A Personal Tour of Modern Irish History
Fintan O’Toole talks about “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” and Julie Otsuka discusses “The Swimmers.”
Dazzling New Short-Story Collections
Three dazzling new short-story collections rattle and shake with horror and heartbreak.
Steward Brand’s Long, Strange Trip
John Markoff’s “Whole Earth” traces Brand’s career, from counterculture impresario to management consultant.
New in Paperback: ‘The Promise’ and ‘Whereabouts’
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
Preteen Angst, Swedish Style
Even utopian Sweden has mean girls, but in Kristina Sigunsdotter’s “The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson” theirs is a kinder, quirkier cruelty.
Karina Yan Glaser’s First Non-Vanderbeekers Novel
“A Duet for Home” interweaves the story lines of two music-loving preteens living in a South Bronx homeless shelter.
12 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Jeremy Denk’s Memoir Features Music, Love and More Music
In “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” the concert pianist recalls his artistic and erotic awakening.
3 nonfiction translations to read this spring
It's been rare for non-academic nonfiction to be translated into English — but that's beginning to change. These three books may be academic in the depth of their inquiries — but not in style.
(Image credit: Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR)
New Mysteries and Crime Fiction
The note — found at a murder scene in Simone St. James’s spine-tingling new novel, “The Book of Cold Cases” — seemed to implicate one woman. Or did it?
Be Not Afraid? Seth Meyers Thinks That’s Baloney.
In his best-selling picture book, the comedian shows how fear and anxiety can fold in the face of teamwork.
Audiobooks, Translations, and Other Letters to the Editor
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
Why David Shields Can’t Read the ‘Greatest Book Ever Written’ Anymore
Shields used to idolize Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” But these days it “feels to me sort of twee. ... I need more comedy, more urgency, more white space.”
In the future of 'Here Lies,' the mourning can't bury their dead
Olivia Clare Friedman's Here Lies provides a poignant portrait of the way grief can bring people together, uniting even strangers through a common pain and commitment to keep memories alive.
(Image credit: Grove Press)
Newly Published, From ‘Star Trek’ to Ferdinand Magellan
A selection of books published this week.
Two Forgers and a Small Crocodile Walk Into a Sauna
In María Gainza’s mystery “Portrait of an Unknown Lady,” the truth of Buenos Aires’s shady art underworld is in the eye of the beholder.
Book Review: ‘Flipped,’ by Greg Bluestein
Greg Bluestein’s “Flipped” argues that Georgian voters are turning away from the Republican Party.
For Russian Aristocrats, Paris Was a Glittering Expat Playground — Until 1917
Helen Rappaport’s “After the Romanovs” explains why Paris became the gravitational center for exiles both before and after the Russian Revolution.
A Return to Even Less Enlightened Eras
Three new historical novels whisk readers back to the Civil War, World War II and medieval times.
The Tender Bar
UnCovered review by Stephanie Baker, ACLS IT
Subscribing to belief that the book is always better than the movie, I set out to read J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar before watching the Netflix adaption.
Typically, I’m not a reader of non-fiction and biographies. I like to say there is “too much real world in my real world.” I read to escape. However, as a bartender for 20 years, The Tender Bar called to me. Moehringer’s memoir reads like a novel much like Steinbach’s Travels with Charlie and Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast and, like Steinbeck and Hemmingway, he too had his roots in journalism.
Moehringer perfectly captures the free flow, stream-of-conscience, and wit of bar banter in his writing style as he records the patrons’ exchanges on relationships, sports, politics, and great literature. One of my favorite scenes is when J.R. walks into his beloved neighborhood bar for the first time as legal drinking age. He must decide on his “drink.” Will it be vodka, gin, whisky, scotch, bourbon? His decision is more then what will sit in the glass in front of him. It will tell people who he is and set the tone for night to come. While the existential contemplations and discussions that occur in the bar may, for some, seem incongruous to the setting, these are the parts of the book that rang the most true to me.
Ultimately, the book is more than just about a bar. It follows the path of a boy as he shapes himself into a man. And, in the absence of a traditional father figure, how he forms his identity dissecting the qualities and characteristics of the men around him. Moehringer lives, and describes, his youth as an observer. While this detachment may serve him well as a journalist, it hampers his evolution into an adult. It’s not until the end, when he returns to his hometown of Manhasset in the aftermath of 9/11 and gets a clear look beyond the smoke filled bar room of his childhood, that we see his growth as a person and as a writer.
Moehringer does a lot a lot falling off of bar stools, literally and figuratively, but he makes it to “last call” standing straight up and leaving behind a cast of personalities that you may recognize and will always remember
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