Table of contents for Vol. 119, No. 4, 10/15/22 in Booklist

Journalism & Publishing The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters. By Joanna Gaines. Nov. 2022. 256p. Harper Select, $31.99 (9781400333875). 070. This book is “an invitation to a kind of life where you know how to hold what you believe—about yourself and the quiet worlds of the people you pass—with gracious and open hands,” writes Gaines, a designer, best-selling author, and media mogul behind Magnolia, the company she founded with her husband, Chip. Similar pronouncements fill its pages, on topics like meeting fear, finding empathy, being vulnerable, and reimagining your story. Sharing an image of herself journaling this book into existence in her family’s cozy laundry room, Gaines invites readers, like she said she would, to find a similar space for themselves and offers some of her…

Painting, music, film, and drag performances are all explored from fresh, dynamic, and social-justice-oriented perspectives in the most exceptional arts books reviewed in Booklist from October 15, 2021, to October 1, 2022. —Donna Seaman Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time. By Teju Cole. 2021. Univ. of Chicago, $22.50 (9780226641355). In his astute essays, writer and photographer Cole aligns art with the world’s tragedies as he considers Caravaggio, Kerry James Marshall, and Blackness in Africa and America. Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century. By Dana Stevens. 2022. Atria, $28 (9781501134197). Stevens insightfully aligns ingenious and daring Buster Keaton’s kinetic cinematic artistry with the velocity of innovation and change that propelled the twentieth century. Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in…

Adult Babel; or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators’ Revolution. By R.F. Kuang. Read by Chris Lew Kum Hoi and Billie Fulford-Brown. 2022. 21.75hr. HarperAudio, DD (9780063021457). Firmly rooted in colonial history, Kuang’s thought-provoking alternative history provides biting commentary on contemporary realities. Words have power, and the supremacy of the Victorian British Empire is insured by magic, requiring access to silver magic and the translators of Oxford University. A young Macau orphan dubbed Robin Swift holds the key to expanding Britain’s pre-eminence over China. Kum Hoi narrates Robin’s emotional journey from a terrified childhood, an aloof guardianship, his joyous first Oxford friendships, and his eventual awakening to broader socio-political realities. The insidious purpose of Babel forces Robin and his classmates to balance security against losing…

That summer I was feeling particularly restless. I had been out of college a few years. It was 1980 and I was on my third job in Columbus, Ohio. It seemed as if I was unable to fasten myself to a career trajectory. I was working at the Heritage House, a Jewish cultural center. One of the promises I had made to myself was that upon receiving my paycheck every other week, I’d buy myself a hardback book. Even though I majored in urban planning in college, the literature courses I took made me giddy. Professor Marian Musgrave had told us stories about writers in New York City, writers in Paris! So there I was, gliding into the SBX bookstore on N. High Street in Columbus, scanning the shelves and…

Adult All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson. By Charles Johnson. Art by the author. Oct. 2022. 280p. New York Review, $34.95 (9781681376738). 741.5. Prodigious National Book Award–winning, 1998 MacArthur “Genius” Johnson is now in his 70s, having been repeatedly lauded in multiple genres. Perhaps not as well known is that Johnson began his literary career as a cartoonist (in high school!)—and never stopped drawing, even as he was winning acclaim as a novelist, essayist, scholar, screenwriter, and more. This landmark compilation gathers decades of his graphic work, including three pivotal, now-rare books: 1970’s Black Humor (“my imagination felt free, as if its own Juneteenth had arrived”), 1972’s Half-Past Nation Time (published by “a flight-by-night operation that disappeared right after sending [Johnson his] author’s copies”),…

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. By Tom Stoppard. Performed by a full cast. Oct. 2022. 2hr. L.A. Theatre Works, DD (9781682661697). The clever absurdism of Stoppard’s twentieth-century classic comes through loud and clear in this full-cast production. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are friends of Hamlet, minor characters in Shakespeare’s play, but the main characters here, puzzling out the events of Hamlet from their own vantage. Brief narrative explanations help set the stage and indicate action when dialogue is absent in the play, and well-placed sound effects (coins being tossed, water gently lapping on the hull of a boat) enhance particular scenes thanks to the foley artistry of Jeff Gardner. Production effects allow the listener to hear conversation in the distance, know when characters are approaching, and generally feel as if they…

General Fiction The Applicant. By Nazli Koca. Feb. 2023. 304p. Grove, $26 (9780802160546); e-book, $26 (9780802160553). In 2017, 26-year-old Leyla, a Turk, is living in Berlin, working as a cleaner at a hostel. She has come here to be a writer, but, she complains, her words don’t have freedom. Perhaps that’s because her quotidian life consists of working, visiting friends, and getting drunk or high. On a whim, she decides to keep a diary, and it becomes the core of the novel. In the diary, she records the failure of her university thesis on which her visa depends and her meeting with a Swede, who is like “a goodhearted giant from a Grimms’ fairy tale.” They begin an affair, and part of her wants to marry him and call it…

Older Readers Better Than We Found It: Conversations to Help Save the World. By Frederick Joseph and Porsche Joseph. Oct. 2022. 528p. Candlewick, $19.99 (9781536224528). Gr. 8–11. 320.973. This thought-provoking book comes from Frederick Joseph, the author of the bestselling  The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person (2020). Frederick and his wife, Porsche, take turns narrating chapters dealing with social issues—gun violence, ableism, immigration, Indigenous land theft, homophobia, and so on—acknowledging the impact of these influences and considering thoughtful alternative behaviors. Sixteen chapters define specific problems in a global context, providing ample background information and explaining far-reaching consequences. Chapters also feature interviews with various individuals that add real-world perspective (in the chapter on disinformation, Chelsea Clinton shares how fabricated media stories impacted her childhood). While this material is…

From putting on a ballet to designing clothes to finding art in surprising objects, these fiction and nonfiction books, reviewed in Booklist between October 15, 2021, and October 1, 2022, dig into the unexpected, showcasing moments of beauty and the people who create them. —Maggie Reagan A Is for Oboe: The Orchestra’s Alphabet. By Lera Auerbach and Marilyn Nelson. Illus. by Paul Hoppe. 2021. Dial, $17.99 (9780525553779). Gr. 1–4. Stunning poetry and vivid illustrations turn an orchestra into a living, breathing thing in this lesson on how to listen. The artistic merit of the book and the accessible introduction to musical concepts will inspire young musicians. Ablaze with Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas. By Jeanne Walker Harvey. Illus. by Loveis Wise. 2022. Harper, $18.99 (9780063021891). K–Gr. 3. As…

Older Readers At Midnight. Ed. by Dahlia Adler. Nov. 2022. 464p. Flatiron, $19.99 (9781250806024). Gr. 7–12. While the fairy-tale theme might seem overplayed when it comes to adaptations, this anthology is well worth checking out. Edited by the talented Adler, who also contributes her own version of “Rumpelstiltskin,” the stories take classic tales in creative, new directions. Anna-Marie McLemore applies their command of the ethereal and magic realism to The Nutcracker, imbuing it with modern elements and a lovely queer romance, while Darcie Little Badger turns “Puss in Boots” into “Coyote in High-top Sneakers.” Tracy Deonn, Stacey Lee, Malinda Lo, and Rebecca Podos are some of the other accomplished authors taking on such familiar stories as “The Nightingale” and “The Little Matchstick Girl” as well as the lesser known, like…

Growing up is hard enough; throw in zombies, haunted houses, and other eldritch horrors and you’ve got something really bad—and compulsively readable. These horror novels, including one graphic novel, take a coming-of-age storyline and spice it up with otherworldly terrors. With teen protagonists, these will appeal to teen and adult readers alike, as long as they can handle gore and monsters. Blood Sugar. By Daniel Kraus. 2019. Hard Case Crime, $9.95 (9781789091939). This dark thriller mixed with a tragic coming-of-age story follows a misbegotten trio of kids who, under the tutelage of the demented Robbie, assemble the ingredients to doctor Halloween candy with razor blades, glass shards, and worse. The Ghost Tree. By Christina Henry. 2020. Berkley, $16 (9780451492302). A small town owes its prosperity to the annual disappearance of…