LONDON — Oleksandr Usyk disagreed with the idea that he’s become one of boxing’s all-time greats, but the evidence is mounting after his fifth-round knockout of Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium on Saturday.
The victory, sealed with a crunching left hook to Dubois’ jaw, made Usyk the undisputed world heavyweight champion for a second time.
The undefeated southpaw retained his WBA, WBC and WBO belts and regained the IBF belt he relinquished just over a year ago.
The bad news for opponents — especially the British ones that he keeps beating — is that the 38-year-old Ukrainian has no plans to stop anytime soon. He said he’s still a “young guy” and named Tyson Fury, Derek Chisora, Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker as possible next foes. Jake Paul threw his own hat in the ring.
“I will continue boxing and I will continue training, but now I cannot say who my next opponent will be,” Usyk said at his press conference.
“I prepared 3 1/2 months, I’ve not seen my family, my wife. Every day I live with my team — 14 guys in one house. Now I want to go back home.”
Usyk dropped Dubois twice in the fifth — the second time with a lunging left hook midway through the round after Dubois missed with a right. The London native looked stunned on the canvas and couldn’t beat the count before about 90,000 spectators at Wembley.
Usyk, best known as a slick tactician rather than a power puncher, certainly answered questions about his age and whether he’d slow down.
He said that hook is called an “Ivan.”
“Ivan is like a big guy who lives in [the] village and work in (a) farm… it’s a hard, hard punch,” Usyk said.
Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk and Britain’s Daniel Dubois trade punches during an undisputed world heavyweight boxing title fight in London on Saturday.
(Frank Augstein / Associated Press)
No controversy
Usyk (24-0, 15 KOs) beat Dubois for the second time in under two years and this time there was no low-blow drama. It was a ninth-round stoppage in Poland with, of all things, a straight jab. But the finishing shot Saturday was a no-doubter.
Dubois (22-3, 21 KOs) joined British countrymen Fury and Joshua in having lost twice to Usyk, who was an undisputed world champion as a cruiserweight before he moved up in weight six years ago.
The 27-year-old Dubois’ last fight — also at Wembley — had been a stunning knockout of Joshua last September.
He couldn’t muster the same magic, telling DAZN: “I gave everything I had. Take no credit away from that man, I’ll be back.”
The Briton gave a better showing than two years ago, when Usyk peppered him with jabs and won almost every round. Between the fourth and fifth rounds Saturday, Dubois’ corner was urging him to use a double jab but there was not time to carry out the orders as Usyk ended it shortly thereafter.
Dubois was hoping to become the first British heavyweight to hold every major belt since Lennox Lewis just over 25 years ago.
Dubois had inherited the IBF title that Usyk vacated last year when the Ukrainian chose to focus on his rematch with Fury.
Usyk said flatly “No” in response to whether he thinks he’s one of the sport’s all-time greats.
He said he’s just disciplined.
“I don’t have motivation, I have discipline. Motivation is temporary,” he said.
U.K. has been good to Usyk
Usyk said Britain has been like a “second home” to him. He won a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics. He dethroned Joshua at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2021.
“I’m very grateful for this country. Thank you so much, you’re the best,” he said.
In 2008 in Liverpool, Usyk was crowned European amateur champion in the light heavyweight category.
In his last fight at the cruiserweight level, Usyk knocked out Liverpool’s Tony Bellew in Manchester. He remains undefeated as a professional and hasn’t lost any bout in 16 years.
Jake Paul eyes Joshua and Usyk
Unsurprisingly, Paul had his share of the spotlight Saturday. He was loudly booed during his entrance to the stadium — shown on the big screens.
The YouTuber-turned-boxer told DAZN that a fight against Joshua is “going to happen,” possibly at Wembley.
After the ring cleared out, Paul and Usyk engaged in a brief “stare down.”
Paul posted a message on his social media accounts: “Congrats to one of the greatest heavyweights of all time… I respect you a lot. Now we do an MMA match for the world.”
He added: “First AJ then OU. Book it.”
Frank Bruno was among the VIPs. The London native won the WBC heavyweight belt 30 years ago at the old Wembley Stadium when he beat Oliver McCall. He was knocked out by Mike Tyson six months later.
Usyk entered the stadium with an Eeyore stuffed donkey from the “Winnie the Pooh” books tucked into his jumpsuit. He brought it to past fights as well, apparently given to him by his daughter.
If you’re about to book seats, read this first and then decide
Are you heading on holiday soon?(Image: Getty)
If you’re heading on holiday soon and wondering whether or not to book specific seats, you may want to hold off. According to travel experts at Which?, you’re “probably wasting” your money if you’re paying to sit together.
It comes as Which? Travel found many customers who didn’t pay for seat selection “told us they ended up seated with their travel companions anyway.” Talking about other major airlines, they state that “most” of them will “automatically seat you with the people you booked with” with the figure for those being seated together for easyJet standing at 93% with Jet2 at 90%.
Am I legally entitled to sit with family?
The short answer, no?(Image: Getty)
Many people may think that there is a legal requirement to do this, especially those with children. But this is not the case at all. Which? explained: “There’s no legal right to sit next to your family, not even children.”
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says: “Young children and infants who are accompanied by adults should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult. Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults.”
In a recent post, Which? also stress: “There is no UK law that says children have to be seated with their parents on a plane.”
What UK airlines sit families together?
Which? state: “Most airlines will seat people who book together for free, whether they’re families or not. Paying for a seat is usually unnecessary – except with a couple of carriers, as we’ll see below.
“We’ve looked at the policies of some of the major airlines to see how likely they are to seat children with parents – and whether you’ll need to pay extra. Also, be warned that some airlines will charge hundreds of pounds more for a baby than others.”
Travelling soon?
If you are set to travel soon, holidaymakers should also know that there are seven essential passport checks you should carry out before heading on holiday this summer. Travel insurance experts at Tiger.co.uk have said people should ensure the laminate over the personal details page is not lifting or peeling.
This is because it could raise suspicions of tampering. This is a common reason for passports being flagged or rejected so even if all the information is readable, it’s best to get your passport replaced to prevent any issues.
Don’t stress too much!(Image: Getty)
They further add that if your passport has sustained water damage, you likely won’t be able to use it as a valid travel document. While minor exposure to water such as slightly crinkled page edges shouldn’t be an issue – further damage like smudged ink or discolouration can lead to delays or refusals at the border. You can read about all seven key passport checks for Brits here.
In 2012, Cassidy Krug competed in her first and last Olympics. Raised by two diving coaches, Krug was in diapers when she started dreaming of competing.
At 27 years old, she had a shot at the Olympic bronze medal but landed in seventh place instead. Krug decided to retire, something she’d already been considering for three years. But how do you move forward in life when diving is the only thing you’ve ever known?
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
Krug tried to replace her passion for diving with a corporate career. But after seven years in advertising and brand strategy, she felt lost and without the purpose and motivation she’d once felt for her sport. Fascinated by the endless options of what to do next, Krug wrote “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”
The Times spoke with Krug about why we’re so resistant to uncertainty and what tools we can use to get comfortable with change.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Why do you think transitions are an important part of life?
Transitions are an important part of life because they’re an inevitable part of life. An author named Bruce Feiler estimates that we have three to five “lifequakes” in our lives — major shifts that change our habits, our identities, our communities and our sense of purpose. These shifts are even more frequent now that it feels like the pace of change in the world is speeding up. The more we can embrace change, rather than try to hold on to our old ways, the more set up we will be to adapt and move forward.
“During a transition, we often need to change our definition of success,” says Cassidy Krug, author of “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”
(Natalie Fong)
For this book, you interviewed people going through all kinds of life transitions, from changing careers to leaving prison. What did you find to be universal truths about these transitions?
There were two: that transitions take away our sense of community, and that during a transition, we often need to change our definition of success. Stanley — the man I interviewed who left prison after 20 years — told me that when he did, he lost the sense of camaraderie he felt while there. He also realized that he’d previously defined success by having a family and a stable job. When he left prison, he needed to redefine success to include the impact he’d had on other people’s lives while in prison. Though my experience was not the same, I also felt a huge loss of community and the need to redefine success while leaving diving.
In the book, you write that as humans, we are resistant to change and feel a need for certainty. Why are we so resistant to such an inevitable part of our lives, and how can we overcome this?
We often waver between the need for stability and a desire for change and growth. Right now, as a society, our expectations for certainty are ever-increasing. Twenty years ago, there were no dating apps that could assess my compatibility with a partner and no Yelp reviews that could predict if I’d like where I chose to eat dinner. Now with generative AI, there are many more avenues that market a false sense of security, and I think those avenues give us even more anxiety when it comes to the inevitable moments when we are uncertain. One way to fight that need for certainty is to put ourselves in difficult and uncertain situations. The ability to live in uncertainty is a muscle: The more we rely on external things to give us a sense of certainty, the less capable and the more anxious we feel when we don’t have those crutches around.
In the book, you write that a transition never ends. What do you mean by that?
I used to think of transitions as beginning, middle, end. Instead, psychologists use the phrases moving into, moving through, and moving out of to describe transitions, acknowledging that they rarely yield a clear-cut endpoint. My friend Nora, whom I write about in the book, expected that once she was in remission from cancer, she would move forward and thrive. In reality, she’s in remission, but she has brain fog, fatigue and lingering health issues that will change her life moving forward. The damaging and false expectation is that transitions end. Often, in reality, we don’t return to our previous state, and our transition instead ripples into our future — but that rippling change means ongoing growth and forward movement.
In Cassidy Krug’s “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions,” interviewees range from a cancer survivor to injured athletes to a man starting over after 20 years in prison.
(Cassidy Krug)
How can we move forward after leaving something important to us behind?
Rituals are a great way to honor what we’re leaving behind, commemorate how it shaped us and help incorporate the lessons from it into our evolving identities. Just like holding a funeral for a lost loved one, people find creative ways to honor different parts of their lives coming to a close. One woman I interviewed who struggled with infertility threw herself a menopause party complete with tampons wrapped in ribbons and women telling their first period and menopause stories. [Author] William Bridges said that change is something that happens to us, and transition is how we choose to react to that change. I think there’s a third step to that — how we interpret that transition — and rituals can help us do so in a way that moves us forward.
What would you recommend someone do when they’re paralyzed by the thought of an upcoming change?
Firstly, I’d recommend someone reframe their anxiety by spinning those fears into opportunities. “I’m afraid to leave this job because I don’t know what will happen” can become “If I leave, there will be so many opportunities open for me, and I’m going to have my own back.” Secondly, it’s important to start with something small and concrete. The idea of finding a new passion is paralyzing, but asking yourself what you’re interested in and finding a small step you can take in the direction of exploring that interest feels much more manageable.
What would you say to someone who’s not sure if they’re ready to make a big jump?
An author named Annie Duke wrote a book called “Quit” — in it, she writes that by the time a decision appears to be 50/50, it is probably better for your upcoming happiness if you move on. We have a societal bias towards grit, and every success story seems to be of someone who had an idea and then overcame obstacles and then succeeded. Stories forget to include all the things that person quit before they chose and invested in the right path. We don’t quit nearly as often as we should, so if you’re thinking about quitting something, do it.
Now that you’ve finished writing your book, you’re going through a period of transition again. How do you feel about it this time around?
There’s grief and loss associated with all transitions. Something I have to remind myself of with each transition I face is that there will be a period where I don’t know what’s next, and that’s normal. Things aren’t supposed to last forever, and I have to remind myself to breathe into the opportunity that temporariness brings, rather than the fear. I think many of us are overwhelmed by possibilities — there are many things we could do, but we don’t know which path to take. I’m in the aftermath of a project I felt so certain about, and my instinct is to wait for that certainty to hit me again before taking a step in any direction. But if I do that, I’ll be waiting forever. What I need to do is ask myself is, “What am I curious about? What is driving me?” and then invest time into exploring it — that is how I’ll figure out what my passion is going to be next.
Forget The Salt Path scandal! Daily Mirror’s book expert Jessica Boulton picks the best new Chick Lit, Thrillers, Family Sagas and Murder Mysteries which deserve the space on your Kindle this summer
08:00, 13 Jul 2025Updated 11:13, 13 Jul 2025
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Treat yourself to me time with one of these 14 sizzling summer reads
Plane tickets? Check. Swimwear? Check. The patience of a saint to get through airport security? Check. Yes, if you’re planning the perfect summer holiday, there’s only one other thing you need: A jolly good book. For when you’ve smugly beaten other hotel guests to a sunbed, there’s little more relaxing than a great page turner. So what new tomes deserve the precious space on your Kindle or a spot in your suitcase? Here, columnist Jessica Boulton takes you through the best of this summer’s new releases – whether you’ve a soft spot for romance, a love for crimes of passion, or prefer your beach reads bloodier than a tomato juice and vodka….
From the author of Netflix’s The Kissing Booth comes an enemies-to-lovers-style romp set in that favourite of romcom scenarios: The destination wedding, Three unhappy singletons are en route to the ‘wedding of the year’ – and they’re all dreading it: One’s in love with the groom, one’s the overprotective brother of the bride and the other is a maid of honour fed up of playing second fiddle. So when fate convenes to strand all three at an airport bar overnight, they get to talking, drinking and….plotting….
The bestselling chicklit author Ali Hazelwood has become quite the talking point on social media and so-called ‘book tok’ thanks to her novel spin on romance tropes. Released on late May, her latest book puts Gen Z values under the microscope as Maya, 23, falls for her brother’s much older – and much richer – best friend. Everyone, including him, says a romance would be problematic. But when the two are forced to spend a week sharing a remote Italian villa at her brother’s wedding, Maya decides it’s time to ignore the red flags and follow her heart, not her head. Will she prove the naysayers wrong?
One of the biggest names in the genre, Cecelia Ahern was the bestselling author behind the weepy-but-ultimately-uplifting romance PS. I Love You, which later became a 2007 hit film with Anne Hathaway and Gerard Butler. Cecelia’s latest paperback release centres on wallflower Pip, who has been hiding from life, living a sheltered existence, until the stars – or rather an attractive local astronomer – opens her eyes to the world…
Summer lovin’ indeed! There’s a huge mix of new relationship and love life stories desperate to be your holiday pick
Get the tissues ready! This romance comes with a side serving of trauma. When Jenny loses the love of her life, Joe, in a freak accident, she thinks she will never recover. That is until…. she begins seeing Joe’s ghost. There’s only one thing wrong with their renewed relationship: He’s a little less solid than before. When Jen meets the infuriating new guy, Luca, who’s moved into Joe’s old flat, she takes an instant dislike to him. But slowly and surely he reminds her what it means to have fun. However the more Jen sees Luca, the less she sees Joe. So who will she choose?
A chick-lit romance where the heroine is a serial murderer? Talk about a killer concept. Sure to be a hit with fans of Sky’s Sweetpea, this twisted tale, from an author whose sold a million books, centres on Saffy Huntley-Oliver, a millennial who’s fallen for a brilliant true crime podcaster Jonathan. There’s just one complication in their romance. Saffy’s got a secret passion project – killing men. Bad men. Like a a certain handsy children’s TV star….So will Saffy’s hobby be the nail in the coffin for their romance? Or can they love each other til death do they part? It may depend on whose death we mean.
Where better to set a crime novel than at a crime writers’ convention? A Novel Murder’s delightfully-playful premise sees aspiring author Jane Hepburn joining big-name name authors at a quaint town’s festival, to try to get her big break. But when her literary agent turns up dead, Jane fears the writing’s on the wall for her career…..unless she can help police find the killer – and throw the book at him.
Posy Starling, Caro Hooper and Rosalind King are some of TV and the West End’s finest actresses. Yet not only have they all played the same fictional detective – TV’s Dahlia Lively – but they’ve all let the role go a little to their heads.. The fifth standalone story in the Three Dahlias series, this Agatha Christie-style mystery sees the women once more forced to turn Sherlock for real after Caro’s hunky west end co-star is found dead in a theatre dressing room – with a blood-drenched Posy[italic] standing over him. Will her fellow Dahlias believe her claims of innocence before the real killer enjoys an encore?
Judy Murray has served up her second ‘cosy murder’ tome
White Lotus S2 vibes ahoy! A dead body in the sea, a reformed con man and the faded beauty of Sicily – what else do you need?
Think Sex And The City meets Desperate Housewives on a day out at Wimbledon…Yes, Judy Murray is back with her second murder mystery, once again set in the world of tennis. This time, close friends Kristin, Vee, Bibi and Hailey are sipping prosecco at Surrey’s posh Royal Oaks Tennis Club, when their charming coach Jeremy keels over – thanks to some poisoned sponge cake.
Soon it’s clear: one of these glamourous women had the balls to catch out their coach. But who served him his just deserts? And what other backhanded shenanigans are happening at the exclusive club?
A murder mystery in sun-drenched Sicily? Characters who all have something to hide? And a lingering sense of unease? If this book isn’t popular with fans of The White Lotus, something is definitely awry. This sumptuously-set mystery begins with trainee journalist Nedda Leonardi desperately trying to find a scoop at a local town festival. But she gets a splash in more ways than one when local dancers dive in the glistening Ionian Sea… and return with a corpse. Nedda’s soon out of her depth but finds an unlikely partner-in-solving[ital]-crime – a retired grifter, trying to leave his con man past behind until he becomes a suspect. Together, the oddball pair set out to uncover the real story.
A mum’s worst nightmare: Lauren goes to pick her daughter up from university, knocks on her door and comes face to face…with a stranger. At first, she presumes she has the wrong room but then she realises the terrible truth. Her daughter Evie is not there. And she hasn’t been for a long time. The discovery sparks a heart-in-mouth race to uncover what’s happened before it’s too late. If, indeed, it’s not too late already.
Steph McGovern debut novel is set in her familiar world of Live TV
Steph McGovern doing her other day job – on Bear Grylls’ Bear Hunt
Following her years hosting Steph’s Packed Lunch and a stint in the Costa Rican jungle on Bear Grylls’ Bear Hunt, the former BBC broadcaster is now onto her third act – as a novelist. Her debut tome is set in a familiar world but the premise is still deliciously tantalising: a TV host is just about to go live, interviewing the most powerful man in the country, when she gets a message through her earpiece. Kidnappers have taken her family. Now she must do exactly what they say, on Live TV, if she ever wants to see them again.
Prefer your thrillers with a period era twist? Mark Ellis has released the latest is his Frank Merlin detective series, set in the shadowy world of wartime London 1943. A local murder sparks an investigation into a wide-scoping mystery featuring the disappearance of a US officer in possession of invasion plans, dodgy MPs, even dodgier police and a seedy underworld of Cockney gangsters, brothels and blackmail.
Talk about an intriguing set-up: this psychological thriller begins in 2005 as a group of students each writes a letter to their future selves, sharing their fears, dreams, mistakes and heartaches. Of course, they should have known better. For unlike the contents of a normal time capsule, these students’ secrets don’t stay buried for long. Two decades on, their private notes begin dropping through their letterboxes – and the unearthed truths begin to change their lives for ever.
Love getting post? Maybe not this time…..
These Summer Storms – the weather may be sunny but the mood is dark….
Missing Succession? Loved Amazon’s adaptation of We Were Liars? Then this should be the perfect lazy day read. Alice Storm is the surprisingly-grounded daughter of an eccentric billionaire tech genius. But when he dies suddenly, she forced to return to the family’s private island off the coast of New England – with some of the oddest, most dysfunctional and competitive people she knows: her siblings. Then there’s the biggest surprise: Alice’s puppet master father has left his children one last test. To receive their inheritance they must spend a week on the island completing a list of very specific challenges….
What’s you beach read recommendation? Share in comment or message me on Instagram/X @JessicaBoulton
By Kashana Cauley Atria: 256 pages, $28 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores
There are a frightening number of ways an American can become indebted today: there’s medical debt (I won’t be paying off my child’s birth until he’s nearly 5 years old, and I have insurance). Mortgages, of course (though as a millennial living in an expensive city, I wouldn’t know what those look like). And then there’s student loan debt carried by nearly 43 million Americans, and which disproportionately affects Black women. But hey, at least one good thing has come of that, as TV writer and novelist Kashana Cauley graciously acknowledges in her new book, “The Payback”: “To the student loan industry,” reads her dedication, “whose threatening phone calls made this book possible.”
Narrated by Jada Williams, a wardrobe designer turned retail salesperson, “The Payback” is full of such you-gotta-laugh-to-keep-from-crying humor. The book opens at Phoenix, the clothing store at the Glendale mall where Jada now works, and includes a hilarious yet mostly sincere appreciation for the beleaguered centers of suburban America: “I loved mall smell,” Jada narrates, waxing poetic about the scents of the bins at the candy store and the ever-present pizza smell before admitting that she sometimes even leans down to smell the plastic kiddie ride horses. “Sometimes, when there were no kids, I’d lean into the horse and sniff it to get a whiff of plastic, childhood dreams, and dried piss. Yes, I know, nobody’s supposed to savor the aroma of pee, and I wouldn’t rank it first among the smells of the world, but pee is life. It’s humanity. It’s the mall.”
Jada loves the mall, and she even loves her job, which is not a given for anyone who’s lost their dream career like she did. She’s passionate about helping people find the clothes that look and make them feel good, even if she’s doing that for 20% commission. She’s definitely gotten over her sticky fingers habit, too, except that, well, on the day the book opens, someone leaves an expensive watch in the fitting room, and Jada can’t help but pocket it. This eventually leads to her getting fired, but not before the boss she likes, Richard, dies on the store’s floor and Jada and her co-workers get to witness the newly formed debt police in action chasing and beating up Richard’s grieving widower during his wake.
The debt police are exactly what they sound like: cops who come after people in debt. Cauley, a former writer for “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” who has contributed to the New Yorker, has fun with this concept: she dresses them up in turquoise and makes them all obnoxiously hot and as annoying as the worst Angeleno cliché you can think of (they’re especially obsessed with overpriced new age treatments and diet culture). The cherry on top is their true apathetic evil. “These Leo moon incidents are always the worst,” a debt policeman says, for example, while literally beating Jada up.
Six months after she’s fired, Jada is making money by “eating food on camera in the hope that internet people, mostly guys, according to their screen names and Cash App handles, would pay [her] rent.” She eats shrimp for its pop and the way she can lick it; graham crackers for their whisper and crackle; almonds for their snap; celery sticks for their crunch. On the one hand, she’s paying her rent; on the other hand, her relationship to food has become sonically focused and exhausting.
The saving grace is that Jada manages to stay friends with her former Phoenix co-workers, Lanae (frontwoman of a punk band, the Donner Party) and Audrey (a runner and hacker in her spare time). Together, they come up with a plan to erase their own — and everyone else’s — student loan debt. It’s a heist, of sorts, except instead of getting rich, they’ll stop being in the hole for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the real pleasure, just like it is in any good heist movie, is witnessing the three women spending time together and becoming closer over the course of the book.
Jada is a deeply imperfect narrator. She’s quick to judge others, slow to trust, and even steals a watch on page 12 (Gasp! She’s a thief!) So, yes, she’s a messy millennial who has some issues to work through, but neither she nor anyone deserves to spend the rest of their life indebted to a system that claimed a college education as the only way to break into the middle class, and which instead ends up keeping so many from it.
The novel is a satire, of course, and the debt police are over the top because it’s generically appropriate, but also because Cauley is using humor to approach the horrifying reality that people really do go to prison for having debt in this country. And even when they don’t, student loan debt ends up increasing the racial wealth gap. According to the latest data from the Education Data Initiative, “Black and African American college graduates owe an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white college graduates.” Flash-forward four years after graduation, and “Black students owe an average of 188% more than white students.”
Yet the job of a novelist isn’t to hit you over the head with statistics but to entertain you — if you learn anything along the way or think more deeply about something you’d never considered, that’s great, but it’s not the main point. For all that it deals with systemic racism and economic precarity, “The Payback” is a terrifically fun book that made me laugh out loud at least once every chapter.
Masad, a books and culture critic, is the author of the novel “All My Mother’s Lovers” and the forthcoming novel “Beings.”
By Charlotte Runcie Doubleday: 304 pages, $28 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores
Any profession can corrupt its practitioners — and arts critics are no exception. Are they enlightened standard-setters dragging us back from a cultural abyss — or deformed exiles from the arts who, with sharpened pens and bent backs, are ready to pounce on plot-holes and devour careers at a moment’s notice?
If Charlotte Runcie’s debut novel, “Bring the House Down,” is anything to go by, it’s a bit of both. The book centers around four heady weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which begins the unraveling of two newspaper critics who have traveled up from London to cover the sprawling performance art event. Runcie, a former arts columnist for the Daily Telegraph, has created something so delightfully snackable that you may, as I did, gulp it down in two or three sittings.
Runcie’s anti-hero is theater critic Alex Lyons. Alex gives everything he reviews either one star or five, and the latter are vanishingly rare. He bemoans a world of “online shopping reviews,” where “five stars has come to mean the baseline, rather than outstanding,” and so insists on panning almost everything he sees. What’s bad for artists is good for him: His reviews become desperately sought-after career makers or breakers. “The paper didn’t allow Alex to award zero stars. Otherwise, he’d do it all the time.”
“Bring the House Down”
(Doubleday)
We learn about Alex’s story through our narrator Sophie Ridgen, his colleague who, despite being in her mid-30s like Alex, is on a very different track. Alex rose quickly through the newspaper’s ranks, and his reviews are featured on the front page almost daily. Sophie continues to toil as a junior culture writer, picking up whatever scraps nobody else wants. Sophie is also a new mom, overworking to compensate for time lost to maternity leave. She feels uncomfortable in her post-pregnancy body, exhausted and frustrated with her husband. Alex, on the other hand, finds it “embarrassingly easy” to get laid.
But Alex’s glory days are numbered. Early on at the Fringe, he sees a one-woman show that, unsurprisingly, he hates. He writes a review as devastating as it is personal (calling the star a “dull, hectoring frump,” her voice a “high-pitched whine”). All of this would be business as usual for Alex except for one problem: After quickly filing his review of the show, he bumps into Hayley Sinclair, its creator and star, in a bar. He takes her home and sleeps with her. He knew the one star was waiting for her; she did not.
When she finds out, there is hell to pay. Hayley transforms her nightly show into the “Alex Lyons Experience,” collecting testimony from his ex-girlfriends and lovers, or even those who have simply received bad reviews from him. Over the following weeks her show swells into a Greek chorus of one man’s wrongs. The whole nation, including members of Parliament, have hot takes (the performance is livestreamed). It doesn’t help his case that Alex is a bit of a nepo baby, as his mother Judith is an actor whose name would be recognized in most British households.
Sophie, living with Alex in the company-rented flat, has a front row seat to his public unraveling. She watches the livestreams with guilty awe, stalks Alex and Hayley compulsively online, and feverishly scans social media for the latest gossip (Runcie is great at writing a fake mean Tweet/X dispatch). She starts missing calls with her husband and their toddler son, as she becomes fully obsessed with the drama unfolding in Edinburgh.
As she continues to inhabit the same flat as her colleague, Sophie is increasingly questioned by others as to whose side she’s on, Alex or Hayley’s. For much of the book, she seems unable to make up her mind. She refuses to give up on Alex, and increasingly becomes his only source of companionship, which she can’t help but find flattering. But she also finds herself sympathetic to and magnetized by Hayley, whose popularity is blossoming on the Fringe circuit and beyond.
While Alex and Hayley both appear to possess other-worldly levels of charisma, one flaw with Runcie’s novel is that this is something we are repeatedly told, rather than shown. Alex spends most of the book being condescending to Sophie, and yet she is transfixed by him. “He had the strange ability to make you feel as if you were the only person who was in on a joke, the only person who understood some fundamental truth about the world that escaped other people.” This feels unsatisfyingly generic, like something you might find in an online wedding vows template.
We are at least given more backstory and a more plausible explanation for Sophie’s fascination with Alex: the ego trip. Having been dragged down by motherhood, a rocky marriage, and grief over the death of her own mother, Sophie enjoys Alex’s increasing dependence on her, a lone rock of support amid an ocean of alienation. There is something undeniably delicious in watching someone you revere fall to their knees, and Sophie begins to see in Alex “a tiny flickering of fear, at first only visible as a barely perceptible interruption to his arrogance, like a power cut that dims the lights for just a hundredth of a second.”
Hayley, unfortunately, never quite comes to life in the same way. And it remains unclear why her show, which is essentially a litany of (legitimate) complaints about a real-life terrible man with some added pyrotechnics, takes Edinburgh and the entire country by such storm. “I find I can’t explain why it had the effect that it did,” Sophie tells us. “This wasn’t theater, not really; it was a happening. The audience weren’t spectators anymore, but a silent, connected web of righteous energy.” Without more to go on, we have no choice but to take her word for it.
The result feels like a missed opportunity to interrogate some important questions. How much does the identity (gender, race, or class) of the critic matter when it comes to their ability to judge art? What about the identity of the artist themselves? In other words, who shall criticize the critics? Readers may leave Runcie’s novel feeling that some of these questions go unanswered, but this deeply entertaining novel is nonetheless well worth the price of admission.
Mills is a writer and human rights researcher who has worked for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. She lives in New York.
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Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your July reading list.
It’s officially beach-reads season: Whether you do your reading outdoors or inside in air-conditioned comfort, July’s hot new releases will help you stay cool. Topics range from analog memories of Golden Age Hollywood to a maverick female athlete. Happy reading!
Baum, a journalist for the Hollywood Reporter, draws on knowledge he has gleaned about cosmetic surgery, the profession of his protagonist, Dr. Roya Delshad. Dr. Delshad, who is multiracial and once supposedly plain, remakes herself into a glorious bombshell — but then lands in prison. She’s agreed to consider interviews with a ghostwriter named Wes Easton, who will soon discover why she’s called “the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive.”
Like the carriage of a well-oiled Olivetti, this novel moves between Carmel and Hollywood, in two different centuries, with ease. In 1957, actress Isabella Giori hopes to land a career-making role in a Hitchcock film; when her circumstances change and she winds up secluded in a tiny cottage in Carmel-on-the-Sea, a blacklisted emigre screenwriter named Léon Chazan saves her. In 2018, his screenwriter granddaughter finally learns how and why.
Vera, the child narrator of this wry and relevant new novel from Shteyngart (“Our Country Friends”), brings a half-Korean heritage to the Russian-Jewish-WASP Bradford-Shmulkin family. Between Daddy, Anne Mom, and her longing for her unknown bio Mom Mom, Vera has a lot to handle, while all she really wants is to help her dad and stepmom stay married — and to make a friend at school. It’s a must-read.
In the wake of her best friend Esther’s 2020 death, Miriam loses faith in almost everything, including the God that made her job teaching Christian scripture at a San Francisco private school bearable. She quits and takes a job as a mail carrier (as the author also did), not only finding moments of grace from neighborhood to neighborhood but also writing letters to Esther in an effort to understand the childhood difficulties that bonded them.
The title tells so much about how queer people must live in Nigeria, and so does the structure: Osunde (“Vagabonds!”) calls it a novel, although its chapters read more like short stories. If it doesn’t hang together like a traditional novel, that may be part of the point. Characters like May, struggling with gender identity, or Ziz, a gay man in Lagos, know that their identities don’t always hang together in traditional ways — and that’s definitely the point.
Decades of Cold War espionage between the United States and the Soviet Union included programs that leveraged cultural media. The Central Intelligence Agency’s Manhattan-based “book club” office was run by an emigre from Romania named George Midden, who managed to send 10 million books behind the Iron Curtain. Some of them were serious tomes, yes, but there were Agatha Christie novels, Orwell’s “1984” and art books too.
Crucially, MacGregor’s painstakingly researched history of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II includes Japanese perspectives. The historian (“Checkpoint Charlie”) treats the atomic bomb more as a weapon of mass murder and less as a scientific breakthrough, while managing to convey the urgency behind its development for the Allied forces.
Let this sink in (basketball pun very much intended): Caitlin Clark has scored more points than any player in major college basketball history. Not just the female players — the male players too. Now that she’s in the WNBA as a rookie for the Indiana Fever, Clark is attracting the kind of fan base once reserved for male basketball stars like Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Brennan’s longtime coverage of Clark’s career makes this book a slam dunk.
Each stratum, or layer, of our planet tells a story. Science writer Poppick explains what those millions of strata can tell us about four instances that changed life dramatically, from oxygen entering the atmosphere all the way to the dinosaur era. Ultimately, she argues that these strata show us that when stressed, the earth reacts by changing and moving toward stability. It’s a fascinating peek into the globe’s core that might offer clues about sustainability.
The once-unassuming Roxie Laybourne became the world’s first forensic ornithologist in 1960, when the FAA asked the Smithsonian — where Laybourne was an avian taxidermist — to help them identify shredded feathers from a fatal airplane crash in Boston. She analyzed specimens that contributed to arrests in racial attacks, as well as in catching game poachers and preventing deaths of fighter pilots. In her way, Laybourne was a badass.
Ryan Gosling puts the “not” in “Astronaut” in the new trailer for “Project Hail Mary.”
The upcoming sci-fi film, based on Andy Weir‘s novel of the same name, stars Gosling as middle school teacher turned reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, who’s tasked with saving humanity from the effects of a dimming sun. However, when he wakes up from a coma as the sole survivor aboard a spaceship, he must overcome his amnesia to remember where he is and why he was sent there.
“It’s an insanely ambitious story that’s massive in scope and it seemed really hard to make, and that’s kind of our bag,” Gosling said of “Project Hail Mary” at CinemaCon in April, where he debuted footage from the film, according to Variety. “This is why we go to the movies. And I’m not just saying it because I’m in it. I’m also saying it because I’m a producer on the film.”
The trailer, released Monday by Amazon MGM Studios, opens with Gosling startling awake on the spacecraft, his hair and beard uncharacteristically long. “I’m several light-years from my apartment,” he proclaims, “and I’m not an astronaut.”
It then jolts back in time to show Grace pre-launch as he learns from Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) that if he does not journey into space, everything on Earth will go extinct. According to Stratt, who heads the mission, Grace is the only scientist who might understand what is happening to the sun and surrounding stars.
The trailer, which progresses through an intense montage set to Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times,” teases Gosling’s signature humor. “I can’t even moonwalk!” the “Barbie” actor declares at one point. (Gosling portrayed moonwalker Neil Armstrong in another recent space movie, Damien Chazelle’s “First Man.”)
Everything leads up to Grace meeting an alien, who isn’t shown in full — but fans of the book know it plays an integral role in saving planet Earth and beyond.
The film, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, marks the second book-to-movie adaptation for Weir, whose novel “The Martian” became an Oscar-nominated 2015 blockbuster starring Matt Damon. An adaptation for his book “Artemis” is also in development with the same directing team.
By Alan Niven ECW Press: 240 pages, $23 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
As the manager of Guns N’ Roses during the band’s debauched heyday, Alan Niven has no shortage of colorful stories.
Slash going off script and taking a Winnebago for a joyride — and then standing in rush hour traffic and brandishing a bottle of Jack Daniels — while filming the “Welcome to the Jungle” music video.
Guitarist Izzy Stradlin carrying a $750,000 cashier’s check that Niven had to take from him and hide in his own shoe for safekeeping during a raucous trip to New Orleans.
About 15 minutes into a thoughtful Zoom conversation, the garrulous Niven poses a question of his own: “Why was I managing Guns N’ Roses?”
Given what he describes, it is a good question.
“Because nobody else would do it,” he says, noting that the band’s former management firm “could not get away fast enough” from the group. “No one else would deal with them. Literally, I was not bottom of the barrel, darling — I was underneath the barrel. It was desperation.”
Case in point: his very first Guns N’ Roses band meeting. On the way into the house, Niven says, he passed by a broken toilet and “one of the better-known strippers from [the] Sunset Strip.” Stradlin and Slash were the only ones who’d shown up. Once the meeting started, Stradlin nodded out at the table and Slash fed “a little white bunny rabbit” to a massive pet python.
“And I’m sitting there going, ‘Keep your cool. This may be a test. Just go with it and get through it.’ But that was my first GNR meeting.”
These kinds of stranger-than-fiction anecdotes dominate Niven’s wildly entertaining (and occasionally jaw-dropping) new book, “Sound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories.” With brutal honesty and vivid imagery, he describes the challenges of wrangling Guns N’ Roses before and after the band’s 1987 debut, “Appetite for Destruction.” These include mundane business matters (like shooting music videos on a budget) and more stressful moments, such as navigating Rose’s mercurial moods and ensuring that band members didn’t take drugs on international flights.
But “Sound N’ Fury” also focuses extensively on Niven’s time managing the bluesy hard rock band Great White, whose lead singer, the late Jack Russell, had his own struggles with severe addiction. To complicate the entanglement, Niven also produced and co-wrote dozens of the band’s songs, including hits “Rock Me” and “House of Broken Love.”
Niven mixes delightful bits of insider gossip into these harrowing moments: firing for bad behavior future superstar director Michael Bay from filming Great White’s “Call It Rock ’n’ Roll” music video; Berlin’s Terri Nunn sending President Reagan an 8-by-10 photo with a saucy message; clandestinely buying Ozzy Osbourne drinks on an airplane behind Sharon Osbourne’s back.
And his lifelong passion for championing promising artists also comes through, including his recent advocacy for guitarist Chris Buck of Cardinal Black.
Unsurprisingly, Niven says people had been asking him for “decades” to write a book (“If I had $1 for every time somebody asked me that, I’d be living in a castle in Scotland”). He resisted because of his disdain for rock ‘n’ roll books: “To me, they all have the same story arc and only the names change.”
A magazine editor paid him such a huge compliment that he finally felt compelled to write one.
“He said, ‘I wish I could write like you,’ ” Niven says. “When he said that, it put an obligation on me that I couldn’t shake. Now I had to be intelligent about it and go, ‘Well, you hate rock ‘n’ roll books, so what are you going to do?’ ”
Niven’s solution was to eschew the “usual boring, chronological history” and structure “Sound N’ Fury” more like a collection of vignettes, all told with his usual dry sense of humor and razor-sharp wit.
“If you tell the stories well enough, they might be illuminating,” he says. “I saw it more as a record than I did a book. And you hope that somebody will drop the needle in at the beginning of the record and stay with the record until it’s over.
“For me, dialogue was key — and, fortunately, they were all more f— up than I was,” he adds. “So my memory of the dialogue is pretty good. … There’s some dialogue exchanges in there that imprinted themselves for as long as I live.”
One of the artists that doesn’t get much ink in “Sound N’ Fury” is another group known for its hedonistic rock ‘n’ roll behavior, Mötley Crüe.
“The fact that people are still interested in what you’ve got to say about things that happened 30 years ago is almost unimaginable,” Alan Niven says.
(ECW Press)
Niven promoted and facilitated distribution of the independent release of the band’s 1981 debut, “Too Fast for Love” and helped connect Mötley Crüe with Elektra Records. He doesn’t mince words in the book or in conversation about the band, saying he feels “very ambivalent about the small role I played in the progression of Mötley Crüe because I know who they are. I know what they’ve done to various people. I know how they’ve treated certain numbers of women. And I am not proud of contributing to that.
“And on top of that, someone needs to turn around and say, ‘It’s a thin catalog that they produced,’ in terms of what they produced as music,” he continues. “There’s not much there and it’s certainly not intellectually or spiritually illuminating in any way, shape or form. They are brutish entertainers, and that’s it.”
Still, Niven says he didn’t hesitate to include the stories that he did in “Sound N’ Fury,” and by explanation notes a conversation he had with journalist Mick Wall.
“He sent me an email the other day saying, ‘Welcome to the club of authors,’ ” he recalls. “And I’m going, ‘Yeah, right. You’ve been doing it all your life. I’m just an enthusiastic amateur.’ And he said, ‘Welcome to the club — and by the way, it’s cursed.’”
Niven pondered what that meant. “A little light bulb went on in my head, and I went, ‘Ah, yes, the curse is truth,’ because a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth and don’t want to hear what truly happened.
“There are people in the Axl cult who won’t be happy. There will be one or two other people who won’t be happy, but there’s no point in recording anything unless it’s got a truth to it.”
Niven says when the book was done, he didn’t necessarily gain any surprising insights or new perspectives on what he had documented.
“The fact that people are still interested in what you’ve got to say about things that happened 30 years ago is almost unimaginable,” he says. “I never used to do interviews back in the day. But at this point, it would just be graceless and rank bad manners not to respond.
“Occasionally people go, ‘Oh, he’s bitter,’” Niven continues. “No, I am not. I don’t think the book comes off as bitter. Many times I’ve said it was actually a privilege to go through that period of time because I didn’t have to spend my life saying to myself, ‘I wonder what it would have been like to have had a No. 1. To have had a successful band.’ Well, I found out firsthand.”
Niven stresses firmly that management was more than a job to him.
“It was my way of life,” he says. “People who go into management and think it’s a job that starts maybe at about half past 10 in the morning once you’ve had your coffee and then you check out at six, they’re not true managers.
“They’re not in management for the right reasons,” he adds. “Rock ‘n’ roll is a way of f— life. It’s 24/7, 365. And that was my approach to it.”
The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature
By Charlie English Random House: 384 pages, $35 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
Charlie English begins “The CIA Book Club” by describing a 1970s technical manual: a dull cover, as uninviting as anything. A book that practically begs you to put it back on the shelf and move on.
Which was exactly the point. Secreted inside the technobabble dust jacket was a Polish-language copy of George Orwell’s “1984,” the boring cover a deliberate misdirection to deter prying eyes. The false front is a bit of skullduggery that harks back to a world where conspiracy to escape detection was a part of everyday life. A world where literature could be revolutionary, “a reservoir of freedom.”
English, formerly a journalist for the Guardian, specializes in writing about how art and literature are used to fight extremism: “The Storied City,” published in the U.K. as “The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu,” spotlights librarians who heroically saved priceless manuscripts of West African history from al Qaeda; “The Gallery of Miracles and Madness” traces the “insane” artists who influenced the early 20th century Modernism movement and Hitler’s attempts to stamp out their art — and them. His new book takes us through five decades of Poles fighting Soviet domination and Communist propaganda with a potent weapon: literature.
Even from the vantage point of the 21st century, when we know what became of the USSR, English’s book reads like a thriller. There are CIA suits, secret police, faceless bureaucrats and backstabbing traitors lurking in these pages. We face tensions between paramilitary cowboys and prudent intellectuals, between paper-pushing accountants and survivors saving a culture. While reading, I worried about figures like Helena Łuczywo, who edited and published an underground newspaper, and Mirosław Chojecki, who smuggled books and printing supplies into Poland. As with the best spy novels, we know the good guy is going to win while reading “The CIA Book Club,” but how English gets us there is exciting.
His best chapters follow the protests in the Gdańsk shipyards that led to the Solidarity trade union. A better future shimmers on the page when Lech Wałęsa climbs over a fence as an unemployed electrician, taps someone on the shoulder and becomes “the face of the Polish revolution.” (Ten years later, he became president of Poland, too.) In the violent crackdown that followed the momentary blossoming of freedom after Gdańsk, we feel the heartbreak and fear of the people. We hope again when fighters like Łuczywo begin printing a scant newsletter whose “main job was just to exist” and remind people they weren’t alone.
The book is gripping, but it doesn’t quite deliver on its subtitled promise to “win the Cold War with forbidden literature.” The story English has researched and put together focuses almost entirely on Poland’s fight for freedom from the USSR. Of course, the CIA’s funding of smuggling illicit literature into the Eastern Bloc is an important story, and a nearly forgotten one. As English mentions in the epilogue, while “the book program’s latter-day budget stood at around $2 million to $4 million annually, [the Afghan operation] by 1987 was running at a cost of $700 million a year, taking up 80 percent of the overseas budget of the clandestine service.” Apparently, an operation costing nearly 200 times the other deserves nearly 200 times the credit as well. The result is that the power of inexpensive books was swept under the rug in favor of expensive shows of force.
Still, the impressive power of the book club might have been better elucidated if details about its impact in other Eastern Bloc countries were brought into the story. The focus on Poland obscures what was happening in the USSR. English focused on Poland because the country had a long history of underground revolutionary culture; when the USSR turned independent Poland into a client state known as the People’s Republic of Poland, the Poles already knew how to go underground to fight back. The lifestyle doublespeak people used to survive under successive dictatorships in Eastern Europe came a little more easily to Poles, who had practiced it before. When the CIA offered funding, they were ready. Still, it would have been nice to see how “1984” inspired people in Ukraine or Moldova or Kyrgyzstan. If books are an answer to dictatorships — and as strong as “an organization packed with spooks and paramilitaries who fought in warzones” — it would be inspiring to see more of that. Hopefully a sequel is in the planning stages.
What this book does incredibly well is document an oral history of Polish resistance that has, until now, only been told in bits and pieces. There is archival research in here, but it is in the nature of dictatorships to destroy evidence of their crimes. Fortunately, English talked to many of the people who were there, publishing underground newspapers and smuggling in illicit literature. What information has been declassified — and much of it hasn’t been — bolsters the memories of survivors.
One of the most interesting details of “Book Club” is not that books inspired a nation but which books did. Philosophical tracts and political satires were smuggled in, of course; Poland received its share of “Animal Farm” and “1984” and “Brave New World.” But just as important to the Poles living under Soviet dictatorship were art books, fashion magazines, religious texts, lighthearted novels and regular newspapers. More influential than anti-Communist diatribes were the reminders that there was a world outside Soviet propaganda; each book read was a bid to avoid brainwashing, to not become a tool of the state.
This literary history is a prescient one. As book bans increase around the United States and peaceful protests are met with state violence here in Los Angeles, a tale of when stories saved the day is inherently hopeful. This book is a reminder that words are powerful and that stories matter. Sometimes the most rebellious thing one can do is read a book.
Loughborough Lightning have the chance to go for an unprecedented three-peat after booking their spot to face London Pulse in the Netball Super League Grand Final.
Defending champions Lightning were condemned to the preliminary final after they were beaten last week by Pulse, the regular season leaders.
That meant a repeat of last year’s Grand Final against Manchester Thunder and hosts Lightning came from behind to win 69-57 on Sunday.
Thunder scored 10 unanswered goals en route to a 19-12 lead after the first quarter, but Lightning did not look back after a blistering second.
After going 27-20 down, Jodie Gibson came on at goal defence to give Lightning a boost, while Samantha Wallace-Joseph did the damage at the other end.
The Trinidad and Tobago shooter converted five two-point super shots during the second quarter to help Lightning into a 37-30 lead at half-time.
Thunder called a tactical timeout at 44-33 down, while South Africa shooter Elmere van der Berg was brought off for the first time all season.
But Lightning still led 52-40 heading into the final quarter and stayed clear to book a rematch with Pulse in next Sunday’s Grand Final at London’s O2 Arena.
Picture books are not usually the stuff of Supreme Court rulings. But on Friday, a majority of justices ruled that parents have a right to opt their children out of lessons that offend their religious beliefs — bringing the colorful pages of books like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Pride Puppy” into the staid public record of the nation’s highest court.
The ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought by parents in Montgomery County, Md., who sued for the right to remove their children from lessons where LGBTQ+ storybooks would be read aloud in elementary school classes from kindergarten through 5th grade. The books were part of an effort in the district to represent LGBTQ+ families in the English language arts curriculum.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that schools must “notify them in advance” when one of the disputed storybooks would be used in their child’s class, so that they could have their children temporarily removed. The court’s three liberals dissented.
As part of the the decisions, briefings and petitions in the case, the justices and lawyers for the parents described in detail the story lines of nine picture books that were part of Montgomery County’s new curriculum. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor even reproduced one, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” in its entirety.
Here are the nine books that were the subject of the case:
Pride Puppy Author: Robin Stevenson Illustrator: Julie McLaughlin
Book “Pride Puppy” published by Orca Book Publishers.
(Orca Book Publishers)
“Pride Puppy,” a rhyming alphabet book for very young children, depicts a little girl who loses her dog during a joyful visit to a Pride parade. The story, which is available as a board book, invites readers to spot items starting with each of the letters of the alphabet, including apple, baseball and clouds — as well as items more specific to a Pride parade.
Lawyers representing the parents said in their brief that the “invites students barely old enough to tie their own shoes to search for images of ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ ‘lip ring,’ ‘[drag] king’ and ‘[drag] queen,’ and ‘Marsha P. Johnson,’ a controversial LGBTQ activist and sex worker.”
The “leather” in question refers to a mother’s jacket, and the “underwear” to a pair of green briefs worn over tights by an older child as part of a colorful outfit.
Love, Violet Author: Charlotte Sullivan Wild Illustrator: Charlene Chua
Book “Love Violet” published by macmillan publishers.
(macmillan)
The story describes a little girl named Violet with a crush on another girl in her class named Mira, who “had a leaping laugh” and “made Violet’s heart skip.” But every time Mira tries to talk to her, Violet gets shy and quiet.
On Valentine’s Day, Violet makes Mira a special valentine. As Violet gathers the courage to give it to her, the valentine ends up trampled in the snow. But Mira loves it anyway and also has a special gift for Violet — a locket with a violet inside. At the end of the book, the two girls go on an adventure together.
Lawyers for the parents describe “Love, Violet” as a book about “two young girls and their same-sex playground romance.” They wrote in that “teachers are encouraged to have a ‘think aloud’ moment to ask students how it feels when they don’t just ‘like’ but ‘like like’ someone.”
Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope Author: Jodie Patterson Illustrator: Charnelle Pinkney Barlow
Book “Born Ready” published by Random House.
(Random House)
In “Born Ready,” 5-year-old Penelope was born a girl but is certain they are a boy.
“I love you, Mama, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don’t want tomorrow to come because tomorrow I’ll look like you. Please help me, Mama. Help me be a boy,” Penelope tells their mom. “We will make a plan to tell everyone we know,” Penelope’s mom tells them, and they throw a big party to celebrate.
In her dissent, Sotomayor notes, “When Penelope’s brother expresses skepticism, his mother says, ‘Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.’ ”
In their opening brief, lawyers for the families said that “teachers are told to instruct students that, at birth, people ‘guess about our gender,’ but ‘we know ourselves best.’ ”
Prince and Knight Author: Daniel Haack Illustrator: Stevie Lewis
“Prince and Knight” is a story about a prince whose parents want him to find a bride, but instead he falls in love with a knight. Together, they fight off a dragon. When the prince falls from a great height, his knight rescues him on horseback.
When the king and queen find out of their love, they “were overwhelmed with joy. ‘We have finally found someone who is perfect for our boy!’ ” A great wedding is held, and “the prince and his shining knight would live happily ever after.”
“The book Prince & Knight clearly conveys the message that same-sex marriage should be accepted by all as a cause for celebration,” said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, a concerning message for Americans whose religion tells them that same-sex marriage is wrong.
“For young children, to whom this and the other storybooks are targeted, such celebration is liable to be processed as having moral connotations,” Alito wrote. “If this same-sex marriage makes everyone happy and leads to joyous celebration by all, doesn’t that mean it is in every respect a good thing?”
Uncle Bobby’s Wedding Author: Sarah S. Brannen Illustrator: Lucia Soto
In “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a little girl named Chloe learns that her beloved uncle is engaged to his partner, a man named Jamie. At first, she worries that the marriage will change her close bond with her uncle. But she soon embraces the celebration and the joy of getting another uncle through the union.
In the majority opinion, Alito wrote that the book sends children the message that “two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they ‘love each other.’ ” That viewpoint is “directly contrary to the religious principles that the parents in this case wish to instill in their children.” Parents ability to “present a different moral message” to their children, he said, “is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor includes the entire book, writing that, “Because the majority selectively excerpts the book in order to rewrite its story.”
The majority’s analysis, she writes, “reveals its failure to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist. They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size. Eliminating books depicting LGBTQ individuals as happily accepted by their families will not eliminate student exposure to that concept.”
Jacob’s Room to Choose Author: Sarah Hoffman and Ian Hoffman Illustrator: Chris Case
Book “Jacob’s Room To Choose” published by Magination Press.
(Magination Press)
“Jacob’s Room to Choose” is a follow-up to “Jacob’s New Dress,” a picture book listed as one of the American Library Assn.‘s top 100 banned books of the last decade.
Jacob wears a dress, and when he tries to use the boy’s bathroom, two little boys “stared at Jacob standing in the doorway. Jacob knew what that look meant. He turned and ran out.” The same thing happens to his friend Sophie, who presents as a boy and is chased out of the girl’s bathroom.
Their teacher encourages the whole class to rethink what gender really means. The class decides everyone should be able to use the bathroom that makes them feel comfortable, and makes new, inclusive signs to hang on the bathroom doors.
“After relabeling the bathroom doors to welcome multiple genders, the children parade with placards that proclaim ‘Bathrooms Are For Every Bunny’ and ‘[choose] the bathroom that is comfy,’ ” lawyers for the parents wrote.
IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All Author: Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council and Carolyn Choi Illustrator: Ashley Seil Smith
Book “IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All” published by Dottir Press.
(Dottir Press)
“IntersectionAllies,” written by three sociologists, is a story about characters with different identities, including one who uses a wheelchair, and another, Kate, who identifies as transgender. One page shows Kate in a gender-neutral bathroom, saying, “My friends defend my choices and place. A bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.”
In the majority opinion, Alito describes a discussion guide included with the book that he said asserts: “When we are born, our gender is often decided for us based on our sex . . . . But at any point in our lives, we can choose to identify with one gender, multiple genders, or neither gender.” The guide asks readers, “What pronouns fit you best?” Alito wrote.
What Are Your Words?: A Book About Pronouns Author: Katherine Locke Illustrator: Anne Passchier
“What Are Your Words” is a picture book about a child named Ari whose pronouns are “like the weather. They change depending on how I feel. And that’s ok, because they’re my words.” Ari’s Uncle Lior (who uses they/them pronouns) is coming to visit, and Ari is struggling to decide which words describe them.
“The child spends the day agonizing over the right pronouns,” the lawyers for the parents wrote. At the end, while watching fireworks, Ari says, “My words finally found me! They and them feel warm and snug to me.”
My Rainbow Author: DeShanna Neal and Trinity Neal Illustrator: Art Twink
“My Rainbow” tells the true story of a Black child with autism who self-identifies as a transgender girl. Trinity wants long hair, just like her doll, but has trouble growing it out. “The mother decides that her child knows best and sews him a rainbow-colored wig,” lawyers for the parents wrote.
This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
Like most busy working mothers who struggle with work-life balance, three-time Grammy Award winner Victoria Monét cherishes spending time with her 4-year-old daughter, Hazel, who she shares with ex-boyfriend fitness trainer John Gaines.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Known for writing hits like Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” Blackpink and Selena Gomez’s “Ice Cream” and Chloe x Halle’s “Do It,” in addition to “On My Mama” from her debut album “Jaguar II,” the L.A.-based R&B singer-songwriter recently penned something for younger audiences: the heartwarming children’s picture book “Everywhere You Are,” due out June 24.
In a recent interview, Monét revealed the inspiration behind her book. (She will discuss her new book at Malik Books on Saturday and the Reparations Club along with moderator Gabrielle Union on Sunday. Tickets are required.)
“As a parent, it’s hard to miss those pivotal moments,” she said of the separation anxiety that many children feel when their parents are working and unavailable. “It’s important for children to know that there is a purpose behind them. I wanted to offer assurance and relay an important message: Everything will be OK.”
Despite her demanding schedule, Monét always finds a way to make quality time for Hazel. In 2023, Hazel, then 2, became the youngest Grammy nominee in history when she was nominated for her vocals in “Hollywood” alongside her mother. And when Beyoncé kicked off her “Cowboy Carter” tour at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood last month, Monét took Hazel to her first concert. Their ideal Sunday in L.A., which Monét fondly calls “me time,” would involve playing outdoors, enjoying a visit to a family fun center, indulging in vegan sweet treats and reading “Everywhere You Are” to one another before bed. Here, Monét shares a joy-filled Sunday spent with her daughter.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
8:30 a.m.: Awake with gratitude
On Sundays, me and Hazel wake up later than usual because we probably stayed up late the night before if I didn’t have to work. We normally start our day by doing our gratitude journaling, where she doodles and I write. Then we do our self-care, where we brush our hair and teeth. I will then go downstairs and make her character pancakes with chocolate chips or Fruity Pebbles cereal.
After that, we may make some art. She loves to draw, and we have a nice art section in the house featuring everything from crayons to markers, scratch-off art, watercolors and rainbow paints.
10 a.m.: Dance, dance, dance!
Hazel is active and enjoys doing things, but on the weekends, we have instructors come to the house for dance lessons. So far, she has taken ballroom dance, ballet and tap. She was in gymnastics for a while. We’re looking forward to taking ballet and tumbling at To The Pointe Dance and Pilates Centre.
She loves being outside and enjoys riding her bike or visiting the park. During the week, she plays soccer twice a week. She loves it because it isn’t serious yet. It’s more about giving them a chance to have fun. They do drills on how to kick and run at the same time. It’s hard when you think about it.
12 p.m.: Indulge in fresh pasta at Uovo
Hazel loves pasta, so we often go to Uovo Pasta, which has several locations in Los Angeles. Their handmade al dente noodles are perfect — they overnight them from Italy. We would get the pomodoro and make sure that it’s not too spicy. Their cacio e pepe is great, but that’s a once-in-a-blue-moon thing for me because I’m [mostly] plant-based. Hazel usually gets what I get. When I was pregnant with her, I ate Flamin’ Hot Cheetos all the time, and now she likes them too. After lunch, I’d have to bring her home because she naps around 1 p.m.
2:30 p.m.: Jump for joy at Off the Wall
After her nap, we’ll hit Off the Wall in Woodland Hills. It’s trampoline heaven, where you can catapult higher than you intended to. There are rock climbing walls, an arcade and food. They have an air-filled basketball court that’s on a soft floor and there are birthday party rooms in the back. Hazel loves that place, especially the trampoline. She likes me to chase her, so I get a workout while we are there. I’ll literally be sweating when we leave.
4 p.m.: Sample sweet treats at Happy Ice or Magpies
For a sweet treat, Happy Ice is a favorite. It’s the best-tasting slushy snow cone, especially during the summer when it’s hot. They have locations in Northridge and Hollywood, but they also have a truck [at Smorgasburg on Sundays in downtown L.A.]. For Hazel’s birthday party, we had the truck come to our house. I usually get the Rainbow Rocket, which is a mix of all their Italian ice flavors, and Hazel gets the same thing I do. She is happy to get anything, frankly. Magpies Softserve is another one of our favorites. Their vegan honeycomb soft serve is so good. Hazel likes their soft-serve pies.
6 p.m.: Tapas-style dining at Joey
Hazel is newly picky, but if she were to go out to dinner with me, she would love Joey in Woodland Hills, which offers a wide-ranging menu. They check off a box for everybody. I’m a tapas-style girl, so I like to order a variety of different dishes: guacamole, tuna and avocado crunch roll and Korean fried cauliflower. I’ll order the sake-glazed Chilean sea bass and pasta for Hazel.
We’re homebodies, so another dinner option would be spending time together at home, cooking and playing in the pool. We enjoy making veggie and tofu tacos together. Things you can eat with your hands are always fun with kids. That’s one reason they like s’mores so much. Occasionally, we’ll make something pescatarian like grilled salmon or other fish.
8 p.m.: Watch “Moana 2” … again
At night, we would watch a movie and wind down with some Skinny Pop popcorn. Hazel would probably watch “Moana 2” again right now. We saw it in the theaters, and she goes through phases where she wants to watch different things, but she recently said that she wants a “Moana 2” party for her fifth birthday. I thought she’d like something else by then. But then, she thinks there will be 20 Moanas.
10 p.m.: Read “Everywhere You Are” before bed
Before bed, Hazel often asks me to read “Everywhere You Are” to her. She loves to read and enjoys being read to. I’ve read it to her so many times that she can read it back to me. She recorded a segment of the audiobook with me and was excited to hear herself when she recorded it in the studio. Reading the book to her, I realized that missing a parent is a lot like losing a loved one. You can still feel their presence even though they’re not around. Love binds people together despite physical distance. Even when they don’t see you, children need to know that you’re still there and that you’ll always be with them.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s upbringing in a deeply dysfunctional family makes him a uniquely destructive and unstable leader for the country, his estranged niece writes in a scathing new book released Tuesday, perhaps the most personal in a series of deeply unflattering tell-all accounts about the president.
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, describes her uncle as deeply insecure and unscrupulous, saying he paid a friend to take his SAT so he could get into college. She accuses him of “twisted behaviors” and “cheating as a way of life,” citing a lifelong habit of lying.
“Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved,” writes the 55-year-old daughter of the president’s eldest brother, Fred.
The Times obtained an early copy of her 240-page book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” before its official release.
The book, which portrays the president as almost pitifully desperate for affirmation, provides a harsh contrast to Trump’s self-made image as a tough and successful businessman. It also represents an extraordinary breach in the wall of secrecy that he has erected around his life.
More than any modern president, Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal or distort major details of his private life, barring his schools from releasing transcripts, refusing to disclose his tax returns or detailed health information, and requiring employees and others to sign nondisclosure agreements to prevent release of unflattering material about his business and personal affairs.
The author says the president’s late father, Fred Sr., was domineering and a “high-functioning sociopath,” and his late mother, also named Mary, was “emotionally and physically absent.” They left Trump, she argues, without empathy and “fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others.”
“Honest work was never demanded of him, and no matter how badly he failed, he was rewarded in ways that are almost unfathomable,” she writes.
“Now the stakes are far higher than they’ve ever been before; they are literally life and death. Unlike any previous time in his life, Donald’s failings cannot be hidden or ignored because they threaten us all,” she adds.
The president, the fourth of five Trump siblings, argued that in writing the book, his niece violated a nondisclosure agreement that she signed two decades ago as part of the settlement of a bitter dispute over the family fortune.
His younger brother, Robert, sued to block the book’s release, but a New York appeals court decided that publisher Simon & Schuster could distribute the book. Another state judge ruled on Monday that Mary Trump could not be barred from publicly speaking about the book’s contents, saying that “would be incorrect and serve no purpose.”
She had told the court that the confidentiality agreement should be declared invalid because Trump lied about his net worth and other business affairs during the negotiations.
Sarah Matthews, a White House deputy press secretary, said her allegation in the book that Trump paid someone to take the College Board admissions test for him “is completely false.” Trump enrolled at Fordham University in 1964 but transferred two years later to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business.
Matthews also said “the president describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him.”
According to the book, the Trump family was caustic, cold and calculating.
“Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life,” Mary writes, and he developed personality traits that included “displays of narcissism, bullying, grandiosity.”
He also became practiced at bending the truth, a precursor to becoming a president who has uttered and tweeted thousands of falsehoods since taking office.
“For Donald, lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was,” Mary writes.
According to her account, Trump got his older sister, Maryanne, to complete his school homework, and he paid a friend to take his College Board admissions test.
“That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records,” Mary writes. “Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.”
Mary Trump relies on her training as a clinical psychologist to analyze the president. She blames him for the unraveling of her father, Fred Jr., who died in 1981 at age 42 after struggling with alcoholism.
Fred Jr., often called Freddy, had been expected to take over the family real estate business, but he was uninterested, and Fred Sr. ended up favoring Donald instead.
“Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence, and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father,” Mary writes.
Freddy became a commercial airline pilot, disappointing his father, who described him as a “bus driver in the sky.” While Fred Jr. was living in Massachusetts with his wife, Donald visited and berated him for his alleged failings.
“You know, Dad’s really sick of you wasting your life,” Donald said, according to the book.
Fred Jr.’s drinking worsened, and an attempt to return to the family business didn’t pan out. At the end of his life, no family members accompanied him when he was taken to the hospital, Mary writes. She says Donald went to the movies the night his brother died.
According to the book, Trump internalized Fred Sr.’s treatment of Freddy.
“He had plenty of time to learn from watching Fred humiliate his older brother and Freddy’s resulting shame,” Mary writes. “The lesson he learned, at its simplest, was that it was wrong to be like Freddy: Fred didn’t respect his oldest son, so neither would Donald. Fred thought Freddy was weak, and therefore so did Donald.”
Trump, not known for introspection, has expressed rare doubts about his treatment of his older brother. “I do regret having put pressure on him,” he told the Washington Post last year.
After Fred Sr. died in 1999, Mary and her brother, known as Fritz, were angered to learn that they would inherit far less than they expected. When they challenged the will, the Trump family cut off their medical insurance — a devastating blow to Fritz, whose new son was born with cerebral palsy and needed constant care.
Mary and Fritz eventually settled for less money than they felt they were entitled to, but the legal sparring had consequences down the road.
In the book, Mary reveals herself as the key source for the New York Times’ investigation into Trump’s alleged tax fraud as he inherited his father’s real estate empire. She communicated with one of the reporters using an untraceable phone and visited her former lawyer’s office to collect computer files and nineteen boxes of documents.
The book also describes unflattering comments made by Maryanne, Trump’s older sister and a retired federal judge. When he announced he was running for president, Mary writes, Maryanne dismissed him as “a clown.” And when he started to build support among evangelical voters, she was outraged.
“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there,” Maryanne said, according to the book. “It’s mind boggling. He has no principles. None!”
Trump’s well-documented lewdness extends to his interactions with his niece, she says. After asking Mary to help ghost write one of his books, he refused to grant an interview but provided her with “an aggrieved compendium of women he had expected to date but who, having refused him, were suddenly the worst, ugliest, and fattest slobs he’d ever met.”
Around that time, Mary went with her uncle to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. She writes that when he spotted her in a bathing suit, the future president looked at his 29-year-old niece “as if he’d never really seen me before” and told her “you’re stacked!”
Several former senior members of Trump’s inner circle have also shared withering criticism of the president as he seeks reelection.
Last month, John Bolton, Trump’s third national security advisor, released a scorching behind-the-scenes account of what he viewed as the president’s incompetence and servile behavior toward authoritarian leaders.
Copyrighted books can be used to train artificial intelligence models without authors’ consent, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The decision marked a major victory for San Francisco startup Anthropic, which trained its AI assistant Claude using copyrighted books. The company, started by former OpenAI employees and backed by Amazon, was sued by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace in August.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of purchased books was “exceedingly transformative and was a fair use” but the company may have broken the law by using pirated books. Alsup ordered a trial in December to determine damages, which can reach up to $150,000 per case of willful copyright infringement.
“If someone were to read all the modern-day classics because of their exceptional expression, memorize them, and then emulate a blend of their best writing, would that violate the Copyright Act? Of course not,” the ruling reads.
“The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train [large language models] to generate new text was quintessentially transformative. Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”
Anthropic pirated more than 7 million books from Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online libraries containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted books, to train its large language models, according to Alsup. As the company started to become “not so gung ho” about pirating “for legal reasons,” it brought on Tom Turvey from Google to obtain “all the books in the world” but still avoid “legal/practice/business slog.”
While Turvey initially inquired into licensing agreements with two major publishers, he eventually decided to purchase millions of print copies in bulk. The company then proceeded to strip the books’ bindings, cut their pages and scan them into digital and machine-readable forms, according to the decision.
Though the plaintiffs took issue with Anthropic making digital copies, Alsup ruled that this practice also falls under fair use: “The mere conversion of a print book to a digital file to save space and enable searchability was transformative for that reason alone,” he wrote.
Anthropic later purchasing books that it initially pirated did not absolve the company, but it may impact the extent of statutory damages, Alsup said.
A travel expert has pointed out one specific seat that offers the best combination of safety and value – and it’s one that most people don’t even know about
It should also help ensure a smoother ride(Image: J. James via Getty Images)
For many, the thought of flying can be a source of anxiety, particularly when turbulence strikes or the mind wanders to the potential dangers of being 30,000 feet in the air. While some opt for the comfort and reassurance of business class, others simply hold tight to their armrests and hope for smooth skies.
However, travel guru Bryson Robert, from Safari Soles Tours, an operator specialising in African escapades, suggests there’s a more intelligent approach that won’t leave your wallet feeling light.
“Most people don’t realise there’s actually a specific seat that offers the best combination of safety and value,” Mr Robert revealed. “While seat 11A might seem like any other window seat, it’s actually positioned in what many aviation experts consider the safest part of the aircraft, and you can often snag it without paying those exorbitant upgrade fees.”
With his extensive experience guiding clients to far-flung locations across Tanzania, Mr Robert has gained deep insights into aviation safety and booking strategies, and he explains why this particular seat should be on the radar of safety-conscious travellers.
Why Seat 11A is the sweet spot for safety
The allure of seat 11A lies in its strategic placement over the aircraft’s wings. This location provides several safety benefits that most passengers overlook when reserving their flights.
Aircraft seating expert Mr Robert shared a tip on securing a smoother ride, saying: “When you’re sitting over the wing, you’re positioned at the plane’s centre of gravity,” and added, “This means you’ll experience less turbulence compared to seats at the front or back of the aircraft. The wing area also has the most reinforced structure in the entire plane.”
The reinforcement of the wings not only ensures steadier flying due to the robust structure but is also pivotal for the plane’s structural integrity. The design of aircraft wings is intentional to bear significant stress, which in turn makes the space directly above them a highly stable zone in the event of any unforeseen trouble during a flight.
There’s also the added perk of being near emergency exits when seated at 11A, giving passengers swift access to multiple egress points – a sharp contrast to seats situated at the extremities of the plane where exit options could be restricted.
Check seat maps for your aircraft
Before rushing to book your seat, remember to review the seat maps specific to your flight.
For those aiming to claim seat 11A, Robert emphasises the importance of verifying the seat layout by stating: “You want to look for planes where 11A sits directly over the wing with clear sight lines to emergency exits,” recommending both Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s as prime candidates for such favourable seating arrangement.
To make sure that 11A indeed boasts these strategic positional perks on your particular journey, it’s wise to consult airline seat map resources and tools such as SeatGuru. It’s noteworthy that certain aircraft may have unique numbering sequences or layouts that displace row 11 from its advantageous spot over the wing.
Mr Robert also advises against choosing planes where the 11th row falls within the premium economy section, as these seats usually come with compulsory upgrade fees that negate the point of affordability.
You can get the ‘safest’ seat, according to an expert(Image: Pexels)
Securing seat 11A without additional charges
The timing of your booking could be the deciding factor between securing seat 11A for free or being hit with hefty selection fees. Mr Robert reveals his insider tip for nabbing this prime spot.
“Book your flight first, then wait about 24 hours before selecting your seat,” he recommended. “Many airlines release their best available seats during this window, and 11A often becomes available for standard selection.”
“If you’re flexible with your departure times, Tuesday and Wednesday flights often have more seat availability,” Mr Robert said. “Airlines are less likely to charge premium fees for seats that aren’t filling up quickly.”
Another tactic involves regularly checking back after making your booking. As the departure date draws nearer, airlines sometimes make previously restricted seats available for free selection when it’s apparent they won’t be sold as upgrades.
Some seats are thought to be safer than others(Image: Pexels)
Mr Robert concluded: “After years of coordinating travel for safari clients flying into remote African destinations, I’ve learned that smart seat selection can make or break a long-haul flight experience. Seat 11A represents the perfect sweet spot that most travellers completely overlook. You’re getting the structural advantages of being positioned over the wing – which means better stability during turbulence and proximity to the aircraft’s strongest point – without paying the premium that business class demands.
“The beauty of this seat is that it addresses the two biggest concerns I hear from nervous flyers: safety and cost. You don’t need to spend an extra £200-500 on an upgrade to feel more secure during your flight. Understanding aircraft design and booking timing can get you into one of the safest positions on the plane for the price of a standard economy ticket.
“It’s particularly valuable for travellers heading to destinations like ours in Tanzania, where you’re looking at 15-20 hour journey times. Every advantage in comfort and peace of mind counts when you’re covering that kind of distance.”
By Peter Brown Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: 48 pages, $20 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
There are rare moments in the culture when a children’s book resonates with everyone. Parents who buy the book for their kids find themselves moved by a story that is not intended for them but somehow speaks to them. Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” is one such book.
A tender-hearted fable about a robot who washes ashore on a remote island and goes native, the 2016 middle-grade novel from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has spawned two sequels and last year’s hit (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation from DreamWorks Animation, with book sales for the series topping 6.5 million worldwide. Brown has now created a picture book titled “The Wild Robot on the Island,” a gateway for those still too young to read the original work.
“This new book gave me a chance to create these big, colorful, detailed illustrations, while still maintaining the emotional tone of the novel,” says Brown, who is Zooming from the Maine home he shares with his wife and young son. “I’ve added some little moments that aren’t in the novel to give younger readers an introduction and when they’re ready, they can turn to the novel.”
“The Wild Robot on the Island” picture book is geared for a younger audience than Brown’s earlier children’s novels featuring Roz the robot and friends.
(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
The new book’s mostly-pictures-with-some-words approach is a return to Brown’s earlier work when he was creating charming fables for toddlers about our sometimes fraught, sometimes empathetic attitude toward nature. In 2009’s “The Curious Garden,” a boy encounters a patch of wildflowers and grass sprouting from an abandoned railway and decides to cultivate it into a garden, while 2013’s “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” finds the title character longing to escape from the conventions of a world where animals no longer run free. This push and pull between wilderness and civilized life, or wildness versus timidity, has preoccupied Brown for the duration of his career, and it is what brought Brown to his robot.
“I was thinking about nature in unlikely places, and the relationships between natural and unnatural things,” says Brown, a New Jersey native who studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. “And that led to the idea of a robot in a tree.” Brown drew a single picture of a robot standing on the branch of a giant pine tree, then put it aside while he produced other work. But the image wouldn’t let him go: “Every couple of months, I would think about that robot.”
Brown began researching robots and robotics, and slowly the story gestated in his mind. “Themes began to emerge,” says Brown. “Mainly, the idea of this robot becoming almost more wild and natural than a person could be. That was so fascinating to me that I wanted to let this thing breathe and see where it took me.”
Brown knew the involved narrative he had imagined wouldn’t work in picture book form; he needed to write his story as a novel, which would be new territory for him. “When I pitched the idea to my editor, she basically said, ‘Pump your brakes,’ ” says Brown. “If I was going to write, I had to include illustrations as well. The publisher thought it was a bit of a risk. They wanted pictures in order to sell it, because of what I had done in the past.”
(Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Brown locked himself away out in the wilds of Maine, in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, and got down to it. “I was nervous, and my editor wasn’t sure, either,” says Brown, who cites Kurt Vonnegut as a literary influence. “I realized there was no other option but for me to do it. And once I got into it, I had a blast.”
Like all great fables, Brown’s story is deceptively simple. A cargo ship full of robots goes down in the middle of the ocean. Some of these robots, still packed in their boxes, wash ashore on a remote island. A family of otters opens one such box, which turns out to be Roz, Brown’s wild robot. As Roz explores this strange new world, she encounters angry bears, a loquacious squirrel and industrious beavers, who regard her as a malevolent force. But the robot’s confusion, and the animal’s hostility, soon dissolve into a mutual understanding. Roz is the reader’s proxy, an innocent who acclimates to the complex rhythms of the natural world. Eventually she is subsumed into this alien universe, a creature of nature who allows birds to roost on her chromium shoulder.
“Roz has been programmed to learn, but her creators, the men who built her, don’t expect her to learn in this particular way,” says Brown. “And so she uses that learning ability to mimic the animals’ behavior and learns how to communicate with them. Roz is the embodiment of the value of learning, and part of that is adapting, changing, growing.”
The story isn’t always a rosy fairy tale. There are predators on the island; animals are eaten for sustenance. Real life, in short, rears its ugly head. “It gets tricky. Life is complicated, right?”, says Brown. “But thanks to Roz’s influence, all the animals discover how they are all a part of this interconnected community.”
Roz adopts an abandoned gosling that she names Brightbill, and the man-made machine is now a mother, flooded with compassion for her young charge. Their relationship is the emotional core of Brown’s series. At a time when the world is grappling with the increasing presence of robotic technology in everyday life, Brown offers an alternative view: What if we can create robots that are capable of benevolence and empathy? Roz reminds us of our own humanity, our capacity to love and feel deeply. This is why “The Wild Robot” isn’t just a kid’s book. It is in fact one of the most insightful novels about our present techno-anxious moment, camouflaged as a children’s book.
The author kept his underlying fable intact in the new “Wild Robot” picture book.
(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says Brown. “There’s obviously a lot of good that is happening, and will continue to happen, but in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.” He mentions Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book “The Anxious Generation,” and Haidt’s prescriptions for restricting internet use among children, which Brown endorses. “I don’t have a lot of answers, but I just think we need to reinvest in our own humanity,” he says. “We have to make sure things are going in the right direction.”
In subsequent books, the outside world impinges on Roz’s idyll. “The Wild Robot Escapes” finds Roz navigating the dangers of urban life and humans with guns, while a toxic tide in “The Wild Robot Protects” leaves the animals scrambling for ever more scarce resources. None of this is pedantic, nor is it puffed up with moral outrage. Brown knows children can spot such flaws a mile away. Like all great adventure tales, Brown’s “Wild Robot” stories embrace the wild world in all of its splendor, without ever flinching away from it.
“In the books, I just wanted to acknowledge that the world is complicated, and that people we think are bad aren’t necessarily so,” says Brown, who is currently writing the fourth novel in the “Wild Robot” series. “Behind every bad action is a really complicated story, and I think kids can handle that. They want to be told the truth about things, they want to grapple with the tough parts of life.”
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
By Kelly Ramsey Scribner: 338 pages, $30 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
Fire changes whatever it encounters. Burns it, melts it, sometimes makes it stronger. Once fire tears through a place, nothing is left the same. Kelly Ramsey wasn’t thinking of this when she joined the U.S. Forest Service firefighting crew known as the Rowdy River Hotshots — she just thought fighting fires would be a great job.
But fire changed her too.
In her memoir, “Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West,” Ramsey takes us through two years of fighting wilderness fires in the mountains of Northern California. She wrote the book before January’s deadly Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires, and what she encountered in the summers of 2020 and 2021 was mostly forests burning, not city neighborhoods. But at the time, the fires she and her fellow crewmen fought (and they were all men that first year) were the hottest, fastest, biggest fires California had ever experienced.
“My first real year in fire had been a doozy, not just for me but my beloved California: 4.2 million acres burned,” she writes, in the “worst season the state had endured in over a hundred years.” That included the state’s first gigafire — more than 1 million acres burned in Northern California.
The job proved to be the hardest thing she’d ever done, but something about fire compelled her. “At the sight of a smoke column, most people feel a healthy hitch in their breath and want to run the other way,” she writes. “But all I wanted to do was run toward the fire.”
Ramsey’s memoir covers a lot of ground, skillfully. She learns that being in good shape isn’t enough — she has to be in incredible shape. She learns how to work with a group of men who are younger, stronger and more experienced than she is, and she figures out how to find that line between never complaining and standing up for herself in the face of inappropriate behavior.
She also writes about the changes in her own life during that time: coming to terms with her alcoholic, homeless father; pondering her lousy record for romantic relationships; searching for an independence and peace she had never known.
“It wasn’t fire that was hard; it was ordinary life,” she concludes.
Sometimes her struggles with ordinary life threaten to take over the narrative, but while they humanize her, they are not the most interesting part of this book. What resonates instead is fire and all that it entails — the burning forest and the hard, mind-numbing work of the Hotshots. They work 14 days on, two days off, all summer and fall, sometimes 24-hour shifts when things are bad. They sleep rough, dig ditches, build firebreaks, set controlled burns, take down dead trees and, in between, experience moments of terrifying danger.
Readers of John Vaillant’s harrowing 2023 book “Fire Weather” — an account of the destruction of the Canadian forest town of Fort McMurray — might consider Ramsey’s book a companion to the earlier book. “Wildfire Days” is not as sweeping or scientific; it’s more personal and entertaining. It’s the other side of the story, the story of the people who fight the blaze.
Ramsey’s gender is an important part of this book; as a woman, she faces obstacles men do not. It’s harder to find a discreet place to relieve herself; she must deal with monthly periods; and, at first, she is the weakest and slowest of the Hotshots. “Thought you trained this winter,” one of the guys tells her after an arduous training hike leaves her gasping for breath. “I did,” she said.
“Thinking you shoulda trained a little harder, huh,” he said.
But over time she grows stronger, more capable, and more accepted. In the second year, when another woman joins the crew, Ramsey is torn between finally being “one of the guys” and supporting, in solidarity, a woman — but a woman whose work is substandard and whose attitude is whiny.
“Was I only interested in ‘diversity’ on the crew if it looked like me?” she asks herself. “Had I clawed out a place for myself, only to pull up the ladder behind me?”
But competence is crucial in this dangerous job, and substandard work can mean deadly accidents.
For centuries, natural wildfires burned dead trees and undergrowth in California, keeping huge fires in check. White settlers threw things out of whack.
“The Indigenous people of California were (and still are) expert fire keepers,” Ramsey writes. “Native burning mimicked and augmented natural fire, keeping the land park like and open.”
But in the 20th century, humans suppressed fires and forests became overgrown. “Cut to today,” she writes. “Dense forests are primed to burn hotter and faster than ever before.”
Ramsey’s descriptions of the work and the fires are the strongest parts of the book.
“We could hear the howl — like the roar of a thousand lions, like a fleet of jet engines passing overhead — the sound of fire devouring everything,“ Ramsey writes.
Later, she drives through a part of the forest that burned the year before to see “mile upon mile of carbonized trees and denuded earth, a now-familiar scene of extinguished life.”
But she also notes that the burned areas are already beginning to green up. “New life tended to spring from bitterest ash,” she writes.
“The forest wouldn’t grow back the same, but it wouldn’t stop growing,” she observes earlier.
There is a metaphor here. Ramsey’s memoir is a moving, sometimes funny story about destruction, change and rebirth, told by a woman tempered by fire.
Hertzel’s second memoir, “Ghosts of Fourth Street,” will be published in 2026. She teaches in the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program at the University of Georgia and lives in Minnesota.
Travel writer Sophie Law headed to the Amalfi Coast to try out Uber’s new helicopter and boat ride experience that lets you explore one of Italy’s most beautiful coastlines from a different angle.
15:49, 11 Jun 2025Updated 18:04, 11 Jun 2025
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It’s not every day you get to tick off a bucket-list experience — especially one that has you soaring above one of the most dazzling coastlines in the world.
But thanks to Uber’s latest luxurious offering, I found myself stepping into a helicopter for the very first time, ready to see the Amalfi Coast like never before.
Uber’s new Uber Copter service — launched just in time for what promises to be a bustling summer season — felt like stepping into a scene reserved for the rich and famous.
My nerves were jittery at first — naturally! — but from the moment we lifted off from the exclusive helipad in Sorrento, the experience was astonishingly smooth. Forget the turbulence of your typical commercial flight; this was sheer luxury.
Uber has launched a helicopter ride over the Amalfi Coast this summer(Image: Sophie Law)
The helicopter ride passes beautiful grottos along the famous Italian coastline(Image: Sophie Law)
The journey took just 15 minutes to reach Capri, an island in Italy’s Bay of Naples famed for its expensive hotels, crystal-clear waters, and celebrity sightings — Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyoncé, and the Kardashians, to name a few.
As we gracefully soared over the glittering Mediterranean, the dramatic cliffs and sun-soaked villages unfolded below us. One of the area’s most iconic natural wonders is the Blue Grotto — a dark cavern where the sea glows electric blue, thanks to sunlight filtering through an underwater cave.
In summer, the Amalfi Coast’s cove-studded shoreline draws countless yachts — celebrity and billionaire superyachts often anchor in picturesque spots like Marina Piccola in Capri. Our two cheery pilots eagerly pointed out landmarks along the coastline, from ancient Roman ruins to luxurious hotels.
And just like that, we touched down in Capri and were whisked away in a stylish pink convertible jeep (another pinch-me moment). The helicopter experience is one I’ll never forget — and one that’s surprisingly easy to book. The view was mesmerizing: a vibrant, cinematic spectacle made accessible right from your smartphone via the Uber app.
The helicopter ride holds up to six people and costs £210 (€250) per person. While that may sound steep, a typical helicopter tour over the Amalfi Coast usually runs between €1,800 and €2,950 per group — so it’s relatively reasonable.
The round-trip journey includes door-to-door transportation to and from the helipad, with a 9am departure from Sorrento and 5pm return from Capri. But Uber wasn’t done spoiling us yet. Next up: a dreamy boat trip that felt almost too good to be true. And get this — it’s completely free for tourists all summer long.
The stylish boat (straight out of The Talented Mr. Ripley) picked us up from Sorrento Marina for a four-hour cruise along the coastline, stopping at pretty bays for swimming. We were given a guided tour along the way too, passing ruins, hotels, towns, and even a tiny island with a villa that can be rented for an eye-watering £125,000 a week.
The Uber Boat experience sailed around the Amalfi Coast from Sorrento(Image: Sophie Law)
The journey took 15 minutes and was incredibly smooth(Image: Sophie Law)
Cruising leisurely along the Amalfi Coast in a chic Italian Gozzo 35 boat, we sipped chilled prosecco and ate salty snacks before docking at the iconic UNESCO World Heritage Site town of Positano for a lunch of courgette pasta, a regional speciality, and Aperol Spritz.
The view of the pastel-coloured town climbing up the mountainside — one of Amalfi’s most famous vistas — was even more extraordinary from sea level and a great way to avoid the throngs of tourists. I’m told each trip includes a personal skipper, along with complimentary snacks and beverages, but you can bring your own, of course. Each boat can be chartered for up to 12 people.
These unforgettable experiences are part of Uber’s ambitious new initiative to transform travel on Italy’s Amalfi Coast.
Stops included the UNSECO World Heritage Site of Positano(Image: Sophie Law)
The free boat takes you around the coastlines of the Amalfi(Image: Sophie Law)
From helicopter transfers and luxury sea cruises to seamless ground transportation, Uber’s latest offerings ensure travellers can truly “go anywhere” by land, sea, or air and the summer services will run every Saturday and Sunday from July 26 to August 24.
Starting next month, you can book a helicopter transfer or free luxury boat trip with just a few taps on the Uber Reserve feature.
Trust me — it’s Amalfitani style at its finest, and it’ll leave you feeling like a celebrity.
Book it
Uber Copterrides for up to six people costs £210 (€250) per person. They can be booked on the Uber app by selecting the ‘Uber Copter’ icon from the home screen.
The private helicopter operates every Saturday and Sunday between July 26 and August 23, and includes transportation to and from the helipad, with a 9am departure from Sorrento and 5pm return from Capri.
The Uber Boat can also be booked through the Uber app on your phone and it’s free — select the ‘Uber Boat’ icon from the home screen. Boats depart every Saturday and Sunday from July 26 until August 24 at 10am from Sorrento’s marina.
LONDON — Frederick Forsyth, the British author of “The Day of the Jackal” and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said. He was 86.
Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family.
“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” Lloyd said.
Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for “The Day of the Jackal,” his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin.
Published in 1971, the book propelled him to global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a Peacock television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.
In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.
Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and “it was hard to say no” to officials seeking information. “The zeitgeist was different,” he told the BBC. “The Cold War was very much on.”
He wrote more than 25 books including “The Afghan,” “The Kill List,” “The Dogs of War” and “The Fist of God” that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said.
His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that “Revenge of Odessa,” a sequel to the 1974 book “The Odessa File” that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August.
“Still read by millions across the world, Freddie’s thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,” Scott-Kerr said.
