Table of contents for Vol. 118, No. 4, 10/15/21 in Booklist

ADULT NONFICTION Journalism & Publishing Please Scream inside Your Heart: Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year That Wouldn’t End. By Dave Pell. Nov. 2021. 368p. Hachette Go, $28 (9780306847394). 071.309052. Many who lived through the year 2020 hoped it was all a nightmare. However, as the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2021, and the wicked taste of a bad year failed to evaporate with the glass of champagne, the reality sunk in. Pell, publisher of the news-focused NextDraft newsletter, chronicles the endless year from start to finish. He hails from a family where his main sources of conversation were television and the news; he is, by his own admission, a news junkie. 2020 provided news at a breakneck pace, from the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, to…

RA Corner RA Corner highlights professional reading of particular interest to readers’-advisory librarians. The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror. 3rd ed. By Becky Siegel Spratford. 2021. 200p. illus. ALA Editions, $64.99 (9780838948767). 026.80883. “Horror fans aren’t monsters, they just like to read about them.” Readers’ advisers need not fear the horror-reading patron with the third edition of librarian, columnist, and Booklist reviewer Spratford’s eminently practical guide to the genre at hand. The book begins with a definition of horror and its appeal; it isn’t just about gore, it’s about the emotions the story elicits, making tone a vital appeal element. Spratford then gives a brief history and an assessment of the current state of the genre, including major authors every readers’ adviser should know. She then offers some pointers on…

Spotlight Top 10 Art Books Biographies and memoirs occupy many of the slots on the list of the best art books reviewed in Booklist over the past 12 months, including portraits of queer artists and artists of color confronting harsh discrimination; here, too, is a deep history of music and a chronicle of a reality-TV franchise. —Donna Seaman Art Is a Tyrant: The Unconventional Life of Rosa Bonheur. By Catherine Hewitt. 2021. Icon, $39.95 (9781785786211). Rosa Bonheur called it a tyrant, but art was also a liberator for this gender rebel who became the most famous woman artist in nineteenth-century France, celebrated for her powerful and anatomically precise animal portraits. Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend. By Jackie Kay. 2021. Vintage, $16.95 (9780593314272). Black lesbian Scottish poet…

GRAPHIC NOVELS Adult Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey. By Fabien Toulmé. Art by the author. Tr. by Hannah Chute. Nov. 2021. 272p. Pennsylvania State Univ./Graphic Mundi, $29.95 (9781637790007). 741.5. French graphic creator Toulme transforms “the words that were entrusted” to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with Toulme’s personal attempt to humanize the horrific immigration statistics, among which “Syrians make up the vast majority of the refugees trying to get to Europe.” A journalist friend led Toulme to Hakim. Within the first 10 pages, readers know that Hakim has been living in Aix-en-Provence since 2015, but his labyrinthine path from homeland to…

YOUTH FICTION Older Readers The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell. By Kate Brauning. Nov. 2021. 368p. Page Street, $17.99 (9781645673125). Gr. 9–12. After her father leaves them, Dinah struggles to help her family survive on their farm in the Ozarks. Additionally, she must fight off the land baron Gabriel Gates from foreclosing on her family’s farm, just as he’s done to so many other homes and farms in her county. Dinah’s world changes, however, when her mother’s body is found—with Gabriel standing over it. As she escapes into the mountains, fleeing Gabriel and his henchmen, Dinah becomes hell-bent on revenge. Alone and unprepared for living in the wild, she meets Johnny, another outcast, who shelters her and introduces her to his bootlegger friends. Together, they all attempt to take back their…

AUDIO Adult Audio Beautiful World, Where Are You. By Sally Rooney. Read by Aoife McMahon. 2021. 10hrs. Macmillan Audio, DD, $31.04 (9781250818041). Modern relationships are complicated. Simon and Eileen have been friends since childhood; Alice and Eileen became friends in college. All three are beautiful, well-educated, and devoted to one another. But when Alice becomes overwhelmed by her success as an author and moves to a solitary house on the Irish coast, they are suddenly apart. She hooks up with Felix, a local worker with no interest in literature, and she is by turns angered and intrigued by him. Simon and Eileen can’t seem to decide if they are friends or lovers; Alice and Felix are physically drawn to each other but live in different worlds; Eileen and Alice’s friendship,…

Classics Corner Classics Corner highlights new recordings of classic titles. Women of Will: The Performance. By Tina Packer and Nigel Gore. Read by the authors. 2021. 8hr. Alison Larkin Presents, DD, $34.95 (9781667907994). Shakespeare fans will delight in this thoughtful and upbeat exploration of his female characters, but even those less-enthusiastic listeners will find something to love in this engaging audio performance. Shakespearean actor Tina Packer takes listeners on a chronological journey through Shakespeare’s canon, examining the evolution of his female characters from sexist cliches into whole people with power, agency, and complex psychologies. She’s joined by fellow actor Nigel Gore, and the two of them perform memorable scenes from each play. These performances are a treat all on their own; the skill both actors bring to the work is…

Spotlight on the Arts New Arts on Audio Adult The Last Mona Lisa. By Jonathan Santlofer. Read by Edoardo Ballerini. 2021. 9.5hr. Brilliance, DD, $37.99 (9781713611790). Romance, renaissance, and revenge set the stage for this story of passion, mystery, and espionage. In 1911, a desperate, grief-stricken Louvre employee plots to steal the most famous painting of all time. The thief’s great grandson, a tenure-seeking art history professor; an Interpol detective; and an obsessed art collector go to great lengths to locate a missing journal that chronicles the whereabouts of the elusive Mona Lisa. A romantic relationship threatens to derail the solution to the fake vs. original riddle. Ballerini’s smooth voice and lyrical use of linguistics transport the listener to Italy and France as he portrays the suspenseful search to uncover…

ADULT FICTION General Fiction Admit This to No One. By Leslie Pietrzyk. Nov. 2021. 256p. Unnamed, paper, $18 (9781951213411). Pietrzyk returns to the short story after the novel Silver Girl (2018) and the collection This Angel on My Chest (2015), winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Here she tells twisted tales of Washington, DC’s elite. Pietrzyk doesn’t shy away from any subject, no matter how sensitive, using her 14 loosely connected stories and their characters to tackle racism, abortion, and sexual assault. From the rebellious teenage daughter of the Speaker of the House, to the staff member who wants to sleep with her boss to the college friends reconnecting at a hockey game, all Pietrzyk’s characters have defined personalities and motivations that keep the pages turning. Her witty style…

YOUTH NONFICTION Older Readers Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today (Adapted for Young Adults). Ed. by Alice Wong. Oct. 2021. 240p. Delacorte, $17.99 (9780593381670). Gr. 8–11. 305.9. This uplifting anthology, adapted from editor Wong’s adult title, features writings from 17 disabled individuals on a variety of subjects in four sections: Being, Becoming, Doing, and Connecting. A standout in the Being section recounts the injustice Jeremy Woody, who is deaf, experienced when denied sign-language interpreters in prison. In the Becoming section, disabled individuals discuss topics like the erasure of disabled people in society or the importance of actor Selma Blair, who was diagnosed with MS, appearing on the red carpet with a cane. Essays in Doing feature people with disabilities who have accomplished great things that impact society at large,…

Spotlight Top 10 Arts Books for Youth Singing, dancing, photography, fashion—these are just a few of the powerful tools of expression in this year’s best books on the arts, reviewed in Booklist between October 15, 2020, and October 1, 2021. —Julia Smith A Boy Named Isamu: A Story of Isamu Noguchi. By James Yang. Illus. by the author. 2021. Viking, $17.99 (9780593203446). K–Gr. 2. In this tender, imagined biography of the young Japanese American artist, spare text and illustrations reflect Isamu Noguchi’s modernist sculpture and quiet, perceptive nature. In One Ear and out the Other: Antonia Brico and Her Amazingly Musical Life. By Diane Worthey. Illus. by Morgana Wallace. 2020. Penny Candy, $16.95 (9781734225914). Gr. 3–6. Musician Antonia Brico was ahead of her time, a woman whose dreams of conducting…

Booklist Backlist Japanese Graphic Horror by Terry Hong I can’t watch scary movies, but I love graphic horror on the page. And really, fearmongering via Japanese manga—both series and stand-alones—promises some of the most affecting fright-fests. As we approach that most haunting time of the year, here’s some chilling company. Death Note. By Tsugumi Ohba. Art by Takeshi Obata. Tr. by Tetsuichiro Miyaki. 2005–11. Viz Media. (12 vols.). The omnipotent Death Note bestows genius high-school student Light Yagami the power to control death. Initially, he just rids the world of the most heinous criminals. But that’s not enough, especially as his power grows with the assistance of Ryuk, the Death Note’s Shinigami (“death god”). Murder rates rocket, but Light’s ultimate utopian vision means he won’t let anyone or anything stand…