Books Briefing: Let Books Be Your Summer

May 19, 2020

Eric Petersen

Hi readers,

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

The news:

This year, reading will have to do more than usual to help us get away from it all while we can’t get away. Sarah Lyall offers some suggestions, along with a reminder: “Whatever works. We are making this up as we go along.”
We talk with four writers who have books coming out soon: Brit Bennett, Marie-Helene Bertino, Roddy Doyle and Megha Majumdar. Whether you want genre-bending surrealist fiction, a gripping political thriller or something in between, be sure to watch for their novels.
Bookstores across the country are weighing how to safely reopen: Require face coverings to enter? Enforce social distancing? Some stores are charging ahead, while others still feel it’s too risky. As one executive with the California Independent Booksellers Alliance put it: “What is right for the bookstore in this town is not going to be right for the bookstore in the next town.”
Figures released today show U.S. book sales across all categories fell more than 8 percent in March, compared with March 2019. The decline reflects the obstacles publishers face as the pandemic has ravaged the retail landscape.
And get ready for books about coronavirus, from reported narratives to spiritual guides, poetry and more. Will readers bite? “It’s a hard subject for writers to write, and it’s hard for publishers to buy, because you don’t know what the narrative arc is yet,” said one literary agent.
Literary events worldwide have been canceled because of the pandemic, but at least one group has been thriving in these circumstances: Afrolit Sans Frontieres, an online African festival that uses social media to host frank discussions around writing, creativity, sex and violence.
If you’re growing tired of your four walls, these books may inspire some newfound appreciation for your home.
Carolyn Reidy, the head of Simon & Schuster, died last week at age 71. Here’s The Times’s obituary.
On “Sugar Calling,” Cheryl Strayed and Billy Collins reflect on the value in memorizing poetry — and summoning the lines when you need them most.
Fiction out today: “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” by Suzanne Collins; “Rodham,” by Curtis Sittenfeld; “Drifts,” by Kate Zambreno; “The Tree and the Vine,” by Dola de Jong; “The Motion of the Body Through Space,” by Lionel Shriver.
Nonfiction out today: “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide,” by Jia Lynn Yang; “The Equivalents,” by Maggie Doherty; “Stray,” by Stephanie Danler; “Troop 6000,” by Nikita Stewart; “The Chiffon Trenches,” by André Leon Talley.

The critics:

The “Hunger Games” prequel is here, and central character may not be who you expect. As Sarah Lyall puts it in her review of “The Ballad of Songirds and Snakes”: “As much as this is Coriolanus Snow’s origin story, it is an origin story for the Games themselves.”
Dwight Garner writes about “Wuhan Diary” by the Chinese novelist Fang Fang, an angry and eerie dispatch from life under quarantine.
Jennifer Szalai reviews “Dark Mirror,” in which the journalist Barton Gellman writes about being one of the few journalists to whom Edward Snowden leaked classified documents about government surveillance.
And finally, Garner, Szalai and Parul Sehgal discuss the adaptation of “Normal People,” Sally Rooney’s novel, with The Times’s chief TV critic. Among the pressing questions: Did the show downplay Marianne’s weirdness?

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.

My best,

Joumana Khatib

Books at The New York Times

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