books

A spate of ‘extreme weather’ in Ibiza has left many locals and tourists experiencing heavy rainfall, flooding and strong winds – and some are now worried about their flights home

A mum who booked a trip to Ibiza is having regrets after a spate of “extreme weather” has left her worried her “flight may be delayed”. Ibiza is widely regarded as the party capital of the world, with images of vibrant clubs packed with keen revellers moving to beats spun by world famous DJs most often coming to mind when hearing its name.

But that’s not all it’s known for – its pristine, serene beaches offer a breathtaking retreat for those craving a spot of relaxation; hikers are spoiled for choice with rugged yet scenic cliffs, coastal paths, pine forests and other dramatic areas; while the UNESCO-listed walled old town of Dalt Vila is a haven for history lovers; with plenty more on offer too.

It’s no surprise then that the destination is a top choice for a wide range of holidays, with its usually hot summers and mild, gentle winters making it a decent getaway destination all year round.

This August, however, is a different story entirely. A sudden change in sea levels has led to flooding, heavy rainfall and strong winds.

There’s been reports of locals and tourists alike bolting from Platja de s’Arenal beach, which can be found in the town of Sant Antoni de Portmany, while an event planned to honour the music of a Spanish rock band was cancelled by San Antonio Town Hall “for security reasons”, after the stage was surrounded by sea water.

The flooding followed previous warnings from weather chiefs on the threat of ‘mini tsunamis’ – or rissagas, as they’re known locally – due to hit parts of the Balearic Islands at the beginning of the week.

Majorca Daily Bulletin reported: “Mallorca experienced two minor ‘rissagas’, also known as meteotsunamis, in the ports of Andratx and Soller on Monday, as the Balearic Islands remained under watch for sudden sea level changes.”

How have holidaymakers fared?

Many visitors to Ibiza have shared their experiences of the “extreme weather” online. One mum captured footage of the pool area around her hotel, with winds whipping the palm trees and the cushions strapped to the sun loungers, and shared it to TikTok.

In text written over the top of the clip, the mum penned: “Go to Ibiza in August they said!!!” while in the caption, she added: “Think our flight may be delayed!”

In the comments section, fellow TikTok users were keen to share their thoughts. One person said: “I went in August and it was so sunny and hot 33 degrees.”

Another shared: “Mate last year we were caught in the worst storm’s Ibiza’s had in decades.”

A third said: “We are doing 12 hours in Ibiza with no hotel THIS SATURDAY.”

To which, the mum replied: “Saturday will be beautiful I’m sure! Don’t worry, it’s very rarely like this!”

But someone else said: “Everyone knows around this time of year there is a chance for extreme weather.”

And another agreed: “It rains every year by this time so it’s nothing new and won’t stop anything either.”

Another Ibiza-holidaymaker shared a light-hearted clip mocking herself after sharing envious clips of her getaway before being “humbled” by the torrential downpour.

In the caption, she explained: “Yesterday: ‘Basically, I’m in Ibiza… and you’re not.’

“Today: Ibiza humbled me. We held out under that umbrella for FAR longer than was sensible before admitting defeat!”

Pity the period. And the comma and the semicolon too. Punctuation is the sturdy armature of written language, yet it does its job quietly, in the background. We tend to spend far more time analyzing the written words than we do the dots, dashes and ellipses that give those words meaning, nuance and tone.

In her new book “On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World,” author Florence Hazrat argues for punctuation as no less than the bricks and mortar of civilization, the deceptively simple and endlessly pliable tools that made humankind. I recently chatted with Hazrat, a Berlin resident, about scare quotes, emojis and the magic of parentheses.

✍️ Author Chat

Florence Hazrat, author of the new book “On The Mark,” writes about the history of punctuation.

(Masoud Ali Shaiwani)

What sparked your interest in punctuation?

It was a long time back, when I was studying for my master’s degree. I was working with Renaissance romances, which have a lot of parentheses. I just asked myself, where does this come from? And why don’t we use parentheses like this anymore? And then I did my post doc on this very topic. So it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Going back to the earliest cuneiform texts, we see that they consist of words bunched together like commuters on a rush-hour subway. There is no space between words and no punctuation.

Writing was just a manifestation of speech. Text was meant to be read aloud. It would have been shocking 2,700 years ago to see someone reading silently. There is an anecdote that when Alexander the Great was spotted reading to himself, people were stunned.

It took hundreds of years for punctuation to really bloom. The Renaissance, with its increased literacy rates, elevated punctuation into an art.

During the Renaissance, text needed to do more. Writing moved out of the monastery, into trade and diplomacy, science, education and so on. The humanists of the Renaissance who loved language wanted text to be able to do more than it historically had been doing. They wanted to bring more nuance and tone into writing.

And silent reading became the normal practice.

Silent reading is so interesting because it’s a kind of subversive act. It’s a private act, so you can be reading anything. There was a lot of consternation at the time that women would spend all their time reading romance stories.

You also write about punctuation as a political tool, especially the power of quotation marks to ironize or diminish the meaning of the words in between the quotes.

Quotes in and of themselves are empty signs. Which means they can be used for all kinds of political purposes. We can delegitimize an entire race of people using scare quotes or belittle something like COVID-19 simply by putting it in between quotes. We’re wresting a word used by another group and changing its meaning with quotes.

You discuss the advent of digital communication, and the ways we use and abuse punctuation now. Yet, we are very sensitive to punctuation in the public sphere. I’m thinking of the use of capital letters in words that connote race, for example.

Absolutely. There are two sides of the culture that contradict each other. Texting seems to be such an informal medium and something we dash off very quickly. Nobody really expects proper grammar in a text. Yet a misplaced period or comma in certain texts, like the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, for example, can set people off into endless arguments.

What is your feeling about emojis? I find them to be a very rich communication tool. They can have literal or figurative meaning, depending on context. And the meaning can shift over time.

I love emojis. I think they’re still quite misunderstood. They are covering so many functions, because we put them after clauses, for example. We just don’t put them anywhere. But they aren’t punctuation, because we can’t actually make them when we write manually.

Are you pessimistic about the future of punctuation with kids on ChatGPT and texting in elementary school?

Not really. Children who are texting at 9, 10 years old are still learning the rules of grammar and punctuation offline at school ideally. They still have to read books. They have to write essays by hand. So I think the human brain knows how to process different inputs and switch accordingly.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Paris Hilton performs at the Pussycat Doll Lounge located inside Pure Nightclub in Las Vegas on Feb. 16, 2008.

(Chris Weeks / Associated Press)

“Up All Night,” Imogen Willetts’ new history of urban nightlife, devotes a chapter to the L.A. club scene of the early aughts, when Paris Hilton was a ubiquitous scenester and Perez Hilton was writing about her. “I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts told Lina Lecaro. “I was like, I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times.”

Shortly after the trailer for the movie adaptation of her novel “Children of Blood and Bone” dropped, author Tomi Adeyemi hinted at an on-set ordeal that traumatized her, Emily St. Martin reports. “It’s a reality that I’ve had to live with for about a year and a half, and everyone involved, at least at the highest level, has been made aware of this reality, and they haven’t done anything to make it better,” Adeyemi said in a video posted to social media.

Stand-up comedian Anthony Jeselnik, an avid reader, has started an online book club that is gaining traction. “My goal was to curate and give people their best shot at enjoying reading,” he told Maddie Connors.

Ryan Murphy’s TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “The Shards” is a visually vivid throwback to 1981 Los Angeles. Eloise Rollins-Fife gets the lowdown from the show’s production designer, Cat Smith, an L.A. native. “This is like time travel, but you’re traveling back to your childhood,” said Smith. “I’ve done period before, and you always feel like you’re time traveling to a certain extent, but it’s visceral when it’s yours.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Hollywood Books is an indie bookshop started by a freelance film researcher.

(Roxanne David)

Hollywood Books is the most indie of indie bookshops. Housed in a nondescript storefront on Melrose Avenue, its only signage is a craft paper sign with bubbly pink letters. Hollywood Books was started by Rebecca Ressler, a freelance film researcher. Blond wood shelves surround the store; a round gingham couch beckons page-grazers to bide their time finding that perfect new or secondhand book before taking a short walk to Ressler’s husband’s restaurant Stir Crazy for a bite and a glass of Malbec.

I chatted with Ressler over email about her store.

What made you want to open a bookstore and how did you land upon your location?

The location, in many ways, inspired me to open the shop! I lived down the street and loved the space when it was Nonaka-Hill’s second gallery. After I had my son, I found it really hard to return to my work as a freelance researcher for filmmakers. I was originally set on figuring out a way to make the space a shared office with my husband and some friends. At some point, I had the idea of making it a bookstore and became determined!

What kind of books do you sell?

We sell both used and new books. We have small curated sections in photography, art, design, fashion, film, literature (novels, poetry, plays), nonfiction, children’s books, and cookbooks! I hope our customers find things at our shop they’ve never read or seen or a great copy of a classic they’re excited to cherish. Our books also make great gifts!

Who is shopping there? Who are your clients?

We are really lucky to be surrounded by great art and furniture galleries that people travel from all over to visit. Those customers are happily surprised when they wander into our store. We also have tons of neighbors and friends who keep coming back and help me determine what I can add to our inventory!

What genres tend to sell?

A little bit of everything! Children’s books are very consistent — even if people don’t read themselves they still want their kids to!

Why a bookstore in 2026 when The Atlantic, among other places, is decrying the end of reading?

Because I love books and think enough other people do too to keep my little store afloat!

Hollywood Books is at 6917 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA.

Nearly every week, I pass a colleague in the office who taunts me with four words: “Count of Monte Cristo, Count of Monte Cristo,” as he shakes his head. He’s disappointed his favorite book didn’t make the cut of our 101 best book club picks list, which served as the 2026 LA Times Festival of Books curtain-raiser. I don’t mind the barb. There’s nothing more exciting than an impassioned reader — even when they’re wrong. I’m all for rallying around a book or author and debating their merits like it’s a sporting match. Our book lists, after all, aren’t meant to be final verdicts. They’re invitations to read more (and, maybe, better).

To compile our expansive list we surveyed more than 200 bookish luminaries — along with a few zealous book club members. Our readers had their own ideas for their top book club picks, many of which we deeply considered. Here you’ll find some of our worthy Los Angeles Times reader selections.

“Fahrenheit 451” by Raymond Bradbury

“A favorite book my book group read and discussed is ‘Farenheit 451.’ It was fascinating to see what the past thought the future might bring,” reader Margaret Hardy writes of the 20th century classic. “In terms of technology and control by the government we are seeing today what Bradbury was thinking about in 1953. We felt that the future was found in the past. It was a chilling read.” Equally chilling is that the book often shows up on banned books lists — not unlike in its narrative.

“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi

“You missed ‘Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi!” reader Melanie H. writes of the critically acclaimed Ghanian historical fiction novel. “My book club read it and I was enthralled. I can’t stop thinking about it ever since. The amount of research and empathy into every single character and era Gyasi put into this story is incredible. It altered my brain and to this day I tell everyone about this book.”

“Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin

Reader Roxanne Yahner writes, “It is beautifully written, elegant and eloquent, and there is no preparing anyone for the sheer inexorable force of Baldwin’s language. This novel expresses the personal — and historical — grief of two gay, perhaps bisexual, men as they explore their sexuality at a time and place where such behavior was dangerous. The reader aches for these men and feels their grief. Some in our book club were disturbed by this novel, but all agreed they were deeply moved by it.”

“The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie

Several readers wrote to us recommending Rushdie’s magical realist epic. “It’s such a complex, yet entertaining novel. We learned a lot about the tenets of Islam as woven into the story,” Ellyn Moscowitz shares about their book club pick. “It provoked great discussions about death, afterlife, religion in general and great character studies.”

“Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn

Reader Francesca Smithwick-Driver chose this as a book club pick in the ‘90s for her group and the 1989 National Book Award fiction finalist remains a favorite.

“[It’s] about a family who runs a carnival of ‘freaks.’ The story is told by an albino dwarf. There are strong themes about what it is to be normal, falling in and out of love with yourself — your family — and the world around you. Wonderfully written scenes about horrible things and beautiful things. I still remember the discussion of my book club — from ‘why in the world did you recommend this disgusting book’ to ‘what a book’ … I couldn’t wait to get back to it each time I put it down.”

“The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov

Reader Kate Karp, who has a cat who resembles a key character in this Russian classic, writes: “[It] turned out, no surprise, to have been the inspiration for the Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’” She notes it also requires multiple readings to grasp all the subplots — but it’s worth it.

“Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro (and “Chain Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah)

“I am terrible at book clubs because I have found that I am a very picky reader who simply will not read a book that I do not enjoy,” reader Mike Gascoigne writes. “That said, in a book club I did very much enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun’ and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s ‘Chain Gang All-Stars.’ There was a lot to discuss about both titles including AI/robots, intellectual enhancements, climate change, reality television, prison reform/abolition and human nature.”

“All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren

“‘All the King’s Men’ is a powerful summer read — a Pulitzer-winning novel that feels strikingly current,” reader Ken Muche writes. “Set in the 1930s South, Willie Stark’s political rise echoes modern demagogues, reminding us how easily power can blur truth. Even more important, the novel invites reflection on our own bad life choices — showing that taking accountability for one’s actions is the first step toward forgiveness, peace, and ultimately, a more grounded kind of happiness.”

(Grove Press / Black Cat)

“Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo

Reader Seth Kivnick’s pick is this work of fiction that co-won the Booker Prize in 2019, he notes that the compelling book describes the Black women in the British Isles who came from all walks of life and different countries. “[It] appealed to male and female club members.”

“Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott

“It’s good-humored without being comedy or satire but opens serious friendly discussions about contemporary problems,” reader Christine Almeida writes of the novel that won the 2021 National Book Award for fiction. “Our library-based book club talked about it for a solid 90 minutes without straying from what the book itself had to offer its readers.”

Brace yourselves, BookTok: Bestselling romantasy author Sarah J. Maas just dropped the titles and covers for the sixth and seventh “A Court of Thorns and Roses” books.

Maas scrubbed her Instagram of all previous posts for the big reveal, and digital billboards in Los Angeles, Denver and New York City also broadcast the book news. In March, Maas announced on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast that the two new books were on their way, ending a five-year drought since the fifth installment, “A Court of Silver Flames.”

The sixth book, “A Court of Splintered Harmony,” will hit bookshop shelves Oct. 27. According to news media materials, in the sixth installment of the romantasy phenomenon, “what was broken will be remade.” As Koschei the Deathless stirs from millennia-long captivity, powerful allies close in to reclaim the human lands. To counter the growing threat across Fae territories, Prythian’s fractured Night Court must overcome internal rifts and recent betrayals to restore former alliances.

And in the seventh book, “A Court of Forgotten Melody,” which is slated for publication Jan. 12, diplomacy is failing and traditional alliances are falling apart as the threat of Koschei the Deathless reaches a critical point. Desperate for any advantage, the Night Court’s Inner Circle must scatter far and wide to face emerging past enemies and salvage Prythian’s fragile peace.

The first installment of the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series was released in 2015, but the series garnered widespread popularity on BookTok during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The books follow Feyre Archeron in the faerie lands of Prythian and her steamy love story with the High Lord of the Night Court, Rhysand.

Maas is one of the pioneers of the modern romantasy boom and widely credited with taking “fairy porn” or “faerie smut” into the mainstream. But Maas told Cooper in May that although she loves writing hot sex scenes, she has a bone to pick with people dismissing her work as “smut.”

“I find that there is a tendency for people to roll their eyes at things that bring women joy,” she told Cooper. “Anytime a woman writes something and there’s even a little hint of sex that’s not fade to black or very artistically mentioned, it’s like suddenly it devalues the work, and it doesn’t matter what else is in that book. … I don’t understand because you’re writing a thing that is so accurate to life, and sex is a part of life.”

Times staff writer Katie Simons contributed to this report.

Get ready to wipe the steam off the TV screen. Season 2 of the Peabody Award-winning series about two hockey rivals entangled in a heated romance is still months away from premiering. But details are slowly emerging that paint a picture of what fans can expect from the sophomore season of “Heated Rivalry.”

The first season’s release schedule was accelerated in the U.S. after it was acquired by HBO Max from Bell Media’s streaming platform Crave, Justin Stockman, the VP of content for Bell Media, told Variety late last year.

Things will be different for the upcoming season, which was announced in December 2025, creator Jacob Tierney told Variety. Tierney wrote and directed every episode of the first season.

“It can’t be the same time next year, because this time last year I’d written five of [six episodes], and this time this year I’ve written zero of them. So it’s going to be a little bit later, but it’s still going to be soon.”

“Soon” has now turned into spring 2027, when it is slated to hit HBO Max.

Here’s everything to know about Season 2 of “Heated Rivalry”:

What book will Season 2 cover?

The first season was based on the second book in the “Game Changers” series by Rachel Reid. It followed the off-the-ice romance between two professional hockey stars that play for the rival teams the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders in a fictional Major League Hockey league.

The new season will continue their romance and will be based on the sixth book, “The Long Game,” which reads as a direct sequel to “Heated Rivalry.” The novel follows Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rozanov, portrayed by Connor Storrie, as they struggle with going public with their secret relationship.

The follow-up season will also introduce a new couple — from the fifth book in the series, “Role Model” — a player who’s traded to a struggling team finds support from the franchise’s social media manager.

Who will play the new couple?

Justice Smith (“I Saw the TV Glow”) and Charlie Gillespie (“Splitsville”) will be joining Season 2 of the hit romantic drama as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett, respectively.

Character descriptions were not released, but in Reid’s book Troy is a hockey player who gets traded to the Ottawa team after cutting ties with a Toronto teammate who is accused of sexual assault. Harris is Ottawa’s social media manager.

Who else is joining the cast?

Season 2 will also welcome new faces to the cast, including Emily Hampshire from “Schitt’s Creek,” Edvin Ryding from “28 Years Later,” Robert Naylor from “Mile End Kicks,” Sabrina Jalees from “I Used to Be Funny” and Priyanka from “Meet Me Next Christmas.”

Hampshire will play Vanessa, Ryding will portray Luca Haas, Naylor is cast as Wyatt Hayes, Jalees will take on Farah Jalali and Priyanka is Tarek.

How many episodes are in the new season?

Did Dylan Walsh, who plays Shane’s dad, reveal too much? The actor recently paused his account on the celebrity video app Cameo after he slipped up and released information about the new season.

“Getting ready to go back up to Canada and shoot some more episodes … I think we’re doing 12 this time,” Walsh said in a clip recorded for a fan.

The number is significantly more than the first season‘s six episode-run. However, Tierney told The Times early this year that he doesn’t want to make more than six episodes per season so there’s a possibility that they’re filming two seasons back to back.

Walsh’s Cameo account has been set as unavailable until August 2027 with a message under his profile that reads, “Stepping away because a video went viral that got me in trouble.”

Does the arbitrary nature of our daily existence cohere into something resembling a story? And if so, how do we begin to tease out meaning from that story?

Valeria Luiselli posits these questions in her new book, “Beginning Middle End,” but mercifully she doesn’t weigh down her fiction with pedantry. Rather, Luiselli tucks her ideas into the folds of an all too human story about a woman, stinging from a recent divorce, and her younger daughter as they embark on a journey across Sicily. The book is written in fragmentary fashion, discrete chunks of prose that accrete into a greater whole, much like the ancient mosaics that are among of the novel’s thematic touchstones.

I recently spoke with Luiselli about Proteus, Pliny the Elder and Polaroid photos.

✍️ Author Chat

There are resonances of your last novel “Lost Children Archive” in “Beginning Middle End.” Certain character names are repeated, and there is also an audio-visual component, as there was previously. Additionally, a QR code in your new novel allows the reader to access audio recordings related to the book. Is this part of a larger project you have in mind?

I learned a lot about [sound and sound recording] when I was writing “Lost Children.” After I finished it I devoted the next five years to a work in progress called “Echoes From the Borderlands,” recording the sounds of the Mexican-U.S. borderlands. I think of “Beginning Middle End” as a book that exists both in its textual version and in its sonic translation.

The story is told in a fragmentary fashion, with short paragraphs that are separated by subheadings. And the last third of the book contains Polaroid pictures and postcards that relate to the story. There is also a mosaic tessera that is integral to the narrative. What is it that appeals to you about the notion of a story that is constructed from lots of discrete parts?

I’ve been interested for some time now in thinking about how to shorten the distance between process and result in such a way that the signs of the process can be read in the final project. When I’m working on something, I’m collecting postcards and archival material, and taking Polaroid pictures along the way, partly because I know that my process in writing is not linear. And I use Polaroids almost as Post-It notes, as another form of note taking.

Valeria Luiselli’s new novel, “Beginning Middle End,” is about memory and imagination.

(Clayton Cubitt)

It’s such a fascinating creative process.

It can be incredibly frustrating. Because sometimes it’s years before I know what language I’m going to be using in its final form.

Your book is about many things, but the act of storytelling is definitely a major theme. Not just in fiction, but in the way we shape our own personal narratives and how they are transmitted. And this notion of “the middle” as a space that hovers between two poles, the place where you are looking behind and ahead, between life and death, and so on.

The mother in the story is in the mess of the middle, trying to make sense of things and laying out events, but not really finding the deeper threads that tie life together and give it some kind of meaning. And it is only until her daughter arrives at the end of the book that you can read the novel backwards somehow, and understand in hindsight how she, the daughter, has seen a relationship all along between all these seemingly arbitrary events. She is the one that finds meaning in a sequence, where the mother sees only chaos.

The book is grounded in Greek and Roman Classical texts. Proteus and Pliny the Elder feature prominently. Where does your interest in the Classics come from?

The early pre-Socratic philosophers were the first to observe nature without the scaffolding of mythology, who were really just trying to make sense of it. And so that’s how I arrived eventually at Pliny, who has this 37-volume compendium of observations of nature that ask all the important questions about the oceans and rivers and mountains and the sky and the clouds. Pliny became a kind of ghost that led me through the years in which I was writing this novel.

Your novel delves into the relationship between memory and imagination.

What guides me are questions that press on me. I have little interest in plots early on. I become interested in plot as an emanation from questioning things. And one of those questions was about the relationship between memory and imagination. How are the two things connected? How much is our imagination shaped by our memory?

One of the writers that has best addressed that question is Jorge Luis Borges in the last story he ever wrote, “Shakespeare’s Memory,” where the protagonist has two consciousnesses inhabiting his interiority. When a train passes, he doesn’t know what it is, because he’s in Shakespeare mode. He doesn’t have a memory of the sound of a train. That story can be read as an allegory for how our memories and imaginations work as readers. We have all our life events that compose our being and our memory of life, but we also have everything we have read. And I think that that’s really where the discussion around imagination and memory gets very interesting.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of “The Odyssey” ignited a fire in the literary world, inspiring harsh critiques from Homer translator Emily Wilson and staunch defenses from Joyce Carol Oates and Susan Orlean.

(Illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Source: Louis-Frédéric Schützenberger)

Chris Young was serving two life terms without parole for a low-level drug charge when Kim Kardashian intervened. The reality TV mogul successfully petitioned President Trump to commute Young’s sentence in 2021. Now Young has written “The Wound Is Where the Light Enters,” a searing memoir that “not only reveals the system’s horrors, but also celebrates the redemptive power of hope, intellect and community,” writes Julia M. Klein.

Justin Halpern, the co-showrunner of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” has written his first novel, called “Get Lost,” and Stuart Miller talked to him about it. Of taking on the challenge of writing alone, Halpern told Miller that “I’m definitely still codependent, but the novel forced me to venture into waters that I never would have gotten into on my own.”

The battle over Christopher Nolan’s movie adaptation of “The Odyssey” rages on. In the wake of Homer translator Emily Wilson’s excoriating critique of the film, Emily St. Martin reports that Susan Orlean and Joyce Carol Oates have publicly rallied behind Nolan. In a recent post on X, Oates wrote that Wilson’s “tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note.”

Steve Wasserman takes a deep dive into “Too L.A.,” a newly published collection of author Eve Babitz’s rich trove of mostly unsent correspondence. The letters “brilliantly reveal Babitz’s eye for the deep shallow as well as explore the porous boundary between the largely self-inflicted injuries of her private life and the glittering sheen of her public persona,” writes Wasserman.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Whitmore Rare Books in Pasadena caters to customers who value the physical experience of reading books.

(Pierre Galant Photography)

Although it lives on a busy Pasadena street corner, Whitmore’s Rare Books feels like something a book hound might discover in London or New York: an elegantly appointed space with a large bookshelf running along the length of one wall that contains some of the store’s inventory of antiquarian treasures. Founded by a former lawyer turned bookseller and Pasadena native Dan Whitmore, the store is doing brisk business among a younger clientele that still values the tactile pleasures to be found from beautiful books. I spoke with Whitmore about what’s selling in his store.

How long have you been in the rare book business?

I stumbled into a first edition when I was in law school in Philadelphia in 2006 and I was bitten by the bug to start a collection. I worked as a lawyer for a year out here in L.A. and quit my job in 2009 to pursue rare books full time. So we’re coming up on 17 years, which is a good stretch, although there are people who’ve been in the trade for 50 or 60 years.

How do you find your inventory?

You amass this database of knowledge over time, and there really isn’t a substitute for it. I know people think that the AI boom is going to just turn around and be able to do what we do, but it’s not quite that simple. You really have to understand the market and the way that the market tends to shift over time. More modern material can shift a bit faster. But a Shakespeare folio or Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” or Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” books that document important moments in history where something new is introduced to the world, will always have value.

We just bought a first edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous,” and a second edition that was inscribed by Bill Wilson. These are books that have had such a profound impact on so many people’s lives that there’s this really strong market for early AA books.

What is selling presently?

I would say things like fantasy, science fiction, especially some of the classics: “Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit.” Some of these iconic works are having a moment right now, such as “Dune,” “I, Robot” and the “Foundation” trilogy. There are new buyers coming in, and I think some of that is tech money — people who maybe grew up reading these books and find inspiration there.

Why should we spend a lot of money on old books, when we can buy new ones for a lot less?

I don’t think that everyone is a collector or should be. I think that there are people who love the physical objects. They love the connection to history, that feeling of thinking about what it must have been like when someone opened the book and read that for the first time, and they get to have that experience again.

Whitmore Rare Books is at 121 E. Union St. in Pasadena.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

A chapbook by Henry Opeyemi 

Publisher: Felis Catus Press

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”

T.S. Eliot

Henry Opeyemi is an oracle, and this chapbook is a miracle of sorts; it is a prayer of consolation, a hymn, a psalm, a song that gives birth to awakening after awakening, enlightenment after enlightenment. It starts with conscientising and ends by raising a phoenix-like awareness of boyhood and its challenges on the African continent. Where Rumi, Khalil Gibran, Weldon Kees, Mzi Mahola, and Ken Saro-Wiwa walked, where Rethabile Masilo walks, now Henry Opeyemi walks alongside these giants. There was Derek Walcott, Langston Hughes, those constellations feeding galaxies, and now there is Henry Opeyemi.

Perhaps all poets have an innate sense of clairvoyance. They can recognise the pains of the land, the masculine and feminine pains of the vessel of an African body, the psychological torment, the mental despair, the stigmatized struggle, the social alienation, the estrangement from the land of our ancestors, and the unbearable loneliness that every waking moment a poet experiences, lives with, suffers from, and the devastation of the internal landscape of the wounded children of Africa. Yes, yes, yes. Henry Opeyemi has turned blood into ink, and the veins are enriched with shelter.

These poems, each one “peeling itself into joy” (from the poem, Wanderers on pg.5).

This manuscript cleanses like the sea. Writing is a spiritual act, a spiritual dance. It is meditative and comes with instructions. It is sacred. When the hand of God moves through the pen, the poet must obey, and Henry Opeyemi has obeyed. The title of this chapbook speaks about black vulnerability, black stigma, the rallying cry of injustice and inequality, systemic racism, the undertow of the vision of poverty-stricken, disenfranchised and marginalised Africa. Henry Opeyemi writes about miracles in the same breath that he confronts suicide ideation, and when he writes, as he does in his dedication, “of the land of his youth”, he is addressing the social ills of the day, he is speaking to every man, woman, youth and child on the African continent. 

The dedication is a searing polemic, a testimony to a time that came before, and that sadly, heartwrenchingly still exists. The bittersweet river of the sands of time through the hourglass, the tapestry of exile, the memory of the silent witness, the memory of the historian and recorder and poet, the novel dispensation that we are living and co-existing in with the pains of a wandering soul, and history, have not erased anything. We, as African poets, living on the African continent beset with problems of despair and conflict, a continent ravaged by “hungry bowls” as the poet writes, we are the angry souls, the grief, heartbreak and emptiness of our rages.

There is beauty in the poetic sense and sensibility of Henry Opeyemi, and a sense of isolation. Every poet from this continent writes about what we have faced, endured, survived (colonialism, liberation, independence, civil war), and the terrible price we have had to pay, the debts of love of our mothers, the considerable debts of love of the maternal figures in our lives. There is the moral distress, the psychiatric distress, and cry of the poet, the language of moral decay in these verses, and the injury, the sickness, the mental tension, the utter mental turmoil and devastation, and the moral distress of the decay of the mind, of the psychological framework, of the alienation, the social ineptitude and isolation, the rejection from the church, from the community, from society who has labeled the citizens and inhabitants of African descent as interlopers, from the immediate and maternal and paternal family of the individual, of the poet.

Henry Opeyemi is the poetic version of Moses Molelekwa, and in his verses abound “genes and spirits”, ancestral kingdoms and bloodlines.

Every African writer, every African novelist and African poet who lives on the continent and finds themselves elsewhere in the world, writes about stigma, whether they acknowledge this consciously or subconsciously. It is written on the blueprint of our consciousness. Henry Opeyemi (remember this name) writes about the wounded child, the boy, the youth’s fractured sense of self and the youth’s spoiled identity, marginalised identity, wanting to seek validation and approval from the powers that be, from the same gender parent, from adult supervision, from their contemporaries, from leaders, from mentors. Every poet is a wanderer, a directionless nomad, a seeker, a believer if he has found the certainty of faith, of religious instructions and meditative practices. When I write, I write as an African, who lives on the African continent first and foremost; secondly, I write as a woman.

On these pages, a particular tenderness is personified in the writing. The wound is sacred and as omnipresent as the omega, and the grief our mothers have carried is a sacred kind of grief that their cells carried when they were in the womb of the maternal grandmother. The mother-figure is the portal, the origin of humanity. It is where the tension and spark of history coincide with the psychological repair, release and repair of life. 

The poet serves grief, heartbreak, their loneliness on a silver platter to humanity, like a beacon, an anchor, a lighthouse in the storm, like the being of light, like daybreak, like an oyster it is consumed, eaten, studied, investigated, and it is this noble endeavour, the practice of writing poetry about grief, heartbreak, and loneliness, that serves us, our collective humanity, exile and history, that is a remainder of colonialism that will last the test of time, that will serve as proof of evidence that we existed, that we were here, that this was our collective emotional pain on the face of the African continent.

The grief of Africa is, unfortunately, not bloodless. Even her tears are, in fact, tears of blood, of war, of strife, of conflict, of genocide. Poetry is our only method of self-defence. It is the survival, coping and defence mechanism of the novelist, the journalist, the filmmaker, the editor, most of all, the poet. It always has been since the onset of slavery and colonialism and independence. Henry Opeyemi does what poets have done before and after colonialism, he discusses emancipation, personal freedom, personal growth, missionary education, liberation, self-improvement, his youth, his Africa, he addresses the ritual of bone, blood, bowl, the question of God and religion, yes, how immortal religion defies and defines us, guides and interrogates us, he mentions the roles of Big Pharma, and the use of pharmaceuticals in society, are they of help or hindrance? He speaks about the mother-figure, the abandonment of Eve, the resurrection of Lady Macbeth on these pages. The mosque becomes an education, the mind of the young intellectual like a feverish young tree, eager for verdant-green growth, branches like limbs, eager to be acknowledged in a garden of other poets, all vying for attention and literary prizes, or, or, humility, imaginative grace, which is, to all intents and purposes more powerful than attention and literary prizes. 

Creative writing, the practice of writing poetry, is an intellectual pursuit. It is the cultural endeavour of the modern-day philosopher, and all poets are wanderers for an eternity of time.

Sidenote: Henry Opeyemi, welcome to the African Renaissance. May you mentor other poets, you, young poet, young leader, young intellectual. Africa is in good hands. Be, go forth, onwards and upwards; be as all princes from this continent who write poetry; be King of the World. Take the empire back. Build your own empires of gold from the dust of the colonial masters, from the powers that be.

If your summer could use a little energy boost, forget the complicated smoothie — turn to one of these fresh book releases instead. From fast-paced World War II history to a slow-burn rescue in rural Wyoming, along with an art-world mystery and a punchy look at modern America, you’ll find something to galvanize your bedside book stack. Happy reading!

FICTION:

Appraisals: A Novel
By Claire Boyles
W. W. Norton: 288 pp., $30
(Aug. 4)

While Boyles’ debut novel ostensibly follows the fate of an Eastern Colorado family farm, its deeper purpose involves showing how dire water resources are for all agricultural endeavors in the region. Maggie and her husband Fish have inherited their land from her grandparents, but they and their teenage daughter Ozzie all know that without irrigation, even defeating big development plans won’t make much of a difference to locals.

The Seekers of Deer Creek: A Novel
By Thao Thai
Mariner Books: 320 pp., $30
(Aug. 4)

Vietnamese American sisters Vivi and Calla are also a curator and an artist. When their father dies and leaves behind a sketch that might be the work of renowned Vietnamese painter K.P. Lý, the siblings embark on a quest to find out whether Lý had connections to their family. Along the way they reexamine their difficult upbringing and find new ways to communicate that matter more than any artwork.

Etna: A Novel
By Paul Yoon
Scribner: 208 pp., $28
(Aug. 4)

Anyone who has seen “The Odyssey” with Matt Damon or is anticipating “Heart of the Beast” with Brad Pitt (about a veteran and his war dog), should pick up Yoon’s remarkable tale of a combat survivor in an alternate present who happens to be a former military dog named Etna. His adventures traversing a broken land of haunted people and animals may be less the stuff of future myth and more about trauma, but Yoon brilliantly creates voices for human and canine that make both more whole.

A Tender Age: A Novel
By Chang-Rae Lee
Riverhead: 368 pp., $30
(Aug. 11)

Jeon-Gi, known as J-G, is a relatively happy 10-year-old in 1976, until a neighbor’s attack on him fuels his own violent ideas. Although he gets a relatively easy sentence after threatening a classmate, J-G’s parents decide to send him to a Christian summer camp. Incidents there that might be sweet nostalgia for other kids only remind him of how different and lonely he feels inside. However, it’s J-G’s adult reason for sharing his experience that hits home.

Sunrise: A Novel
By Téa Obreht
Random House: 368 pp., $29
(Aug. 11)

Many, so so many, historical novels seek to tie a contemporary protagonist to a long-ago event or story; so so many fail to make the connections mean anything. That’s why Obreht’s superb and fascinating new book should earn a place on your 2026 reading list: She not only meaningfully connects the stories of a stranded young woman, an early-20th-century gunslinger, and a historical reenactor, but manages to make them illuminate each other.

NONFICTION:

Triage
By Claudia Rankine
Graywolf: 192 pp., $28
(Aug. 4)

The book’s epigraph says a great deal: “Any attempt to name and describe our lives will always seem unstable because all language is a form of triage.” Rankine’s new attempt at triage focuses on her long friendship with a person identified only as “the theorist.” Anecdotes and analysis are interspersed with photos of all sorts of sofas and couches, calling into question ideas about where and how we find respite and support — or not.

Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches Across the Country We Call Home
By Peter Santenello
Simon & Schuster: 336 pp., $30
(Aug. 4)

Santenello has over 4 million subscribers on YouTube, where he posts videos about every kind of place in America — rich and poor, renowned and hidden, busy and abandoned. Love or hate the author’s self-described nonpartisan approach, you’ll find this book surprising, particularly as it reveals how geography, climate and infrastructure affect community and communication. Think Anthony Bourdain crossed with Michael Moore.

Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War
By James M. Scott
W. W. Norton & Co.: 528 pp., $42
(Aug. 4)

Historian Scott (“Black Snow”) creates a propulsive read about the last days of World War II, in which America’s development of the atomic bomb pushed against Japan’s aggressive majority, with tragic results that many — including the author — believe necessary. The contrast between President Harry S. Truman, who had been in office for a matter of weeks, and Emperor Hirohito, whose military seemed unstoppable, remains shocking.

The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
By Dave Zirin
Dutton: 320 pp., $33
(Aug. 4)

Recently a friend showed me a list of books recommended by a pundit and asked which one to read first. Without hesitation I told her she should pick up “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, first published in 1980 and still the most comprehensive remedial tonic to received wisdom I know. Zirin’s lively biography of this activist should remind everyone that history isn’t just about facts and figures but also context and compassion.

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State
By Jill Lepore
Liveright Publishing Corp.: 336 pp., $30
(Aug. 25)

Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century’s defining political thinkers, posited that modern life was making “being human superfluous”; her learned successor Lepore warns that our present bears out that idea. One day scholars will teach Lepore’s work alongside Arendt’s, seeing that Lepore interrogates not simply a modern moment, but traces our current machine age back to the 17th-century conceit for artifice as improvement. According to her, the way out is to get back to nature. Meet you in the woods.

This adaptation fans are calling ‘absurd’ is incomparable to any other period drama, as a peculiar version of real life events in the medieval times – packed with dark humour and explicit content

Fans of period dramas are not quite prepared for this mini series take on the genre, turning it on its head completely.

What many viewers are unaware of, however, is that its entertaining storyline is drawn from a collection of 100 tales penned by an Italian author, dating back to that very same period.

Instead, Netflix subscribers can see back and watch pieces of the story play out on screen in this dark comedy series set in 14th-century Italy.

The Decameron is a show inspired by the classic work of the same name, unfolding against the backdrop of the devastating Black Death pandemic. It follows a wealthy family as they desperately attempt to survive the outbreak, all played out with an abundance of humour.

The Decameron pulls no punches when it comes to sexual content, strong language, violence, and grisly details within its darkly comedic narrative. It is precisely these elements that set it apart from the rest and see it racking up a string of five-star reviews.

One viewer wrote on Rotten Tomatoes: “I was entertained throughout the entire series. Definitely worth watching! I was cheering for all the characters as they were developing throughout the season.”

Another shared their feelings towards the show, writing: “It’s completely silly yet the characters inexplicably grow on you and become like a bunch of very stupid but very dear friends. Never seen something like this.”

Audiences are transported on an adventure, commencing in 1348 in a fictionalised retelling of events, as the Black Death grips Florence. In reaction, a collection of aristocrats and their servants take refuge in a rural villa in Tuscany, weathering further outbreaks surrounded by their riches and extravagant way of life.

Before long, the pestilence reaches the peaceful hillsides and they find themselves with little alternative but to battle for their very existence. While the setting is of course based on a real life health crisis, its events are entirely fictionalised.

Playing these characters are Tanya Reynolds from Sex Education, together with Zosia Mamet, recognised for her part in Girls. Also appearing alongside them on screen are Lou Gala, Leila Farzard, Jessica Plummer and Amar Chadha-Patel.

The cast have garnered considerable praise with one reviewing saying that they delivered “enjoyable performances”.

Others said it was “well acted”, while one viewer said the script and actors had them “laughing out loud” throughout.

One review reads: “While not really an adaptation of The Decameron (more like “inspired by”), this tv show manages to be horny, dumb, deep, nihilist and sweet at the same time.

“It has great moments, great lines, really dumb jokes, some smart ones, some good and profound takes and overall an awesome cast and soundtrack.”

The period drama packs a great deal into its compact eight episodes and was sadly never commissioned for a second series following its 2024 release, making it perfect for a binge-watch.

To experience a period drama like never before, The Decameron is available now to stream on Netflix.

In a book nerd battle that’s become so epic, even The Onion has satirized the saga, acclaimed author Susan Orlean has grabbed the mic, and Emily Wilson is admitting she has one regret in her review of “The Odyssey.”

Earlier this week, Joyce Carol Oates panned Wilson’s critique of Christopher Nolan’s big-screen adaptation, and now acclaimed author and journalist Susan Orlean has entered the chat.

“I loved The Odyssey (saw it twice) and love any piece of art that gets people talking and reading and thinking,” she posted on Threads on Thursday. “Emily Wilson is being a bit of a jerk.”

Choice words from Orlean, but she knows a thing or two about film adaptations: her 1998 book “The Orchid Thief” inspired Spike Jonze’s 2002 film “Adaptation” starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep (who played Orlean), and her 1998 article “Life’s Swell” was brought to screen as “Blue Crush,” also in 2002.

“Why can’t things be the things they are and if they’re different from their source material that’s their new form and their own thing and I SAY THIS FROM EXPERIENCE,” she added in a separate post.

The ire stems from a biting 4,200-word takedown of “The Odyssey” penned by classicist Wilson, who translated Homer’s poem in 2017.

In early interviews discussing the film, Nolan referenced Wilson’s translation, which subsequently skyrocketed in sales. A representative for Audible told The Times on Wednesday that, year over year, purchases of Wilson’s “Odyssey” translation were up by more than 600% across Audible’s U.S., U.K. and Canadian marketplaces.

Wilson’s review, published in the London Review of Books, essentially dubbed Nolan’s film a dud for academics with taste and a blockbuster hit for virgins who like special effects that go “Boom!”

“Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours,” she wrote. “It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

Pulitzer Prize finalist Oates, like Orlean, is also team Nolan. “Her tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note,” Oates said of Wilson’s review in a post on X. Oates added that rather than Wilson disagreeing with “interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner,” she benefited from Nolan’s film and then attacked it.

Wilson’s review went so viral it crashed the London Review of Books website for a few hours on Monday. On the heels of the missive’s publication, Wilson posted on Bluesky that an earlier draft of the essay was actually more cutting than the version that went live.

“Was I too mean? Or not mean enough? I went through my first draft and tried to take out the snark,” she wrote. “To quote the great poet: ‘Though much is taken, much remains… That which we are, we are.’”

She added in the same thread: “The oddest thing about the response to this essay is people who say it’s ‘personal’. You can disagree about some or all of it! I may well be wrong! But it’s not ‘personal’ to analyze a film or other work of art, even negatively. Criticism is more than ‘Hurray!’ or ‘Hiss!’”

One criticism Wilson admits she regrets in retrospect is her take on Nolan’s race-neutral casting. In the review she wrote that while the casting launched a culture war, it wasn’t actually progressive. She likened the characters portrayed by Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins and Travis Scott to “versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist.”

On Bluesky, she wrote, “In this piece, I regret the paragraph about the uses of the POC actors – who are all great, but IMO under-utilized (and why couldn‘t Himesh Patel be Odysseus instead?) I still think the film largely wastes its strong cast, but I framed it badly.”

Winning tip: Northern Ireland

Inspired by Dervla Murphy’s A Place Apart

Dervla Murphy’s A Place Apart persuaded me to see Northern Ireland differently. Cycling through the country during the Troubles, she looked beyond headlines to find generosity and ordinary lives. Following in her footsteps, you can walk the walls of Derry and stand beside the Giant’s Causeway, where the landscapes are every bit as striking as she described. Yet it is the people you remember most. Conversations begin easily in pubs and cafes, with local people quick to recommend a favourite beach or walk. I went looking for the places Murphy described. I left with the conversations she promised I’d find.
James

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Inspired by Priscilla Morris’s Black Butterflies

I read Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris during a long, hot Covid afternoon and was immediately intrigued by the city of Sarajevo. The book is set during the siege, but I was captivated by the description of the buildings mixing east and west. Last year, I finally went and experienced the beautiful city for myself. The surrounding mountains and the old town, mixed with haunting memories unapologetically left in view by way of bullet holes in buildings and “roses” in the pavement [to mark where mortars fell], gave off a unique atmosphere. There are hints of old Eastern European glamour, Middle Eastern rituals and precious hope for the richness of a hard peace to remain in place. It’s a place that took my heart and showed me that it’s OK, things change but we carry the memories for a reason.
Louise

Porquerolles, France

Inspired by Georges Simenon’s My Friend Maigret

As a Georges Simenon fan, I had always enjoyed the novel My Friend Maigret, set on the island of Porquerolles off the French Mediterranean coast. Nearing 80 years old, I decided it was now or never to visit and resolved to travel by train. So, it was Eurostar to Gare du Nord, RER across Paris to Gare de Lyon, then on to Toulon (despite missing my booked train), a slow train to Hyères, a bus to the port and a boat to Porquerolles. Visiting the sites described in the novel was such a pleasure. I became “Porquerolled” and an addict of the unique atmosphere (and the island wine).
Leigh

San Francisco

Inspired by Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City

It has to be Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series. Originally a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, these wonderful novels paint the city as a place of kindness, beauty and pleasure. It made me and my wife Nic commit to two years of saving so we could live like the Barbary Lane gang for a fortnight. San Francisco didn’t disappoint. Weird, gorgeous and fascinating, it’s a city that rewards ambling and curiosity, just as Maupin suggests.
Fraser

Orkney, Scotland

Inspired by Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun

I read The Outrun by Amy Liptrot and went on to have a wonderful three-week holiday in Orkney and Shetland. I travelled solo and met the best of people. I stayed in Amy’s mum Jane’s B&B and she took me birdwatching. It was a time to recover from a challenging year and enjoy the peace and beauty of the islands while never feeling lonely. I spent a week in the Papay hostel and walked all around the island. My sister lives in Shetland now and I plan to return soon.
Amanda

Bognor Regis, England

Inspired by RC Sherriff’s The Fortnight in September

The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff, written in the heyday of British seaside holidays, harks back to a time when resorts like Bognor Regis were magical summer destinations that an ordinary family would look forward to all year. The descriptions of the bandstand, beach and lovely walks inspired a trip to Bognor to retrace the family’s steps. Bognor may have seen better days, but it was a perfect base for days out in the Sussex countryside, and there’s still little to beat a stroll along the promenade of this fading seaside town, sun shining and ice-cream in hand.
Patricia

Provence, France

Inspired by Émile Zola’s Contes Choisis

While studying French A-level back in the 80s, I read Émile Zola’s Contes Choisis short stories, which made me long to explore Provence. I loved the book, and its visual descriptions made me hanker to see the area for myself. More than 10 years later, I finally got to visit the area, by which time I’d also discovered the works of Cézanne and Matisse. Provence was a glorious feast for all the senses. I have visited a few times now and am always impressed by the beauty. I still have my book, and it is a wonderful reminder of the inspiration of A-levels.
Sandra

The Apennines, Italy

Inspired by Eric Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines

Eric Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines inspired my wife and I to spend a month hiking in the mountainous area running the length of central Italy. Newby’s praise for the brave honest people who sheltered him, as a fleeing prisoner of war, in stone cottages and freezing farmyard barns was uplifting. They helped him learn Italian, and the book also delights in showing how he met his wife Wanda, an Italian-Slovenian woman, while hiding from the Nazis. Newby depicts loving, tight communities in towns like Fiumalbo, which we enjoyed visiting and where we were given a warm welcome. When we mentioned Signor Newby and showed his book, we were met with smiles by local people. It felt like we were part of an appreciative, heartfelt legacy created by the writer and those he met.
Peter

Naples

Inspired by Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend

In 2018, after devouring the novel My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, my lifelong friend and I decided to visit Naples. The book explores two childhood friends who bonded and grew up in various edgy neighbourhoods around Naples in the 50s, exploring social class and poverty. Naples has always had a bad press, focusing on crime and shabbiness. We had wonderful times visiting the places mentioned in the book. We felt safe, were welcomed and fed. Chiaia is mentioned in the book as a waterfront renowned for its promenade along Via Francesco Caracciolo.
Carol

Prince Edward Island, Canada

Inspired by LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

My favourite childhood books, read countless times, were the Anne of Green Gables series by LM Montgomery, set in a rural community on Prince Edward Island, Canada. The snowy winters, enchanting woods, winding country lanes, and red sandstone cliffs along the coast captured my imagination, leaving a lasting impression. At the age of 44, I made the journey there myself. My first day was a bitter disappointment, with torrential rain and thick mist obscuring the island’s beauty from dawn until dusk. However, the second day more than made up for it. Under clear skies, I enjoyed a perfect coastal boardwalk, a truly magical visit to Green Gables itself, and finished the day with a wonderful lobster meal.
Katharine

In 2007, for the first time in recorded history, more humans were living in urban spaces than rural ones. The animal kingdom has followed suit. In our cities, we are surrounded by synanthropes — wild animals that have adapted to human-modified environments and have learned to thrive in them — yet most of us are unaware of the biodiversity of this urban wildlife and how it functions along a parallel track with its human brethren.

Dan Werb’s latest book “Our Wild Familiars” explains how these “soil churners … epidemic vectors and ecosystem partners” have a crucial role to play in the future sustainability of our communities. I talked to Werb about coyotes, the health benefits of birdsong and seagulls with junk-food issues.

✍️ Author Chat

You are an epidemiologist.

I was trained as a social epidemiologist — somebody who can look at how societal factors influence the health of populations. I study how society determines who lives and dies, who is sick and who is healthy.

I’m wondering if it was your interest in Zoonotic viruses that led you to this subject?

The last book I wrote was called “The Invisible Siege.” It is an overview of the history of coronavirus science, starting in the ‘80s, braided with the much longer history of the coronavirus family. And it ends with this scientist who is describing being in northern Thailand and moving through Myanmar and Yunnan Province in China in the ‘90s. And he stumbles upon this exotic animal market near the Shan Autonomous state, which is an ethnic enclave in northern Myanmar that’s been at war with the junta there forever. And this market’s got cloud leopard skins, civets and every crazy, exotic animal that you can imagine. And they were all being sent directly into China. And it’s exactly this kind of trafficking that is carrying all these viruses, like this superhighway of exotic animals into urban areas.

But not all urban animals are vectors for disease. In fact, we have fostered very cushy urban environments for many different species. Pigeons, for example, who don’t have to fly in cities because they have no natural predators.

Chris Shell, a coyote expert from Altadena that I interviewed, pointed out that pigeons do have to worry about predators now, because there are red tail hawks and coyotes and other creatures. Our urban ecosystems are becoming more complex. There are some biologists that are describing our time right now in North America as the great urban shift. They’ve done modeling exercises showing that over the next few decades there are literally going to be thousands of species moving into urban areas. They’re increasingly going to be mega-fauna, much larger animals.

Why is that happening?

We’re seeing the continuing acceleration of the transformation of wild spaces into human modified spaces. But it’s also because of extreme weather events. If you look at the horrible fires that occurred in Los Angeles last year, one of the things that happened was hundreds of thousands, even millions, of animals had to flee those areas that were on fire, and they fled into urban areas. What do urban areas provide? Constant sources of freshwater, continual sources of food waste, and other prey. You’ve got climate change happening, and that’s causing this real shift of animals moving into different places.

Dan Werb, author of “Our Wild Familiars,” a new book about wild animals who’ve managed to survive in human communities.

(Joseph Fuda)

What about a less traditional metropolitan space, like L.A. County, which is a hodgepodge of so many different kinds of topography and terrain.

L.A. is super fascinating because lot size isn’t directly related to income. It’s very much more heterogeneous and variable, even within neighborhoods. The wealthier a neighborhood is, the higher the biodiversity is going to be, because we’re going to have larger lots, more green space, fewer fences, things like that.

We have a complicated relationship with coyotes in L.A., especially those of us who have lost pets to them. But according to your book, we have trapped them in our cities.

Coyotes need to have pathways that allow them to move in and out cities. As it is now, they move into urban environments looking for food and water, and they can’t get out. They get trapped in cities, and conflict happens. Like black bears in suburbs across large parts of North America that dig into people’s garbage.

And bears and other animals eating, say, fast food leftovers is a nutritional disaster as well.

It’s like an ecological trap. They see no reason why they would leave, even though staying is actually more dangerous for them. And there are all kinds of ecological traps across cities that manifest in different ways. One that I always think about is seagulls at the seashore that have evolved over tens of millions of years to be able to hunt fish and shellfish. And the fish are right there, yet they’re eating french fries because it’s slightly less work.

You mention the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing that spans the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills, the first animal crossing of its kind in America, as a potential solution to this problem.

I think it’s great. One hopes there will be more projects like that undertaken in other cities around the world.

We’ve discussed all the rotten things that are going on with animals in cities. Why is it a wonderful thing that animals have come into our cities and our lives?

If we hear birdsong, we’re less stressed. If we hear additional birdsong, it multiplies the stress-relieving effect. Being close to animals is biologically beneficial for us. It’s really about connection. I look at AI, and there’s this kind of sense that an AI chat bot can decrease loneliness. But it’s just an echo chamber. I think a true connection is bridging some kind of divide in the way that you think or perceive the world. And in that sense, being aware of an animal who is aware of you takes you out of yourself in a way that I think is really, really special.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Book jacket for “You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters” by Rachel Aviv

(Los Angeles Times illustration; book jacket from Knopf)

The ostensible topic of Rachel Aviv’s new essay collection, “You Won’t Get Free of It,” is mothers and daughters, but according to Julia M. Klein, Aviv’s sparkling, sharp-eyed pieces “involve the slipperiness of truth and the crushing inadequacy of our mental-health system and social safety net.”

“Cool Machine,” the final volume of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy, is an “American epic disguised as a heist novel,” writes Leigh Haber. “Whether or not New York is your jam, or a place you have escaped from or to, Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy is destined to live on as an American classic.”

Whitney Friedlander profiles Jessica Knoll, one of America’s most successful authors of sexy thrillers that “depict the absolute worst things one person could do to another — but in such a sensational, tongue-prickling-sour-candy kind of way that her books come off as devilishly evil beach reads.”

Finally, Dan Tana’s book about his legendary, eponymously-named restaurant in West Hollywood, “Everybody Came to Tana’s,” has been posthumously published. Sixty-two years after the restaurant’s opening, it’s still a tough reservation to snag. “In a town that’s always trying to be something that it’s not, it’s not trying to be anything,” his daughter Katerina tells Maddie Connors. “Dan Tana’s is longevity in the midst of ephemera.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

The Philosophical Research Society is a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in Los Feliz.

(Philosophical Research Society)

There is nothing else in L.A. like the Philosophical Research Society. The nonprofit was founded by scholar Manly Hall in 1934 as a place for the curious to explore wisdom, philosophy, mysticism and mythology across all cultures. Its visually striking Mayan Revival Los Feliz campus, a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument, features an auditorium, a gallery and a library of 30,000 volumes. The PRS bookshop is its own gem, a well-curated miscellany of books for spiritual seeking and enlightenment.

In a joint email exchange, PRS staffers dama, Jarrett Schaefer, Kelly Carmena and Amanda Brass explain what makes the store a sui generis experience.

How does the bookshop tie in thematically with the Philosophical Research Society?

The PRS Bookstore is a reflection of all that we do here at PRS. It is an extension of the library created by Manly Hall where you will find foundational texts in alchemy, mythology, philosophy, astrology, and art. You will also find a selection of books based on themes explored in our talks and screenings and from recommendations made by the team at PRS.

It’s a very well-curated inventory of new and secondhand books — I assume you’re very careful about what you stock on the shelves.

We select works that are meaningful to us and hope that they will resonate with everyone too. We highlight works by mystics and visionaries. In our staff recommendations section, you’ll find titles like Ben Caldwell and Robeson Taj Frazier’s “Kaos Theory,” art books by Penny Slinger, Betye Saar and Remedios Varo, Yoko Ono’s “Grapefruit,” “Red Tarot” by Christopher Marmolejo, “The Bhagavad Gita,” and “Time, Myth & Matter” by LD Deutsch. We also feature items from local artists like Moss Candles, Black Willow Jewelry, and perfume by Syd Botanica. Our secondhand books are donation-only and are a kaleidoscopic bag of surprises.

The Philosophical Research Society features an auditorium, a gallery, a library of 30,000 volumes and a bookshop.

(Philosophical Research Society)

What book genres tend to sell well?

Esoteric art, mythology, tarot and divinatory practices, ancient philosophy, and hermeticism are all popular subjects. The top-selling book every year is Manly Hall’s seminal work “The Secret Teachings of All Ages,” which is an encyclopedic outline of symbolic philosophy. The used astrology books and children’s books are quite popular too.

Do you have author events?

We’ve hosted book talks with Mark Mothersbaugh, Michelle Coltrane, Mitch Horowitz and Susan Orlean. We regularly co-present events with publishers like Hat & Beard Press, Angel City Press, the Library of Esoterica, Sky Press, Ouroboros Press and Bibliomancers. There are also monthly events that are centered around the bookstore: The Manly Hall Book Club, Astro Study Group, Surrealist Study Group, Tarot Salon and an Esoteric Game Night.

Philosophical Research Society is at 3910 Los Feliz Blvd. in Los Angeles.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

This month, “Cool Machine,” a riff on 1980s New York in the form of a tightly plotted crime novel, arrives from Colson Whitehead. It concludes his Harlem trilogy, they say. If you’d told readers two decades ago that Whitehead would become a bestselling crime novelist, they might have thought you were kidding. He started out writing innovative novels with such intellectual and stylistic punch that the MacArthur Foundation gave him a fellowship in 2002.

His written output is fun, fearless and fantastic. Where to start? Here’s a cheat sheet.

For N.Y. lovers

With “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead begins his crime trilogy in the 1960s in a furniture store with stylish midcentury stock whose owner, Ray Carney, is trying not to be a fence. Love the evocation of Harlem as a place with a cool interconnected community. Worry about that cousin who’s always trouble. The follow-up, “Crook Manifesto,” is set in the 1970s. All of New York City is at a nadir; Ray is on the straight and narrow, but needs an influx of cash (for Jackson Five tickets for his daughter). Then comes “Cool Machine,” secrets to be revealed when it hit shelves this week . And as a bonus, his essay collection “The Colossus of New York,” which is vivid, episodic and yet still a story: “Talking about New York is talking about the world.”

To break your heart

The novel “The Underground Railroad” comes from an imagined misunderstanding, logical for anyone who grew up riding subways: that the path to freedom for enslaved people that we call The Underground Railroad was in fact underground. In Whitehead’s hands, that imagining takes us through both time and place while making visceral the horrors of enslavement. The book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted by Barry Jenkins into a limited series.

In a rare feat, Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize a second time for his novel “The Nickel Boys,” another work of historical fiction dealing with the devastating effects of American racism. Based on the true story of a reform school where Black boys went missing, the novel pairs the stories of two teens, one a troublemaker and the other caught up by mistake. Barack Obama called it “a necessary read.” Cleverly structured, it seemed difficult to adapt, but director RaMell Ross made it into a brilliant film.

To blow your mind

In Whitehead’s debut novel, the not-realistic “The Intuitionist,” a Black female elevator inspector faces powerful forces aligned against her. Inflected with Thomas Pynchon-like wordplay and situations, it’s both ambitious and funny. So is “John Henry Days,” mixing narrative forms while telling the story of a Black journalist around the year 2000 going to every press junket he can, unmaking the myth of John Henry all the while. And “Apex Hides the Hurt” is a comic novel about the conflicts that arise in a small town when they hire a name consultant for a possible rebranding.

To eat your mind

Just around the time they started staggering onto TV, Colson Whitehead published a zombie novel. “Zone One” is a smart take on the shuffling hordes and pandemic survivors who try to take Manhattan back.

To beat the odds

Whitehead, an enthusiastic amateur poker player, wrote the nonfiction book “The Noble Hustle” about his entry into the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was a luxurious time in media, circa 2011, when ESPN’s Grantland paid his $10,000 entry fee and said he could keep his winnings. The book, expanded from what he wrote for them, includes his training, pending divorce, joking asides and playing for high stakes.

To take to the beach

“Sag Harbor,” set in the mostly Black, affluent beach community in the Hamptons, is the closest Whitehead has come to writing a coming-of-age story. Taking place during the summer of 1985, Benji and his teenage friends banter about culture and get their first taste of freedom.

Mothers and daughters are often caught in a double bind: biologically kindred yet divided by competing claims on identity and selfhood. In Cay Kim’s debut novel “The Future Perfect”, that bond is tangled by cultural discontinuity.

The novel’s mother has been reared in a South Korean household that places a high value on academic rigor and head-down discipline. She devotes all of her energy to grinding that work ethic into her daughter (Kim’s characters are unnamed), who is shuttled between her native Seoul and Minnesota, and grapples with finding the one true way for her to navigate the world.

I spoke with Kay, a native of Seoul who relocated to the States, about mothers, daughters and the unstoppable power of language.

✍️ Author Chat

Author Cay Kim

(Margaryta Bushkin)

This is your first novel. Did you start writing it in college?

This actually originated from a long poem that I wrote. I didn’t know I was going to turn it into a novel at the time. I just had the idea, the summer before my MFA, to expand each stanza into a chapter. That made the writing process relatively easier for me because it was such a straightforward process. I already had the frame of it.

Even though the novel is grounded in a very specific milieu — that of a child who is ensnared between Korean and American cultures — it’s very much a universal story, of a mother who feels the burden of raising a perfect daughter and is resentful when the daughter rebels against her ministrations.

It’s something that occupies so much of my head space. I wanted the mother to be portrayed as a victim of her society. The way that people choose to parent isn’t something that they learn in a vacuum. She has deep-seated beliefs about suffering and self-abnegation. But there’s a point at which an act of service risks inverting into a selfish act.

A big concept for the mother is endurance.

Exactly. It’s a generational trauma the mother is dealing with. She has had such ingrained beliefs passed down to her, and she’s unable to recognize when her methods result in her own mental and physical splintering, as well as her daughter’s.

Is it a function of the mother’s ego, or some kind of twisted narcissism?

She is putting herself through so much suffering because she believes she is doing the right thing. And there’s an extent to how much you can excuse that self-unawareness.

Yet despite this, the daughter feels tied to her mother, even when they are at loggerheads and she is living thousands of miles away.

The mother is such an integral part of the daughter’s consciousness that severance is impossible. They have a shared history and the daughter wants to share things with her mother, even when they are fighting. When she feels lonely at Stanford, the daughter verbalizes the fact that she has learned loneliness from her mother.

There are a lot of scenes in the novel tied to meals prepared by either the mother or the grandmother.

I do a lot of thinking about how cooking plays a role in our everyday lives. It’s something that people can spend hours preparing, only to have it disappear. It’s her mother’s domain. It is so opposed to the way the father thinks, which is very much tied to capital, to amassing and saving money.

The daughter really comes into herself when she is exposed to American culture.

Minnesota is where she acquires language for the first time. Language is so important to this character. Then she is shuffled back to Korea, and this disjunction is the thing that propels her narrative development. But as the story goes on, the daughter reaches a point where she has such mastery of expression and that is a power she acquires.

“The Future Perfect” is written in a very precise and concise way. What fiction writers do you admire, or who may have served as models?

I love writers whose use of language jolts the mind. My favorite writer of all time is Marguerite Duras. “The Lover” reads so easy but when you pay attention to the language, it’s very precisely engineered. I also love Clarice Lispector, for the way she expresses human spirituality.

Is this book drawn from your life? I ask that only because your protagonist winds up attending Stanford, as you did.

When I first started learning how to write, my teacher always used to say that writing shouldn’t necessarily contain the factual truth, but it should have emotional truth. And I feel like that has been the core of my writing practice throughout my life, and that even for those that don’t think consciously about it, that’s often the case.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Country music performer Kenny Chesney sat down with Holly Gleason, the co-author of his new memoir, to talk about writing the book.

(Jill Trunnell)

The state of Ohio is celebrating America’ssemiquincentennial by offering a statewide reading project that features Toni Morrison’s fictional oeuvre, thus providing a vivid alternative history of the country. “Not only does her work re-center African Americans in the story of our country, it also tackles major events from our founding, through slavery, to the impact of Jim Crow, to the great migration and beyond,” Literary Cleveland Executive Director Matt Weinkam tells Leigh Haber.

Chef-Podcaster-Author etc. Eddie Huang has written his first novel, a lightly autobiographical twirl through the foodie-verse called “Come Undone.“ “This book was very much about breaking up with your family to start your own,” he tells Mariella Rudi.

At a time when teen literacy is declining, Rudi polled five high school teachers to find out what books students should be reading now.

Gabrielle Korn’s novel “Long Island Girls” is a Millennial coming-of-age story that drips with Y2K nostalgia and the ways in which youthful optimism and hope can drift into middle-aged cynicism. “One thing I wanted to capture about early adulthood is the constant humiliation,” Korn tells Emily St. Martin. “The thing about being young is that people are so resentful of your youth, but you don’t understand that it’s resentment, you just think everybody hates you.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

The Loved Ones bookshop

(James Alan Duran)

J.C. Gabel, the owner of local book imprint Hat and Beard, has opened a new bookshop called The Loved One, and it already feels like an essential anchor for Historic Filipinotown’s burgeoning cultural scene. The store, which is also a gallery and events space, is expansive (5,000 square feet) and inviting, with patinated hardwood floors and a wall of picture windows that bathes the interior in natural light. I spoke with Gabel about his future plans for his new space.

What is the mission statement of The Loved One?

The Loved One reflects our ongoing commitment to independent publishing, original exhibitions, and the belief that books (and ideas within them) are best experienced in conversation with one another, in-person, whenever possible. In our post-post digital age, the serendipitous nature of organically curating physical objects is, in a sense, the point of the entire operation. We envision The Loved One as a space where everyone can exchange ideas, free from data-mining tech overlords, AI slop and click-bait tomfoolery.

What kind of books are you selling?

We’re going to focus mostly on new books about the visual arts, but we’ll also have several curated tables of fiction and nonfiction organized by subject and publisher, to highlight and promote the work of publishers we admire. Moreover, our genre-based book clubs and live author events — which will run weekly by August — will also influence the titles carried in the shop, too. Lastly, we’re bringing back Big Table, our books and conversation podcast — which we started with Dub Lab during COVID — now that we have a physical space to host and record these conversations.

It’s a very large space. What are your plans for it?

We are really keeping the space as modular as possible so we can change the interior of both storefronts to exhibit art and photography, as well as host author events, artist talks, live music, comedy, book clubs, etc.

You’re also a publisher, with Hat and Beard. How will that tie into The Loved One?

At least half of the arts programming I bring to the table will tie back to Hat and Beard’s original publications; the other half will be curated by Aubrie Wienholt and her team, working in tandem with myself and the H&B family. H&B will, of course, continue to program events all over the city regularly, but it will be nice to have a storefront again for the publishing house. We also intend to sell our rare and limited edition bundles of our books at TLO. There will finally be a physical space where one can come see this work in person before purchasing.

What about Historic Filipinotown? The Loved One is such a cool addition to what is becoming a vital cultural hub for L.A.

We are honored and thrilled to be working out of Historic Filipinotown. So much has opened in and around this neighborhood since COVID. It is a really vibrant community. There is a great camaraderie among all the small businesses in and around our cluster off Temple Street and Glendale Boulevard. Our immediate neighbors, Couplet Coffee and the bar 1642, are both actively involved in our programming monthly: Couplet has sent over a pop-up barista to serve coffee and tea at our literary events, and most of our after-parties are now held at 1642, two doors down.

On a recent summer day at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, students ambled through yawns, braces and acne into their creative writing class. The day’s lesson tackled “style,” that elusive, ultra-subjective choice of expression.

“Who was the first author you encountered to do something different on the page?” asked the teacher, Clarke E. Andros.

They named Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein and Lemony Snicket before moving on to a précis of Joy Williams’ flash fiction. “These stories are weird — she’s weird,” Andros warned.

In some ways, high school looks much the same as it did 20, even 100 years ago: sleepy eyes either light up or glaze over when a teacher poses a Socratic question. Nervous laughs and unexpected insights emerge as young people use stories to make sense of themselves and the world around them.

(Fingerprint; Penguin Classics; Pantheon)

The idea of the “Great American Novel” took shape in the aftermath of the Civil War, when a fractured nation looked to literature to define itself. As classrooms evolved, so did the canon that reflected America’s changing identity.

But the syllabus today is at a tipping point. Forces — some visible, some harder to see — are upending literature and education itself. American students are in a decade-long reading recession, while fewer students are reading for pleasure than in previous generations.

Reading scores among high school seniors are at their lowest in decades, according to federal testing data, while schools across the country are grappling with how to respond to waning attention spans and artificial intelligence. The Los Angeles Unified School District has begun a course correction, voting to limit student use of laptops and tablets during class — the first major American school system to do so.

We spoke with five high school English teachers across the city — three from LAUSD, one from a charter and one from a private school — to find out what literature belongs in today’s classroom, and which stories can help us understand America, past and present.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Raquel Olvera, Roosevelt High School, Boyle Heights

What books in the American literary canon are you teaching (old and new)?

In 11th-grade American Literature, as part of the LAUSD-approved Odell curriculum, we read four book options: “Friday Night Lights,” “Beloved,” “The Great Gatsby” and “The Warmth of Other Suns.” For my 10th-grade World Literature course, I like “Antigone” and “Things Fall Apart.” I also teach “In Cold Blood,” using it to explore Americans’ fascination with true crime and what the genre reveals about race, gender, class and the justice system.

(Simon & Schuster; Sky Publishing; Vintage)

What’s one work from the canon adults should revisit today?

“The Great Gatsby.” When I read it in high school, I wasn’t engaging with its undercurrents of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, gender or sexuality in the way I do now. Its themes of power, wealth, consumerism and American identity remain as relevant as ever.

What are English teachers up against in the classroom in 2026?

Besides large class sizes and underfunding, I think public educators are largely battling apathy. Students and young people aren’t engaging with books like they used to. A side effect of that is a lack of empathy and curiosity. At the very least, you can model what it means to be a reader and a writer, and hope that years later, students remember that one nerd English teacher who showed them what humanity can look like.

Schehrezade Lodhy, Da Vinci Schools, El Segundo

What books in the American literary canon are you teaching (old and new)?

Students really enjoy Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” — it’s all about the human condition and cancel culture, forbidden love and lies and deceit, with witches in the forest. In poetry, we explore a range of American voices, from Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes to Amanda Gorman, and sometimes even song lyrics. I also use “The Moth: Storytelling” podcast when students are working on personal essays. The goal is to make literature, poetry and storytelling as accessible as possible. At a charter school, we have quite a bit of autonomy with what we teach.

What’s one work from the canon adults should revisit today?

James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” I read Baldwin a few summers ago, and that was quite an education for me. Unfortunately, some of the content is a bit too mature for high school, but I do talk about Baldwin a bit in my classes when we cover African American authors.

(Reader’s Library Classics; W. W. Norton & Company; Simon & Schuster)

What are English teachers up against in the classroom in 2026?

Artificial intelligence, big time. I really pared back technology in my class, and we’ve pivoted back to paper and pencil. Going into my 18th year of teaching, my biggest goal is re-creating that experience of thinking critically for oneself and studying literature through a critical lens. We’re in this era of going back to the basics. With decreased attention spans, teachers are being forced to become even more creative. It feels like we’re reinventing ourselves every year.

Aiden Brown, John F. Kennedy High School, Granada Hills

What books in the American literary canon are you teaching (old and new)?

From an educationally traditional background, I still believe in canon disruption — mixing the new and old. In American Lit, I’ve taught “Their Eyes Were Watching God” 11 times now. It’s a hard one to get on the first try because the vernacular is so particular, but when we read it physically while also listening to the audiobook, it’s such a great novel to hear. I pair it with bell hooks’ “All About Love.” I teach “Macbeth” from a performance-based lens, making it less intimidating. My favorite book is “Frankenstein,” written by a teenage girl who invented science fiction. My ninth-graders’ favorites were “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Odyssey” (Emily Wilson translation) and “Persepolis,” a graphic novel about a girl discovering punk rock and rebelling against the established order.

What’s one work from the canon adults should revisit today?

All of the lonely young men need to reread “The Great Gatsby,” and anyone freaked out by the state of the world should read “Parable of the Sower.” One quote from the book hangs on a poster board in my classroom: “A community’s first responsibility is to protect its children — the ones we have now and the ones we will have.”

What are English teachers up against in the classroom?

Teenagers are still the funniest people on the planet. As the world around them becomes more atomized, I find that they’re increasingly interested in connection. In the classroom, we are seeing skill loss and a decreased ability to focus on a task. I don’t think that’s just because of AI or the pandemic — it’s also phones, screens and the world kids are growing up in. One thing teachers seem to agree on is a return to pen and paper.

Clarke E. Andros, Crossroads School, Santa Monica

What books in the American literary canon are you teaching (old and new)?

A newer addition I would recommend is “Hunger: A Novella and Stories” by Lan Samantha Chang. Especially in California, we have a lot of great Asian American literature, including works by Amy Tan, but I enjoy the writing level in Lan’s — it’s accessible to students but pushes them, all about intersectional identity and the first-gen experience. A lot of the Latino students I’ve taught in Los Angeles also connect with that book.

(Penguin Classics; Grand Central Publishing; Mariner Books Classics)

What’s one work from the canon adults should revisit today?

“Of Mice and Men.” Revisiting it today opens up deeper conversations about labor, social conciousness and power. Steinbeck creates a microcosm of American society, where disability, gender, race and class are all represented and shaped by an economic hierarchy. The characters are left navigating a world where people often turn on each other rather than challenge the systems around them. It’s novella-length, so you could read it in a Sunday morning.

What are English teachers up against in the classroom in 2026?

We’re up against systems that often prioritize ed-tech and third-party vendors over smaller class sizes and more teachers. When I was at LAUSD, it was clear from our superintendent — who just stepped down over his fraud investigation — was just in bed with tech. It’s hard for me to imagine the folks in power didn’t look at [the failed AI chatbot venture] and see it as a grift.

On the flip side, at hyper-competitive, elite schools like this, students are approaching high school with college in mind rather than with high school in mind. When students understand the value of the process, they’re less likely to look for an easy shortcut like AI.

Adam Tan, Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, Mid-City

What books in the American literary canon are you teaching (old and new)?

With independent reading, memoirs are big, like “Crying in H Mart” and Sylvia Plath’s fictionalized “The Bell Jar.” Younger kids gravitate to “Musashi,” a celebrated epic based on a famous samurai. We have a lot of Korean American students here, so they like “Pachinko,” dealing with racism and the Korean population in post-World War II Japan. I’ll also throw in “The Bluest Eye.”

In ninth grade, we read “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Of Mice and Men,” “The Thief and the Dogs” and “Romeo and Juliet,” with the film adaptations to use media literacy. In American Literature, the major texts are “The Great Gatsby,” “The Things They Carried” and “The Crucible.” We also read nonfiction articles, including pieces on AI and robots, while focusing on rhetorical devices.

(Blackstone Publishing; Knopf; Little, Brown and Company)

What’s one work from the canon adults should revisit today?

“The Catcher in the Rye” benefits from the distance of adulthood. It’s a novel about disillusionment and the search for identity, but when you revisit it, you also see that it’s very much a love story. I often encourage students to look for forms of love beyond romance — love for family, friends and fellow human beings. Even today, students can tell you that the biggest phony in the book is Holden himself. The novel reminds us that while literature may not have answers to the world’s problems, it can help us examine our wounds and find solace in art.

What are English teachers up against in the classroom in 2026?

A lack of accountability in the modern world. In general, we have a school district focused on 100% graduation rates, no F’s. [LAUSD] wanted everything on computer, and now they want less computer time, which is great, but not everyone at top management is on the same page. Teachers are often trying to balance what the district wants with what we know our students need.

What I try to instill instead is an intrinsic desire to grow as a thinker. How do you make sure students are reading without taking the joy out of it? A lot of us are going back to pen and paper. Despite all the concerns about AI, I still think the soul and spirit of young people is as strong as ever. The core is not rotting.

New reads abound for your vacation tote throughout the weeks of July, with fiction picks featuring a Carnival cruise casualty, a highly entertaining jewel heist at the Waldorf-Astoria, and a Soviet-era madcap adventure. In nonfiction, authors consider how we define wild places, how we pigeonhole the aging, and how languages live or die. Happy reading!

FICTION:

A Real Animal: A Novel
By Emeline Atwood
Catapult: 368 pp., $29
(July 7)
After surviving a sexual assault, narrator Lucy stalks her college campus as a leopard. Don’t spend too much time worrying about whether this transformation is real, or not; Lucy’s knowledge of her fierceness is the point, a fierceness she employs as she struggles to negotiate her independence from parents who wish she’d come home to recover and men who offer up their desires and ignore hers. It’s an astonishing debut with a compelling voice.

Man Overboard!: A Novel
By Kathleen Rooney
Gallery Books: 208 pp., $27
(July 7)
Readers expecting something akin to Rooney’s wondrous previous novel, “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk,” should remember that that book followed “Cher Ami “ and “Major Whittlesey,” a story about a pigeon and a World War I Army officer. In other words, Rooney doesn’t repeat herself, and in “Man Overboard!” she’s concocted a hilarious adventure tale of a man floating in the Gulf of Mexico, adrift with himself, his thoughts, and a few sea creatures.

Astronaut!: A Novel
By Oana Aristides
W. W. Norton: 272 pp., $28
(July 14)
Imagine a dystopia set neither in the future nor in fantasy; that’s the 1989 Romania 7-year-old Lia inhabits, its adults living in fear of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, its infrastructure strained by deprivation, and its reality so scrambled that calling an explorer an “astronaut” instead of “cosmonaut” risks punishment. When Lia sets out to buy her mother a birthday gift, she sets in motion a series of weirdly probable yet totally weird events.

City of Widows: A Novel
By Nadia Hashimi
William Morrow: 432 pp., $32
(July 28)
During the two decades of American occupation, Afghanistan experienced a sort of peace, one in which women could be educated, work as professionals, and even serve in the military. When the U.S. left in 2020, those same women found themselves — regardless of their individual status — subject to Taliban restrictions that deny differences in gender, desire and ambition. Hashimi (“Sparks Like Stars”) shows how desperate and daring the women become.

Cool Machine: A Novel
By Colson Whitehead
Doubleday: 368 pp., $30
(July 21)
First “Harlem Shuffle,” then “Crook Manifesto,” and now, “Cool Machine,” the highly anticipated “Harlem Trilogy” conclusion from the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Whitehead. The inimitable Ray Carney, who started out as a minor criminal, is now Sterling Furniture’s “Northeast Regional Dealer of the Month,” a respected businessman. It’s the mid-1980s, and when Ray’s beloved wife Elizabeth gets turned down for a small-business loan, he takes matters into his own hands, in his own former ways.

NONFICTION:

How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
By Sophia Smith Galer
Crown: 304 pp., $33
(July 7)
Smith Galer’s nonna spoke an Italian she called “dialet”; her mother spoke “dialet” and English; Smith Galer herself speaks only English. What do we lose, the author asks, when a language dies? The answers she found are powerful, like an enzyme to treat HIV that was found in a tree that was discovered because a researcher spoke Samoan. Unsurprisingly, she also found that language death often corresponds to ecological and cultural devastation.

The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore Our Planet
By Jason Dove Mark
W. W. Norton: 224 pp., $25
(July 14)
Perhaps art will be the thing that preserves the environment, even if humans can’t save it. “Go outside. Bear witness. Make a record. Pass it on,” writes Mark in this eloquent, impassioned plea for us all to remain involved in environmental action. The more we appreciate the natural world, the more we’ll want to care for it, share it with others, and help future generations understand how some changes are natural and not all are inevitable.

Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old
By Lucy Schiller
Flatiron Books: 272 pp., $30
(July 14)
Services for the elderly range from luxury assisted-living facilities to special digital devices meant to bypass phone scams, but as Schiller explains, these things not only commodify a natural life passage — they separate older people from their natural communities. The author was inspired to investigate our country’s aging population when she cared for a grandmother who died from COVID; the book weaves the personal with the political in a meaningful way.

(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schust)

Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir
By Matthew Quick
Avid Reader Press: 320 pp., $30
(July 21)
Novelist Quick (“The Silver Linings Playbook”) turns to memoir in recounting his contentious relationship with his father, whom he’s losing to dementia. While the author has had big highs (like the movie adaptation of “Playbook”), he’s also experienced deep lows, including alcoholism and severe creative block. Somehow, through recovery (which he credits to Jungian therapy), he affords both his imperfect, ailing parent and himself grace.

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness
By Cal Flyn
Viking: 448 pp., $35
(July 28)
In “Downton Abbey”, the Dowager Duchess of Grantham starchily asked “What is a ‘weekend?’” In this book, journalist Cal Flyn asks — more affably, but with equal intensity — “What is a wilderness?” Her answer: Depends on your perspective. In other words, nearly every place on Earth teems with life. It’s only humans who have attached words like “wild” and “unexplored” to regions where they feel uncertain, afraid, and even awed.

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”

For 45 years, in his novels, short stories and essays, James Ellroy has been creating the definitive under-history of his Los Angeles hometown, mapping in his work the subterranean currents of power, corruption, sex and lies that have shaped the polity of the city. Ellroy’s latest is another compelling entry in his ongoing project.

“Red Sheet” is a multilayered American epic that blurs fact and fiction, a deep dive into anti-Communist paranoia, from the corridors of City Hall to the dank precincts of the LAPD. The novel also marks the return of Fred Otash, a real-life Hollywood fixer whom the author has featured in previous novels, including his last book, “The Enchanters.” I recently talked to Ellroy about Otash, L.A. in the ‘60s and L.A. today.

✍️ Author Chat

Freddie Otash has been something of a twisted muse for you. In “Red Sheet,” Otash is an LAPD detective trying to smoke out Communist sleeper cells in Kennedy-era L.A. He was, in fact, a real person, a notorious Hollywood fixer. How did you first become aware of him?

I had seen a documentary about his specious role in the cover-up caper surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death. I’d been hearing about him for years, and then I created the Jack Vincennes character who worked for scandal magazines in my book “L.A. Confidential,” played by the scurrilous Kevin Spacey in the vastly overrated movie of the same name.

Did you ever meet him?

Years ago I met a producer named James B. Harris, who produced all the old Stanley Kubrick movies and had optioned one of my early books called “Blood on the Moon.” I asked him if he knew Freddie Otash, and he said everyone in Hollywood knew Freddie Otash. I was planning my novel “American Tabloid” and so I arranged to meet him. He was unpleasant and charmless and way past his prime. I spent some time with him in Miami, where he was living in a place called the Jockey Club, and I had to listen to him talk about his many conquests of the world’s most beautiful and desirable women. I didn’t believe a word of it.

But he did have useful stories, I’m assuming.

Otash I used for the character Pete Bondurant in “American Tabloid.” We entered into a deal whereby I would pay him 10% of what Knopf was paying me in exchange for him keeping his mouth shut. He has become that valuable literary artifact: the great detective.

“Red Sheet: A Novel” by James Ellroy

(Knopf)

Your book deals with a piece of legislation called the Rumford Act that would tear down the city’s racist racial housing covenants in 1963, but the act in ’62 had enemies in high places, namely Mayor Sam Yorty and his power base. You were 14 in L.A. in 1962. Did you feel this racial tension?

I remember vividly how the world was changing. I knew there was de facto segregation in housing. I remember Nixon’s pathetic campaign for governor in 1962. But I remember racial barriers breaking down, particularly in school. Just talking with Black kids in school, because why wouldn’t you? And I had been this dumb, bigoted kid.

What’s interesting about the characters in your book is that their ideological alliances are quite fluid, depending on the circumstances. Communists are married to John Birchers, who may be, in fact, red-diaper babies, and so on.

People are endlessly complex. Going back to Freddie Otash again. He knew Tom Bradley in the ‘40s, when Bradley was a cop. And Freddie becomes a bag man for the civil rights movement, and the Rumford Act in particular. He’s about the most unlikely guy you would expect to support civil rights. I wanted to show [how] complex human beings and their beliefs can be, and this book is a primer on that.

You are so closely associated with Los Angeles, and you lived here for most of your life. Why do you live in Denver now?

Helen Knode is my all-time life partner, who is also my second ex-wife. Ten years ago, we decided to get back together, but she was living in Colorado. She came up with the idea of me getting a loft in her building, and we would have the keys to each other’s places, and that’s why I did it. I like it in Denver, though it’s quite hot at the moment.

Do you miss L.A? What are you feeling about the city now?

I was just there on my book tour. I feel like it’s a complete dump. It’s just totally run-down. When I got off the airplane, I noticed a smog layer, so smog is back. I saw many young, odd-looking, overly adorned young people. I don’t know. … It’s a kid’s town now, to a certain extent.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Country music performer Kenny Chesney sat down with Holly Gleason, the co-author of his new memoir, to talk about writing the book.

(Jill Trunnell)

Greg Sarris is the chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Sonoma County. He’s also an acclaimed novelist whose his first book in 28 years, “The Last Human Bear,” is loosely based on the life and teachings of Pomo spiritual leader Mabel McKay, a constant lodestar for Sarris. “An American Indian woman is as richly complicated as anybody else. I wanted to show this rich and complicated character who’s negotiated a history that she’s showing you,” Sarris tells Maddie Connors.

In “Daughters of the Sun and Moon,” author Lisa See excavates the events surrounding the Chinese Massacre of 1871. In doing so, she also digs into her own Chinese heritage in L.A. “My great-grandfather’s fourth wife was 16 when he brought her here, and she was never let out,” See tells Emily St. Martin. “My mom used to say these women would all get together, and she used to describe it as birds twittering together, because they actually had this opportunity to be with each other, but on really very rare occasions.”

Fear not, literary Cassandras: Authors can still generate online heat, thanks to BookTok and other social media outlets. So much so that more books are being adapted into streaming content than ever before. “With the advent of BookTok, it allows you to have so much social chatter around these authors,” producer Bryan Unkeless tells Gary Goldstein. “They’re becoming new rock stars, in a way.”

Finally, Kenny Chesney sat down with Holly Gleason to discuss their collaboration on “Heart Life Music,” Chesney’s new memoir. “I didn’t know if there was a story there,” the country megastar tells Gleason. “Over time you wore me down, to make me pause and … reflect.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

The interior of Counterpoint Records & Books.

(David Jones)

In a city that has so often seen its old-school retail businesses turned into nail salons and real estate offices, Counterpoint Records & Books remains an outlier. Originally established in 1979 by John and Susan Polifronio, the store on Franklin Avenue has remained, even as many of its nearby store-mates have shuttered, offering a well-curated selection of secondhand books and records from every conceivable genre. I chatted with David Jones, who is one of the owners of the Franklin Avenue store, about Counterpoint’s enduring success.

Counterpoint is an Eastside institution, but businesses along your strip on Franklin have gone under while you have survived. What is the secret to your longevity?

Firstly, we are lucky enough to own the building we do business in, which has given us a lot of freedom to be able to pursue doing business our way. That didn’t happen until we were in business for almost 20 years, but now in our 47th year we feel lucky to be able to continue to provide a physical, in-person shopping experience. I think our success is tied to this. People are looking for an experience away from their screens, and I think we provide that without being anachronistic or nostalgic by keeping up with and stocking contemporary music, digital media and all types of books.

Is your clientele mostly local? I’m guessing it’s a multigenerational clientele, given the store’s long history.

We definitely have a younger demographic these days, but we have a very intergenerational staff, and I think that attracts an all ages clientele. We meet folks daily from all over the world as a destination that people return to and tell their friends about. I think word-of-mouth is our greatest form of outreach. People say we feel special to them, as if they’ve stumbled onto a secret by shopping here. It’s something I love and am very proud of.

How have books maintained their staying power despite the countless distractions of daily life?

I think of it as one of life’s greatest luxuries. To be honest, I never thought too much about the staying power of books until the pandemic. During that time, people would come in and thank us for being open and a place they could come to escape what was happening. It was a real turning point for me. I started to think more about the importance of what we do and how much of an effect it has on people. I never took what we do for granted, but it gave me a sense of urgency that I didn’t quite have before.

Counterpoint Records & Books is at 5911 Franklin Ave. in Hollywood.

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