Books Briefing: David Sedaris, quarantine edition

June 23, 2020

Throughout the pandemic, David Sedaris has been walking, masked, around New York City. “Everywhere I go it smells the same, and it smells like my breath,” he said.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

Hi readers,

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

The news:

We caught up with the author David Sedaris to see what he’s been up to during the coronavirus pandemic. In short? A lot of walking. “I destroy everyone I’m a Fitbit friend of,” he told us.
In the race to publish Trump tell-alls, Simon & Schuster is taking the lead, releasing books by John Bolton and Mary Trump, and another about the first lady. “We’re not coming from this in a partisan way. We want to give voters the information and the context that they need to make an informed decision in 2020,” Simon & Schuster’s chief executive said. “We do have a lot of Trump books for that reason.”
Novels for teenagers have long explored topics such as sexual violence, but authors are beginning to address these issues in books for middle-grade readers.
The rapid rise of a new online retailer, Bookshop.org, during the shutdown has been hailed as a boon for independent stores. But some booksellers worry it could become just another competitor for online business.
For the past two years, Naomi Alderman, author of “The Power,” has been working on a pandemic novel. She talks about the adjustments she’s had to make now that we’re in the middle of a real one.
Fiction out today: “Death in Her Hands,” by Ottessa Moshfegh; “What’s Left of Me Is Yours,” by Stephanie Scott; “Love,” by Roddy Doyle.
Nonfiction out today: “The Room Where It Happened,” by John Bolton; “The Biggest Bluff,” by Maria Konnikova; “Empty,” by Susan Burton.

The critics:

Jennifer Szalai reviews John Bolton’s highly anticipated — and contested — memoir of his White House tenure, writing, “The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged.”
Dwight Garner writes about Ottessa Moshfegh’s new novel, “Death In Her Hands,” about a a widow who becomes an amateur sleuth. As he writes of the story: “It has an afterlife in your mind. From a distance, you can savor its trap doors.”
Separately, Garner laments the decline of one of his favorite genres of writing: old-fashioned, hand-written correspondence. During the pandemic he’s returned to books of letters and surveys the best — including those by Ralph Ellison, Iris Murdoch and Janet Malcolm.

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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