Rude, immature, inappropriate–DBC Pierre’s Man Booker Prize-winning debut novel seems to bring out the schoolmarm in critics. I mean, I’d call it all those things, and I like the book. But the fact is, you’re not supposed to write a comic novel about a Columbine-like school-shooting spree in the barbecue-sauce capital of central Texas. Some things just aren’t funny. That truism, though, is one that you just know Pierre would disagree with. Otherwise we wouldn’t have this high-energy, inappropriately–and undeniably–funny novel.
An Imperfect God by Henry Wiencek
The Washington who emerges in this first-rate biography (subtitled “George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America”) is an all-too-human father of his country. But in the end he looks greater than ever. Washington was the only Founding Father to free his slaves. He did it posthumously, in his will, but he did it. Wiencek’s biography, which never bogs down in politically correct nitpicking, shows how slavery stained almost every aspect of early American life, and we end up respecting Washington because while most Colonials were willing to ignore the evils of slavery, Washington wasn’t.
Pompeii by Robert Harris
Everyone knows the ending, but Harris–whose best sellers include “Enigma”–has produced another winner with his new offering about a city on the verge of destruction. Sent from Rome to maintain the aqueducts, Marcus Attilius Primus finds himself dealing with a sudden crisis on Mount Vesuvius, the disappearance of his predecessor and the brutality of an ex-slave turned real-estate mogul. He also falls in love with the villain’s rebellious daughter. Packed with fascinating historical details, Harris’s yarn brings Pompeii to life even as it faces certain death.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Robert Meyer”
This thorough recounting of October 2002’s D.C.-area sniper spree earns the book its subtitle: “Inside the Hunt for the Killers Who Terrorized the Nation.” Horwitz and Ruane, reporters at The Washington Post (NEWSWEEK’s parent company), can get so inside that the story occasionally bogs down. One victim gets shot “through vertebra T7.” Still, the authors empty their notebooks to thrilling effect–especially in detailing the massive nighttime sting operation at the rest stop where the accused snipers were finally caught.
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
An entertaining “how to” guide, “The Creative Habit” isn’t about getting the lightning bolt of inspiration but rather the artistic necessity of old-fashioned virtues such as discipline, preparation and routine. While Tharp draws heavily on her own experience as a choreographer, the book is peppered with anecdotes about everyone from Mozart to Philip Roth. “Art is a vast democracy of habit,” writes Tharp (whose own daily regimen begins at 5:30 a.m. with a workout). She sets forth the necessary ingredients; all you need to add is a pinch of genius.
My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
Inspired by a literary hoax that fooled Australia in the ’40s, Carey wonders what would happen if you invented a poet and his work, but then someone came along claiming to be that poet, and wrote beautifully into the bargain. The book has spongy spots. The ending is a mess–a shotgun marriage of Conrad and the Keystone Kops. But, as always with Carey, the characters, especially the mad impostor, are reason enough to take this bumpy ride.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Maria Oddo”
Hiaasen’s love-hate relationship with Florida (loves the place, hates what developers have done to it) has produced some of the best and certainly the funniest fiction ever written about the Sunshine State. And in Chaz Perrone, “Skinny Dip’s” protagonist, Hiaasen has fashioned one of the great jerks of American literature. Chaz not only tries to kill his wife, Joey, he does it on an anniversary cruise, all because he thinks she’s discovered that he’s been falsifying water-quality standards in the Everglades. Unbeknownst to Chaz, Joey survives, thereby kick-starting the plot, which is an intricate, hilarious proof that hell hath no fury like a woman thrown off a cruise ship.
Public Enemies by Bryan Burroughs
At the beginning of the Great Depression, much of the United States was still the Wild West: dirt roads, cracker-box banks and “murderous hillbillies” in search of cash–but now with faster cars and bigger guns than the cops had. Enter a fastidious control freak with an appetite for publicity and a genius for political survival named J. Edgar Hoover and his recharged FBI. Burroughs turns the collision of lawlessness and order into a rollicking yarn whose prose bounces across the page like a getaway car through a wheat field.
Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley
It has always been Walter Mosley’s intention to write the social history of Los Angeles through the eyes of a black private detective. But who knew he would do it so well? “Little Scarlet,” the eighth novel in the series, takes place in the aftermath of the Watts riots in 1965, when Easy Rawlins, Mosley’s private eye, tries to find a white man suspected of murdering a black woman. This is a page turner that finds the time to pose the question: how many different ways are there to define heartbreak? We lost count about halfway through.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-02” author: “Marc Patton”
David Sedaris can really shtik it to you-with light but laugh-filled essays on his tortured youth and screwy siblings. This collection is as wry as his previous best sellers “Naked” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Sedaris mines for chuckles in the darnedest places: a tour of Anne Frank’s house and an elevator ride with a boy following the Roman Catholic Church scandal.
1912 by James Chace
If you think this election year’s a doozy, think back 92 years. There were two candidates vying for the Republican vote-conservative incumbent William Howard Taft and ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a quasi-radical Progressive. The Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, was playing to both moderates and the segregationist South. And the leftist Eugene V. Debs got the most votes ever for a socialist candidate. Great characters, high drama. If Bard College professor Chace had given us a few boiler-plate paragraphs of context–what was America like in 1912? Why were the “trusts” such an issue?–this book, like Wilson, would be a hands-down winner.
The Three-Martini Playdate by Christie Mellor
Don’t be misled by the winsome cover–this book is not a joke. A witty guide to parenting, it takes the radical position that old-fashioned child rearing should make a comeback. Children should learn manners and go to bed when they’re told–and parents should learn to say no. It also recommends that children be given back their childhood, instead of gearing up for Harvard. The martinis? They’re for grown-ups who, Mellor believes, need quality time too.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Justin Hale”
The story is simple, readable, desolate: Carl, an office worker taking the last train home, gets severely beaten by thugs. So his coma begins, on page seven. He spends the rest of the novel trying to break free from unconsciousness. The more Carl’s mind struggles to return to life, the more it tricks him. He dreams he is awake when he is not. He searches his memories for a trigger–a childhood home or a lover–to help him snap out of it but finds only amnesia. “You wake, you die,” says our comatose narrator. Garland, author of “The Beach” and the screenplay “28 Days Later,” serves up his most accomplished work to date, a poetic riff on the vagaries of memory, trauma and dreams.
The Dog Fighter by Marc Bojanowski
We know many telling details about the narrator in this darkly comic debut novel set in 1940s Mexico: he doesn’t like to talk, his mother died when he was 14, he once hung a puppy from a tree and his grandfather prophesied that he would one day fight dogs to the death. He’s also in love with the niece of the deadliest businessman in Cancion, a town where developers want to build a tourist haven and the locals want to stop them. Meanwhile, he makes a name for himself fighting dogs for money. In this finely crafted story about our eternal desire for violence, man bites dog, and dog bites man. Turns out we’re both beasts.
Public Enemies by Brian Burroughs
At the beginning of the Great Depression, much of the United States was still the Wild West: dirt roads, cracker-box banks and “murderous hillbillies” in search of cash–but now with faster cars and bigger guns than the cops had. Enter a fastidious control freak with an appetite for publicity and a genius for political survival named J. Edgar Hoover and his recharged FBI. Burroughs turns the collision of lawlessness and order into a rollicking yarn whose prose bounces across the page like a getaway car through a wheat field.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-03” author: “Marie Ewart”
September 11 raised a vexing question: “Why do they hate us?” Lee Harris dispenses with hand-wringing about root causes of Arab unrest and blames our problems on an evolution in world conflict. The prime threats to stability are now individuals whose political aims are unreachable. Harsh but refreshingly realistic, he views America as the only legitimate, strong and moral authority that can lead the fight against those who would tear civilization apart.
Venus as a Boy by Luke Sutherland
This disturbing and oddly beautiful fairy tale is told from the point of view of a young transvestite prostitute in London who’s dying because his insides are turning to gold. Strange, yes, but Sutherland’s writing is fluid and thoughtful. The plot is violent, the sex a bit too graphic. Yet you can’t help but be drawn into the author’s captivating vision of London’s Dickensian underbelly.
L’Histoire Recente du Cambodge et Mes Prises de Position by Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan is said to have once held a pistol to Pol Pot’s head to hold off a crowd of mutinous troops that had cornered the two Khmer Rouge leaders, but he didn’t shoot. Although he doesn’t tell this story in his memoir, Samphan, who stood with Pol Pot during three decades of killing, still comes across as utterly unheroic. Given their government’s reluctance to confront him, it’s important that Cambodians read Samphan’s justifications, excuses and pleas of helplessness, so they can decide whether moral cowardice is a crime against humanity.
title: “Snap Judgement Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Brenda Rodriguez”
On April 7, 1779, Martha Ray, the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s longtime mistress, was shot dead by her thwarted lover as she boarded her carriage outside London’s Covent Garden opera. The tale became an instant media sensation, and has since been retold by countless hacks, quacks, poets and prostitutes. In this fresh take, historian Brewer offers illuminating snapshots of the event as interpreted through the ages. Rather than re-examine one of Britain’s most famous murders, he provides a riveting history of British storytelling.
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein
The 1990s were not just about making–and losing–a bundle; they were about making a difference, writes Bornstein. He tracks down such social visionaries as Erzsebet Szekeres, who organized parents to start a network of shelters for disabled adults in Hungary. Bornstein calls them “social entrepreneurs,” and indeed, their impulse to do good is grounded in a sturdy mix of business sense and networking acumen.
The Maze by Panos Karnezis
Set in Anatolia post World War I, “The Maze” centers on a retreating Greek brigade that reaches a village unaffected by the war. Chaos–and tragedy–ensue after some brigade members commit petty crimes. Karnezis, a Greek-born, London-based engineer who won acclaim for a 2002 short-story collection, writes clearly and vividly–quite a feat considering he started writing in English only in 1996. His characters are well crafted and plausible. But ultimately “The Maze” is just that: the reader feels trapped in a confusing tangle of information with no obvious path out.
