Latest news with #DreamState
The Age
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Searching for your next read? Here are 10 new books
From medieval world-building and early 2000s nostalgia to a seminal study of Palestine and the cultural significance of one of our great rivers, this week's books traverse time, subject and genre. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK The Pretender Jo Harkin Bloomsbury, $32.99 The Pretender takes us into a late medieval England dominated by violence and political intrigue. As the dynastic bloodbath of the Wars of the Roses draws to a close, Henry Tudor snatches the crown from the corpse of Richard III on Bosworth Field. Meanwhile, a farm-boy is groomed for power – yet another pretender to the throne. Raised John Collan, the lad is told he is not in fact a commoner but Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick. For his own safety, he must assume a third persona – that of Lambert Simnel – as he is shunted between unscrupulous powerbrokers jockeying for position in, and plotting to overthrow, the court of Henry VII. Jo Harkin reaches deeply into medieval (and classical) literature, language and thought in this rich novel that follows the fortunes of a character forced into three layers of identity. It's an unusually granular and imaginative act of historical world-building, attentive to the fabulism and flaw of history itself, and should appeal to fans of medieval fantasy as much as those who devoured Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. A classic love triangle morphs into more multidimensional, non-Euclidian emotional geometry as Erich Puchner's Dream State unfolds. It opens with preparations for matrimony underway. Cece is to be wed to a brilliant young doctor, Charlie. She travels to her in-laws' majestic lake house in Montana to finalise details, together with Charlie's best friend (and best man) Garrett, whose own prospects as a baggage handler at a provincial airport can't compare to the bright future Charlie has mapped out for himself. From there, the course of their lives unfurls over decades. They have children whose lives will be marked in enigmatic, fateful ways by their parents' decisions, and against the family saga, told with winning humour and poignancy, the world around them runs not just to the present day but into a starkly imagined future. Destiny and human agency, a progression from innocence to experience, and the grim fate of the natural environment haunt this expansive and engaging work, which has the scope of a Victorian novel while remaining breezily contemporary in tone and style. Daughter to two Afghan doctors who fled to Germany before she was a thing, Nila is seized by a perverse desire to ruin her life. Sex, drugs and hedonism beckon her to the nightclubs of Berlin. Nila begins a romance with a celebrated American author, Marlowe Woods, that was always bound to exoticise her, even as it nurtures her desire for artistic expression (for which Marlowe, predictably, takes too much credit). She becomes a photographer, as acute at capturing the contradictions and piercing moments of life as it's experienced through images as the novel's author – clearly a poet – is through words. Good Girl might be slightly over-realised, tying up too many loose ends and drumming home answers to thematic questions, but only after it has seduced and shocked with its delirious honesty, its refusal to succumb to received ideas about race and racism, say, or to reduce the countershading and complexity of characters usually portrayed as either good or bad. A coming-of-age novel thrumming with the complications and ironies of desire, from a writer to watch. The Book of Guilt Catherine Chidgey Penguin, $34.99 New Zealand novelist Catherine Chidgey has penned a diverse corpus of fiction – everything from Holocaust novels to a book featuring a magpie narrator – and her ninth novel consciously echoes Kazuo Ishiguro's most renowned work, Never Let Me Go. Like that book, it's set in an institution for children, and follows three of them – teenage triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William – as the institution they live in is mothballed by guilt-ridden bureaucrats. Released into the community, they meet another child cut off from the world outside and discover sinister truths unknown to them. The Book of Guilt departs from Ishiguro in more fully articulating a dystopian vision. The history of this alternate, Thatcher-era England includes the successful assassination of Hitler in 1943, a rapidly negotiated conclusion to the war, and the global embrace of unethical medical experimentation. Chidgey is also more overtly political in her approach, incorporating other voices such as that of a government minister. It isn't a terrible book, but no one who's read the Ishiguro will be able to resist unfortunate comparison. The length of the literary shadow is too long. Deep Cuts Holly Brickley The Borough Press, $32.99 An homage to indie music of the early 2000s wrapped in a romance, Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts sees two young characters enmeshed in a fruitful creative embrace long before love takes over. Joe and Percy meet at Berkeley – the former is an emerging singer/songwriter, the latter is, well, a critic, among other things. Percy recognises Joe's talent and collaborates with him to develop it, although she refuses credit on the album when it is released and Joe's career takes off. When Joe's girlfriend Zoe announces she's gay, the space opens for Percy to make a move. A simmering attraction is placed on the backburner, however, as Joe values their creative bond and friendship too much to risk a relationship. Brickley immerses the reader in period pop-cultural references, as the world turns from 9/11 to the election of President Obama. Her book should find a ready audience in Millennials with a taste for having their nostalgia buttons pressed, even if the romance plot itself is less exciting than the period colour, or Percy discovering her own voice in the face of frustrated love. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Trails to Freedom Simon Tancred Hardie Grant, $39.99 On September 3, 1943 Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, effectively ending its involvement in the war. Prison guards in the north of Italy released their captives, drinking and celebrating with them. Among them were four Australian POWs, who, a few weeks later, walked into neutral Switzerland along medieval paths – the eponymous trails to freedom. It was no stroll in the park, the Germans weren't happy, and they had to be guided by brave partisans. Tancred, who first heard of the Australians' escape from a friend, was inspired to walk the same trails, and as he follows in their footsteps he skilfully incorporates the tales of the partisans, German atrocities and the story of his uncle, a POW who drowned in the Mediterranean after his transport was torpedoed by an English sub, Tancred granting him another fate and imagining he too took that walk to freedom. It's a fascinating account of dangerously topsy-turvy times in one corner of Italy, Tancred vividly evoking the countryside as he completes the walk, topping it with a rolled ciggie in his uncle's honour. The Question of Palestine Edward W. Said Text, $36.99 With the slaughter in Gaza going on and on, the re-publication of this seminal 1979 study couldn't have come at a more critical moment. What distinguished it 45 years ago, among other things, was the fact that for the first time a lauded Palestinian writer, writing in English, presented the Palestinian story to the West to widespread acclaim. It was not so much a history of the country, as an attempt to convey the Palestinian experience to a largely ignorant world. Said, who died in 2003, was a towering figure in critical theory, his landmark work Orientalism essentially putting post-colonial studies on the map. And that whole notion of the oriental Other underpins his thinking here, for it is the Orientalist lens that frames Western and Zionist thinking about Palestinians, ultimately 'de-humanising' them. Not an easy book for him to write, he covers a highly complex situation from 1948 (the establishment of Israel, and the displacement of Palestinians) up to Camp David – also including the reasons for his shift from favouring a two-State solution to a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian one-state solution. The writing, fired by passion yet calmly stated, is masterly. The River Chris Hammer MUP, $36.99 In the summer of 2008-09, when journalist and author Chris Hammer embarked on a series of journeys through the Murray-Darling Basin, a 10-year drought had dried up many of its waterways – and the 'mighty' Murray didn't have the oomph to flow into the sea. As he observes in this up-dated version of his 2010 publication, 'The dams are (now) full, the rivers are flowing', but it's largely due to the luck of the weather and will only take the pendulum to swing back and Australia's largest, most vital river system will once again be in dire straits. And although some things have changed politically, not enough has. The River, a compelling record of those drought days that seemed to bring the apocalypse with them, is just the antidote for the 'complacency' that has since set in. It's a highly evocative catalogue of mud-baked rivers, tragically laughable signs indicating mooring sites and properties going bust (he interviewed numerous farmers), which also incorporates the cultural significance of the river system. A literary warning bell, often very moving and still resonant. Sarah Arachchi's memoir about becoming a paediatrician is as much a migrant tale as a first-hand account of the varied experience of being a female doctor of colour in Australia. Born in Kandy, Sri Lanka, her parents (in response to the dangers of civil war) immigrated to Australia, fetching up in Melbourne. It was the start of a protracted tug-of-war between one home and another, often played out in a number of schools both state and private (courtesy of scholarships she won), where she was bullied – the recurring question being 'Where are you really from?' Added to this is the gender prejudice she's continually faced as a woman doctor. But what really comes through is the complexity, the juggling act of coming from two cultures, both of which she embraces – fiercely proud of her Sri Lankan heritage, and an Aussie girl who played cricket against the boys and had, it seems, a particularly fine sweep shot as well as a crush on Shane Warne. A plain speaking but emotionally charged rites-of-passage portrait. Unveiled Vincent Fantauzzo Penguin, $36.99 This memoir, by portrait painter Vincent Fantauzzo, recalls among other things his time growing up in the tough environment of the Broadmeadows/Glenroy area in the late 1970s and '80s. Fights were an everyday occurrence, not to mention the violence and neglect of his father (a troubled relationship reflected in the son's ambivalent feelings on his death). He is also dyslexic and was written off as a lost cause in all the schools he attended. But he could draw and paint, and at 16, painted Albert Einstein, for whom he developed an affinity because Einstein emphasised imagination over knowledge. The story ranges from Broady to Britain and New York (where he had the dubious distinction of meeting Donald Trump), back to Melbourne, marriage and children. There are some pretty grim scenes here – brawls, drugs and the occasional creative use of a baseball bat – but it's also a classic tale of a seemingly lost soul finding his life-saving métier.
Sydney Morning Herald
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Searching for your next read? Here are 10 new books
From medieval world-building and early 2000s nostalgia to a seminal study of Palestine and the cultural significance of one of our great rivers, this week's books traverse time, subject and genre. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK The Pretender Jo Harkin Bloomsbury, $32.99 The Pretender takes us into a late medieval England dominated by violence and political intrigue. As the dynastic bloodbath of the Wars of the Roses draws to a close, Henry Tudor snatches the crown from the corpse of Richard III on Bosworth Field. Meanwhile, a farm-boy is groomed for power – yet another pretender to the throne. Raised John Collan, the lad is told he is not in fact a commoner but Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick. For his own safety, he must assume a third persona – that of Lambert Simnel – as he is shunted between unscrupulous powerbrokers jockeying for position in, and plotting to overthrow, the court of Henry VII. Jo Harkin reaches deeply into medieval (and classical) literature, language and thought in this rich novel that follows the fortunes of a character forced into three layers of identity. It's an unusually granular and imaginative act of historical world-building, attentive to the fabulism and flaw of history itself, and should appeal to fans of medieval fantasy as much as those who devoured Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. A classic love triangle morphs into more multidimensional, non-Euclidian emotional geometry as Erich Puchner's Dream State unfolds. It opens with preparations for matrimony underway. Cece is to be wed to a brilliant young doctor, Charlie. She travels to her in-laws' majestic lake house in Montana to finalise details, together with Charlie's best friend (and best man) Garrett, whose own prospects as a baggage handler at a provincial airport can't compare to the bright future Charlie has mapped out for himself. From there, the course of their lives unfurls over decades. They have children whose lives will be marked in enigmatic, fateful ways by their parents' decisions, and against the family saga, told with winning humour and poignancy, the world around them runs not just to the present day but into a starkly imagined future. Destiny and human agency, a progression from innocence to experience, and the grim fate of the natural environment haunt this expansive and engaging work, which has the scope of a Victorian novel while remaining breezily contemporary in tone and style. Daughter to two Afghan doctors who fled to Germany before she was a thing, Nila is seized by a perverse desire to ruin her life. Sex, drugs and hedonism beckon her to the nightclubs of Berlin. Nila begins a romance with a celebrated American author, Marlowe Woods, that was always bound to exoticise her, even as it nurtures her desire for artistic expression (for which Marlowe, predictably, takes too much credit). She becomes a photographer, as acute at capturing the contradictions and piercing moments of life as it's experienced through images as the novel's author – clearly a poet – is through words. Good Girl might be slightly over-realised, tying up too many loose ends and drumming home answers to thematic questions, but only after it has seduced and shocked with its delirious honesty, its refusal to succumb to received ideas about race and racism, say, or to reduce the countershading and complexity of characters usually portrayed as either good or bad. A coming-of-age novel thrumming with the complications and ironies of desire, from a writer to watch. The Book of Guilt Catherine Chidgey Penguin, $34.99 New Zealand novelist Catherine Chidgey has penned a diverse corpus of fiction – everything from Holocaust novels to a book featuring a magpie narrator – and her ninth novel consciously echoes Kazuo Ishiguro's most renowned work, Never Let Me Go. Like that book, it's set in an institution for children, and follows three of them – teenage triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William – as the institution they live in is mothballed by guilt-ridden bureaucrats. Released into the community, they meet another child cut off from the world outside and discover sinister truths unknown to them. The Book of Guilt departs from Ishiguro in more fully articulating a dystopian vision. The history of this alternate, Thatcher-era England includes the successful assassination of Hitler in 1943, a rapidly negotiated conclusion to the war, and the global embrace of unethical medical experimentation. Chidgey is also more overtly political in her approach, incorporating other voices such as that of a government minister. It isn't a terrible book, but no one who's read the Ishiguro will be able to resist unfortunate comparison. The length of the literary shadow is too long. Deep Cuts Holly Brickley The Borough Press, $32.99 An homage to indie music of the early 2000s wrapped in a romance, Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts sees two young characters enmeshed in a fruitful creative embrace long before love takes over. Joe and Percy meet at Berkeley – the former is an emerging singer/songwriter, the latter is, well, a critic, among other things. Percy recognises Joe's talent and collaborates with him to develop it, although she refuses credit on the album when it is released and Joe's career takes off. When Joe's girlfriend Zoe announces she's gay, the space opens for Percy to make a move. A simmering attraction is placed on the backburner, however, as Joe values their creative bond and friendship too much to risk a relationship. Brickley immerses the reader in period pop-cultural references, as the world turns from 9/11 to the election of President Obama. Her book should find a ready audience in Millennials with a taste for having their nostalgia buttons pressed, even if the romance plot itself is less exciting than the period colour, or Percy discovering her own voice in the face of frustrated love. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Trails to Freedom Simon Tancred Hardie Grant, $39.99 On September 3, 1943 Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, effectively ending its involvement in the war. Prison guards in the north of Italy released their captives, drinking and celebrating with them. Among them were four Australian POWs, who, a few weeks later, walked into neutral Switzerland along medieval paths – the eponymous trails to freedom. It was no stroll in the park, the Germans weren't happy, and they had to be guided by brave partisans. Tancred, who first heard of the Australians' escape from a friend, was inspired to walk the same trails, and as he follows in their footsteps he skilfully incorporates the tales of the partisans, German atrocities and the story of his uncle, a POW who drowned in the Mediterranean after his transport was torpedoed by an English sub, Tancred granting him another fate and imagining he too took that walk to freedom. It's a fascinating account of dangerously topsy-turvy times in one corner of Italy, Tancred vividly evoking the countryside as he completes the walk, topping it with a rolled ciggie in his uncle's honour. The Question of Palestine Edward W. Said Text, $36.99 With the slaughter in Gaza going on and on, the re-publication of this seminal 1979 study couldn't have come at a more critical moment. What distinguished it 45 years ago, among other things, was the fact that for the first time a lauded Palestinian writer, writing in English, presented the Palestinian story to the West to widespread acclaim. It was not so much a history of the country, as an attempt to convey the Palestinian experience to a largely ignorant world. Said, who died in 2003, was a towering figure in critical theory, his landmark work Orientalism essentially putting post-colonial studies on the map. And that whole notion of the oriental Other underpins his thinking here, for it is the Orientalist lens that frames Western and Zionist thinking about Palestinians, ultimately 'de-humanising' them. Not an easy book for him to write, he covers a highly complex situation from 1948 (the establishment of Israel, and the displacement of Palestinians) up to Camp David – also including the reasons for his shift from favouring a two-State solution to a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian one-state solution. The writing, fired by passion yet calmly stated, is masterly. The River Chris Hammer MUP, $36.99 In the summer of 2008-09, when journalist and author Chris Hammer embarked on a series of journeys through the Murray-Darling Basin, a 10-year drought had dried up many of its waterways – and the 'mighty' Murray didn't have the oomph to flow into the sea. As he observes in this up-dated version of his 2010 publication, 'The dams are (now) full, the rivers are flowing', but it's largely due to the luck of the weather and will only take the pendulum to swing back and Australia's largest, most vital river system will once again be in dire straits. And although some things have changed politically, not enough has. The River, a compelling record of those drought days that seemed to bring the apocalypse with them, is just the antidote for the 'complacency' that has since set in. It's a highly evocative catalogue of mud-baked rivers, tragically laughable signs indicating mooring sites and properties going bust (he interviewed numerous farmers), which also incorporates the cultural significance of the river system. A literary warning bell, often very moving and still resonant. Sarah Arachchi's memoir about becoming a paediatrician is as much a migrant tale as a first-hand account of the varied experience of being a female doctor of colour in Australia. Born in Kandy, Sri Lanka, her parents (in response to the dangers of civil war) immigrated to Australia, fetching up in Melbourne. It was the start of a protracted tug-of-war between one home and another, often played out in a number of schools both state and private (courtesy of scholarships she won), where she was bullied – the recurring question being 'Where are you really from?' Added to this is the gender prejudice she's continually faced as a woman doctor. But what really comes through is the complexity, the juggling act of coming from two cultures, both of which she embraces – fiercely proud of her Sri Lankan heritage, and an Aussie girl who played cricket against the boys and had, it seems, a particularly fine sweep shot as well as a crush on Shane Warne. A plain speaking but emotionally charged rites-of-passage portrait. Unveiled Vincent Fantauzzo Penguin, $36.99 This memoir, by portrait painter Vincent Fantauzzo, recalls among other things his time growing up in the tough environment of the Broadmeadows/Glenroy area in the late 1970s and '80s. Fights were an everyday occurrence, not to mention the violence and neglect of his father (a troubled relationship reflected in the son's ambivalent feelings on his death). He is also dyslexic and was written off as a lost cause in all the schools he attended. But he could draw and paint, and at 16, painted Albert Einstein, for whom he developed an affinity because Einstein emphasised imagination over knowledge. The story ranges from Broady to Britain and New York (where he had the dubious distinction of meeting Donald Trump), back to Melbourne, marriage and children. There are some pretty grim scenes here – brawls, drugs and the occasional creative use of a baseball bat – but it's also a classic tale of a seemingly lost soul finding his life-saving métier.
Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
This family saga is 100 pages too long — but who cares, the writing's great
I like it when a novel surprises me. So often, it's easy to slot literary narratives into a short list of categories: will-they-won't-they romance, journey to self-knowledge, sad girl millennial lit. By page 50, I can generally tell my thinly disguised autobiographies from my cosy crimes. But Dream State, the American writer Eric Puchner's second novel, went somewhere I wasn't expecting. We begin in the summer of 2004 in a gorgeous old house on a lakeshore in Montana. It belongs to Cece's future parents-in-law, and she's there to plan her wedding to Charlie. The house is a magical place, a romantic idyll with 'raspberry bushes, magically replenishing, like something in a fairy tale'. Keeping Cece company while Charlie toils away as a cardiac anaesthetist
The Guardian
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dream State by Eric Puchner review – an epic tale of paradise lost
American author Eric Puchner's latest novel is a colossus: a vast, bright behemoth of a book, panoramic as the Montana skyline. Dream State opens in 2004 with the image of a young woman, a month before her wedding, diving into a perfect lake whose 'blue expanse of water' reflects the 'overlapping peaks of the Salish range'. From this Edenic outset, it traverses decades, barrelling through our present day into a projected future: dipping in and out of the lives of a tight cast of characters as they succeed and fail; love and fall out of love; change and stay the same. The young woman is Cece. She has stepped out of the lakeshore family home of Charlie Margolis, a cardiac anaesthesiologist to whom she's engaged. Route 30 traffic noise aside, the place is a bucolic idyll, marked by abundance and continuity: orchards filled with 'ancient apple trees', 'raspberry bushes, magically replenishing', mountain slopes 'bristling with pines'. Cece 'loves it more than any place on the earth'. She's come to Montana early to put the finishing touches to the wedding plans before the guests, or even Charlie, arrive. In his absence, Charlie has deputed his best friend, Garrett, to lend a hand. Garrett appears on the lakeshore as Cece is swimming – and from there, events unfold more or less as we'd expect. Cece and Garrett move rapidly through antagonism into fascination; the wedding looms; and decisions taken in the heat of the moment profoundly shape the lives of all three characters from that point on. Puchner carries off his novel's first act with aplomb, deploying the elements of the love triangle as the formula demands, but deftly, and with humour: light relief comes in the shape of a recalcitrant mountain goat, and a norovirus outbreak that topples the wedding party like dominoes. But it's in the second act – and all the acts thereafter – that Puchner really flexes his muscles. His interest, it turns out, is not in the resolution of his love triangle, but in the idea that any such resolution is a chimera. Cece, Charlie and Garrett become parents, move through careers that wax and wane, grow old. Far from being finalised in the first act, their feelings about and for one another continue to shift and complicate as the decades unfold. This absence of resolution is most visible in the lives of the trio's children, via whom Puchner presents us with a dichotomy: they're at once actors in their own right, and vessels carrying forward a queasy inheritance. The relationship between two of them, Jasper and Lana, is the subject of a perfectly formed chapter at the heart of the book, in which Puchner makes it clear that their own feelings are at once deeply personal, and at the same time inflected by their odd, slanting glimpses into the relationship between their parents. By following his characters over the course of years, Puchner shows us that we're not fixed at the point of early adulthood; that change remains not just possible but inevitable. Yet in revealing how profoundly the children's lives are shaped by the actions of their parents, he simultaneously calls the whole idea of free will into question. And free will means something different for those born in the 21st century. In its scope and plenitude, Dream State feels, at times, like a Victorian novel: an unhurried depiction of a rich, full world, in which actions have consequences that ripple across generations. But where the great novelists of the Victorian age tended to set their players' foibles and insecurities against stable, knowable landscapes, these characters' journeys take place amid a landscape that is slipping and changing, year by year, degree by terrifying degree. Puchner measures the passage of time by the disappearance of wildlife, the recession of the snowline and, most poignantly, by the retreat of the lake from the shore, leaving behind a 'dry lake bottom … bleached grey as the moon'. Lana and Jasper's summers are hotter and less bounteous than their parents', and their choices, as a result, are curtailed. As the years pass, the book itself evolves, from romantic drama into elegy: for the characters' lost youth, but more profoundly for the loss of a version of youth that is carefree and filled with potential. In his wrenching final chapter, Puchner takes us back to the beginning, and shows us the events that set his central characters' feet on the path to their endings. We feel, in an instant, both the loss of the promise their own lives contained and the collective loss of a steadily unfolding future that once we took for granted. In Dream State, Puchner seduces us with a familiar and deeply secure narrative structure, only to undermine that structure, to force it to tell a tale of profound and fatal insecurity. But he tells his tale so compellingly, so engagingly, with such warmth and humour, that it's not until you set the book down that you can appreciate the breadth and brilliance of what he's done. Dream State by Eric Puchner is published by Sceptre, £18.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
CBS News
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
The Book Report: Washington Post critic Ron Charles (March 9)
By Washington Post book critic Ron Charles With spring just around the corner, it's time for a new crop of fresh books: Eric Puchner's "Dream State" is one of those big family novels you just want to fall into. It starts, very charmingly, with the planning for a wedding at a summer house in Montana. Cece is about to marry Charlie, but then Charlie's best friend shows up, and their plans veer off in ways nobody expects. With humor and heartbreak, this sweeping saga explores the way choices – big and small – shape lives and families for decades. Fans of "Americanah," rejoice! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Dream Count" (Knopf) marks her long-awaited return to fiction. It's an intricately woven novel that spans continents and classes. Following four Nigerian women in North America and Africa – a travel writer, a lawyer, a banker and a maid – Adichie explores love, ambition, family expectations, and the forces that shape women's choices. With her signature wit and insight, she examines privilege and power, intimacy and betrayal, and the weight of history, delivering a story as thought-provoking as it is moving. The history of the Dust Bowl in Nebraska gets swept up in a magical new novel by Karen Russell, called "The Antidote" (Knopf). At the center of the story is a woman known as a prairie witch, who stores memories that people don't want to carry any more. And with farms going bankrupt and a string of murders terrifying the town, there are lots of things these folks don't want to remember. A whole bunch of unforgettable characters swirl through these pages, including a lucky Polish farmer, a teenage basketball star, and a photographer whose time-traveling camera reveals more than some folks want to see. The weather is finally getting warmer, the ground is about to thaw, and Martha Stewart is here to get you ready with her biggest gardening book in more than 30 years. "Martha Stewart's Gardening Handbook: The Essential Guide to Designing, Planting, and Growing" (Harvest) offers her expertise to gardeners of all levels. Packed with advice about plant care, year-round maintenance and planning, this guide to trees, shrubs, specialty gardens and vegetables is filled with color photos to inspire you, even if you don't get off your sofa or pick up a shovel. "Martha Stewart's Gardening Handbook: The Essential Guide to Designing, Planting, and Growing" (Harvest), in Hardcover and eBook formats, available March 18 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and That's it for the Book Report. For these and other suggestions about what to read this spring, talk with your local bookseller or librarian. I'm Ron Charles. Until next time, read on! For more info: Produced by Lucie Kirk. Editor: Chad Cardin. For more reading recommendations, check out these previous Book Report features from Ron Charles: The Book Report (January 26) The best books of 2024 The Book Report (October 13) The Book Report (July 14) The Book Report (June 2) The Book Report (April 28) The Book Report (March 17) The Book Report (February 18) Ron Charles' favorite novels of 2023 The Book Report (October 22) The Book Report (September 17) The Book Report (August 6) The Book Report (June 4) The Book Report (April 30) The Book Report (March 19) The Book Report (February 12, 2023) The Book Report: Ron Charles' favorite novels of 2022 The Book Report (November 13) The Book Report (Sept. 18) The Book Report (July 10) The Book Report (April 17) The Book Report (March 13) The Book Report (February 6, 2022) The Book Report (November 28) The Book Report (September 26) The Book Report (August 1) The Book Report (June 6) The Book Report (May 9) The Book Report (March 28) The Book Report (February 28) The Book Report (January 31, 2021)
