelling and publication. (Weir's new novel, "Project Hail Mary" is a bestseller, too. But it has some problems.) "Book Wars" looks at the ascent of Amazon, the dramatic rise (and surprising plateau) of e-books, the new relevance of backlists, the explosion of self-publishing and the wonderful resilience of bound books. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) If you're interested in the complicated history and future of contemporary publishing, you'll want a copy of this book. Attention, cheaters: Like Sam Malone, who discovered too late that there's a movie version of "War and Peace," this week I heard a great interview with Thompson on the Biblio File podcast that lays out many of the main points of "Book Wars" (listen).  Ecco; Poetry Out Loud national champion Rahele Megosha (Screenshot by James Kegley/Courtesy of Poetry Out Loud); Gallery | This week's literary awards and honors: - "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker," a memoir in essays by Damon Young, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. This $5,000 award is sponsored by Thurber House, a literary center based in the boyhood home of writer and cartoonist James Thurber. Our reviewer called Young's memoir "hilarious, as in laughing so hard that you end up in tears or, sometimes, laughing hard enough to stop the tears from flowing" (rave).
- Rahele Megosha won the Poetry Out Loud national championship last night. The South Dakota high school senior took home the top prize of $20,000. You can see her delightful recitation of Mary Lamb's "Breakfast" here.
- "The Only Good Indians," by Stephen Graham Jones, won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. The prize is conferred annually by the Horror Writers Association. Our reviewer wrote, "'The Only Good Indians' is splashed with the requisite amounts of blood and gore, but there's much more to it than that" (rave). This marks the third Stoker Award for Jones, who is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.
 The God Bless the USA Bible website © 2021 Elite Source Pro | Lamentations. Almost exactly a year ago, federal police fired gas canisters to drive away demonstrators near the White House so that President Trump could walk across Lafayette Square, stand in front of St. John's Church and get his picture taken holding a borrowed Bible. That bizarre stunt ignited a fierce debate about the appropriate relationship between faith and politics and, more specifically, about using the Bible as a political prop. This week witnessed another surprising chapter in that argument. Zondervan, a Christian imprint of HarperCollins, has disavowed any involvement with the "God Bless the USA Bible." This special edition was conceived by Nashville-based marketer Elite Source Pro to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Elite Source Pro hoped to include the text of the New International Version of the Bible, published by Zondervan, along with the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics to "God Bless the USA," by country singer Lee Greenwood. Because, of course. But that plan didn't sit well with some devout Christians, including some of Zondervan's own authors who feel that the Bible doesn't really need to be tarted up with political documents and country music. Hundreds of people signed a petition asking the publisher not to license the text of the New International Version for the "God Bless the USA Bible," calling the expanded canon "blasphemy," "ungodly" and "an abomination" that "adds fuel to Christian nationalism." Apparently in response to these concerns, a spokesperson for HarperCollins Christian Publishing has said that Zondervan is not involved with the Elite Source Pro project (story). But behold: The "God Bless the USA Bible" has returned! Elite Source Pro plans to proceed using the text of the King James Version, whose copyright expired a while ago. The website for the upcoming GBUSA Bible notes that it's perfect for all kinds of people such as "Military," "Grandparents," "U.S. history buffs," "teens," "Anyone that loves America" and "Brides." Oddly, "Grooms" are omitted from the list.  Penguin Books | Carrie Fountain's third collection, "The Life," is a book about parenthood and poetry and the persistence of faith. The incidents in her poems seem entirely ordinary — making Valentine's, putting the kids to bed, praying they'll stay in bed! — but again and again Fountain transforms familiar moments into junctures of poignant joy. I want to send "A Life" to a friend, but I'm not giving up my copy. Summertime I flush the latest dead fish down
the toilet before the children
come home. We bought the fish
to be little responsibility lessons
and then little death lessons
for the children, though the fish
keep dying for no clear reason
and somehow I am the only one
who is ever home to partake
of the death lessons. The children
are at camp learning to be bored
and itchy with a few moments
of wonder and one to two friends
each. They are having childhoods
and I am having adulthood,
watching the silver body that just
this morning contained a life
flash like money one last time
before vanishing down the drain,
trying to decide whether or not
to tell them when they arrive,
their faces red from sun and chlorine.
I pray here, over the toilet, that in
the moment, I will tell them the truth
and that I will tell it well enough. From "The Life," by Carrie Fountain, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Carrie Fountain.  Dawn and Madeline Charles enjoying some good novels on the subway during a trip to New York in February 2020. (Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | Later today, my wife and I are heading up to New York City for our first vacation in the wild since the pandemic lockdown began 14 months ago. My younger daughter just finished her first (all virtual) year of graduate school at Hunter College, so we'll celebrate by making her entertain us for the weekend. It's supposed to rain the whole time, but honestly, the city could be covered in molten lava and I would still feel happy to be there. Meanwhile, a peaceful Memorial Day to you all. If you have any questions or comments about our book coverage, contact me at ron.charles@washpost.com. And if you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please help me out and forward it to them. To subscribe, click here.
Interested in advertising in our bookish newsletter? Contact Michael King at michael.king@washpost.com. |
Email 
No comments:
Post a Comment