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TimesLIVE
6 days ago
- Business
- TimesLIVE
Exclusive Books' recommended June reads
If you haven't done so, pick up Waterstones' Book of the Year for 2024, Butter by Asako Yuzuki, a culinary thriller inspired by true events. Manako Kajii was once a celebrated gourmet cook now in Tokyo Detention Centre, convicted of murder. Rika Machida, the only female journalist in her news office, works late every night and rarely cooks anything beyond noodles. When Rika writes to Manako requesting her recipe for beef stew, hoping to soften her up and get her to finally speak to the media, the two women develop an unlikely bond. In the latest addition to the Elements series, Air from John Boyne offers a contemplative exploration of a man's journey towards becoming a better father. Aaron is at a crossroads in life. The trauma of his childhood has shaped the man he is today, but it's also what's keeping him from his son. Stuck on a plane together on a long-haul flight halfway across the world, this trip may bring them closer together or drive them further apart. If you're in the mood for romance, don't miss Swept Away by Beth O'Leary. Zeke is in town for the weekend to buy back his father's houseboat. Lexi is desperately looking for help caring for her best friend's daughter. After meeting in a local bar, Zeke and Lexi spend what they assume will be one night together. But they wake up the next morning surrounded by the ocean because no one remembered to tie the houseboat to the dock the night before. As they navigate their way back, they'll have to figure out how to get back on land without falling for each other. The non-fiction selection this month is sure to pique your interest, with major tech titles, moving memoirs and an eye-opening probe into building a safer SA. In Behind Prison Walls, retired judge and chancellor of Stellenbosch University Edwin Cameron offers a powerful look at the failing prison system, along with insights and reflections on how it might be reformed for the better. In Apple in China, Patrick McGee delves into the complex relationship between one of the world's most valuable companies and its biggest political rival. After struggling to build its products across three continents, Apple was drawn to China's seemingly vast, low-cost labour force. By 2014, China had produced up to 200-million phones for Apple. McGee tells the gripping story of how a company once celebrated for its rebellious spirit became a compliant player in a tightly controlled regime. What happened to Elon Musk? In Hubris Maximus, Faiz Siddiqui traces the rise of the richest man on earth, and the cracks beginning to show in his empire. From transforming Tesla into the most valuable automaker to Twitter's rebrand to X, Musk is no stranger to controversy. Siddiqui provides a portrait of the billionaire's rapid ascent and his spectacular public implosion. On the other end of the spectrum, I am a Girl from Africa is the powerful memoir from Elizabeth Nyamayaro as she reflects on how her near-death experience sparked a dream that changed the world. The book charts Nyamayaro's life from nearly starving to death in Zimbabwe to becoming a senior adviser at the UN. Follow the journey of a young girl who dreamed of change for herself, and for the people who need it most.
San Francisco Chronicle
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
This playwright just bailed out Berkeley Rep after its NEA cancellation
As theaters across the Bay Area and the country reel from canceled National Endowment for the Arts grants, one local company is getting relief from an unlikely source: an artist. Tony Award-winning playwright John Logan is donating $40,000 to Berkeley Repertory Theatre — the same amount the company was set to receive from the federal agency to support the Ground Floor, its new play development program. 'Without the support of regional theatres like Berkeley Rep I wouldn't be a writer today,' Logan said in a statement. 'Young writers, singers, actors, poets, musicians, filmmakers, composers, and painters all across America benefit from not-for-profit arts institutions.' Confusingly, Berkeley Rep had already received the government grant before it received a 'notice of termination' on May 2. Managing Director Tom Parrish told the Chronicle via email on Wednesday, May 14, he worries this means the NEA will seek to 'rescind' the grant in the future, so the company is currently appealing the termination decision, even though it still has the funds in hand. Amid all the uncertainty, Logan's gift is both a relief and a 'morale boost' for everyone at the company, according to Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer. 'It was truly amazing, in the midst of such a dark and demoralizing week of news from and about the NEA, to get an email out of the blue from the incredible John Logan,' she said in a statement. Logan has a long history with the heavyweight downtown Berkeley company. His musical 'Swept Away,' featuring the music of the Avett Brothers, had its world premiere there in 2022 before heading to Broadway two years later. 'Red,' a drama about Mark Rothko that garnered Logan his Tony Award, ran at the company in 2012. His other theater work includes 'The Last Ship' and 'Moulin Rouge,' and he wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for 'The Aviator,' 'Gladiator,' 'Alien: Covenant' and 'Any Given Sunday,' among others. The Ground Floor, created in 2012, counts among its alums the cool kids of the theater world locally and nationwide: Madeleine George and Dan Hoyle, Denmo Ibrahim and Jeffrey Lo, David Adjmi and Lila Neugebauer, Erika Chong Shuch and Baruch Porras-Hernandez. Itamar Moses workshopped 'The Ally' here before it became a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Drama; Ashley Smiley, Margo Hall, Sean San José and Joan Osato developed 'Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad' here before its world premiere at Magic Theatre. This year's Ground Floor lineup, to be announced at a later date, includes 23 projects by more than 100 artists.
New York Times
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
20 Books Coming in April
Flesh Szalay's new novel traces the life of a young man in Hungary who eventually makes his way to England, following him from troubled youth to immigrant success to tragic fall. Each chapter provides glimpses of the major stages of adulthood — first love, marriage, parenthood — interwoven with intervals of aimlessness, reinvention and grief. With cool detachment, Szalay offers observations on both the complicated self and the unpredictable world surrounding it. Heartwood Gaige's latest novel is an intricate tale about three women: Valerie, a hiker who has gone missing on the Appalachian Trail; Beverly, the warden leading the search to find her; and Lena, a scientist languishing in a retirement community who becomes obsessed with Valerie's case. Each is lost in her own way, and as the story unfolds, they discover what it takes to find themselves. Surreal Muse, creator, survivor, godmother of Surrealism: Who, exactly, was Gala Dali? Klein, whose last book cast new light on the designer Charles James, brings out the creative, tempestuous, multifaceted woman behind the famous husbands and lovers in this new biography. Swept Away There's a reason 'forced proximity' is one of the most popular romance tropes, and it doesn't get much more proximate than being trapped at sea on an unmoored house boat with the person who was supposed to be your one-night stand. Zeke, a grieving chef, and Lexi, a prickly bartender, must battle not only the North Sea elements but also their fierce attraction to each other in this high-stakes love story. Audition The fifth novel by the author of 'Intimacies' — one of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2021 — begins with a Manhattan lunch meeting between a successful, married, middle age actress and a mysterious younger man. Is he a fan, her protégé, her lover, her son? This taut novel explores the performances we all put on, consciously or otherwise. The Float Test Think your family is complicated? Meet the Kenners, the floundering clan at the center of Strong's latest novel. The family has been estranged for years, but after their mother's death, the four siblings — Jenn, Fred, Jude and George — have to figure out if they can put aside their differences, grudges and secrets to come together again. Eminent Jews Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan and Norman Mailer: What do these four figures have in common? As Denby, a prolific cultural critic, argues, they were all illustrious American Jews, shaping a cultural moment and changing America for good. Open, Heaven This debut novel by an Irish poet follows James, a 16-year-old gay teenager who is ostracized and isolated in his small English village because of his sexuality. That changes when an older boy, Luke, moves to a nearby farm. Each is looking for connection, resulting in a confusing, complicated, life-changing relationship that unlocks something in them both. I Seek a Kind Person When Borger, a journalist, discovered a series of personal ads placed in The Manchester Guardian seeking refuge for Austrian Jewish children in the years before the Holocaust, it sent him on a quest to learn more about these desperate pleas, one of which saved his father from Nazi-occupied Vienna. He tracks down the life stories of seven of these children, and in the process unlocks the mystery of his distant, deceased father. Fish Tales Jones's roaring debut novel, first published in 1983, is a tour of the bad ol' days of New York City and Detroit, with a pleasure-seeking young woman at the helm. Surrounded by hustlers, lovers and ample supplies of drugs and booze, she finds love in all the wrong places — until she meets her match in a handsome quadriplegic. Vanishing World The Japanese novelist behind 'Convenience Store Woman' and 'Earthlings' imagines a dystopian world where the human race reproduces only via artificial insemination, dramatically shifting cultural attitudes toward sex and family. When the main character, a young girl named Amane, learns that she was conceived naturally, the revelation sets her down a path of sexual discovery, which ultimately leads to an experimental commune. The Rebel Romanov When Catherine the Great handpicked a bride for her grandson Constantine, she thought the innocent young princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, would be easy to control. But Julie quickly tired of her new husband's violence and the cutthroat atmosphere of the Russian court, ultimately forfeiting her chance at the throne for a life of her own making. Exit Zero In these 12 darkly comic, surrealist stories, the 'Beautyland' author mines life's very real losses — grief, breakups, loneliness — through decidedly unreal plots: haunted farms, exes raining from the sky, perimenopausal vampires and injured genitals replaced with orchids. Great Big Beautiful Life Set on an island off the coast of Georgia, this twisty, grumpy-sunshine summer rom-com follows two story lines: the life of an heiress and former tabloid princess turned recluse, and the simmering attraction between the two rival journalists competing for the chance to write her biography. Notes to John Didion published no new work after putting out 'Blue Nights' in 2011. But the posthumous discovery of a carefully maintained diary from 1999 prompted her literary executors to put out this book. In 46 entries, written after sessions with her psychiatrist and addressed to her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion talks about their daughter, alcoholism, the struggle to write and her literary legacy. Matriarch Stylist, businesswoman and mama bear to Beyoncé and Solange, Tina Knowles grew up the youngest of seven children in Galveston, Texas, in a home that emphasized creativity and pride. 'From my first breath, I was told, shown and embraced into knowing that it is an honor to be a Black person,' she writes in an inspirational volume that remains loving, but discreet, about her megastar daughters. America, América This history by a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar offers a fundamentally new account of the New World — and of America — beginning with these terms themselves, which once commonly evoked both northern and southern continents and, equally important, a set of shared ideals. Stocked with unfamiliar figures and historical details, the book portrays Latin America as until recently a source of productive tension with the United States, pushing it to adhere to the democratic values it seems increasingly in danger of abandoning. Sister, Sinner This vivid biography explores 'the dark and demented frenzy of scandal' that surrounded the charismatic Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, whose weekslong disappearance in 1926 helped make her an object of media fascination and 'the pioneer of 20th century self-mythologizing.' Girl on Girl Amid pervasive rollbacks to women's rights in America, Gilbert, a writer at The Atlantic, mounts a powerful argument that millennial pop culture 'turned a generation of women against themselves.' From the Spice Girls and Britney Spears to Kate Moss and 'American Beauty,' the dawn of the 21st century saw the undoing of much of the feminist progress of the '70s and '80s, giving way to the kinds of objectification, sexualization and infantilization of women that have metastasized into our current moment. The Fate of the Day 'The British Are Coming,' the best-selling first volume of Atkinson's projected trilogy about the American Revolution, dazzled scholars with its author's 'Tolstoyan view of war' and mastery of historical material. Picking up where that book left off, 'The Fate of the Day' plunges readers into the tense middle years of an increasingly bloody and expensive conflict whose outcome was far from guaranteed.
