Latest news with #bookclub
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Club: Let's Talk About ‘The Safekeep'
MJ Franklin, who hosts the Book Review podcast's monthly book club, says that whenever someone asks him what book to read next, Yael van der Wouden's 'The Safekeep' is his go-to recommendation. So he was particularly excited to discuss the novel with a fellow editor at the Book Review, Joumana Khatib, and Anna Dubenko, a passionate reader who heads The New York Times newsroom's audience team, for this week's episode. (We've also been talking about the book with readers online. Join that conversation here.) Set in the Netherlands in 1961, 'The Safekeep' is the kind of book it's best not to know too much about, as part of the delight is discovering its secrets unspoiled. As our reviewer coyly wrote in her piece about the novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 (alongside former Book Club picks 'James' and 'Orbital'): 'What a quietly remarkable book. I'm afraid I can't tell you too much about it.' Here are some other works discussed in this week's episode: 'The Torqued Man,' by Peter Mann 'The Little Stranger,' by Sarah Waters 'Mice 1961,' by Stacey Levine 'The New Life,' by Tom Crewe We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@
New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Everything You Need to Know About Taylor Jenkins Reid
After writing five best-selling novels about women reaching astronomic heights of fame, it seems only natural that Taylor Jenkins Reid would turn to the stars — literally — for her next work. Her new novel, 'Atmosphere: A Love Story,' coming out on Tuesday, follows a female astronaut in the 1980s as she navigates her high-pressure career and a blossoming romance. As a mainstay of best-seller lists and book clubs, with two screen adaptations of her work already out and several more underway (including 'Atmosphere'), Reid is among the most popular writers publishing now. She has sold over 21 million books across print, e-book and audiobook formats, according to one of her publicists, and Time reported this month that she recently signed a five-book deal for a total of $40 million. If you're new to her work or need a refresher, here's where to start. The Hallmarks of a Taylor Jenkins Reid Novel Including 'Atmosphere,' Reid has published nine books over the last 12 years. She began by writing about ordinary-seeming heterosexual couples, often living in Los Angeles, who face extraordinary obstacles: a woman widowed days into her marriage, an estranged couple on a romantic walkabout, a presumed widow who discovers her missing husband is alive. 'The emotions just jumped off the page,' said the author and former book editor Greer Hendricks, who acquired and worked on Reid's earliest work. Reid's first four books — 'Forever, Interrupted,' 'After I Do,' 'Maybe In Another Life' and 'One True Loves' — found middling success among readers, and in retrospect form an unofficial quartet, in which romance is the focus and comparatively little attention is paid to other aspects of the characters' lives. Her fifth novel, 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,' was a distinct departure in terms of theme, style and scope. The story of a Hollywood icon who offers her dishy life story to a young journalist, it established the framework for the novels that would vault Reid to fame. These later books zero in on women who are exceptional in their fields (acting, music, sports, science) but nonetheless grapple with all-too-mortal problems: heartbreak, addiction, infidelity, grief. Reid has spoken of how her own drive helped shift her literary preoccupations. 'I wanted to be a bigger name, and I wanted to be aggressive about that,' she told The New York Times in 2021. Her focus became the 'type of woman who I want to talk about, a woman who has naked ambition.' Her Writing Style Reid's first four books are told in a relatively straightforward style, with occasional flashbacks to the early days of a character's romantic relationship. But there are commonalities with her later books, including an ear for snappy conversation. 'When you're not painting on as broad a canvas, dialogue is even more important,' said Sarah Cantin, who edited several of Reid's novels, including 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.' Her later novels are elaborately constructed, often toggling between time periods and perspectives. The most dramatic example of her experimentation with form is 'Daisy Jones and the Six,' which is presented as an oral history. 'She is so gifted in how she portrays humanity,' said the Today show co-host and publisher Jenna Bush Hager, who selected 'Malibu Rising' for her book club. 'Her books are so easy to fall into,' she continued, 'they gave me the same feeling that Sweet Valley High or The Babysitters Club did when I was young and wanted to stay up all night under the covers reading them. Taylor is a 'flashlight under your covers' writer.' Through her female characters in particular, Reid explores 'different ways of moving through the world and behaving in ways that aren't always likable,' said Cantin. 'There's something in their vulnerability and wild ambition and aspiration that people are drawn to.' Reid, who recently announced she is bisexual, has garnered praise for her books' queer characters, whose rich lives aren't defined by their sexuality. But she has gotten pushback to her handling of nonwhite characters; the heroines of 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' and 'Carrie Soto Is Back' are Latina and their portrayals, including the way they use Spanish, rankled some readers as perniciously stereotypical. A TL;DR Guide to Her Books After a whirlwind romance and elopement, Elsie is sure she's found her soul mate. Nine days into married life, her husband is killed in a bike accident, forcing Elsie to grieve for the life she had just begun while locking horns with her mother-in-law, who didn't even know she existed. After many happy years together, starting in college, Lauren and Ryan's marriage has stagnated and they are on the precipice of divorce. In an effort to save their relationship, they agree to a year of trial separation, with no communication allowed. Nearing 30 and utterly adrift, Hannah returns to her hometown, Los Angeles, to plot her next move. In this 'Sliding Doors' story, told in alternating chapters, Hannah goes down two parallel tracks: one in which she reconnects with her high school boyfriend, and one where she blazes a new path on her own. Emma and her husband, Jesse, built a thrilling life together. But after Jesse goes missing during an ill-fated helicopter trip, she cobbles together a world without him — including a new fiancé. When Jesse is found alive, Emma must choose between the men she loves. (A movie adaptation was released in 2023.) A Hollywood icon nearing the end of her life contacts a young journalist and offers to share her life story. The novel, a BookTok favorite, is narrated partially by the star, Evelyn Hugo, as she reflects on her upbringing in Hell's Kitchen, relationships and career — and partially by the young journalist, who is connected to Evelyn in a manner she couldn't have expected. Structured as an oral history, this novel tells the story of a wildly popular 1970s rock band (that feels a lot like Fleetwood Mac) as its members navigate sudden celebrity, family life, heartbreak and addiction. A popular TV adaptation stars Riley Keough as Daisy. Over one night in 1983, four famous siblings — children of Mick Riva, a legendary singer — convene at the elder sister Nina's annual end-of-summer party. Each is wrestling demons that evening, and that's all before Nina's house goes up in flames. A tennis champion comes out of retirement in her late 30s to face off against a younger challenger, and reflects on how her single-minded athletic focus came at the expense of personal fulfillment off the court. (The real-life tennis GOAT Serena Williams is producing a series adaptation.) In 1980, Joan was selected as one of the first women to train as a NASA astronaut. We meet her four years later, as the steadying voice on the ground guiding her comrades through a flight gone terribly awry. Chapters leap between the edge-of-your-seat mission and Joan's past, showing how she grows into a top-flight astronaut, aunt and love interest. The Easter Eggs Reid's characters frequently make cameos in multiple books, and connecting her universes is often part of the fun for her fans.
The Guardian
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
American Dirt author Jeanine Cummins: ‘I didn't need to justify my right to write that book'
When Jeanine Cummins logs in to our video call, I am surprised to see that the profile picture that pops up before her video loads is the Spanish-language cover of her book American Dirt. I had assumed, given the vitriol that novel attracted when it was published in 2020, that she would be trying to distance herself from it. For the first year after its publication, that was the case, she tells me from a light-filled, bookshelf-lined room in her New York home. 'My husband would ask me every week: 'Knowing what you know now, would you still write it?'' she says, and the answer was consistently: 'No, I would not.' Eventually that answer shifted to maybe, and now, five years on, the 50-year-old author is firmly at yes. 'I'm really glad I wrote that book,' she says. 'I'm proud of it. But having to endure the experience of publication, it was brutal.' American Dirt had been expected to be one of the buzziest books of 2020, having reportedly earned Cummins a seven-figure advance. Copies of the novel, about a mother and son fleeing a drug cartel in Mexico, arrived in bookshops emblazoned with a quote from the thriller writer Don Winslow, who called it 'a Grapes of Wrath for our times', and it was chosen as an Oprah's book club pick. 'The kind of praise that it got was so over the top,' Cummins says now. She wasn't used to the attention – her three previous books had not received anywhere near that level of hype – and she certainly wasn't prepared for what came next: a string of bad reviews, one calling the book 'trauma porn'. Whether Cummins had the right to tell the story of Mexican migrants, being neither Mexican nor a migrant herself, was called into question, and 141 writers signed a letter to Oprah Winfrey, asking her to remove it as a book club pick. None of this was helped by the way Cummins's publishers marketed the book, with barbed-wire centrepieces decorating a launch event, or the novel's author's note, which the writer now thinks opened the door to scrutiny. In it, Cummins, whose grandmother was Puerto Rican, wrote that she 'wished someone slightly browner than me' had written the novel, but added: 'if you're a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?' She also explained that her husband had been an undocumented immigrant in the US – but didn't mention that he was white, and that his country of origin was Ireland. 'I was trying to justify my right to write that book and I didn't need to justify it. It's a novel. I'm allowed to write it.' She will continue to write characters who share different experiences from her, she says, and 'would encourage every other writer out there to do the same', as long as they do so with tremendous care. It was her publisher who encouraged her to expand on the author's note, which in the original manuscript was a one-line statistic about the number of migrants who had died in the US-Mexico borderlands. Before the book was sold, when she was taking meetings with the numerous editors who were interested in buying it, 'every single one of them said: 'Why did you write this book? Why?'' She felt she was being pushed to come up with a personal link to the story, when really she was thinking, given what was going on at the border: 'Why isn't everyone writing this book?' Addressing 'this enormous humanitarian stain on our national conscience' was the real reason she wrote American Dirt, Cummins says – and the reason she remains proud of it. For her, it was 'a very personal book', because it was written just after her father died suddenly while out with friends. It was only later, after someone pointed it out to her, that she realised all the book's major characters are grieving for their fathers. 'So the notion that I was writing trauma porn or that I was unqualified to write about grief was really absurd,' she says. Much was made at the time of the fact that she had referred to herself as white in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece about the murder of two of her cousins, the subject of her first book, the memoir A Rip in Heaven. 'I have always been white. I will always be white,' she says now. 'I have always been Latina. I will always be Latina. Those things are not mutually exclusive. I couldn't believe that in 2020 I had to say Latino people come in different colours.' The question of which ethnic group the author belongs to is one that has come up throughout her life, and is a major theme in her latest novel, Speak to Me of Home, in some ways a product of her post-American Dirt 'soul-searching'. The intergenerational saga follows an Irish‑Puerto Rican family that closely reflects Cummins's own – nobody can this time accuse her of writing outside of her own experience. 'It's unassailable in that particular way, which is a comfort,' Cummins says, though 'that's not why I wrote it'. The character of Rafaela is partly based on Cummins's grandmother, who was born into a well-to-do family in Puerto Rico, a 'cherished and coddled oldest child' until her father 'lost everything' when she was a teenager, and she was sent to the US naval base in Trinidad to work. There, she met Cummins's grandfather, and the couple 'ended up in St Louis with eight kids'. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion At one point in the novel, Rafaela's husband is asked by the manager of a 'whites only' country club for proof that Rafaela is white. In the end, she is allowed to become a member, but must change in the staff locker room. 'That's a true story,' Cummins says – the same thing happened to her grandmother. Rafaela's children being banned from speaking Spanish at home in order to fit in better at school is also taken from real life – Cummins herself was only allowed to speak English at home. And like Rafaela's daughter Ruth, the writer felt like a fraud in all of the social groups at university, where everyone seemed to gravitate towards sororities or fraternities 'where everyone looked exactly like them'. Having grown up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, widely recognised as one of the most racially diverse US cities, Cummins was shocked by the way her fellow students at Towson University in Baltimore segregated themselves. 'I'll never forget being in the dining hall for the first time,' she says, where Black students were sitting in one room, white students in another. 'And then there were a few tables in the corner for whoever was Asian or Latino, not Afro-Latino. And I was like, where do I sit?' She and her boyfriend at the time, who was Black, tried to set up a club, 'Target Unity', with a view that it could be 'a social outlet where people could mix and mingle with people who were not from their same racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic background.' They rented a room in the student union, but 'no one came … no one wanted that'. Cummins went on to work in publishing for a decade, so she was 'acutely aware that publishing had a race problem', but it 'felt very weird' to be a focal point of that criticism – American Dirt sparked a wider global conversation about race and publishing, out of which the #DignidadLiteraria campaign for greater Latino representation in US publishing was launched. Now her feelings about the book are bittersweet. Commercially, American Dirt was a huge success, something the author wasn't able to feel excited about at first. She was 'relieved' rather than happy every week it continued to be a No 1 bestseller. Though she doesn't read media coverage or online reviews, occasionally her husband will send her a screenshot 'if there's something really lovely'. Yet so often these positive reviews 'are defending my right to author the book', she says, which she finds 'really bothersome'. When reviewers say things like 'it doesn't matter that she's not Latina', they are still viewing her identity differently from the way she identifies herself: Irish and Puerto Rican; white and Latina. 'The book won,' she says. 'It's sold three and a half million copies and continues to sell.' But 'in those moments, I realise I lost'. Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins is published by Tinder. To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
South China Morning Post
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How silent book clubs are rising around the world as readers enjoy the no-pressure events
On a Saturday morning in April, readers gathered in a park in Indonesia's capital Jakarta for a monthly book club. Around 260 strangers sat on the grass, heads down, captivated by what they were reading. It almost looked like a regular book club, but there was a twist. Everyone here was reading something different: from fantasy, romance and religion to business and self-help books. Titles read included Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, The Vegetarian by Nobel laureate Han Kang, and The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Non-traditional book clubs have gained momentum around the world in recent years. Silent Book Club Jakarta is part of a movement that spans from the US to Taiwan, where readers reject the traditional book club format and bring a novel of their own choice and no judgment for uninterrupted reading time. All types of book formats are encouraged at Silent Book Club's events, from hard copies to Kindles and even audiobooks. Photo: Silent Book Club Silent Book Club's premise avoids many of the things people do not like about traditional book clubs: the monthly book pick, questions and quarrels about how people interpreted it, and pressure to read it.
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
'Book club has helped me cope with cancer'
A woman says a book club for cancer patients has helped her to cope with the Moore, from Boston, was invited to join the Lincolnshire-wide group, which meets online, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in said the free books, which are sent to members monthly, had helped her to take her mind off the cancer by escaping "away into this other world".Annie Theed, a Macmillan care co-ordinator, founded the club to help patients feel less isolated. She said: "We have created an atmosphere where people feel relaxed and can talk openly." Ms Moore, an activities co-ordinator at a Boston care home, described how she "kept thinking about cancer all the time" before joining the club."I was sent my first book, which was set in the 1800s," she said. "It was brilliant reading it, as it took me away from my situation."She added: "I'd forgotten how much I liked reading. I was being sent books that I wouldn't normally buy, yet I read every one and always got something from it."The club, which was set up during the Covid-19 pandemic to help patients keep in touch with carers and one another, holds virtual meetings, allowing anyone in Lincolnshire with a cancer diagnosis to is funded by the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Charity. Ben Petts, a manager for the charity, said: "The cost of a book could be a lot for some families to find each month. By providing this funding, we have ensured the book club is inclusive to everyone." Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
