Books Newsletter
Satirical art-world novels, poetry collections, and biographies we’re reading this season, plus a review of Ann Patchett’s newest book.
Sometimes, all it takes is the prospect of a new book to pull me out of a reading slump. Elizabeth Alexander’s forthcoming essay collection did the trick, as did Layli Long Soldier’s book of poetry and visual art. They’re two of 15 art books my colleagues and I are itching to read this fall, which brings a particularly exciting slate of biographies, satirical art-world novels, and titles that don’t fit neatly into a single genre. I’m increasingly drawn to those latter books, the ones in between.
Art historian Jennifer Higgie masters that nebulous form in Bedlam, a fictional account of Richard Dadd’s itinerant life and tragic struggles with mental health, reissued by Verso in July. Claudia Ross considers the sensitive task of inhabiting a historical figure’s voice, while Nageen Shaikh reviews a book on the often overlooked tradition of Pahari painting in India — not, she notes, to be characterized as “miniatures.” Read why scholars are moving away from that term below.
More on grief and art in Ann Patchett’s latest novel, the latest news in the world of books and art, and some newsletter-exclusive peeks into what our editorial team is reading right now. (Hint: Heated Rivalry may or may not make an appearance.)
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
In “Whistler,” Ann Patchett Tackles Loss and Art
Artists and authors are taking the Year of the Horse quite seriously. Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey hit theaters this summer, featuring the classic Trojan horse and all it stands for: things both passed down orally and things unspeakable. And just a month before that came Ann Patchett’s Whistler, her 10th novel for adults, which also takes this year’s zodiac quite seriously — the book is named for a horse in a story within the story. | Lavinia Liang
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Guide
15 Art Books for Your Fall Reading List
Guadalupe Rosales’s memoir, Christine Sun Kim’s artist book, Fady Joudah’s ode to the people of Gaza, and Elizabeth Alexander’s essay collection are among our most anticipated titles.
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From Our Critics
In the News
- Siddhesh Gautam, whose anti-caste comics visualize the legacy of Ambedkarite and Dalit organizing, has a graphic novel coming out in India. Penguin, please bring it to the US!
- End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World by duo Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor is coming out next week, and the North America tour is already stacked. Event moderators include Jia Tolentino, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Zeteo’s Kat Abughazaleh.
- Meanwhile, Claudia Rankine’s tour kicks off on Thursday for Triage, her first book since the conclusion of the American trilogy in 2020.
- The indomitable author, historian, and filmmaker Sarah Schulman (whom I had the privilege of interviewing in June) has a novel coming out next fall.
- Micro-publisher Sojourners for Justice Press released their 2027 risograph-printed calendar featuring 12 historical Black feminist publishers and printers. Get yours here.
What We’re Reading
On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV)
I’m on Book IV of Solvej Balle’s strangely addictive On the Calculation of Volume series, the story of a woman stuck in a time loop — a variously autumnal, never-ending 18th of November — that is unlike anything I’ve ever read, brimming with existential reflections on how we construct meaning.
—Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor
After Hours at Dooryard Books
In After Hours at Dooryard Books, a man shows up under shadowy circumstances at a West Village bank bookshop in 1968 New York. He’s taken in by a kind lady and her bookshop manager. Soon, we discover the facts around his fear to go outside, while the bookshop manager’s sister, who is a renowned folk singer, shows up with her newborn after discovering her husband has become one of the thousands killed in the Vietnam War. It’s a backdrop for a curious love story between two men who are healing their own wounds, while the secrets surface and everyone wonders what they actually believe about those they love. It’s by Cat Sebastian, one of my favorite authors in the widely popular MM romance genre that has been on fire since the Heated Rivalry series broke records on TV late last year.
—Hrag Vartanian, co-founder and editor-at-large
Zines
Paper Cuts: 600 Small Press Zines
This Thursday, the Center for Book Arts in Manhattan opens the doors to Paper Cuts, an exhibition with over 600 zines by small presses collected and curated by Christopher Kardambikis. In an email, he explained that it marks the end of the Paper Cuts podcast that gave the show its name, offering him “the opportunity to reach out to creators I had not spoken to before while bringing the project full circle by documenting and collecting the current activities of our oldest collaborators.”
Kardambikis specifically shouted out the work of Pegacorn Press’s Caroline Kern (whose fundraising patch for Gaza has hung in my room for two years), #blkgrlswurld’s Christina Long, and Raw Meat Collective’s Kyle Quinn, each of whom curated a table of zines for the exhibition. “Each of their zine tables offer a different way of understanding DIY publications in the 21st century in the only way that makes sense: by placing the zines in conversation with each other,” he said.
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—Linda Maria Grasso on “Maria Martins Was More Than Just Duchamp’s Lover”
From the Archive
Required Reading
- Colombian writer Ingrid Rojas Contreras interviews Mexican author Valeria Luiselli about her new book for Wasafiri. I am not exaggerating when I say I have dreamt of these two linking up.
- The torturous experience of reading Wuthering Heights made me want to rip out my hair. I loved it. Emily van Duyne writes in the Rumpus that a recent biography of Emily Brontë, arguably the most enigmatic of the literary sisters, offers rare new insights into the mind that concocted such a story.
- At this point, it’s no secret that the Atlantic loves sounding the alarm about “the end of [insert activity here],” as Timothy Noah wrote about for the New Republic. For Defector, Joel Pinckney decided to ask booksellers what they think about the latest declaration: “the end of reading.”
- Rachel Cusk’s Life of M has caused quite a stir; is it actually based on her friendship with Natalie Portman? The New York Times’s Alexandra Alter asked her.
