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‘The Brothers’

By masha gessen reviewed by janet napolitano.

Photographs from Reuters courtesy of Suleimanova family

Tamerlan, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as children.

Masha Gessen’s new book explores why the Tsarnaev brothers shifted from living aimless lives to orchestrating the Boston Marathon bombing.

Jon Ronson: By the Book

The author, most recently, of “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” used to find stories about children in peril unbearable.

• By the Book: Archive

‘The Harder They Come’

By t. c. boyle reviewed by dana spiotta.

In T. C. Boyle’s latest novel, violence and far-right sensibilities intersect, with devastating consequences.

• T. C. Boyle: By the Book

‘Prudence’

By david treuer reviewed by stacey d’erasmo.

An accidental killing sets off a tide of regret in David Treuer’s novel.

‘The Children’s Crusade’

By ann packer reviewed by katie kitamura.

A man upends the lives of his siblings when he returns to their childhood home.

‘The Sellout’

By paul beatty reviewed by kevin young.

In Paul Beatty’s comic novel, a young man’s life unspools on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

• Paul Beatty on Finding Humor in Issues of Race

‘The Poser’

By jacob rubin reviewed by kevin brockmeier.

A man’s gift for impersonation leads to a highly public life in this debut novel.

‘Bad Faith’

By paul a. offit reviewed by abraham verghese.

What should happen when parents, acting on religious beliefs, reject medical care for their offspring?

‘Better Than Before’

By gretchen rubin reviewed by hanna rosin.

Gretchen Rubin looks at how routines structure and govern our lives.

‘Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed’

Edited by meghan daum reviewed by kate bolick.

Reflections on choosing not to become a parent.

‘Ravensbrück’

By sarah helm reviewed by walter reich.

A “biography” of the only concentration camp built primarily to hold female prisoners.

Children's Books

From "Beastly Verse."

JooHee Yoon’s ‘Beastly Verse,’ and More

By daisy fried.

Words and illustrations enrich each other in three books of verse for children.

‘Nightbird’

By alice hoffman reviewed by leigh bardugo.

In Alice Hoffman’s novel, a friendship forms when two girls investigate a witch’s curse.

Children’s Books

Bookshelf: Creepy-Crawlies

By maria russo.

New picture books include “The Grasshopper and the Ants” and “We Dig Worms!”

‘The Island of Dr. Libris’ and ‘Finding Serendipity’

By m. t. anderson.

In two cheerful books for middle-grade readers, kids meet up with the inhabitants of their favorite novels.

‘The Alex Crow’

By andrew smith reviewed by jason reynolds.

A strange summer camp is the scene for an exposé of male-dominated society in this young adult novel.

E-mail the Book Review

Books f.a.q., print & e-books.

• Trade Fiction
• Mass-Market Fiction
• All the lists »

The Shortlist

Literary echoes, by susann cokal.

New novels imagine the lives of literary characters, including Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Is There Anything One Should Feel Ashamed of Reading?

By james parker and charles mcgrath.

James Parker and Charles McGrath discuss whether any books should provoke shame in readers.

• Bookends: Archive | Columnists

Applied Reading

Through a Touch-Screen Looking Glass

By j. d. biersdorfer.

App designers are taking a turn at the reboot game with some of literature’s most beloved characters.

British Invasion

By john williams.

Adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s two Man Booker Prize-winning novels about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII come to stage and screen in the United States.

Letters: How Does That Make You Feel?

Readers respond to a recent review of “Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry” and more.

Inside The New York Times Book Review Podcast

This week, Masha Gessen discusses “The Brothers”; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; Gretchen Rubin talks about “Better Than Before”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.

Book Review Features

Inside the List

By gregory cowles.

Sara Gruen, whose novel “At the Water’s Edge” is No. 6 on the hardcover fiction, recently described the office above her garage as a “bordello circus tent.”

Editors’ Choice

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Paperback Row

By ihsan taylor.

Paperback books of particular interest.

Rabbits Redux

In these new picture books, some bunnies are sweet, some are spirited, and some are just silly.

The New York Times Book Review: Back Issues

Complete contents of the Book Review since 1997.

Book Review Podcast: Masha Gessen’s ‘The Brothers’

April 10, 2015

Taraji P. Henson of ‘Empire’ to Publish a Memoir

Atticus lish wins pen/faulkner prize.

April 7, 2015

More Book News in ArtsBeat »

The 10 Best Books of 2014

100 notable books of 2014, sunday book review: notable children’s books of 2014, crime columns, children’s books spring special section, home delivery, subscribe to the book review, books update.

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Times Topics: Featured Authors

Inside the Ordinary

Inside the Ordinary | Reviews

NYT Sunday Book Reviews

The New York Times Sunday Book Review section appears in the weekend edition of the “paper.”  It’s the literary high point of some weekends;  most reviewers are quite capable authors themselves.  At times they are able to focus their talent in ways that crystallize some aspects of the books they review.  While not necessarily better than the books themselves, the reviews are bite-size morsels that the busy (or lazy) can readily digest.

• Liesl Schillinger on Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table

David Gates on Janet Frame’s Towards Another Summer

Tom mccarthy on clancy martin’s how to sell, tom barbash on howard jacobson’s the act of love.

• Chris Hedges on Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre and Frederic Lemercier’s (tr. by Alexis Siegel) The Photographer

Laura Miller on Walter Kirn’s Lost in the Meritocracy

Jess row on anne michael’s winter vault, jack pendarvis on frederick barthelme’s waveland.

• Robert Sullivan on Eric Sanderson’s Mannahatta

David Orr on Frederick Seidel’s Poems 1959-2009

******************************

Liesl Schillinger on Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table ( 14 October 2011 )

“Not all the mysteries Ondaatje explores in his account of Mynah’s sea passage — revisited in adulthood from the remove of decades and from another continent — have clear resolutions, nor do they need them. Uncertainty, Ondaatje shows, is the unavoidable human condition, the gel that changes the light on the lens, altering but not spoiling the image. . . ”

“. . it looks ahead to Mary Gaitskill’s sense of a vivid inner ferocity: ‘When Grace studied Philip’s eyes she could feel at the back of her mind the movement of sliding door opening to let out small furry evil-smelling animals with sharp claws and teeth.'”

“. . . she’s overwhelmed by the metastasizing of ordinary comportment.”

“At one point Martin deploys the rhetoric of full-blown Heidegerian phenomenology, having an avuncular figure say to Bobby: “Time, Grandson. . . . A watch puts you in the middle of the stuff of ordinary being.” Quentin’s section of “The Sound and the Fury,” perhaps the greatest of all American novels (or, for that matter, of all novels), begins with an almost identical passage. But there’s a vital difference: reading Faulkner, I’m struck with the exhilarating awareness that immense questions are working themselves out right before my eyes; reading Martin, it’s all too evident that commonplaces, worked out already and elsewhere, are being drafted in, or soldered on, to lend philosophical gravitas to what is, at base, a quite straight-up, noirish moral potboiler.”

“The novel succeeds because, for all his insanity, ­Felix knows both too much and not enough about his own and Marisa’s emotions.”

Chris Hedges on Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre and Frederic Lemercier’s (tr. by Alexis Siegel) The Photographer “All narratives of war told through the lens of the combatants cry with them the seduction of violence. But once you cross to the other side, to stand in fear with the helpless and the weak, you confront the moral depravity of industrial slaughter and the scourge that is war itself . . . The disparity between what we are told or what we believe about war and war itself is so vast that those who come back, like Lefevre, are often rendered speechless . . . How do you explain that the very proposition of war as an instrument of virtue is absurd?”

“Like many memoirs [it] combines penetrating shrewdness with remarkable blind spots. . . . He has the satirist’s cruel knack for conjuring and dispatching an individual in a single line, like the ‘computer whiz’ described as having ‘all the characteristics of a bad stutterer without the stutter itself.’ . . . [The memoir] betrays the roots of this skill in a wobbly notion of the self as a void encased in a posture.”

“Their [Anne Michaels and Michael Ondaatje] fiction might be described as an attempt to bring together the practice of the lyric poem — density of language, intense sensory observation, a skilled suspension of time — with the novelist’s brick-by-brick construction of drama in time, and, more important, in history. [They] . . . are not novelists of contemporary life but archivists and re-enactors who use poetic immediacy to make the past present — not as an orderly narrative but as a series of fragments or snapshots linked by a kind of dream logic, a hallucination that is neither entirely past nor present. . . Occasionally, in the midst of all this careful composition, these lovingly burnished surfaces, the howl of a very different kind of novel comes through. . . It shatters its own dreamlike stillness.”

“A book-length fascination and loathing culminates in Vaughn’s rapt litany of all the television he could spend the rest of his life watching in bed: ‘news and sports and those incredible game shows and ‘Lost,’ which seems to have a lot of sex in it, and HGTV, all those house-buying shows, . . . a blown-up building one night and a mother killing her children the next.’  To which Greta, the unlikely voice of reason and the heart of this bittersweet, conciliatory comedy says, ‘Uh, no.'”

Robert Sullivan on Eric W. Sanderson’s Mannahatta

The fact-intense charts, maps and tables offered in abundance here are fascinating, and even kind of sexy. And at the very middle of the book, the two-page spread of Mannahatta in all its primevil glory — the visual denouement of a decade’s research — feels a little like a centerfold.

“. . . he’s an exhilarating and unsettling writer who is very good at saying things that can seem rather bad. When a Seidel poem begins, ‘ The most beautiful power in the world has buttocks ,’ it’s hard to know whether to applaud or shake your head.”  . . . ‘This combination of barbarity and grace is one of Seidel’s most remarkable technical achievements; he’s like a violinist who pauses from bowing expertly through Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 to smash his instrument against the wall. [Quoting Siedel’s The Cosmos Trilogy] :

It is time to lose your life, even if it isn’t over. It is time to say goodbye and try to die. It is October .

Starwhisperer

• Many Voices of Marian McPartland Now Silenced A musical voice can refer to a singer like Tony Bennett. Or it can refer to a voice in an orchestra of voices -- like Arturo Sandoval's trumpet. In the case of the late Marian McPartland, several voices that have sung together in perfect harmony have been silenced.  It is a big loss in our […]
• Nadeem Aslam: "The Opposite of War is Not Peace" The Blind Man's Garden The full quotation from Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden (@AAKnopf):  "The opposite of war is not peace but civilization, and civilization is purchased with violence and cold-blooded murder. With war." The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviewer judges the writing to be "visceral but exquisite, emotionally affecting yet unsentimental." An excerpt: "Rohan […]
• Ex-Situ: The Violin Promo for "The Violin" by Anna Clyne and Josh Dorman As part of New York City's River to River Festival, the Original Music Workshop presented "The Violin." The Original Music Workshop describes such events as those that: . . .take place in unexpected spaces, away from the Williamsburg site where OMW is constructing its heralded […]
• Violinist as Orchestra Symbol The 10 June 2013 issue of the New Yorker featured a photograph by Gabriele Stabile of musician Erykah Badu and a violinist. In the periodical's "Goings on About Town," the violinist is unnamed, anonymous, but represents the Brooklyn Philharmonic with whom Badu was to play later in the month.
• Very Short Fiction as Poetry? So suggests the New Yorker's James Wood in a review (pay wall) of Jamie Quatro’s book of short stories (New Yorker 3/11/13). He writes: Short fiction is closer to poetry than to the novel, and very short fiction is even closer. Quatro has a poet’s compound eye for small forms, passing phrases, useful repetitions, fleeting images. […]

Image Credit

Poetryandscience.com.

• Fearful Asymmetry: Melancholies of Knowledge Melancholies of Knowledge is a collection that brings together a snapshot of perspectives near the end of the last century on the role of "literature in the age of science." The post Fearful Asymmetry: Melancholies of Knowledge appeared first on Poetry and Science.
• Chapter IX: The Functions and Future of Poetry A chapter by FSC Northrop published in 1947 sensed a moral imperative for poetry to embrace the reality uncovered by science. The post Chapter IX: The Functions and Future of Poetry appeared first on Poetry and Science.
• The Subjugated Meaning of “Diversity” Jonathan Cole offers a more powerful sense of "diversity" in university education - and what should be done about it. Interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC 2016-01 The post The Subjugated Meaning of “Diversity” appeared first on Poetry and Science.
• Glenmorangie and the New Makers Glenmorangie campaign in 2016-04: An exciting new generation of makers is merging creative ambition with the disciplined rationale of hard science. The post Glenmorangie and the New Makers appeared first on Poetry and Science.
• Science Gallery International SNIP from the Science Gallery International portal: Science Gallery International is a non-profit company headquartered in Dublin and charged with supporting the development of the Global Science Gallery Network. Our misison […] The post Science Gallery International appeared first on Poetry and Science.

Rachel Poser Is Joining The Times as Sunday Review Editor

Rachel Poser, the deputy editor of Harper’s Magazine, is joining The Times as Sunday Review editor on July 12. Read more in this note from Meeta Agrawal.

I’m excited to announce that Rachel Poser will be our new Sunday Review editor.

The Sunday Review has long been the home of some of Times Opinion’s most ambitious journalism. Rachel will bring her sharp editorial instincts to the section, working closely with the design team to breathe new life into our Sunday section. She will commission and edit long-form pieces and curate the section, drawing from and working alongside the story editors, all with an eye to producing the weekly destination for ideas journalism.

Before coming to the Times, Rachel was the deputy editor of Harper’s Magazine, where she edited reported features, investigations, essays and memoirs. She has been responsible for some of the most-read and celebrated stories in the magazine’s recent history. Over the past year, she has edited a feature about five days in a TikTok collab house , essays about the roles of art and history in our politics, and an unnerving report about the psychological risks of meditation , among many others. Rachel’s own writing has appeared in Harper’s, Mother Jones, The New York Times Book Review and elsewhere. Her profile of classicist Dan-el Padilla Peralta for The New York Times Magazine made waves well beyond the walls of academia.

As we were getting to know Rachel, a former colleague shared, “she is one of the sharpest editors I’ve ever worked with; I remember one issue where she absolutely saved an almost irredeemable draft, and is equally comfortable wielding a red pen on big names and no names.”

Rachel is a Brooklyn native. She holds degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Harvard.

Rachel will start with us on July 12. Please join me in welcoming her to the team.

Explore Further

Mission and values, introducing opinion’s contributing writers and design changes.

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Boomers Daily

The New York Times Book Review- Sunday May 7, 2023

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 7, 2023

Face to Face With Culture’s ‘Monsters’

Claire Dederer’s deft and searching book surfaces a “fan’s dilemma” over such figures as Vladimir Nabokov, Woody Allen, Willa Cather and Roman Polanski.

By  Alexandra Jacobs

Expanding on a popular essay published in  The Paris Review  a month after the exposure of  Harvey Weinstein ’s sexual predation, “Monsters” sustains an essayistic, sometimes aphoristic tone throughout 250-odd pages.

Dark Shadows, Dark Times

Welcome to three novels set in locales where life is exceedingly difficult.

By Alida Becker

AT THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF by Tara Ison

The title comes   from a French expression for twilight. Sure enough, her novel sends us to the dusk that borders the familiar and the wild, the known and the unknown. It’s where our beliefs and suspicions can cast dark shadows over our lives. And, of course, the lives of others.

One Man’s Foray Into the Heartland of the Far Right

Alarmed by the country’s political divisions, Jeff Sharlet embarked on an anguished quest to understand the rise of antidemocratic extremism. In “The Undertow,” he documents his findings.

By Joseph O’Neill

THE UNDERTOW: Scenes From a Slow Civil War , by Jeff Sharlet

The premise of “The Undertow,” Jeff Sharlet’s anguished new book of reportage, is that the United States is “coming apart.” The disintegration is political. It involves the rise of the autocratically inclined Donald Trump; the attempt by members of the Republican Party to overthrow the election of Joe Biden in January 2021; and, during the Biden presidency, the overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v Wade.

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Todd Selby

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Skateboarders, creative directors, chefs and hip designers are all captivating subjects for photographer Todd Selby, who has traveled the world for more than 20 years, capturing creatives at home for his blog, the Selby .

“I have always been interested in outside-the-box people who live in vibrantly colorful homes,” Selby says. “When I was growing up in Orange County during the 1980s, the most interesting person in my world was a classmate who used to draw Garfield at lunch every day. He’d ask me, ‘What do you want Garfield to do?’ To me, he was a hero in a cliquish school.”

After he became a father, Selby’s interest shifted to how other parents managed their chaotic domestic life. His latest book, “The Selby Comes Home: An Interior Design Book for Creative Families” (Abrams, $65), is a testament to this curiosity. It features a diverse array of families — 41 — from Echo Park to Tokyo. Among them are a family of four residing in a one-bedroom apartment in Kawasaki City and a family of five tending to ducks, chickens, a dog and donkeys on a 20-acre wilderness retreat outside of Portland.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Selby says traveling the world has given him an appreciation for Los Angeles. “L.A. is so spread out, and there are so many cities and they are all so different,” he says. “It’s an interesting place for a person who likes to explore.”

Selby travels less than he used to so that he can be at home with his two children, 6 and 8. Below, he details his ideal Sunday itinerary in which, like his subjects, he juggles family and home life, interspersed with some time for himself.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

5:45 a.m.: Online shopping under the covers

My luxury is waking up really early and hiding under the covers to do some silent online shopping and then going back to sleep. I’ll read my buddy Laurel Pantin’s Earl Earl newsletter and buy the silky men’s scarf she recommended from Etsy. Or I’ll log on to Wayfair and snag a two-seat camping chair. I am a camping chair aficionado. I have five of them just for me, for different occasions and backups. Full disclosure: I have directed a bunch of Kelly Clarkson for Wayfair commercials, but I am a big-time fan of the brand and camping chairs!

6:15 a.m: Go back to sleep

After a little more sleep, I’ll wake up at 7 a.m. and go downstairs for coffee and breakfast with my wife, Danielle, and our kids. I make coffee the night before in my beloved Chemex with Groundworks beans. I always buy 5-pound bags of their Black Magic Espresso as I am afraid I will run out, which I have never done. Then, in the morning, I pour the room-temperature coffee over ice and add some extra creamy Califia Farms oat milk.

Best coffee city in the world? Los Angeles

Find the best cafes, freshest brews and your favorite beans in the coffee-shop capital of the world.

Feb. 23, 2023

7:15 a.m. Test jewelry

My wife usually gifts me a piece of jewelry to test for her jewelry line, Sherman Field . Today, it will probably be a 25-inch Double Chain Medium so I can rock two chains like one of my top musical influences, 2 Chainz. I’m an official wear tester, meaning you wear a sample and ensure it functions.

7:45 a.m. Game of Life with the kids

I’ll continue the Game of Life with my kids at our dining table. The classic board game chooses your career path and loans from the bank. The more babies you get, the more money you get, which is confusing.

8:30 a.m.: Do a back workout for photographers

After Life, I’ll do my photographers back workout developed by Jason Whitman at Positive Physical Therapy . One of the exercises involves lying on a psoas ball. It’s like a big puffy yet firm ball on your stomach, and somehow, it makes your back feel amazing.

9 a.m.: Bike ride with the Cobrasnake

I’ll do a quick bike ride with local photography celebrity Mark Hunter, a.k.a the Cobrasnake . We are both “old school bloggers” and like riding our bikes down Ocean Avenue. I have a beach cruiser with a coconut drink holder. We will pass 21st Place and 21st Street in Santa Monica on our bike ride. I always wonder why there is both a 21st Street and a 21st Place.

Travel & Experiences

9 biking groups to cruise (or speed) through L.A. with

From LGBTQ+ cycling groups to a club that rides to dinner, there’s a seat for everyone.

Sept. 27, 2022

11:15 a.m.: Order the secret sandwich at Lady & Larder

Then we’ll stop by Lady & Larder for a Scribe rosé pinot noir, colorful candles and crackers. We like to support local small businesses. They are famous for their cheese boards. Sometimes, I may even order a secret sandwich. Why is it a secret? I have no idea — that’s just what they call it. But who doesn’t like a tasty secret?

11:45 a.m.: Piggies and play at the Mar Vista farmers’ market

Around noon, the whole family will head to the Mar Vista farmers’ market to buy our fruits and veggies for the week and play with Steve’s Machines . He has kid-operated cranes and wild robots. We usually buy some “piggies” (as my daughter calls them) — pig-shaped red bean dumplings.

How to shop at farmers markets without getting overwhelmed

Carts, cash, recycled yogurt containers and making friends with vendors are just some of the ways pro shoppers conquer Los Angeles farmers markets.

Nov. 22, 2022

1 p.m.: Hit the birthday party circuit

We usually end up at one or two kids’ birthday parties during the weekend. The kids often head straight in to pound as many treats and fruity beverages as quickly as possible. I will check out the food options; usually, it’s Fresh Brothers Pizza cut up into small squares. I will eye the pizza, think about skipping it, and then eat it.

2 p.m.: Paint in the art studio

For a long time, the kids were totally uninterested in my art studio, which is a special place. At one point, I told them they weren’t allowed to go into my art studio, and the next day, they were all about my art studio. They love doing watercolors with me. I am trying to get them to do the “paint by numbers” in my new book, but they haven’t been interested. We usually paint kitties, unicorns or other creatures with “cutie eyes.”

3 p.m. Pick up dinner at the Tehran Market

We like to go to the Tehran Market , a great Persian grocery store in Santa Monica, to pick up dinner and some groceries. On Sundays, they have people out back grilling in the parking lot. You place your order, and then you can shop it up inside. I usually load up on labneh while I wait for my huge grilled salmon and vegetable plate.

4 p.m.: Lifeguard

I’ll sit in one of my camping chairs and lifeguard while the kids swim.

5 p.m.: Cook dinner together as a family

My youngest daughter is a hard-core sushi lover, and she rolls it herself with fish we buy at Eataly and Santa Monica Seafood — Eataly has great salmon eggs. My younger daughter will hand-roll some salmon egg sushi, and my older daughter will help make some mac and cheese. Both kids help make kale chips for the whole family. Then our family and some friends will eat our Tehran Market takeout.

7 p.m.: Read library books

We read to our kids with books from the library. I am a huge Los Angeles and Santa Monica library system fan. You can request any book you want, and they ship it to your local library for pickup. Even DVDs. Our family currently has 51 titles out! I stop by a library every week, drop off books and pick up new ones. That way, the books are always fresh for the kids, and we can follow their interests daily. Currently, we love reading the Isadora Moon series and the Real Pigeons series . Isadora Moon is about a kid that’s half fairy and half vampire.

8 little-known things you can check out from L.A. libraries (that aren’t books)

Get hooked up with power sanders, telescopes and free passes to the zoo. All you need is a library card.

Aug. 17, 2022

8 p.m.: Bloons and bath

After the kids are asleep I will play a bit of Bloons TD 6 — a video game where little monkeys throw darts at balloons — on my iPad. It captivates me. I don’t know why. Then it’s time for a Lush bath bomb and a soak.

9 p.m. Books and Zs

Currently, I am loving “ The Lost City of Z .” It was a rumored city in the Amazon rainforest, and all these people went to find it, and they didn’t come back. I’m on the third round of people who don’t come back. I’ve been to the Amazon with my dad, and we went for three days, but we didn’t see any pink river dolphins. I feel fortunate that I didn’t disappear.

More to Read

How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Michaela Jaé Rodriguez

May 10, 2024

How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Laufey

April 26, 2024

How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Tia Mowry

April 12, 2024

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Lisa Boone is a features writer for the Los Angeles Times. Since 2003, she has covered home design, gardening, parenting, houseplants, even youth sports. She is a native of Los Angeles.

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