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New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Club: Let's Talk About ‘The Catch,' by Yrsa Daley-Ward
In this month's installment of the Book Review Book Club, we're discussing 'The Catch,' the debut novel by the poet and memoirist Yrsa Daley-Ward. The book is a psychological thriller that follows semi-estranged twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, who were babies when their mother was presumed to have drowned in the Thames. The novel begins decades later, when Clara sees something strange: A woman who looks just like their mother is stealing a watch. Clara believes this is her mother, and wants to welcome her back into her life. Dempsey is less certain, in part because the woman doesn't seem to have aged a day. She believes the woman is a con artist because it's simply not possible for her to be their mother … right? What's real? What's not? And what does that mean for the lives of these struggling sisters? Daley-Ward unpacks it all in her deliciously slippery novel. On this episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin talks about 'The Catch' with his colleagues Jennifer Harlan and Sadie Stein. Other books mentioned in this week's episode: 'The Other Black Girl,' by Zakiya Dalila Harris 'The Haunting of Hill House,' by Shirley Jackson 'Wish Her Safe at Home,' by Stephen Benatar 'Erasure,' by Percival Everett (you can listen to our book club conversation about it here) 'Playworld,' by Adam Ross (you can listen to our book club conversation about it here) 'The House on the Strand,' by Daphne du Maurier 'Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,' by Max Porter 'The Furrows,' by Namwali Serpell 'Dead in Long Beach, California,' by Venita Blackburn 'The Vanishing Half,' by Brit Bennett 'Death Takes Me,' by Cristina Rivera Garza 'Audition,' by Katie Kitamura We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@
New York Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Best Books of the Year (So Far)
We're halfway through 2025, and we at the Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the ones that just won't let us go. On this week's episode of the podcast, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib talk about some of the best books of the year so far. (Check out our full accounting of the best books of the year so far and save the titles that interest you most to your reading list.) Here are the books discussed in this week's episode: 'King of Ashes,' by S.A. Cosby 'The Director,' by Daniel Kehlmann 'A Marriage at Sea,' by Sophie Elmhirst 'Careless People,' by Sarah Wynn-Williams 'Isola,' by Allegra Goodman 'The Catch,' by Yrsa Daley-Ward 'Daughters of the Bamboo Grove,' by Barbara Demick 'The Sisters,' by Jonas Hassen Khemiri 'The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,' by Stephen Graham Jones 'Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin,' by Sue Prideaux 'Raising Hare,' by Chloe Dalton 'To Smithereens,' by Rosalyn Drexler 'The Fate of the Day,' by Rick Atkinson 'Flesh,' by David Szalay 'Things in Nature Merely Grow,' by Yiyun Li 'These Summer Storms,' by Sarah MacLean We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@
Geek Girl Authority
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
hannah whitten Archives
Categories Select Category Games GGA Columns Movies Stuff We Like The Daily Bugle TV & Streaming Books Stuff We Like TV & Streaming It's a new year, and with it comes plenty of new novels. Click through to check out 10 of our most anticipated book sequels of 2025! Summer is ending soon, and spooky season is almost here! Now's the time to prepare your shelf and plan to ... Book Review: For the Wolf by Aysel Atamdede Too often, stories that attempt to retell or rehash fairy tales fall into ...
New York Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Master of Surrealist Fiction and a Bard for Anxious Times
Roving Eye is the Book Review's essay series on international writers of the past whose works warrant a fresh look, often in light of reissued, updated or newly translated editions of their books. The Italian writer Dino Buzzati (1906-72) sneaked up on me. I like to think of myself as a completist when it comes to the 20th century's international masters of fantastical and surrealist literature, from Julio Cortázar to Kobo Abe to Anna Kavan, yet despite the acclaim from his publishers and translators, the endorsements from Borges and J.M. Coetzee, and a name that makes him sound like a glam-rock guitar hero, I'd missed Buzzati until now. (Completists rarely get there.) I may not be alone in this. American literary culture often seems to make room for precisely one famous writer in a given language at a time — say, Luigi Pirandello, Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco and Elena Ferrante, among Italians — while others, prominent in their native countries, never find a turn in the spotlight. So much, of course, depends on publishing circumstance. Buzzati hasn't been without advocates in the English language. His 1940 novel 'Il Deserto dei Tartari,' translated into English by Stuart C. Hood and published as 'The Tartar Steppe,' was reviewed in major publications and has remained in print in Britain. In the 1980s North Point Press presented handsome collections of his stories, selected and translated by Lawrence Venuti. Still, until recently, the view of Buzzati in English was a fragmented, almost teasing one. The U.S. publication of Buzzati's work is now in the deft hands of New York Review Books, which has corralled five titles for its Classics series. These include three novels — 'The Singularity' (1960), 'A Love Affair' (1963) and 'The Tartar Steppe,' which was recently retranslated under the title 'The Stronghold' — as well as 'Poem Strip' (1969), a graphic novel that will be reissued in the fall. Earlier this year, Venuti continued his curation of Buzzati's short fiction with THE BEWITCHED BOURGEOIS: Fifty Stories (NYRB Classics, 328 pp., paperback, $19.95), a chronological survey culled from the hundreds of stories published in the author's lifetime. Our view of him may still be partial: Buzzati's life's work includes children's books, poetry, travel writing and journalism, and his jazzy drawings provide cover art for all five NYRB volumes. But these books form an extraordinary opportunity for Anglophone readers to take a leap into his unusual mind and have a look around. Start with 'The Stronghold.' That's a recommendation. The story of an Italian Army officer who has been assigned to a mysterious mountain fortress at which nothing, precisely, ever occurs, Buzzati's third novel is a book at once consummate — an unrepeatable performance — and typical of the tone and temper, the anxious, distractible mournfulness, of all of Buzzati's subsequent work. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
6 New Books We Love This Week
Every week, critics and editors at The New York Times Book Review pick the most interesting and notable new releases, from literary fiction and serious nonfiction to thrillers, romance novels, mysteries and everything in between. You can save the books you're most excited to read on a personal reading list, and find even more recommendations from our book experts. TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE A Marriage at Sea In 1972, a young British couple decided to ditch their jobs, sell their house and sail the world. All went well until their boat was capsized by a breaching whale, at which point their story became one not merely of survival but also of a relationship placed under the greatest imaginable pressure. Elmhirst's account is as much a meditation on intimacy as a remarkable adventure. Read our review. FAMILY DRAMA Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
