Reboot, by Justin Taylor (Master of Fine Arts, 2007), Penguin Random House.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said American lives have no second acts. But what about reboots? When a washed-up teen soap actor is summoned to Hollywood by his ex-wife and former co-star, he comes to see an offer to revive their TV roles as a way to reset his listless existence and rescue the nation from toxic doomscrolling. Taylor, writes the Washington Post, wrings brilliant laughs from how “Hollywood and internet language can seem like foreign tongues, something human-adjacent but not quite human.”
Worry, by Alexandra Tanner (Master of Fine Arts, 2015), Simon & Shuster.
In just pre-Covid, post-Seinfeldian Brooklyn, two twenty-something sisters endure the trials of roommate life together. A Thanksgiving trip home to a mother disappearing down the rabbit hole of online deep state conspiracy theories doesn’t help matters. A debut novel called “dryly witty” by The New Yorker and “fabulously revealing” by The New York Times, now available in paperback, holds up a funhouse mirror to a not-so-distant time.
I Know a Man Who Knew Brahms, by Nancy J. Shear (Master of Fine Arts, 2012), Simon & Schuster.
After two years of sneaking into performances she couldn’t afford, 17-year-old Shear joined the Philadelphia Orchestra’s library staff; a year later, fabled music director Leopold Stokowski named her his assistant. Shear’s memoir doesn’t just dish on renowned names like his; it takes us backstage and into rehearsal studios to reveal the creative choices that conductors, composers, and players constantly face. Great prep reading for the summer outdoor concert season.
Beyond Informality: How Chinese Migrants Transformed a Border Economy, by Douglas de Toledo Piza, (PhD., Sociology, New School for Social Research, 2021), Stanford University Press.
There’s a brisk trade in counterfeit and smuggled goods entering Brazil across its border with Paraguay, and Chinese migrant vendors are at its heart. Even as their precarious legal status keeps them from reaping the benefits of their work, a transnational elite of Chinese businesspeople profits and profiteers. “A substantial contribution to migration studies written in a clear and engaging style,” a reviewer in Ethnic and Racial Studies finds.
There is No Ethan, by Anna Akbari, (Ph.D., Sociology New School for Social Research, 2008), Grand Central.
Akbari catalogs her experience as one of three women who discover they each have been taken in by the charming, elusive, and exclusively online Ethan Schuman. Welcome to her, and our, world – where technology mediates relationships; words and images are easily manipulated; and truth, reality, and identity have become slippery indeed. To paraphrase a New York Times reviewer: If you think you have heard it all about online deception – get ready to think again.
The Biggest Highest Wave, by Kerry McQuade (Parsons School of Design, 1999), Peter Pauper Press.
A surfside picture book for the 3-8-year-old boogie board set. Rhyming text and repetitive phrases mimic the rhythm of the ocean’s ebb and flow. Bold, eye-catching colors fill the pages with blue waves and a “tiny speck, a human form” in a yellow swimsuit on a red surfboard on the world-famous surfing shores of Nazare, Portugal. The School Library Journal calls this “an inspiring tale of resilience and bravery in facing nature’s challenges” that will thrill young readers.
Among Friends, by Hal Ebbott (Master of Fine Arts, 2021), Penguin Random House.
Two middle-aged couples reunite for a celebratory autumn weekend in the country. They’ve been friends for more than 30 years; their children have grown up together. They’re seemingly completely comfortable with themselves and each other. But when an afternoon tennis game ends badly, fault lines of envy and resentment start to emerge. A widely hailed debut novel, available in paperback starting this month, in which, a Washington Post review observes, “the sentences go down easy…but there is substance beneath the gleaming surfaces.”
