Books Briefing: Book lovers answer the Strand’s call for help

October 27, 2020

Shoppers waited to enter the Strand on Sunday after the bookstore said its business “had become unsustainable.”Jeenah Moon 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:

The Strand, the beloved downtown Manhattan bookstore, is struggling to stay afloat. Last week, the store’s owner pleaded for business, writing that revenue was down by nearly 70 percent from last year, and shoppers turned up in droves over the weekend. “I really couldn’t believe to see that such a big piece of New York culture is struggling,” one customer said. “So we just wanted to come and show our support.”
Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, “Shuggie Bain,” has become one of the year’s most acclaimed books, named as a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Booker Prize. We talked to Stuart about the book, which he based on his childhood in Scotland, as the lonely youngest son of a single, alcoholic mother.
We spoke with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, a National Book Award finalist for “The Undocumented Americans,” about immigration, her complicated relationship with the American dream and more. “I don’t want all of the images of our people during this period to be of us on our knees or in cages,” the author, who is undocumented, said.
Molly Stern, the former publisher of Crown, who has overseen blockbusters like Michelle Obama’s memoir “Becoming” and Gillian Flynn’s thriller “Gone Girl,” is starting her own company. Zando is an independent publishing company with an unusual marketing strategy.
Looking to be scared, shocked or stumped? We put together a guide to the essential Agatha Christie.
Fiction out today: “Memorial,” by Bryan Washington; “The Cold Millions,” by Jess Walter; “Inside Story,” by Martin Amis.
Nonfiction out today: “Group,” by Christie Tate; “I’ll Be Seeing You,” by Elizabeth Berg; “Life With the Afterlife,” by Amy Bruni.

The critics:

Dwight Garner writes about “Looking to Get Lost,” by the acclaimed music biographer Peter Guralnick, which features writing about Ray Charles, Merle Haggard and others as well as about Guralnick’s own life and career. As you read the book, Garner writes, “an autobiography of this important biographer — the artist as young blues fanatic — presents itself.”
Parul Sehgal reviews “The Kidnapping Club,” in which Jonathan Daniel Wells describes the circle of slave catchers and police officers who terrorized New York’s Black population in the three decades before the Civil War. Sehgal writes: “This is history read with a sense of vertigo, suffused with the present: a rash of child abductions met with official complacency, stories about Black men and women attacked while sleeping in their homes and praying at church.”
Jennifer Szalai reviews “Billion Dollar Loser,” Reeves Wiedeman’s book about WeWork and its co-founder Adam Neumann. WeWork emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, repurposing office space for freelancers worldwide and rebranding precarity into community until its spectacular fall in 2019. The book “would be absorbing enough were it just about one man’s grandiosity, but Wiedeman has a larger argument to make about what Neumann represents,” Szalai writes.
And Janet Maslin writes about “The Sentinel,” the action-packed new Jack Reacher novel that Lee Child wrote with his brother Andrew Child.

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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