Editors’ Choice: 8 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
By the Book: James Lee Burke: By the Book
The author, most recently, of the forthcoming Dave Robicheaux murder mystery “The New Iberia Blues” loves the Beat writers: “I wish Jack Kerouac had lived to be a thousand years old.”
Nonfiction: Illuminating Islam’s Peaceful Origins
Two new books, Jack Miles’s “God in the Qur’an” and Juan Cole’s “Muhammad,” go back to the sources of the Muslim faith.
Fiction: A Comic Novel Asks Who Gets to Write the History of the Colonial Philippines
In Gina Apostol’s “Insurrecto,” a modern American and her Filipino guide write dueling screenplays, raising provocative questions about history and hypocrisy.
Children’s Books: Is Any Topic Off Limits When You Write for Teenagers? Maybe Just One
Young adult books now address every corner of teenage experience, no matter how dark or racy. But few authors dare to write about religion and faith.
Nonfiction: What the Fall of the Roman Republic Can Teach Us About America
“Mortal Republic,” by Edward J. Watts, examines parallels between ancient Rome and today’s United States.
Essay: How Does a Writer Put a Drug Trip Into Words?
"After I set out to write a book about psychedelics, it became obvious what I would have to do,” Michael Pollan says. But how to describe the indescribable?
Essay: Fiction’s New Fake Drugs: A Preliminary Pharmacopoeia
From Infermiterol to Verbaluce, contemporary literature is awash in invented prescribables. The novelist Jonathan Lethem diagnoses the malaise.
Books News: Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales
A backlog at the printing presses, plus a surging demand for popular hardcover titles, has hurt publishers at peak sales season, with popular titles out of stock in some stores.
further reading: Off the Book Lists
Here is a collection of fiction, nonfiction and poetry that didn’t make the “10 Best” or the “100 Notables,” but our editors still found them worthy of attention.
The Book Review Podcast: Isabel Wilkerson Talks About Michelle Obama’s Memoir
The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian discusses the former first lady’s story and the ways in which it dovetails with America’s Great Migration.
From Our Archives: Notes From the Book Review Archives
In which we consult the Book Review’s past to shed light on the books of the present. This week: Jane Howard on Betty Ford.
Letters to the Editor
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
Further reading: Do You Want to Read More About China?
Here are some suggestions from The Times Book Review archives to get you started.
Sketchbook | : The 12 Best Book Covers of 2018
We think you can judge a year by its book covers.
Inside the List: Doughnut Shops, Dive Bars and Diners
Those places frequented by some of your favorite literary characters? They might be real.
The Shortlist: Three New Chilling Page-Turners Feature Unlikely Psychopaths
A middle-aged businessman, an old lady with a walker, a domestic violence victim: The protagonists of these thrillers aren’t what they seem.
Fiction: A Family Splinters in ‘All the Lives We Never Lived’
In Anuradha Roy’s melancholy new novel, an older man, poring through a cache of letters, grapples with the decades-old mystery of his mother’s disappearance.
Fiction: A Dystopian Thriller From Joyce Carol Oates
After many blood-filled novels, Oates has written a book, “Hazards of Time Travel,” in which the victim is America.
Nonfiction: The Not-So-Dumb Objects That Smartphones Have Led Us to Ignore
Two new books, David Edwards’s “Creating Things That Matter” and Glenn Adamson’s “Fewer, Better Things,” argue for a return to the material world.
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