Books briefing: Reading when times are tough

April 7, 2020

Mary Ellen Bartley, “Summer Reading #13,” Yancey Richardson Gallery, NY

Hi readers,

Here’s your weekly catch-up on everything you need to know going on in the book world.

The news:

The current coronavirus crisis is hard for readers — even though, for many, it has come with the unexpected gift of free time and nowhere to go. Sarah Lyall reflects on the books that helped her in past emergencies.
Here’s our handy guide to getting books and other reading material from stores and libraries, including some options that are free.
With her debut novel, “How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” the Chinese-American author C Pam Zhang writes herself into the Wild West. While working on the book, she worried that her depiction of racism toward Asians “would seem too extreme, too maudlin.” Now she feels it’s more relevant than ever.
Since the 1970s, Annie Ernaux has poured a lifetime of memories into intensely personal books such as “Cleaned Out,” “A Frozen Woman” and the Booker International finalist “The Years.” Now, readers in English are catching on, with her latest, “A Girl’s Story,” coming out in the U.S.
Kids stuck inside houses and apartments have inspired literary classics from “The Cat in the Hat” to “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Here’s our list of books to help this generation through this cooped-up time.
Margaret Atwood kicks off a streaming series for Canadian writers whose tours have been derailed. “It doesn’t replace the fun of an audience, mass audience response, but it’s better than nothing,” she said. “I think we’re in the better-than-nothing era.”
If you loved “Tiger King” on Netflix, don’t miss these books.
Frank B. Wilderson III talks about his new book, “Afropessimism,” a blend of memoir and theory. “There is something essential about the suffering of black people that can’t be reconciled with the suffering of other people.”
Fiction out today: “Redhead by the Side of the Road,” by Anne Tyler; “Breasts and Eggs,” by Mieko Kawakami; “Afterlife,” by Julia Alvarez; “And Their Children After Them,” by Nicolas Mathieu; “How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” by C Pam Zhang; “The Ancestor,” by Danielle Trussoni.
Nonfiction out today: “Europe Against the Jews,” by Gotz Aly; “Coffeeland,” by Augustine Sedgewick; “Hidden Valley Road,” by Robert Kolker; “Ordinary Insanity,” by Sarah Menkedick; “Square Haunting,” by Francesca Wade.

The critics:

Dwight Garner reviews Eric Eyre’s “Death in Mud Lick,” a sobering new book that builds on the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting about the opioid crisis in West Virginia.
If you’ve been wondering which writer might be our bard of quarantine, Parul Sehgal has a suggestion: the essayist Samantha Irby. Sehgal loved her new collection, “Wow, No Thank You,” writing that Irby “understands suffering and uncertainty, and is wildly, seditiously funny on both.”
In “Hidden Valley Road,” Robert Kolker tells the story of the Galvin family and its immense misfortune: Six of the 12 children received schizophrenia diagnoses. Jennifer Szalai calls the book a “feat of empathy and narrative journalism.”
Don Winslow, the author of the “Cartel” trilogy, is back with a collection of novellas. Janet Maslin reviews “Broken,” Winslow’s playful tribute to forebears from Raymond Chandler to Steve McQueen.

That’s all for now. Please stay in touch and let me know what you think — whether it’s about this newsletter, our reviews, our podcast, our literary calendar, our Instagram or what you’re reading. We on the Books desk read all of it, and I’ll make every effort to write back. You can reach me at books@nytimes.com.

All my best,

Joumana Khatib

Books at The New York Times

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