You are Here, Mike Nicholls
It’s an adult coming-of-age genre, blending comedy with a sense of melancholy. The story is about Marnie and Michael, two lonely souls nudged together by a mutual friend for a multi-day trek across the English countryside. Nicholls is good at capturing the friction of early middle age for normal people, the quiet acceptance of solitude, lingering fear of being too late for a fresh start. I don’t get that, though I’ve heard it from many people my age whom I speak with. As the
Flesh, David Szalay
The Booker Prize winner for 2025. Flesh follows a Hungarian bodyguard, István, whose physical presence opens doors into the lives of Europe’s wealthy elite as he drifts through relationships shaped by desire, power, and status. It’s an unsentimental meditation on embodiment, power, and the quiet humiliations that shape a man’s life. The novel follows István, a Hungarian laborer as he moves through the shifting landscapes of post–Cold War Europe. Szalay’s prose is almost clin
Football, Chuck Klosterman
His just-released book on Football. This one is not a favorite of mine with Klosterman. Perhaps it’s because I don’t watch football of any kind anymore due to the fact that it’s all about money as opposed to teamwork, the town, and the audience watching it. Klosterman once again provides his trademark ability to treat Football not as a game, but as a massive overall object that explains the American DNA. He argues that football is the ultimate television product… a perfect s
The Land in Winter, Andrew Miller
The Land in Winter centers on two women: quiet, observant Ada and the more impulsive Irene, whose lives intersect during a harsh English winter that mirrors their emotional isolation. As they navigate love, secrecy, and social constraint, each is forced to confront the limits of duty and desire in a society slow to forgive female independence. I think the novel uses winter not merely as a backdrop but as a philosophical condition…a season that strips away illusion and leaves
Giant Love, Julie Gilbert
It’s an exploration of how Giant became one of America’s most iconic stories, both on the page and on the screen. Gilbert intertwines three narratives: the fiercely independent life of her great-aunt Edna Ferber, the long research and writing process behind the bestselling novel about Texas oil, land, and social change, and the decades-spanning journey of that novel into George Stevens’s terrific 1956 Hollywood movie epic. Gilbert’s research and personal connection bring warm
VJ, Gavin Edwards
If you’re GenX, you know the importance of MTV in the 80s and 90s. An insider oral history for readers into the early days of MTV through the voices of its original video jockeys themselves. Rather than a distant third-person narrative, author Gavin Edwards weaves together first-hand reflections and interviews from the first VJ pioneers like Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn, and J.J. Jackson. Their recollections deliver a look at what it was like to be
