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Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times by Gregory Cowles, Senior Editor, Books.
The other day, comparing notes on the
books that have kept us company lately, some of us realized that things
had somehow taken a very sinister turn. (Murder, extinction, bubonic
plague and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” And we weren’t even asking Marilyn “I’m down with cannibals” Stasio.)
Consider
this week’s list of recommended titles a kind of penance, then. It’s
May, after all, and in this part of the world the trees have started
budding and the birds that aren’t extinct have started singing. What
better time to read Ali Smith’s novel “Spring,” which balances its
political anxieties with emotional complexity and a warmth appropriate
to the season? Continuing with fiction, you might pick up Stewart
O’Nan’s character study “Henry, Himself,” or settle in with Julie
Orringer’s historical novel “The Flight Portfolio,” about Varian Fry’s
exploits saving dissidents from the Nazis. Jennifer duBois is back, with
a novel about a talk-show host who goes too far, and Laila Lalami sets
her latest novel in the towns of the Mojave Desert, where a hit-and-run
death ties together the stories of nine very different characters.
The
more-or-less-good vibes continue in nonfiction, with Paul
Mendes-Flohr’s consideration of the great religious philosopher Martin
Buber; Oliver Sacks’s vivacious final essays; Sheri Berman’s cleareyed
analysis of European democracy and its fitful gains; and a look back at
the 2008 financial crisis by the economists who did most to save us from
the brink of disaster. Just don’t ask them about the future.
Source: New York Times
