Listen Up The Last Of Us Fans – There's Good News And Bad News About Season 3
It's been nearly two months since that rollercoaster of a season two finale, and yet The Last Of Us is still playing with our emotions.
The post-apocalyptic drama starring Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal and Kaitlyn Dever ended on a huge cliffhanger when the seventh and final episode of the second season aired back in May, and now it turns out we might be looking at quite a long wait until season three.
In a recent interview with Variety, HBO content CEO Casey Bloys shed some light on the timeline for the next season.
'The series is definitely planned for 2027,' he explained, suggesting the same wait time (and maybe even longer) that we had between the first two seasons.
However, the good news is that there's a possibility of co-creator and showrunner Craig Mazin extending the Emmy-winning show beyond three seasons.
'Craig is still working it out whether it will be two more seasons or one more long season. It hasn't been decided yet, and I'm following Craig's lead on that.'
Season two focused on Ellie's quest for revenge after Joel's brutal murder by Abby, with fans expecting season three to focus on Abby's perspective of the same events, as depicted in the video game it's based on.
After we only saw Pedro's character appear in season two mostly via flashbacks, the HBO exec addressed whether potentially now seeing less of Bella in the next instalment could be a challenge.
'Not from a marketing perspective, because I think the title is obviously helped by the video game, and now the first two seasons is pretty well established,' he explained. 'I kind of appreciate shows that take things and do a show from a different point of view.'
The update comes following the news of a huge creative change behind the scenes, as co-creator Neil Druckmann announced he would be stepping back as co-showrunner.
Executive producer and writer Halley Gross – who co-wrote The Last Of Us Part II video game and worked on several episodes of season two – also announced that she would be departing from her 'day-to-day' duties on the show 'to make space for what comes next'.
The HBO content boss addressed Neil's departure in the new interview, explaining that, while it was 'fantastic to have Neil involved', people often 'don't realise that Neil has a full time job creating video games and running Naughty Dog'.
He added that the game creator had 'given us a good blueprint with the show' and that 'obviously Craig is a pro, so I think we'll be in excellent shape. I'm not worried at all'.
The Last Of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by a fungus which turns humans into a zombie-like infected species. The latest series is among the frontrunners in the Emmy nominations with 16 nods this year.
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Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
They solved a horrific crime in their community. Don't mind the colorful fur suit.
The director of "The Furry Detectives" sheds light on the heroic whistleblowers in a fandom full of outsiders. Americans love true crime shows. More than half of U.S. adults say they are hooked on the genre, according to a June 2024 YouGov poll. (I should know, I'm one of those fans.) But The Furry Detectives: Unmasking a Monster was the first true crime docuseries I've seen to feature its subjects dressed in colorful anthropomorphic fur suits peeling back the layers on a horrific crime. It follows furries, or members of a community of fans who dress as animals with human characteristics, as they investigate a cache of information called the 'Furry Zoosadist Leaks.' The investigation began in 2018 and revealed a sinister criminal conspiracy of animal abuse within the animal-loving furry community. The docuseries explores how furries themselves led a citizen investigation that led to real-life arrests. To see Patch O'Furr, a longtime furry journalist for Dogpatch Press, speaking on camera with measured calm on his face in plain clothes as he recounts the horrors of the case, is a fascinating juxtaposition with other shots of him throughout the series in which he wears the blue-and-white fuzzy paws of his fur suit. It's not something we see every day, but it was a bold choice that put on display his love for the community despite what a few rotten apples had done. In the opening scene of the docuseries, O'Furr says, 'I never tried to be a hero, it's just … who else is gonna do the job?' He is who he is, both behind the keyboard and in front of a global stage. Letting O'Furr — and the other furries who appear onscreen, like Connor Goodwolf and Naia Okami — dress in both their street clothes and in their fur suits was an important element to Theo Love, who directed the four-part docuseries. It premiered in June at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing new episodes on Thursdays on Sundance Now and AMC+. Love tells Yahoo he wanted his subjects to be comfortable, especially given how furries sometimes end up at the 'wrong end of the joke.' 'And you are giving me a huge gift in telling me your story,' he says of the furries. 'So my job is to tell your story the way it exists in your mind.' The choice to include some furries in their fur suits on camera came from the playfulness that's so core to their existence. 'In some ways, we needed some sugar to help the medicine go down,' Love explains. The goal isn't to make fun of anyone, it's to allow them to show their true selves. A different kind of crime solver Love now holds furries in high regard, but he didn't know much about the fandom when he was tapped to direct the docuseries. He just found it refreshing to tell a true crime story from a new angle. The genre gets 'tired' when the 'good guys are always cops solving crimes,' he says. 'The heroes of our story are furries, a group of people [who] are just not very well understood. A lot of times, they're judged. And so to celebrate furries doing something really incredible, it was a privilege. … In this situation, they're saving man's best friend — our ultimate furry buddies, dogs,' Love says. It took a lot of convincing to get people to go on camera for the documentary. Zoosadism is a heinous crime — not something people like thinking about or being associated with, even if they're just recounting the objective facts of a case. Even the people who helped solve the case felt backlash within the community and were accused of making the already ridiculed fandom face even more bad press. 'It's very much like hidden abuse in a church community where people want to pray it away and act like it's old or offensive to talk about,' O'Furr tells Yahoo. His reporting on Dogpatch Press is the basis for much of what's covered in the docuseries. 'Either this gets told, or it gets brushed under [the rug] and guilty people continue using your spaces,' O'Furr writes in a post on Dogpatch Press, explaining his involvement in the docuseries. 'Then it gets worse, and next time, outsiders will tell the story for you with even less agency in how you are seen.' Since furries are so often ridiculed for their interest in costumes and developing anthropomorphic 'fursonas' that they role-play with, which is sometimes but not always sexual, it can be hard for them to be taken seriously. They don't dress in fur suits, often expensive, cumbersome and sweat-inducing, for attention. They do it because it makes them feel authentically like themselves and helps them find community. Ridicule leads some to feel like they've been pushed into the margins of society, where bad behavior can fester and disgruntled individuals can become radicalized. Concerns that multiple members of the fandom had ties to Nazism made headlines in 2017 and have led to the cancellation of at least one convention. For furries who genuinely love animals and role-playing as them, this association is horrific on a moral level, but has also tainted their perception and made them wary of what outsiders might think. 'Furvengers,' assemble A strong contingent of furries wasn't fond of the existence of this docuseries — or even the original blowing of the whistle about the Zoosadism Leaks in 2018 — for fear of how the community at large would be portrayed. But it's a uniquely furry story about the triumph of a fandom over the people using the joyful fandom to conceal their illegal acts. Back then, law enforcement tried and failed to uncover the culprits behind the crime for years, so furry vigilantes known as the Furvengers took matters into their own hands. They used their remarkable tech savvy to pore over chat logs on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, which was the main channel used in the Zoosadism Leaks, leading to the arrest of a furry involved in animal abuse, who then led them to the suspected ringleader, who was arrested as well. The investigation involved combing through disturbing chat logs and screening traumatizing video footage of animal abuse, but the Furvengers maintained in the docuseries that protecting animals made it all worth it. Love says that the story is, at its heart, about ordinary people who went to extraordinary lengths for justice, regardless of what ridicule they might receive inside or outside of the fandom. 'If you've ever looked at a furry and thought, 'These people are weirdos and something to laugh at,' you're going to watch the series and be pretty surprised at how heroic they really are,' he says.
Digital Trends
14 minutes ago
- Digital Trends
Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV review: a few too many barriers for a decent afterparty
Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV MSRP $79.99 Score Details 'Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV keeps the party going, but puts up a few too many roadblocks.' Pros Core game is still a blast and looks and runs better Some excellent new minigames New modes add fun new twists Cons Camera minigames fall flat Bowser Live and Carnival Coaster have little replay value Recommended Videos Last year, Nintendo wrapped up its trilogy of Mario Party games with its most ambitious title yet in Super Mario Party Jamboree. With more minigames, boards, and modes than any entry before it, it was bordering on losing its focus on the core board game gameplay that makes it such a popular and approachable series. That makes it a natural choice for a proper Switch 2 Edition to bring us back for a little afterparty to show off some new tricks. Despite the seemingly obvious potential for DLC, no Mario Party game has gotten any meaningful expansion before now. Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV is the perfect opportunity to break that tradition by taking advantage of the new features found on the Switch 2 to add creative new games and modes. It mostly makes good on that promise, but the way they are integrated into the existing experience only exacerbates the main issues the core game had. With so much tacked on to it now, it has started to lose its appeal as a casual party game experience. Jamboree TV isn't as bloated and cumbersome as its full title, but it flies dangerously close. There are some standout new additions that take full advantage of the Switch 2 hardware, but those that miss the mark fall very flat, and there are simply too many barriers between you and the fun to make this an instant RSVP. Menu madness Jamboree TV presents itself as an entirely new menu option from the home screen, doubling down on the segmented structure of the original. The base game already felt oddly divided with its various modes locking certain games and features from the core game, and this only further complicates what should be a simple pick-up-and-play party experience rather than unifying the experience. The fact that there are now two ways to engage in the core Mario Party mode, but I can only select the new rules if I engage it from within the new Jamboree TV package, or transition over to the Rhythm Kitchen or Bowser Challenges from the original Super Mario Party menu, is needlessly convoluted. It's like hosting a party and having the drinks in the kitchen and snacks in the shed out back. swapping between the new Jamboree TV and classic modes is as much of a momentum killer as swapping between different games The original experience was already the most segmented Mario Party yet, with its various islands housing unique modes and minigames. Jamboree TV adds even more of these smaller, supplemental ways to play to complement the main game, but cordons them off in a way that kills off any desire to swap between them once I started playing. Whether it is with friends locally or online, swapping between the new Jamboree TV and classic modes is as much of a momentum killer as swapping between different games. That might not sound like a big deal, but for a game built around the idea of a group of friends picking up some controllers and having a good time, these barriers throw a major wrench in the gears. That core game is still just as solid as ever. There are no new boards here, but playing the classic Mario Party mode (so long as you select it from within Jamboree TV) does incorporate the new slate of mouse-control games to spice up the selection. Also exclusive to the Jamboree TV version is the camera integration. None of the camera-specific minigames will show up in Mario Party, but each player's face will appear beside their character moving around the board, during minigames, and in a few other cute ways. I was ready to brush this inclusion off as a gimmick, but seeing myself and my friend's reactions during play encouraged a level of silliness that felt right at home. It's all in the wrist Everything inside the regular Super Mario Party Jamboree menu of the game is just as you left it on the Switch, only with mildly improved visuals and performance. Loading up Jamboree TV sets up the new gameshow-esque framing for the new slate of options. Tag Team Rules is the standout mode I will keep coming back to Jamboree TV for Mario Party mode sees two new rules that are easily the most exciting additions. Frenzy Rules offers a quick and chaotic way to jump right to the most exciting parts of the game by starting the game in the Homestretch. With only five turns remaining, each player starts with 50 coins, a Double Dice item, and one Star, plus all the Homestretch modifiers to the board in play. While it does lose a lot of the emotional payoff you get when reaching the end of a 20 or 30 round game, it is a fun way to get a quick hit when you don't want to invest an hour or more in a full game. Tag Team Rules is the standout mode I will keep coming back to Jamboree TV for. This mode pairs players up into teams of two that essentially function as Jamboree Buddies for one another. Teams share coins, items, and Stars, but still operate independently on the board. However, the new Together Dice can be used by one team member to summon and roll with their partner to move together. Just like a Jamboree Buddy, everything is doubled while a team is moving together, from coins and items earned to the number of Stars that can be purchased. Having a dedicated partner to coordinate with and strategize with nails that balance of adding a new layer to the core game without veering into gimmick territory. This was where I spent most of my time and the mode that I see being included in my regular rotation. Tag Team is also the best way to get a taste of the new mouse control minigames since they can only be played in 2 vs. 2, 4-player, or Battle Mode configurations. That restriction makes sense for a few of these games, but I saw no benefit for the majority to not be playable in a traditional free-for-all style. Very few rely on any direct teamwork or coordination between players to justify locking them to those less-common playlists. the majority of games feel like a nice appetizer for what a Switch 2 exclusive Mario Party could look like With a few exceptions, the majority of these new mouse minigames are fun and creative hits. Some like the air hockey equivalent or letter sorting game are borderline copies of older minigames, but work so much better using a mouse that I can forgive them being recycled. Pull-Back Attack, which has teams racing in opposite directions across a bridge with pull-back cars, might be my new favorite game in the entire package. It takes only a second to learn, even if you've never played with the toy in real life, and the HD rumble from the Joy-Con felt while pulling the mouse back fully communicates how much power you are giving. Another standout revolves around dragging a Toad through a maze without touching the edges. There are a few same-y feeling games that revolve around flicking objects from one side of the screen to the other with the mouse, but the majority of games feel like a nice appetizer for what a Switch 2 exclusive Mario Party could look like. Not ready for a closeup Carnival Coaster is almost exactly on par with something like Paratroopa Flight School. That is to say, I had a good time playing through each course once, but have no reason to revisit it unless a friend wanted to give it a shot. This mode is a literal rail shooter with minigame breaks scattered throughout. While riding the coaster, players use the mouse to aim and fire at enemies along the course to extend the timer. Whenever the coaster makes a drop, you can also raise your hands up in the air to add more time, which turned out to be a slightly more interesting twist since I found myself scrambling to get my Joy-Con back down and aiming again when enemies appeared right after a drop. This mode exclusively uses mouse control minigames in a team format, playing against the clock. The faster you and your team can complete the minigame (or the higher the score you can get, depending on the game), the more bonus time you get for the next leg of the coaster. Each course lasts no more than 10 minutes, minigames included, and offers no real incentive to go back aside from setting high scores. The actual rail-shooting is functional, but the courses and enemy patterns aren't exactly thrilling or challenging. Aside from seeing yourself alongside your character in Mario Party mode or Carnival Coaster, Bowser Live is the only mode where the camera and microphone take center stage. It is also the most throwaway mode in the game. After picking between either camera or microphone games, which are mutually exclusive for some reason, two teams of two compete in three games that take all of about 3 minutes total. I say three games, but the last one is always the same, so it is effectively only two. I can see the camera games being fun for younger kids since they involve jumping, squatting, and tilting, but there are so few and they are over so fast that I can't imagine them holding anyone's attention for long. There's also a distinct lack of creativity in the camera games for how much potential there is for Nintendo to mine. They all play things very safe, perhaps due to the camera's inconsistent tracking. The microphone games had some better ideas behind them besides just being loud. Clapping to the beat or using your voice to control a Flappy Bird-like game works better than I expected, until the other people in the room realized how easily it was to sabotage the team playing. You'll have to hope your group is willing to play fair in these games. Or not. That's the Mario Party way, right? Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV is a microcosm of the base game in every way. It adds some meaningful new ways to play the core board game experience that has never been better, plus some additional bonus modes that offer a nice, if shallow, distraction. Jamboree TV just makes navigating and accessing what you want even more of a chore by relegating everything behind multiple menus and loading screens. But the biggest sin is how few big swings Nintendo took here. It once again feels more like a testing ground than a full commitment. This isn't so much a bigger, better party but an invitation to a party with all the same people across town. There's fun to be had, but sitting through traffic between sure does kill the vibes. Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV was tested on the Switch 2.
Atlantic
15 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The One Book Everyone Should Read
What should I read next? If only making that decision were simple: Recommendations abound online and off, but when you're casting about for a new book, especially if you're coming off the heels of something you adored, the paradox of choice can feel intense. You might turn to loved ones to ask which book would be just right for you. Avid readers frequently face a parallel dilemma; they find themselves bombarded by friends and family members who expect a perfectly tailored recommendation. Staffers at The Atlantic get these inquiries a lot—often enough to recognize that for many of us, a pattern emerges. We end up suggesting the same book, again and again, no matter who's asking. Yet each recommender cites a different set of criteria for the work that rises to the top of their list. Some of us pick a read that feels so timeless, and so widely appealing, that it truly does have something for everyone. Others among us evangelize about something so singular that it must be experienced. The 12 books below have nothing in common except for the fact that their advocates have shared them time after time, and believe in their power to delight or captivate readers who have a variety of tastes and proclivities. One of them will, we hope, be the title you pick up next. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka Some people turn to books for history, others for lessons on human nature. They might hope to better understand longing, despair, joy, or love—or simply chase the high of genre fiction (ghost stories, political thrillers, tales of redemption). To all of these readers, I invariably advocate for Karunatilaka's journey into underworlds: both a supernatural realm beyond death and the demimonde of violence and corruption that fueled the Sri Lankan civil war. Seven Moons was the dark-horse winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, beating books by Percival Everett and Elizabeth Strout and rightly claiming its place in the magical-realism canon. The title character is a gay photojournalist with a conscience—which turns out to be a very dangerous combination in 1980s Colombo. In fact, when the novel opens, he's already dead. Before moving on from Earth, he gets seven days of purgatory—during which he must try to influence his living friends to publicize a trove of damning photographs while fending off literal demons and the dark truths he'd rather avoid. My closing pitch to friends: I've rarely read a better ending. — Boris Kachka Made for Love, by Alissa Nutting I love to suggest Nutting's work to people, even though it's been called 'deviant'—if folks avoid me afterward, then I know they're not my kind of weirdo. She has a talent for developing outrageous concepts that also reveal earnest truths about what people expect from one another and why. One of the best examples is her novel Made for Love, perhaps better known as an HBO show starring the excellent Cristin Milioti. The book, too, is about a woman whose tech-magnate husband has implanted a chip in her head, but it grows far more absurd. (A subplot, for instance, features a con artist who becomes attracted to dolphins.) Nutting's scenarios sometimes remind me of the comedian Nathan Fielder's work: You will probably cringe, but you'll be laughing—and sometimes even nodding along. — Serena Dai These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett Here's how I start my recommendation: 'Did you know that Tom Hanks's assistant and Ann Patchett went from total strangers to best friends?' And then, when my target inevitably shows interest in the out-there pairing of a beloved novelist and a Hollywood insider, I put These Precious Days in their hands. The titular essay is about this friendship, but the broader subject of Patchett's book is death: She contemplates the passing of the men who served as fathers in her life; she thinks about the potential demise of her husband, a small-plane pilot; and she considers the mortality of that assistant, a woman named Sooki. After Sooki, who starts her relationship with the author as a long-distance pen pal, is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she moves into Patchett's Nashville house during the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the writing, funny and sharp, follows the two of them as they work on their art, do yoga, take psychedelics—but the sentences get their power from their awareness of the gulf between life and death that will eventually separate the two women. — Emma Sarappo Trust, by Hernan Diaz In 1955, James Baldwin famously pilloried Uncle Tom's Cabin for its 'virtuous sentimentality,' and called its author, the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, 'not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer.' For Baldwin, Stowe's well-intentioned advocacy turned her characters into caricatures who existed only in service of her ideological aims—and as a result, he believed that her novel failed as art. This trap ensnares many fiction writers, and I have spent much time thinking about how they can avoid it when tackling contemporary problems. This is one reason I constantly bring up Díaz's Trust: It navigates the line between politics and artistry with rare skill. Set in New York City's late-19th-century financial world, the book is composed of four fictional texts, each focused on the same people but written from a different vantage point. The question is: Which narrator does the reader believe? Trust 's storytelling is impeccable, full of twists and surprises. The book is also a remarkable criticism of unbridled capitalism—but the story does not exist in service of a doctrine. It remains unlike anything else I've read. — Clint Smith An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo Harjo's poetry collection begins by recounting a horrific event: In 1830, the United States government forced some 100,000 Indigenous people to walk hundreds of miles, at gunpoint, from the southeastern U.S. to lands west of the Mississippi River. Among those on this Trail of Tears were Harjo's Muscogee ancestors, who left Georgia and Alabama for Oklahoma, and whose memory the writer resurrects through poems that collapse the distance between generations, making history feel present-tense. The book deftly expresses both grief for all of the violence perpetrated on American soil and a profound love for all of the beings that inhabit this continent. Ancestors and descendants dance at the perimeter of Harjo's poems, and her definition of relative is wide enough to hold every living thing—panthers, raccoons, tobacco plants. Anyone could spend an afternoon with this book and come away with a refreshed, more capacious view of this country. 'These lands aren't our lands,' Harjo notes. 'These lands aren't your lands. We are this land.' — Valerie Trapp An American Sunrise - Poems By Joy Harjo Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, by Ellen Meloy When Meloy, a desert naturalist, felt estranged from nature, she sought to cure it by stalking a band of bighorn sheep for a year in Utah's Canyonlands wilderness. She begins in winter and feels cold and clumsy. She envies the bighorns' exquisite balance as she watches them spring quickly up cliff faces. She feels 'the power and purity of first wonder.' Meloy's writing is scientifically learned—beautifully so—but this book does not pretend to be a detached study. When she hikes alongside these animals at dawn, she aches to belong. She fantasizes about being a feral child they raised. At first, the band is indifferent to her project. But animal by animal, they begin to let her into their world. To follow her there is to experience one of the sublime pleasures of contemporary American nature writing. Meloy gives an account of their culture, their affections for one another, even their conflicts. All these years after my first read, I can still hear the crack of the rams' colliding horns echoing off the red rock. — Ross Andersen Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth When I picked up this novel some years ago, I'd never heard of Hjorth, and I was drawn to the book simply because of the quiet mood evoked by the cover of the English-language edition—a serene picture of a lonely cabin in the woods at twilight. What I found inside was a story that reads at once as a juicy diary and as a chillingly astute psychological portrait of a dysfunctional family. The story is narrated by Bergljot, a Norwegian theater critic who is estranged from much of her family because they refused to acknowledge the abuse that her father had inflicted on her. A dispute over inheritance brings the whole distant family back into painful contact. The novel was deeply controversial in Norway after Hjorth's family claimed that its contents were too close to reality. Later, Hjorth's sister published her own novelization of their family strife. But the scandal shouldn't detract from the novel itself, which is utterly specific yet universal: The author captures the pettiness of the family's drama and the damage they do to one another with equal fidelity. — Maya Chung Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce The kingdom of Tortall has many of the classic features of a fantasy world: strapping lords, tender ladies, charming rogues, mysterious magical forces that can be used for good or for evil. But what makes Pierce's Song of the Lioness series so timeless and reliable is its heroine, Alanna, who poses as a boy in order to train as a knight. The First Adventure, which introduced her to readers in 1983, serves as an excellent gateway to the fantasy genre. The book covers Alanna's years as a page in Tortall's royal palace, where, from the ages of 10 to 13, she must contend with her girlhood—which means navigating periods and growth spurts—while keeping her identity a secret. Pierce never devalues Alanna's feelings and experiences, and the author isn't didactic about the choices Alanna makes; readers will feel they're being taken seriously, no matter their age. — Elise Hannum Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Love, Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams This book's summary sounds like something out of Black Mirror: An idealist embraces a new form of technology, convinced that it has the potential to change the world, only to become trapped in a hell of her own making. Wynn-Williams, a former director of public policy at Facebook, describes her experiences working at the social-networking giant with dark humor and a sense of mounting panic. I gasped a few times as Wynn-Williams recounted being commanded to sleep in bed next to Sheryl Sandberg, and being harassed by a higher-up while she was recovering from a traumatic childbirth that nearly killed her. But the real shock comes from seeing how Facebook, a site most people associate with college friends and benign memes, helped to amplify and exacerbate hate speech. This is exactly why I keep pressing it on people. The corporation, now Meta, has described some of the book's allegations as 'false'; regardless, Careless People makes a powerful case for why no single company or boss should have this kind of reckless, untrammeled power. — Sophie Gilbert A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific, by Hua Hsu The first thing I like to tell people about Hsu's debut book is that he took its title from a novel that had been lost, or maybe never even existed. The second thing is that it is about America, not China. A Floating Chinaman 's subject, broadly, is Asian American literature between the First and Second World Wars, but its main character is the eccentric novelist and immigrant H. T. Tsiang. Tsiang wrote prolifically at the same time as Pearl S. Buck, the white writer who won a Pulitzer for The Good Earth, her novel about Chinese farmers. Tsiang had high ambitions to combat Buck's rosy portrait of his birth country, but his manuscripts were dismissed again and again, partly for their political radicalism, their criticism of the U.S. and China, and their sheer weirdness. Tsiang had sketched a novel about a Chinese laborer who travels widely—but as far as Hsu can tell, Tsiang's book never materialized. Hsu honors the writer's obsession and perseverance while asking a more pointed question: Were Americans unready to accept an immigrant writer who called out weaknesses in their own country? — Shan Wang The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha Beha's big-swing novel, set in the late 2000s, follows Sam, a young data-crunching blogger from the Midwest who gets hired to work at a legacy New York magazine. He arrives in the city certain that when one has the right information, the world is 'a knowable place'—but he is soon forced to reconsider his rational worldview. Sam encounters an apocalyptic preacher, falls for the daughter of a profile subject (though he's married), and cranks out a near-constant stream of articles while struggling with unexpected doubts. The novel takes on heady themes, but it never feels dull or brainy, and all the people I've shared it with over the years love it too. My New Yorker father told me how well it portrayed the city after the 2008 financial crisis; my friends in journalism affirm its perceptiveness about the industry's 'content farm' days; my church friends appreciate how it takes religious belief seriously. I push it upon pretty much everyone I know. — Eleanor Barkhorn Black Swans, by Eve Babitz Reading Babitz's early work is like being whisked from one glamorous party to another. A fixture of the 1970s Hollywood scene, Babitz transcribed dozens of her own libertine experiences with diaristic recall in autofictional works such as Eve's Hollywood. But by the time she released this 1993 short-story collection, the parties had fizzled out and the scene was over. Retreating from the zeitgeist didn't rob her of inspiration, though. As an older writer, Babitz possessed a new clarity about the meaning of all those youthful nights, and the stories in Black Swans —about former bohemians inching toward the staid life, and romantics bumping up against the limits of love—are told with tenderness that is unusual in her other work. Babitz is often contrasted with her frenemy Joan Didion —Babitz was cast in the popular imagination as the fun, ditzy sexpot, as opposed to Didion's cool, cold-blooded stenographer—but the maturity and thoughtfulness of these stories dispel any lazy stereotypes. Her early work is what made her reputation, but this later collection, in which she's looking back and making sense of it all, is simply better—a trajectory I wish for all writers. — Jeremy Gordon
