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 duo navigates the...

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 clinically detached....

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 synergy of...