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"content": "\u003cp>Even hardworking news journalists by day need a break from reality in their off hours. In the newsroom at NPR, there are some omnivorous fiction readers. There are fans of romance, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more. We asked our colleagues what they’ve enjoyed reading most this year — and here are the titles they shared. (And, OK, yes, we read \u003cem>plenty\u003c/em> of nonfiction, too, because NPR gonna NPR. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959945/best-nonfiction-books-2024-npr-staff-picks\">You can see that list here\u003c/a>. )\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Realistic Fiction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960567\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960567\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM.png\" alt=\"A painting of a cliff edge at sunrise with large trees at its base.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘All Fours: A Novel’ by Miranda July. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘All Fours: A Novel’ by Miranda July\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All Fours\u003c/em> is a coming-of-age novel for perimenopause. The story follows an unnamed narrator as she begins a cross-country road trip away from her husband and child, but she pulls over to stay in a motel 30 minutes from her house instead. This “trip” still changes her life — through an infatuation with a younger guy who works at a car rental place, she begins a new intimacy with herself, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read all of Miranda July’s books, and she’s always doing weird and imaginative things with her characters. This story has all of July’s usual eccentricity, but it also brims with the excitement and fear and possibility that comes with entering the unknown of life’s latter half, especially for women. It felt singularly fresh, and perfectly enjoyable. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/959668312/liam-mcbain\">Liam McBain,\u003c/a> associate producer,\u003c/em> \u003cem>‘It’s Been a Minute’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 860px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960566\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM.png\" alt=\"A gas station sign, a neon sign and a sign with sliding letters.\" width=\"860\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM.png 860w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-800x1127.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-160x225.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-768x1082.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘American Spirits’ by Russell Banks. \u003ccite>(Knopf)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘American Spirits’ by Russell Banks\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The three stories in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/03/10/1237083926/russell-banks-posthumous-novel-american-spirits\">this collection\u003c/a> are set in a fictional town, but seem so familiar: a local guy who got in a dangerous beef with an out-of-towner that bought up his family’s property and then refused to let him hunt on it; a family that adopts several children then purposely crashes their van off the highway; grandparents who are scammed by people claiming to have kidnapped their grandson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The late Russell Banks’ final writings are a masterful exploration of these kinds of tales, looking at the motivations of ordinary people in a world that’s become increasingly polarized and deeply troubled. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/474954558/melissa-gray\">Melissa Gray,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 818px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960564\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with a red house on it. It has oversized flowers illustrated as coming out of its roof. \" width=\"818\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM.png 818w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-800x1183.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-160x237.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-768x1136.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 818px) 100vw, 818px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Behind You Is the Sea’ by Susan Muaddi Darraj. \u003ccite>(HarperVia)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Behind You Is the Sea’ by Susan Muaddi Darraj\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you want to know the challenges that Palestinian Americans face in the U.S., you must read this book. It follows several families in Baltimore as they wrestle with poverty, religion, living in between two cultures and their pursuit of the American Dream. There is Marcus, a cop who stands up for his Arab sister who is dating a Black man; Samira, who is shamed for being a childless divorcee (despite that, she is a successful lawyer); Layla, a high school student who pushes back against the drama club’s production of \u003cem>Aladdin\u003c/em>, which she says perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs. How their lives intersect will leave you at the edge of your seat. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/469106148/malaka-gharib\">Malaka Gharib,\u003c/a> digital editor, ‘Life Kit’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960562\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 832px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960562\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with an illustration of a young pig on it.\" width=\"832\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM.png 832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-800x1165.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-768x1119.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 832px) 100vw, 832px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid. \u003ccite>(G.P. Putnam’s Sons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Told through multiple perspectives, I could not put this snappy page-turner down even though I had no idea where it was going until its jaw-dropping crescendo. Set at the University of Arkansas, this story follows several college students and a writing professor over the course of a year, largely through the lens of their relationship with money — how it motivates them, how it gets them into and (for some) out of situations — as well as race, sexuality, power and social status. As a southerner and the graduate of a southern university, I found myself nodding along excitedly to Reid’s apt depictions of contemporary southern culture. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/637150103/becky-harlan\">Beck Harlan,\u003c/a> visuals editor, ‘Life Kit’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960560\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 822px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with cartoonish font and a photo of two palm trees.\" width=\"822\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM.png 822w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-800x1178.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-160x236.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-768x1131.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel’ by Venita Blackburn. \u003ccite>(MCD)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel’ by Venita Blackburn\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A woman named Coral finds the body of her brother after his suicide, but she doesn’t tell anyone right away. Instead, she begins to inhabit his life through his phone, as if she can keep him alive by answering his texts. But what makes the book even odder, even more ambitious, is that it is narrated in the detached voices of automated beings from the future who are all that’s left after humanity has wiped itself out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This combination of almost unbearable intimacy and arm’s-length anthropology has an explanation of sorts. But more importantly, it serves both to add considerable humor to the text (what would a robot think of human frailty, after all?) and to render Coral’s situation more confusing, more disorienting. It’s a sad story, but it’s also a ride, and that’s a tough combination. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960558\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM.png\" alt=\"Side profile of a woman wearing an elaborate red sari. \" width=\"834\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-800x1161.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-768x1114.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel’ by Shubnum Khan. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel’ by Shubnum Khan\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The djinn of the title — I pictured a depressed Grinch — haunts this comforting dose of tropes: A girl with a deceased mom moves into an old, possibly magic house with an inaccessible area. Blocked-off rooms being irresistible to teenage main characters, Sana Malek digs her way in, uncovering a tragic family secret or two. The twists and revelations that follow aren’t exactly jaw-dropping, but are emotionally wrenching enough to clear out the old tear ducts without leaving a grief hangover. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1173760481/holly-j-morris\">Holly J. Morris,\u003c/a> digital trainer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 824px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960556\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM.png\" alt=\"Colorful illustration of an exotic forest.\" width=\"824\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM.png 824w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-800x1177.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-160x235.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-768x1130.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ by Jennifer Croft. \u003ccite>(Bloomsbury Publishing)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ by Jennifer Croft\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This book has so many layers! Let’s start with the premise. Eight translators meet up at the home of a famous Polish novelist to translate her latest work — which is apparently so brilliant it could change the world! — into their respective home languages. But their beloved author goes missing, setting off their search for her in the nearby Białowieża forest — filled with so many layers of wilderness! The narrator is the Spanish translator, but we’re reading the story in English — it’s been translated by the English translator. Those two don’t get along. More layers! If you like language, literature — and fungi — this wild ride of a very esoteric mystery is for you. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960551\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 848px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960551\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM.png\" alt=\"A Black man relaxes on the edge of a boat, overlooking choppy waves.\" width=\"848\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM.png 848w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-800x1143.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-160x229.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-768x1098.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 848px) 100vw, 848px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Great Expectations’ by Vinson Cunningham. \u003ccite>(Hogarth)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Great Expectations’ by Vinson Cunningham\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vinson Cunningham worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, so it’s no surprise that this coming-of-age story follows a young man working on a thinly (very thinly) veiled version of that very undertaking. It would be easy to make a story like this either a cynical and cutting takedown of politics or a starry-eyed and idealistic discovery of meaning. It’s neither. It presents this campaign as a formative stage in the life of a young person who sees what goes into the successful gathering of power, ugly and impressive as it can be. Full of sharp observations about our precarious system of government, it’s also insightful about race and wealth and the relationship between the two. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 826px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960549\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM.png\" alt=\"Illustration of stairs, boxes and plant life.\" width=\"826\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM.png 826w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-800x1174.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-160x235.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-768x1127.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 826px) 100vw, 826px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Greta & Valdin’ by Rebecca K. Reilly. \u003ccite>(Victoria University Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Greta & Valdin’ by Rebecca K. Reilly\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The loving family at the heart of this very funny and moving novel about a brother and sister is so complex that I drew a diagram — no fooling — halfway through, the better to solidify in my mind ideas like, “Valdin recently broke up with his older boyfriend, who is also his uncle’s husband’s brother.” But despite the messy structure of things, every bond in the book is written to be precious and specific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Greta & Valdin\u003c/em> is the rare story to live up to its fearless promotional copy, which calls it a cross between \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Normal People.\u003c/em> Perhaps that sounds impossible; that’s what makes it so good. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960548\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960548\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a woman wearing boxing gloves and helmet, throwing a punch.\" width=\"828\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM.png 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-800x1167.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Headshot: A Novel’ by Rita Bullwinkel. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Headshot: A Novel’ by Rita Bullwinkel\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Headshot \u003c/em>is a real one-two punch of a novel. Eight teenage girl boxers have come to Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, for the 12th annual Women’s 18 & Under Daughters of America Cup. As each fight plays out in the ring — sometimes brutally, ferociously — Rita Bullwinkel brings to life the internal monologues of the girls. They recite the digits of pi, think about their pasts, their futures, their dreams of being the best in the world — and also of making their opponents chomp on a mouthful of pennies until their teeth break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bullwinkel’s dynamic writing — moving back and forth in time, in and out of the boxing gym — and short, punchy sentences are a perfect mirror of the girls’ jabs in the ring. It’s a knockout. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 840px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM.png\" alt=\"A painting of a man's face, split into two.\" width=\"840\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM.png 840w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-800x1154.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-768x1108.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Henry Henry: A Novel’ by Allen Bratton. \u003ccite>(The Unnamed Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Henry Henry’ by Allen Bratton\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hal is a profane mess, kind of like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, on whom he’s based: The 20-something is careening through life fueled by drugs, booze, cigarettes, and loveless sex. He both flaunts and loathes his class status, his family’s fortune, and his future as Duke of Lancaster, along with a flat-out-refusal to live up to his father’s expectations. Hal is so wholly unsympathetic that if not for the brilliant writing, you might just give up before discovering the shocking violation at the root of his self-destruction. How can he finally become his own person? This isn’t an easy read. It’s at times dark and highly upsetting, but the author makes you stick with it in hopes of seeing Hal finally grow up. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/474954558/melissa-gray\">Melissa Gray,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 846px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM.png\" alt=\"Illustrations of colorful houses, nestled in trees.\" width=\"846\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM.png 846w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-800x1146.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-160x229.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-768x1100.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 846px) 100vw, 846px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Same As It Ever Was’ by Claire Lombardo. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Same As It Ever Was’ by Claire Lombardo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This is one of those beautifully written, keenly observed novels where not that much happens — other than, you know, life itself — but also so much happens. Julia Ames is experiencing a midlife plateau when an announcement from her son sets her reeling, and reflecting on all the relationships — past and present, familial, intergenerational, romantic — that have shaped her life including: Mark, her near-perfect husband; Anita, her near-imperfect mother; and Helen, the older woman who saves Julia in the early days of motherhood. Though the dynamic between Julia and her “spiky” teenage daughter is my personal favorite, Claire Lombardo has written a whole cast of characters so detailed, so specifically themselves, that you almost feel you could reach out and touch them. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960545\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960545\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover showing a row of falling dominoes.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Victim: A Novel’ by Andrew Boryga. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Victim: A Novel’ by Andrew Boryga\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lying is kind of funny. The stress of someone jumping through increasingly wild hoops to avoid getting caught in a lie is hilarious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Victim\u003c/em> is about Javi, a writer from a marginalized community, who fudges his way into the kinds of rooms where people say “marginalized” and “community” a lot. The book is a charming critique of the publishing industry and its surface-level attempts at righting societal ills (which, kind of bold for a debut author), while also staying empathetic towards the well-meaning individuals who give Javi a shot. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348740829/andrew-limbong\">Andrew Limbong,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk, and host, NPR’s ‘Book of the Day’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Romance & Relationships\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960544\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 812px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960544\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of three women positioned around a large martini glass.\" width=\"812\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM.png 812w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-800x1192.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-160x238.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-768x1144.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 812px) 100vw, 812px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet’ by Molly Morris. \u003ccite>(Wednesday Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet’ by Molly Morris\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>What happens when your former best friend comes back from the dead, but only for 30 days? That’s what Wilson needs to figure out when her friend Annie is brought back as part of a local custom in her small California town. To complicate things more, their friend, Ryan apparently hates them both. Wilson is determined to fix things before Annie returns to — well, being dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a beautifully poetic YA work about female friendships, with a touch of magical realism and laugh out loud humor. The dynamic between the trio is filled with teenage angst, love and forgiveness. It considers a common dilemma: How do you accept change when it means giving up what you love? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960543\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 810px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960543\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a woman looking through binoculars. In one lens, we see a bird. In the other, a man. \" width=\"810\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM.png 810w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-800x1199.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-160x240.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-768x1151.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Birding with Benefits’ by Sarah T. Dubb. \u003ccite>(Gallery Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Birding with Benefits’ by Sarah T. Dubb\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This sweet, fake-relationship romance follows the recently divorced empty-nester Celeste as she navigates life as a single woman, once again. This time around, she’s saying yes to life and shaking things up. She didn’t expect the shaking to bring in the sensitive, gentle giant that is John. Or his deep love of birds. Come for the romance but, beware, you might find yourself falling in love with John’s quiet, colorful world of birding yourself!\u003cem> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/580312943/christina-cala\">Christina Cala,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Code Switch’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960542\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960542\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a modern young woman walking through a city under an umbrella and reading a book.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Girl Abroad’ by Elle Kennedy. \u003ccite>(Bloom Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Girl Abroad’ by Elle Kennedy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Girl Abroad \u003c/em>starts with Abbey Bly, 19 years old, ready to step away from her adoring, yet overprotective, father when she is given the chance to study abroad in London. There’s just one hitch: Abbey believes she’ll be living with girls there — but arrives to find out all her flatmates are boys. She decides to step into her new-found independence (and hide this fact from her father). Elle Kennedy has written an enjoyable coming-of-age story filled with humor, drama, romance, and a found family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Readers will enjoy the way Kennedy deviates from her usual steamy-angst-centric stories for one with deeper emphasis on self growth, relationship dynamics and figuring out not only who you are, but what you want. \u003cem>— Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez, audio engineer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960541\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960541\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring illustrations of a woman and man surrounded by palm trees.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-800x1156.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-768x1110.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘How to End a Love Story’ by Yulin Kuang. \u003ccite>(Avon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘How to End a Love Story’ by Yulin Kuang\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If a ’90s rom-com grew up and went to therapy, this sparkling book would be the result. After penning a popular YA book series, Helen Zhang gets a seat in the writers’ room where it’s being adapted into a TV show. Unfortunately, Grant Shepard is also one of the writers in that room. Grant was the charming homecoming king at their high school whereas Helen was awkward and introverted. He’s also the reason Helen’s sister is dead — kind of. It’s been years since the accident, but the writers’ room reopens old wounds and forces Helen and Grant to be vulnerable with each other. Even as Helen wrestles with their past, the two begin a present-day romance that is sexy and tender. This book is a raised glass to second chances and late bloomers. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348774853/lauren-migaki\">Lauren Migaki,\u003c/a> senior producer, Education\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960540\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring bright illustrations of flowers, a woman and man, and a diamond ring.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-800x1158.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Say You’ll Be Mine: A Novel’ by Naina Kumar. \u003ccite>(Dell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Say You’ll Be Mine: A Novel’ by Naina Kumar\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s a familiar South Asian story: Two people finally relent to their parents’ wishes of meeting a potential marriage partner. But \u003cem>Say You’ll Be Mine \u003c/em>is so much more than that. Meghna is in love with her best friend, who is engaged to someone else. Karthik is an engineer who doesn’t really want to get married. But as the two discover, a fake engagement between them may be the answer to their problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naina Kumar writes a funny, heartwarming tale, filled with sizzling chemistry. It’s hard to not root for them from page one, as they slowly fall in love. It’s an incredible book that tackles the merits and shortcomings of culture, finding an identity and of course, true love. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 820px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960538\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring illustrations of a young woman and man surrounded by autumn leaves.\" width=\"820\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM.png 820w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-800x1184.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-160x237.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-768x1137.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Sex, Lies and Sensibility’ by Nikki Payne. \u003ccite>(Berkley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Sex, Lies and Sensibility’ by Nikki Payne\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Set in the heart of vacationland, Nora Dash and Ennis “Bear” Freeman are both fighting uphill battles. After her dad dies, Nora inherits some serious family drama — and a rundown cottage in Maine. Now, Nora and her sister have just months to turn the place into a successful resort. Meanwhile, Bear’s struggling with his own business of guiding visitors through his native Abenaki land. The tours take him through Nora’s backyard and the two team up. Their chemistry is off the charts as they spend hours working and finding stress relief in long runs through the Maine woods. But both are keeping secrets, and have let shame work its way through their lives like an invasive species. The two have to figure out how to move forward once those secrets spill out. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348774853/lauren-migaki\">Lauren Migaki,\u003c/a> senior producer, Education\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Historical Fiction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960537\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960537\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a close up photo of a man's hands playing the piano.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-800x1166.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cahokia Jazz: A Novel’ by Francis Spufford. \u003ccite>(Scribner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Cahokia Jazz: A Novel’ by Francis Spufford\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s 1922 and, in this alternate-history detective story, Cahokia isn’t a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Illinois. It’s a thriving Indigenous-owned and operated city and state with a strong Catholic presence, plus Klansmen, bootleggers and other undesirables. If you try to skim, you’ll get lost in the how-deep-does-this-go corruption, careful world-building and sprawling cast. The naive main character, jazz-playing police detective Joe Barrow, shoves his way through exposition, fight scenes, maybe-occult doings, local royalty and personal angst, all backgrounded by a Roaring Twenties aesthetic portrayed in loving detail. Maps and excerpts from (made-up) primary sources will guide you through — if you pay attention. If you’re me, you’ll take notes. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1173760481/holly-j-morris\">Holly J. Morris,\u003c/a> digital trainer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960536\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 816px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960536\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM.png\" alt=\"Waves crash onto a rocky beach. In the center of the water floats a tea pot.\" width=\"816\" height=\"1206\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM.png 816w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-800x1182.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-160x236.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-768x1135.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Clear: A Novel’ by Carys Davies. \u003ccite>(Scribner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Clear: A Novel’ by Carys Davies\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s the 1840s, the last and most brutal years of The Clearances, when Scottish landowners began replacing unprofitable tenants with sheep. Based on that real history, \u003cem>Clear\u003c/em> is a novel about a minister, John, who has been dispatched to clear a remote island of its last remaining inhabitant, Ivar. Except just after he arrives, John slips and falls off a cliff. Ivar finds John, nurses him back to health, and invites him into his life; Ivar begins to teach John the many words that all mean some variation of “rough seas” in Norn (a real language), and the pair learn to communicate roughly, but with an unexpected depth. What follows is perhaps the most tender, beautiful story about the connection between two people and what they must overcome to find each other — in every sense of the word. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960535\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960535\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring constellations.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-800x1159.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Enlightenment’ by Sarah Perry. \u003ccite>(Mariner Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Enlightenment’ by Sarah Perry\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You know that feeling — when you are fascinated by someone all the more because you don’t fully understand them? That’s how I feel in English author Sarah Perry’s “presence.” \u003cem>Enlightenment \u003c/em>is a tale of two friends, different generations but hailing from the same small Essex town and even smaller congregation. There’s a mystery involving a woman astronomer — but mainly there’s empathy for the complexities of people’s identities and belief systems, a sense of home, and loads of gorgeous writing. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/349278028/shannon-rhoades\">Shannon Rhoades,\u003c/a> senior editor, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960534\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960534\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of an Asian woman, traditionally dressed, walking through snow. Her reflection in the water next to her is a white fox.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-800x1168.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-768x1121.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Fox Wife: A Novel’ by Yangsze Choo. \u003ccite>(Henry Holt and Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Fox Wife: A Novel’ by Yangsze Choo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s a little bit of mystery and mysticism on every page of this book. Set in China in the early 1900s, the book centers around two characters in separate, but connecting narratives. A fox masquerading as a young woman that’s set out to avenge her daughter’s death and a detective with an affinity for foxes who is working a murder case. It’s clever and observant, with twists and turns and just the perfect amount of folklore to keep you asking: What is real and what is imagined? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960531\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960531\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an exotic small town on a hillside at dusk.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-800x1162.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-768x1115.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Hard by a Great Forest’ by Leo Vardiashvili. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Hard by a Great Forest’ by Leo Vardiashvili\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hard by a Great Forest\u003c/em> has all the ingredients of a dark and twisty fairy tale: A mysterious disappearance, a post-war city teeming with danger, a scavenger hunt, riddles, a road trip, escaped zoo animals, an orphan, and a title echoing the first line of Hansel and Gretel. It’s loosely based on author Leo Vardiashvili’s life — he lived through Georgia’s civil war and immigrated to the UK as a refugee in the mid ’90s. It’s two decades later in the novel when Saba’s father is pulled back to their homeland in search of something — before promptly disappearing. His last message to his son: Do not follow me. But Saba (of course) follows his breadcrumb trail of clues and, along the way, is forced to confront the question: Can you ever really go home again? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960530\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960530\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a tiny illustration of a traveling man.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-800x1159.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘James: A Novel’ by Percival Everett. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘James: A Novel’ by Percival Everett\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The jokes in \u003cem>James\u003c/em> range from chin scratchers to knee slappers to gut busters. Although I’m not sure Percival Everett would even classify them as “jokes.” In his re-imagining of the Huckleberry Finn story, Everett mines language, history and irony to showcase brutal truths about America. And yes, it’s often funny. But, like the original source material, things can quickly turn deadly serious depending on how the river flows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The novel is thrilling, hilarious, heartbreaking, and a strong argument for Everett as one of the best doing it right now. \u003cem>— \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348740829/andrew-limbong\">Andrew Limbong,\u003c/a>\u003cem> correspondent, Culture Desk, and host, NPR’s ‘Book of the Day’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960528\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a person on a bicycle riding through purple flames.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-800x1158.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Memory Piece: A Novel’ by Lisa Ko. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Memory Piece: A Novel’ by Lisa Ko\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This is a coming of age story about three friends growing up in and around New York City in the 1990s. Their friendship evolves over the decades as they experiment with, and push the boundaries of, art, performance and technology. I loved that the book makes art feel real and weird and kind of gross — not glamorous and sugarcoated. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an illustration of a woman lying with her arms over her head.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-800x1165.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-768x1118.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Swift River’ by Essie Chambers. \u003ccite>(Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Swift River’ by Essie Chambers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After her beloved father mysteriously disappears, Diamond and her mom find themselves living hand to mouth in a faded New England mill town where Diamond is the lone Black resident. Why did a previous generation of Black families abandon it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This propulsive and poetic first novel, by an accomplished documentary film producer, grounds a tender coming-of-age narrative in a history of migration, marginalization and imagination. Threaded through every step of Diamond’s journey is her deadpan wit; of one ramshackle dwelling, she observes, “the whole house looks like it’s having a cigarette.” And she reflects, when a heartbreaking legal issue is finally resolved, “That was the thing about a racist town. It got to decide when it would be kind.” \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/3850482/neda-ulaby\">Neda Ulaby,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960526\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a woman and man sitting at a restaurant table.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-800x1161.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-768x1114.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Table for Two: Fictions’ by Amor Towles. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Table for Two: Fictions’ by Amor Towles\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first half of this jaunty short-story collection takes place in New York. Among the memorable characters are a Russian immigrant whose chief role in life is to stand in lines; a young antiquarian bookstore employee who gets more than he bargains for in his desire for life experience; and a seemingly straight-laced family man with a big Wall Street job, whose secret pastime, once discovered, upends his and his loved ones’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second half, devoted entirely to the novella “Eve in Hollywood,” is set in Los Angeles during Tinseltown’s Golden Age. The pithy, film noir-ish thriller picks up where the author’s 2011 novel \u003cem>Rules of Civility\u003c/em> left off — with the plucky, scar-faced adventuress, Evelyn Ross, deftly saving the honor of a host of Hollywood starlets. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1113762078/chloe-veltman\">Chloe Veltman,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 842px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a helicopter flying over trees.\" width=\"842\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM.png 842w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-800x1152.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-160x230.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-768x1105.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 842px) 100vw, 842px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Women’ by Kristin Hannah. \u003ccite>(St. Martin's Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Women’ by Kristin Hannah\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“You’re only going to be a nurse until you get married,” her mother said. But Frankie McGrath had other ideas, ones that would lead her away from her wealthy family’s conservative outlook on how daughters should behave. Kristin Hannah’s \u003cem>The Women \u003c/em>follows young Frankie’s transformation, when after working as a nurse in California and tending to a wounded soldier, and missing her soldier brother, she joins the Army as a nurse. That takes her from a comfortable life of known expectations, to one of the chaos and danger of war, new career opportunities and love. Tangled love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Frankie returns home, she finds her country still protesting the war, and those who served. \u003cem>The Women \u003c/em>shines a light on a then little-known aspect of the war: the women who also served in Vietnam, as nurses. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1053920456/jeanine-herbst\">Jeanine Herbst,\u003c/a> news anchor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960523\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM.png\" alt=\"The front half of a horse visible as it sleeps into a spiraling vortex.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-800x1160.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-768x1113.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel’ by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel’ by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This salty and dark historical fantasia feistily explodes well-worn textbook narratives about the meeting of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his captains with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and his entourage in Tenoxtitlan — now Mexico City — in 1519.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Álvaro Enrigue’s depiction of the stressed out, clumsy Cortés and the drugged out, mercurial Moctezuma sets these near-mythical figures into earthy relief. But it’s mostly the intrigues and machinations of these leaders’ canny consorts — the Aztec princess Atotoxtli and the conquistadors’ translator Malinalli — that power the plot. Natasha Wimmer’s English translation sharply delivers the novel’s poetic and witty qualities while at the same time reveling in its core theme: the fundamental untranslatability of human experience. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1113762078/chloe-veltman\">Chloe Veltman,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Mysteries & Thrillers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960522\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a partial close-up of a woman's face and the exterior of a house in the snow.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Nightwatching’ by Tracy Sierra. \u003ccite>(Pamela Dorman Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Nightwatching’ by Tracy Sierra\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nightwatching \u003c/em>begins with a scene straight out of a nightmare: A woman is at home with two sleeping children when she hears the footsteps of an intruder on the stairs. The story that follows is by turns suspenseful, uncomfortable and enraging. Tracy Sierra skillfully uses the home invasion to explore the terrifying responsibility of motherhood and to expose the pure horror of being a woman in a society that does not always choose to believe women. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1227635672/julie-rogers\">Julie Rogers,\u003c/a> historian and curator, NPR Research, Archives & Data strategy\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960518\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960518\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a white house on a red horizon.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-800x1166.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Hunter’ by Tana French. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Hunter’ by Tana French\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Set in the hills of Western Ireland, this novel picks up the story of characters introduced in 2020’s \u003cem>The Searcher\u003c/em> — retired American detective Cal Hooper and Trey, a teen girl he’s taken under his wing. As French revisits the seemingly bucolic landscape where trouble roils just under the surface, her writing continues to shift from mystery to meditation. While there’s still a knot of questions about crimes — including both fraud and murder — to be untangled, this novel is ultimately about belonging; the ways in which families do, and don’t, owe each other debts; the communities we resist, alienate, or become a welcome part of. Morally shaded and complex, it will leave you thinking about who’s right — and what’s wrong — long after you turn the last page. —\u003cem> Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Sci Fi, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction & Horror\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960517\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 744px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960517\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a bird's nest with broken eggs and one that is still intact.\" width=\"744\" height=\"1106\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM.png 744w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM-160x238.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 744px) 100vw, 744px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cuckoo’ by Gretchen Felker-Martin. \u003ccite>(Tor Nightfire)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Cuckoo’ by Gretchen Felker-Martin\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cuckoo \u003c/em>is an ingeniously scary novel about a group of kids sent to a conversion camp in the ’90s. There’s the terror of the socially accepted abuse the kids face (both at the camp and at home) because they are queer, but there’s yet another horrifying entity preying on them, and trying to make them — different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Felker-Martin’s sharp novel takes on the particular vulnerability of queer kids and the body-snatching that is conversion therapy, and she does it with equal measures of tenderness and grotesquery. As harrowing and disgusting as it is, I also found it quite insightful and beautiful — and for that reason, \u003cem>Cuckoo \u003c/em>is a great work of horror. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/959668312/liam-mcbain\">Liam McBain,\u003c/a> associate producer, ‘It’s Been a Minute’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960516\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 874px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960516\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an illustration of a hand holding a gold chain.\" width=\"874\" height=\"1108\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM.png 874w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-800x1014.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-160x203.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-768x974.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 874px) 100vw, 874px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Familiar’ by Leigh Bardugo. \u003ccite>(Flatiron Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Familiar’ by Leigh Bardugo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It is the Spanish Golden Age, and kitchen maid Luzia has secrets to hide: her skill at magic and her Jewish heritage. When her employer discovers her spells, Luzia is entered into a tournament to find King Philip, who hopes to increase his military standing, a champion. She is trained by the strange creature Santángel, an immortal with a mysterious past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1244125050/leigh-bardugo-the-familiar-book-review\">gorgeously lush, vividly written book\u003c/a> that shines with its strong cast of characters. Luzia is a hero you’ll find yourself rooting for right from the start, and the magic system in this world is a breath of fresh air. Once again, Leigh Bardugo proves she never misses the mark when it comes to intricately building fantastical worlds — leaving you thinking about them long after the last page is turned. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960514\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting the word 'Husbands' climbing up a ladder.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-800x1168.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-768x1121.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Husbands: A Novel’ by Holly Gramazio. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Husbands: A Novel’ by Holly Gramazio\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lauren leaves her London flat for a bachelorette party one night only to discover a husband at home awaiting her return. Not only was she not married when she left for the night, she doesn’t recognize this man. Slowly she works out that he’s not a threat — and that all evidence on her phone, in conversations with friends and neighbors, and in their apartments points to him being fully integrated into her life. And there he is until he goes into the attic and a different husband emerges, slightly — or drastically — altering Lauren’s life. The pattern continues as Lauren searches for metaphysical clues to what’s going on and wrestles with how to know, if she can ever know, which life is right for her. A rare combination of the truly hilarious and profound. \u003cem>— Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960513\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 762px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960513\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting block letters floating in space.\" width=\"762\" height=\"1110\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM.png 762w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM-160x233.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 762px) 100vw, 762px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Ministry of Time: A Novel’ by Kaliane Bradley. \u003ccite>(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Ministry of Time: A Novel’ by Kaliane Bradley\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You’d think a novel about the bureaucracy of a time-travel government agency might be kinda boring. But from the moment you meet the book’s enigmatic protagonist — as she starts a new job in the UK’s top secret new time travel agency — to the introduction of the dashing Graham Gore, an 1847 arctic explorer plucked through time, you’ll be hooked. Come for the romance, stay for the unraveling of a mystery, the nuanced, genre-bending treatises on race and identity, and the long-lingering ideas on colonialism, empires and the mutability of history. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/580312943/christina-cala\">Christina Cala,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Code Switch’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960509\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960509\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with small illustrations including the Paris city skyline, the ocean and various plants and flowers.\" width=\"828\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM.png 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-800x1171.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-768x1124.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel’ by Douglas Westerbeke. \u003ccite>(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel’ by Douglas Westerbeke\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the year 1885, in Paris, when 9-year-old Aubry Tourvel encounters a mysterious, wooden, puzzle ball: It may be a blessing or a curse, but it most definitely changes her life. Now she needs to keep moving forever; too long in any one town and she will bleed to death. So her life is all travel and adventure, and through her we wonder at the richness of the globe’s markets, towns, forests and deserts. Over many decades, she meets all types of kind and curious people — as well as cruel and uncaring ones. Sometimes Aubry enjoys quick communion with strangers. Other times, she is surrounded but desperately lonely. This is a ravishing, deeply human book that’s in love with the world, with people, with the new — and yet is infused with a deep, futile longing for home.\u003cem> — \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1091803881/jennifer-vanasco\">\u003cem>Jennifer Vanasco\u003c/em>,\u003c/a>\u003cem> editor and reporter, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Even hardworking news journalists by day need a break from reality in their off hours. In the newsroom at NPR, there are some omnivorous fiction readers. There are fans of romance, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more. We asked our colleagues what they’ve enjoyed reading most this year — and here are the titles they shared. (And, OK, yes, we read \u003cem>plenty\u003c/em> of nonfiction, too, because NPR gonna NPR. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959945/best-nonfiction-books-2024-npr-staff-picks\">You can see that list here\u003c/a>. )\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Realistic Fiction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960567\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960567\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM.png\" alt=\"A painting of a cliff edge at sunrise with large trees at its base.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.29.32-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘All Fours: A Novel’ by Miranda July. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘All Fours: A Novel’ by Miranda July\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All Fours\u003c/em> is a coming-of-age novel for perimenopause. The story follows an unnamed narrator as she begins a cross-country road trip away from her husband and child, but she pulls over to stay in a motel 30 minutes from her house instead. This “trip” still changes her life — through an infatuation with a younger guy who works at a car rental place, she begins a new intimacy with herself, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read all of Miranda July’s books, and she’s always doing weird and imaginative things with her characters. This story has all of July’s usual eccentricity, but it also brims with the excitement and fear and possibility that comes with entering the unknown of life’s latter half, especially for women. It felt singularly fresh, and perfectly enjoyable. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/959668312/liam-mcbain\">Liam McBain,\u003c/a> associate producer,\u003c/em> \u003cem>‘It’s Been a Minute’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 860px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960566\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM.png\" alt=\"A gas station sign, a neon sign and a sign with sliding letters.\" width=\"860\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM.png 860w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-800x1127.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-160x225.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.27.54-PM-768x1082.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘American Spirits’ by Russell Banks. \u003ccite>(Knopf)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘American Spirits’ by Russell Banks\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The three stories in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/03/10/1237083926/russell-banks-posthumous-novel-american-spirits\">this collection\u003c/a> are set in a fictional town, but seem so familiar: a local guy who got in a dangerous beef with an out-of-towner that bought up his family’s property and then refused to let him hunt on it; a family that adopts several children then purposely crashes their van off the highway; grandparents who are scammed by people claiming to have kidnapped their grandson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The late Russell Banks’ final writings are a masterful exploration of these kinds of tales, looking at the motivations of ordinary people in a world that’s become increasingly polarized and deeply troubled. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/474954558/melissa-gray\">Melissa Gray,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 818px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960564\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with a red house on it. It has oversized flowers illustrated as coming out of its roof. \" width=\"818\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM.png 818w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-800x1183.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-160x237.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.26.13-PM-768x1136.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 818px) 100vw, 818px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Behind You Is the Sea’ by Susan Muaddi Darraj. \u003ccite>(HarperVia)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Behind You Is the Sea’ by Susan Muaddi Darraj\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you want to know the challenges that Palestinian Americans face in the U.S., you must read this book. It follows several families in Baltimore as they wrestle with poverty, religion, living in between two cultures and their pursuit of the American Dream. There is Marcus, a cop who stands up for his Arab sister who is dating a Black man; Samira, who is shamed for being a childless divorcee (despite that, she is a successful lawyer); Layla, a high school student who pushes back against the drama club’s production of \u003cem>Aladdin\u003c/em>, which she says perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs. How their lives intersect will leave you at the edge of your seat. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/469106148/malaka-gharib\">Malaka Gharib,\u003c/a> digital editor, ‘Life Kit’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960562\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 832px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960562\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with an illustration of a young pig on it.\" width=\"832\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM.png 832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-800x1165.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.24.40-PM-768x1119.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 832px) 100vw, 832px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid. \u003ccite>(G.P. Putnam’s Sons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Come & Get It’ by Kiley Reid\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Told through multiple perspectives, I could not put this snappy page-turner down even though I had no idea where it was going until its jaw-dropping crescendo. Set at the University of Arkansas, this story follows several college students and a writing professor over the course of a year, largely through the lens of their relationship with money — how it motivates them, how it gets them into and (for some) out of situations — as well as race, sexuality, power and social status. As a southerner and the graduate of a southern university, I found myself nodding along excitedly to Reid’s apt depictions of contemporary southern culture. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/637150103/becky-harlan\">Beck Harlan,\u003c/a> visuals editor, ‘Life Kit’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960560\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 822px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with cartoonish font and a photo of two palm trees.\" width=\"822\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM.png 822w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-800x1178.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-160x236.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.23.03-PM-768x1131.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel’ by Venita Blackburn. \u003ccite>(MCD)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel’ by Venita Blackburn\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A woman named Coral finds the body of her brother after his suicide, but she doesn’t tell anyone right away. Instead, she begins to inhabit his life through his phone, as if she can keep him alive by answering his texts. But what makes the book even odder, even more ambitious, is that it is narrated in the detached voices of automated beings from the future who are all that’s left after humanity has wiped itself out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This combination of almost unbearable intimacy and arm’s-length anthropology has an explanation of sorts. But more importantly, it serves both to add considerable humor to the text (what would a robot think of human frailty, after all?) and to render Coral’s situation more confusing, more disorienting. It’s a sad story, but it’s also a ride, and that’s a tough combination. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960558\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM.png\" alt=\"Side profile of a woman wearing an elaborate red sari. \" width=\"834\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-800x1161.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.21.29-PM-768x1114.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel’ by Shubnum Khan. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel’ by Shubnum Khan\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The djinn of the title — I pictured a depressed Grinch — haunts this comforting dose of tropes: A girl with a deceased mom moves into an old, possibly magic house with an inaccessible area. Blocked-off rooms being irresistible to teenage main characters, Sana Malek digs her way in, uncovering a tragic family secret or two. The twists and revelations that follow aren’t exactly jaw-dropping, but are emotionally wrenching enough to clear out the old tear ducts without leaving a grief hangover. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1173760481/holly-j-morris\">Holly J. Morris,\u003c/a> digital trainer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 824px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960556\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM.png\" alt=\"Colorful illustration of an exotic forest.\" width=\"824\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM.png 824w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-800x1177.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-160x235.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.19.57-PM-768x1130.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ by Jennifer Croft. \u003ccite>(Bloomsbury Publishing)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ by Jennifer Croft\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This book has so many layers! Let’s start with the premise. Eight translators meet up at the home of a famous Polish novelist to translate her latest work — which is apparently so brilliant it could change the world! — into their respective home languages. But their beloved author goes missing, setting off their search for her in the nearby Białowieża forest — filled with so many layers of wilderness! The narrator is the Spanish translator, but we’re reading the story in English — it’s been translated by the English translator. Those two don’t get along. More layers! If you like language, literature — and fungi — this wild ride of a very esoteric mystery is for you. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960551\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 848px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960551\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM.png\" alt=\"A Black man relaxes on the edge of a boat, overlooking choppy waves.\" width=\"848\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM.png 848w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-800x1143.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-160x229.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.18.25-PM-768x1098.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 848px) 100vw, 848px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Great Expectations’ by Vinson Cunningham. \u003ccite>(Hogarth)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Great Expectations’ by Vinson Cunningham\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Vinson Cunningham worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, so it’s no surprise that this coming-of-age story follows a young man working on a thinly (very thinly) veiled version of that very undertaking. It would be easy to make a story like this either a cynical and cutting takedown of politics or a starry-eyed and idealistic discovery of meaning. It’s neither. It presents this campaign as a formative stage in the life of a young person who sees what goes into the successful gathering of power, ugly and impressive as it can be. Full of sharp observations about our precarious system of government, it’s also insightful about race and wealth and the relationship between the two. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 826px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960549\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM.png\" alt=\"Illustration of stairs, boxes and plant life.\" width=\"826\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM.png 826w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-800x1174.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-160x235.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.16.46-PM-768x1127.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 826px) 100vw, 826px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Greta & Valdin’ by Rebecca K. Reilly. \u003ccite>(Victoria University Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Greta & Valdin’ by Rebecca K. Reilly\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The loving family at the heart of this very funny and moving novel about a brother and sister is so complex that I drew a diagram — no fooling — halfway through, the better to solidify in my mind ideas like, “Valdin recently broke up with his older boyfriend, who is also his uncle’s husband’s brother.” But despite the messy structure of things, every bond in the book is written to be precious and specific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Greta & Valdin\u003c/em> is the rare story to live up to its fearless promotional copy, which calls it a cross between \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Normal People.\u003c/em> Perhaps that sounds impossible; that’s what makes it so good. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/93702353/linda-holmes\">Linda Holmes,\u003c/a> host, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960548\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960548\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a woman wearing boxing gloves and helmet, throwing a punch.\" width=\"828\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM.png 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-800x1167.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.15.04-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Headshot: A Novel’ by Rita Bullwinkel. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Headshot: A Novel’ by Rita Bullwinkel\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Headshot \u003c/em>is a real one-two punch of a novel. Eight teenage girl boxers have come to Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, for the 12th annual Women’s 18 & Under Daughters of America Cup. As each fight plays out in the ring — sometimes brutally, ferociously — Rita Bullwinkel brings to life the internal monologues of the girls. They recite the digits of pi, think about their pasts, their futures, their dreams of being the best in the world — and also of making their opponents chomp on a mouthful of pennies until their teeth break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bullwinkel’s dynamic writing — moving back and forth in time, in and out of the boxing gym — and short, punchy sentences are a perfect mirror of the girls’ jabs in the ring. It’s a knockout. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 840px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM.png\" alt=\"A painting of a man's face, split into two.\" width=\"840\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM.png 840w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-800x1154.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.12.49-PM-768x1108.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Henry Henry: A Novel’ by Allen Bratton. \u003ccite>(The Unnamed Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Henry Henry’ by Allen Bratton\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hal is a profane mess, kind of like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, on whom he’s based: The 20-something is careening through life fueled by drugs, booze, cigarettes, and loveless sex. He both flaunts and loathes his class status, his family’s fortune, and his future as Duke of Lancaster, along with a flat-out-refusal to live up to his father’s expectations. Hal is so wholly unsympathetic that if not for the brilliant writing, you might just give up before discovering the shocking violation at the root of his self-destruction. How can he finally become his own person? This isn’t an easy read. It’s at times dark and highly upsetting, but the author makes you stick with it in hopes of seeing Hal finally grow up. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/474954558/melissa-gray\">Melissa Gray,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 846px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM.png\" alt=\"Illustrations of colorful houses, nestled in trees.\" width=\"846\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM.png 846w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-800x1146.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-160x229.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.11.15-PM-768x1100.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 846px) 100vw, 846px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Same As It Ever Was’ by Claire Lombardo. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Same As It Ever Was’ by Claire Lombardo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This is one of those beautifully written, keenly observed novels where not that much happens — other than, you know, life itself — but also so much happens. Julia Ames is experiencing a midlife plateau when an announcement from her son sets her reeling, and reflecting on all the relationships — past and present, familial, intergenerational, romantic — that have shaped her life including: Mark, her near-perfect husband; Anita, her near-imperfect mother; and Helen, the older woman who saves Julia in the early days of motherhood. Though the dynamic between Julia and her “spiky” teenage daughter is my personal favorite, Claire Lombardo has written a whole cast of characters so detailed, so specifically themselves, that you almost feel you could reach out and touch them. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960545\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960545\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover showing a row of falling dominoes.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.09.44-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Victim: A Novel’ by Andrew Boryga. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Victim: A Novel’ by Andrew Boryga\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lying is kind of funny. The stress of someone jumping through increasingly wild hoops to avoid getting caught in a lie is hilarious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Victim\u003c/em> is about Javi, a writer from a marginalized community, who fudges his way into the kinds of rooms where people say “marginalized” and “community” a lot. The book is a charming critique of the publishing industry and its surface-level attempts at righting societal ills (which, kind of bold for a debut author), while also staying empathetic towards the well-meaning individuals who give Javi a shot. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348740829/andrew-limbong\">Andrew Limbong,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk, and host, NPR’s ‘Book of the Day’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Romance & Relationships\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960544\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 812px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960544\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of three women positioned around a large martini glass.\" width=\"812\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM.png 812w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-800x1192.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-160x238.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.07.57-PM-768x1144.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 812px) 100vw, 812px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet’ by Molly Morris. \u003ccite>(Wednesday Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet’ by Molly Morris\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>What happens when your former best friend comes back from the dead, but only for 30 days? That’s what Wilson needs to figure out when her friend Annie is brought back as part of a local custom in her small California town. To complicate things more, their friend, Ryan apparently hates them both. Wilson is determined to fix things before Annie returns to — well, being dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a beautifully poetic YA work about female friendships, with a touch of magical realism and laugh out loud humor. The dynamic between the trio is filled with teenage angst, love and forgiveness. It considers a common dilemma: How do you accept change when it means giving up what you love? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960543\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 810px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960543\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a woman looking through binoculars. In one lens, we see a bird. In the other, a man. \" width=\"810\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM.png 810w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-800x1199.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-160x240.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.06.09-PM-768x1151.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Birding with Benefits’ by Sarah T. Dubb. \u003ccite>(Gallery Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Birding with Benefits’ by Sarah T. Dubb\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This sweet, fake-relationship romance follows the recently divorced empty-nester Celeste as she navigates life as a single woman, once again. This time around, she’s saying yes to life and shaking things up. She didn’t expect the shaking to bring in the sensitive, gentle giant that is John. Or his deep love of birds. Come for the romance but, beware, you might find yourself falling in love with John’s quiet, colorful world of birding yourself!\u003cem> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/580312943/christina-cala\">Christina Cala,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Code Switch’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960542\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960542\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of a modern young woman walking through a city under an umbrella and reading a book.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.03.47-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Girl Abroad’ by Elle Kennedy. \u003ccite>(Bloom Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Girl Abroad’ by Elle Kennedy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Girl Abroad \u003c/em>starts with Abbey Bly, 19 years old, ready to step away from her adoring, yet overprotective, father when she is given the chance to study abroad in London. There’s just one hitch: Abbey believes she’ll be living with girls there — but arrives to find out all her flatmates are boys. She decides to step into her new-found independence (and hide this fact from her father). Elle Kennedy has written an enjoyable coming-of-age story filled with humor, drama, romance, and a found family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Readers will enjoy the way Kennedy deviates from her usual steamy-angst-centric stories for one with deeper emphasis on self growth, relationship dynamics and figuring out not only who you are, but what you want. \u003cem>— Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez, audio engineer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960541\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960541\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring illustrations of a woman and man surrounded by palm trees.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-800x1156.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.01.55-PM-768x1110.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘How to End a Love Story’ by Yulin Kuang. \u003ccite>(Avon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘How to End a Love Story’ by Yulin Kuang\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If a ’90s rom-com grew up and went to therapy, this sparkling book would be the result. After penning a popular YA book series, Helen Zhang gets a seat in the writers’ room where it’s being adapted into a TV show. Unfortunately, Grant Shepard is also one of the writers in that room. Grant was the charming homecoming king at their high school whereas Helen was awkward and introverted. He’s also the reason Helen’s sister is dead — kind of. It’s been years since the accident, but the writers’ room reopens old wounds and forces Helen and Grant to be vulnerable with each other. Even as Helen wrestles with their past, the two begin a present-day romance that is sexy and tender. This book is a raised glass to second chances and late bloomers. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348774853/lauren-migaki\">Lauren Migaki,\u003c/a> senior producer, Education\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960540\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring bright illustrations of flowers, a woman and man, and a diamond ring.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-800x1158.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-2.00.10-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Say You’ll Be Mine: A Novel’ by Naina Kumar. \u003ccite>(Dell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Say You’ll Be Mine: A Novel’ by Naina Kumar\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s a familiar South Asian story: Two people finally relent to their parents’ wishes of meeting a potential marriage partner. But \u003cem>Say You’ll Be Mine \u003c/em>is so much more than that. Meghna is in love with her best friend, who is engaged to someone else. Karthik is an engineer who doesn’t really want to get married. But as the two discover, a fake engagement between them may be the answer to their problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naina Kumar writes a funny, heartwarming tale, filled with sizzling chemistry. It’s hard to not root for them from page one, as they slowly fall in love. It’s an incredible book that tackles the merits and shortcomings of culture, finding an identity and of course, true love. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 820px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960538\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring illustrations of a young woman and man surrounded by autumn leaves.\" width=\"820\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM.png 820w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-800x1184.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-160x237.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.58.26-PM-768x1137.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Sex, Lies and Sensibility’ by Nikki Payne. \u003ccite>(Berkley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Sex, Lies and Sensibility’ by Nikki Payne\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Set in the heart of vacationland, Nora Dash and Ennis “Bear” Freeman are both fighting uphill battles. After her dad dies, Nora inherits some serious family drama — and a rundown cottage in Maine. Now, Nora and her sister have just months to turn the place into a successful resort. Meanwhile, Bear’s struggling with his own business of guiding visitors through his native Abenaki land. The tours take him through Nora’s backyard and the two team up. Their chemistry is off the charts as they spend hours working and finding stress relief in long runs through the Maine woods. But both are keeping secrets, and have let shame work its way through their lives like an invasive species. The two have to figure out how to move forward once those secrets spill out. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348774853/lauren-migaki\">Lauren Migaki,\u003c/a> senior producer, Education\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Historical Fiction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960537\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960537\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a close up photo of a man's hands playing the piano.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-800x1166.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.56.35-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cahokia Jazz: A Novel’ by Francis Spufford. \u003ccite>(Scribner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Cahokia Jazz: A Novel’ by Francis Spufford\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s 1922 and, in this alternate-history detective story, Cahokia isn’t a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Illinois. It’s a thriving Indigenous-owned and operated city and state with a strong Catholic presence, plus Klansmen, bootleggers and other undesirables. If you try to skim, you’ll get lost in the how-deep-does-this-go corruption, careful world-building and sprawling cast. The naive main character, jazz-playing police detective Joe Barrow, shoves his way through exposition, fight scenes, maybe-occult doings, local royalty and personal angst, all backgrounded by a Roaring Twenties aesthetic portrayed in loving detail. Maps and excerpts from (made-up) primary sources will guide you through — if you pay attention. If you’re me, you’ll take notes. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1173760481/holly-j-morris\">Holly J. Morris,\u003c/a> digital trainer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960536\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 816px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960536\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM.png\" alt=\"Waves crash onto a rocky beach. In the center of the water floats a tea pot.\" width=\"816\" height=\"1206\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM.png 816w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-800x1182.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-160x236.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.54.34-PM-768x1135.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Clear: A Novel’ by Carys Davies. \u003ccite>(Scribner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Clear: A Novel’ by Carys Davies\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s the 1840s, the last and most brutal years of The Clearances, when Scottish landowners began replacing unprofitable tenants with sheep. Based on that real history, \u003cem>Clear\u003c/em> is a novel about a minister, John, who has been dispatched to clear a remote island of its last remaining inhabitant, Ivar. Except just after he arrives, John slips and falls off a cliff. Ivar finds John, nurses him back to health, and invites him into his life; Ivar begins to teach John the many words that all mean some variation of “rough seas” in Norn (a real language), and the pair learn to communicate roughly, but with an unexpected depth. What follows is perhaps the most tender, beautiful story about the connection between two people and what they must overcome to find each other — in every sense of the word. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960535\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960535\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring constellations.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-800x1159.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.52.49-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Enlightenment’ by Sarah Perry. \u003ccite>(Mariner Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Enlightenment’ by Sarah Perry\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You know that feeling — when you are fascinated by someone all the more because you don’t fully understand them? That’s how I feel in English author Sarah Perry’s “presence.” \u003cem>Enlightenment \u003c/em>is a tale of two friends, different generations but hailing from the same small Essex town and even smaller congregation. There’s a mystery involving a woman astronomer — but mainly there’s empathy for the complexities of people’s identities and belief systems, a sense of home, and loads of gorgeous writing. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/349278028/shannon-rhoades\">Shannon Rhoades,\u003c/a> senior editor, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960534\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960534\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM.png\" alt=\"An illustration of an Asian woman, traditionally dressed, walking through snow. Her reflection in the water next to her is a white fox.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-800x1168.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.50.50-PM-768x1121.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Fox Wife: A Novel’ by Yangsze Choo. \u003ccite>(Henry Holt and Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Fox Wife: A Novel’ by Yangsze Choo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s a little bit of mystery and mysticism on every page of this book. Set in China in the early 1900s, the book centers around two characters in separate, but connecting narratives. A fox masquerading as a young woman that’s set out to avenge her daughter’s death and a detective with an affinity for foxes who is working a murder case. It’s clever and observant, with twists and turns and just the perfect amount of folklore to keep you asking: What is real and what is imagined? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960531\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960531\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an exotic small town on a hillside at dusk.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-800x1162.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.48.43-PM-768x1115.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Hard by a Great Forest’ by Leo Vardiashvili. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Hard by a Great Forest’ by Leo Vardiashvili\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hard by a Great Forest\u003c/em> has all the ingredients of a dark and twisty fairy tale: A mysterious disappearance, a post-war city teeming with danger, a scavenger hunt, riddles, a road trip, escaped zoo animals, an orphan, and a title echoing the first line of Hansel and Gretel. It’s loosely based on author Leo Vardiashvili’s life — he lived through Georgia’s civil war and immigrated to the UK as a refugee in the mid ’90s. It’s two decades later in the novel when Saba’s father is pulled back to their homeland in search of something — before promptly disappearing. His last message to his son: Do not follow me. But Saba (of course) follows his breadcrumb trail of clues and, along the way, is forced to confront the question: Can you ever really go home again? \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/712227784/samantha-balaban\">Samantha Balaban,\u003c/a> producer, ‘Weekend Edition’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960530\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960530\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a tiny illustration of a traveling man.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1208\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-800x1159.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.47.01-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘James: A Novel’ by Percival Everett. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘James: A Novel’ by Percival Everett\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The jokes in \u003cem>James\u003c/em> range from chin scratchers to knee slappers to gut busters. Although I’m not sure Percival Everett would even classify them as “jokes.” In his re-imagining of the Huckleberry Finn story, Everett mines language, history and irony to showcase brutal truths about America. And yes, it’s often funny. But, like the original source material, things can quickly turn deadly serious depending on how the river flows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The novel is thrilling, hilarious, heartbreaking, and a strong argument for Everett as one of the best doing it right now. \u003cem>— \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348740829/andrew-limbong\">Andrew Limbong,\u003c/a>\u003cem> correspondent, Culture Desk, and host, NPR’s ‘Book of the Day’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960528\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a person on a bicycle riding through purple flames.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-800x1158.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.45.30-PM-768x1112.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Memory Piece: A Novel’ by Lisa Ko. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Memory Piece: A Novel’ by Lisa Ko\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This is a coming of age story about three friends growing up in and around New York City in the 1990s. Their friendship evolves over the decades as they experiment with, and push the boundaries of, art, performance and technology. I loved that the book makes art feel real and weird and kind of gross — not glamorous and sugarcoated. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/378865949/elissa-nadworny\">Elissa Nadworny,\u003c/a> correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an illustration of a woman lying with her arms over her head.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1214\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-800x1165.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.43.47-PM-768x1118.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Swift River’ by Essie Chambers. \u003ccite>(Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Swift River’ by Essie Chambers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After her beloved father mysteriously disappears, Diamond and her mom find themselves living hand to mouth in a faded New England mill town where Diamond is the lone Black resident. Why did a previous generation of Black families abandon it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This propulsive and poetic first novel, by an accomplished documentary film producer, grounds a tender coming-of-age narrative in a history of migration, marginalization and imagination. Threaded through every step of Diamond’s journey is her deadpan wit; of one ramshackle dwelling, she observes, “the whole house looks like it’s having a cigarette.” And she reflects, when a heartbreaking legal issue is finally resolved, “That was the thing about a racist town. It got to decide when it would be kind.” \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/3850482/neda-ulaby\">Neda Ulaby,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 834px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960526\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a woman and man sitting at a restaurant table.\" width=\"834\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM.png 834w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-800x1161.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.42.07-PM-768x1114.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 100vw, 834px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Table for Two: Fictions’ by Amor Towles. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Table for Two: Fictions’ by Amor Towles\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first half of this jaunty short-story collection takes place in New York. Among the memorable characters are a Russian immigrant whose chief role in life is to stand in lines; a young antiquarian bookstore employee who gets more than he bargains for in his desire for life experience; and a seemingly straight-laced family man with a big Wall Street job, whose secret pastime, once discovered, upends his and his loved ones’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second half, devoted entirely to the novella “Eve in Hollywood,” is set in Los Angeles during Tinseltown’s Golden Age. The pithy, film noir-ish thriller picks up where the author’s 2011 novel \u003cem>Rules of Civility\u003c/em> left off — with the plucky, scar-faced adventuress, Evelyn Ross, deftly saving the honor of a host of Hollywood starlets. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1113762078/chloe-veltman\">Chloe Veltman,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 842px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting a helicopter flying over trees.\" width=\"842\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM.png 842w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-800x1152.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-160x230.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.40.35-PM-768x1105.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 842px) 100vw, 842px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Women’ by Kristin Hannah. \u003ccite>(St. Martin's Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Women’ by Kristin Hannah\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“You’re only going to be a nurse until you get married,” her mother said. But Frankie McGrath had other ideas, ones that would lead her away from her wealthy family’s conservative outlook on how daughters should behave. Kristin Hannah’s \u003cem>The Women \u003c/em>follows young Frankie’s transformation, when after working as a nurse in California and tending to a wounded soldier, and missing her soldier brother, she joins the Army as a nurse. That takes her from a comfortable life of known expectations, to one of the chaos and danger of war, new career opportunities and love. Tangled love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Frankie returns home, she finds her country still protesting the war, and those who served. \u003cem>The Women \u003c/em>shines a light on a then little-known aspect of the war: the women who also served in Vietnam, as nurses. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1053920456/jeanine-herbst\">Jeanine Herbst,\u003c/a> news anchor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 836px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960523\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM.png\" alt=\"The front half of a horse visible as it sleeps into a spiraling vortex.\" width=\"836\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM.png 836w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-800x1160.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-160x232.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.38.10-PM-768x1113.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel’ by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer. \u003ccite>(Riverhead Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel’ by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This salty and dark historical fantasia feistily explodes well-worn textbook narratives about the meeting of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his captains with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and his entourage in Tenoxtitlan — now Mexico City — in 1519.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Álvaro Enrigue’s depiction of the stressed out, clumsy Cortés and the drugged out, mercurial Moctezuma sets these near-mythical figures into earthy relief. But it’s mostly the intrigues and machinations of these leaders’ canny consorts — the Aztec princess Atotoxtli and the conquistadors’ translator Malinalli — that power the plot. Natasha Wimmer’s English translation sharply delivers the novel’s poetic and witty qualities while at the same time reveling in its core theme: the fundamental untranslatability of human experience. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1113762078/chloe-veltman\">Chloe Veltman,\u003c/a> correspondent, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Mysteries & Thrillers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 838px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960522\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a partial close-up of a woman's face and the exterior of a house in the snow.\" width=\"838\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM.png 838w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-800x1155.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-160x231.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.36.14-PM-768x1109.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Nightwatching’ by Tracy Sierra. \u003ccite>(Pamela Dorman Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Nightwatching’ by Tracy Sierra\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nightwatching \u003c/em>begins with a scene straight out of a nightmare: A woman is at home with two sleeping children when she hears the footsteps of an intruder on the stairs. The story that follows is by turns suspenseful, uncomfortable and enraging. Tracy Sierra skillfully uses the home invasion to explore the terrifying responsibility of motherhood and to expose the pure horror of being a woman in a society that does not always choose to believe women. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1227635672/julie-rogers\">Julie Rogers,\u003c/a> historian and curator, NPR Research, Archives & Data strategy\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960518\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960518\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a white house on a red horizon.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-800x1166.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-160x233.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.33.24-PM-768x1120.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Hunter’ by Tana French. \u003ccite>(Viking)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Hunter’ by Tana French\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Set in the hills of Western Ireland, this novel picks up the story of characters introduced in 2020’s \u003cem>The Searcher\u003c/em> — retired American detective Cal Hooper and Trey, a teen girl he’s taken under his wing. As French revisits the seemingly bucolic landscape where trouble roils just under the surface, her writing continues to shift from mystery to meditation. While there’s still a knot of questions about crimes — including both fraud and murder — to be untangled, this novel is ultimately about belonging; the ways in which families do, and don’t, owe each other debts; the communities we resist, alienate, or become a welcome part of. Morally shaded and complex, it will leave you thinking about who’s right — and what’s wrong — long after you turn the last page. —\u003cem> Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch2>Sci Fi, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction & Horror\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960517\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 744px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960517\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a bird's nest with broken eggs and one that is still intact.\" width=\"744\" height=\"1106\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM.png 744w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.31.42-PM-160x238.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 744px) 100vw, 744px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cuckoo’ by Gretchen Felker-Martin. \u003ccite>(Tor Nightfire)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Cuckoo’ by Gretchen Felker-Martin\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cuckoo \u003c/em>is an ingeniously scary novel about a group of kids sent to a conversion camp in the ’90s. There’s the terror of the socially accepted abuse the kids face (both at the camp and at home) because they are queer, but there’s yet another horrifying entity preying on them, and trying to make them — different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Felker-Martin’s sharp novel takes on the particular vulnerability of queer kids and the body-snatching that is conversion therapy, and she does it with equal measures of tenderness and grotesquery. As harrowing and disgusting as it is, I also found it quite insightful and beautiful — and for that reason, \u003cem>Cuckoo \u003c/em>is a great work of horror. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/959668312/liam-mcbain\">Liam McBain,\u003c/a> associate producer, ‘It’s Been a Minute’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960516\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 874px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960516\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring an illustration of a hand holding a gold chain.\" width=\"874\" height=\"1108\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM.png 874w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-800x1014.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-160x203.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.29.35-PM-768x974.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 874px) 100vw, 874px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Familiar’ by Leigh Bardugo. \u003ccite>(Flatiron Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Familiar’ by Leigh Bardugo\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It is the Spanish Golden Age, and kitchen maid Luzia has secrets to hide: her skill at magic and her Jewish heritage. When her employer discovers her spells, Luzia is entered into a tournament to find King Philip, who hopes to increase his military standing, a champion. She is trained by the strange creature Santángel, an immortal with a mysterious past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1244125050/leigh-bardugo-the-familiar-book-review\">gorgeously lush, vividly written book\u003c/a> that shines with its strong cast of characters. Luzia is a hero you’ll find yourself rooting for right from the start, and the magic system in this world is a breath of fresh air. Once again, Leigh Bardugo proves she never misses the mark when it comes to intricately building fantastical worlds — leaving you thinking about them long after the last page is turned. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/836937515/hafsa-fathima\">Hafsa Fathima,\u003c/a> production assistant, ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960514\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting the word 'Husbands' climbing up a ladder.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-800x1168.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.26.32-PM-768x1121.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Husbands: A Novel’ by Holly Gramazio. \u003ccite>(Doubleday)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Husbands: A Novel’ by Holly Gramazio\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lauren leaves her London flat for a bachelorette party one night only to discover a husband at home awaiting her return. Not only was she not married when she left for the night, she doesn’t recognize this man. Slowly she works out that he’s not a threat — and that all evidence on her phone, in conversations with friends and neighbors, and in their apartments points to him being fully integrated into her life. And there he is until he goes into the attic and a different husband emerges, slightly — or drastically — altering Lauren’s life. The pattern continues as Lauren searches for metaphysical clues to what’s going on and wrestles with how to know, if she can ever know, which life is right for her. A rare combination of the truly hilarious and profound. \u003cem>— Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960513\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 762px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960513\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover depicting block letters floating in space.\" width=\"762\" height=\"1110\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM.png 762w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.24.33-PM-160x233.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 762px) 100vw, 762px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Ministry of Time: A Novel’ by Kaliane Bradley. \u003ccite>(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘The Ministry of Time: A Novel’ by Kaliane Bradley\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You’d think a novel about the bureaucracy of a time-travel government agency might be kinda boring. But from the moment you meet the book’s enigmatic protagonist — as she starts a new job in the UK’s top secret new time travel agency — to the introduction of the dashing Graham Gore, an 1847 arctic explorer plucked through time, you’ll be hooked. Come for the romance, stay for the unraveling of a mystery, the nuanced, genre-bending treatises on race and identity, and the long-lingering ideas on colonialism, empires and the mutability of history. \u003cem>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/580312943/christina-cala\">Christina Cala,\u003c/a> senior producer, ‘Code Switch’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960509\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960509\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with small illustrations including the Paris city skyline, the ocean and various plants and flowers.\" width=\"828\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM.png 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-800x1171.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-28-at-1.21.52-PM-768x1124.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel’ by Douglas Westerbeke. \u003ccite>(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel’ by Douglas Westerbeke\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the year 1885, in Paris, when 9-year-old Aubry Tourvel encounters a mysterious, wooden, puzzle ball: It may be a blessing or a curse, but it most definitely changes her life. Now she needs to keep moving forever; too long in any one town and she will bleed to death. So her life is all travel and adventure, and through her we wonder at the richness of the globe’s markets, towns, forests and deserts. Over many decades, she meets all types of kind and curious people — as well as cruel and uncaring ones. Sometimes Aubry enjoys quick communion with strangers. Other times, she is surrounded but desperately lonely. This is a ravishing, deeply human book that’s in love with the world, with people, with the new — and yet is infused with a deep, futile longing for home.\u003cem> — \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1091803881/jennifer-vanasco\">\u003cem>Jennifer Vanasco\u003c/em>,\u003c/a>\u003cem> editor and reporter, Culture Desk\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Sharply Funny ‘Janet Planet’ Perfectly Captures the Feel of a Long, Hot Summer",
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"content": "\u003cp>Amid the current crop of summer movies, I can’t think of one that captures the \u003cem>feeling\u003c/em> of summer more evocatively than \u003cem>Janet Planet. \u003c/em>Much of the story takes place in a rustic house in woodsy Western Massachusetts; by day, sunlight streams in through enormous windows, and at night, chirping crickets flood the soundtrack. The celebrated playwright Annie Baker, here writing and directing her first film, has uncanny powers of observation and a talent for evoking time and place. She also has two memorable lead characters and a sharply funny and moving story to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the summer of 1991. The story begins when 11-year-old Lacy, played by the terrific newcomer Zoe Ziegler, calls her mom from camp and demands to be taken home early; her exact words are “I’m gonna kill myself if you don’t come get me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960332']Lacy is a shy misfit with big owlish glasses and a flair for deadpan exaggeration. She and her single mom, Janet, who’s played by a subtly luminous Julianne Nicholson, are extremely close, as we can see when Janet duly comes to fetch Lacy and bring her home. Later at their house, Janet puts Lacy to bed and listens to her vent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baker isn’t one to hurry her characters along. Her plays — the best known of which is her Pulitzer-winning 2013 drama, \u003cem>The Flick\u003c/em> — have been justly praised for bringing a new kind of naturalism to the stage, especially in the way the actors retain the stammers and silences of normal conversation. She brings that same sensibility to \u003cem>Janet Planet\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baker includes a few loving nods to her background in theater; at various points, Lacy plays with a small puppet theater, complete with handmade clay figurines, and in a later scene, she and Janet attend an outdoor performance featuring actors in elaborate costumes. But the movie never feels stagey. It was shot on 16-millimeter film by Maria von Hausswolff, who previously filmed the visually stunning Icelandic drama \u003cem>Godland\u003c/em>, and her use of natural light and precise, fine-grained details feel transportingly cinematic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aBF_v0gvpQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie is divided into three loose chapters, each one focused on a friend or significant other of Janet’s who becomes a houseguest for a spell. First up is her boyfriend Wayne, played by a gruff Will Patton, who has a daughter around Lacy’s age but doesn’t take too kindly to Lacy herself. He’s soon out the door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second chapter we meet Regina, played by a wonderful Sophie Okonedo, a free-spirited drifter who comes to stay with Janet and Lacy after leaving a local hippie commune — basically a cult, though everyone is careful not to use that word. Regina initially brings a breath of fresh air into the house, though she proves insensitive and tactless, especially around Janet, and soon overstays her welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960151']The third houseguest — Avi, played by Elias Koteas — is Regina’s ex-partner and the leader of that hippie commune. Avi is the most mysterious presence in the movie, and it’s through his short-lived relationship with Janet that we fully grasp how profoundly unhappy she is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The title \u003cem>Janet Planet\u003c/em> has many meanings — it’s the name of the acupuncture studio that Janet operates out of the house. It’s also a passing reference to the nickname that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15396571/van-morrison\" target=\"15396571\" rel=\"noopener\">Van Morrison\u003c/a> gave the songwriter Janet Rigsbee, who inspired a lot of his love songs during their five-year marriage. But the title is most meaningful as it frames our understanding of Janet, whose quiet magnetism really does seem to draw other people, especially men, into her orbit. As we see in Nicholson’s heartbreaking performance, it’s been as much a curse as it is a blessing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the movie’s subtlest achievements is the way it clues us into Janet’s perspective, even as it keeps Janet herself at a bit of a distance. Much of the time we’re studying Janet through Lacy’s eyes, and what’s uncanny is the way Baker captures a sense of the girl’s growing disillusionment — that intensely specific moment when a child begins to see even a doting parent in a clear and not always flattering new light. By the end of \u003cem>Janet Planet\u003c/em>, not much has happened, and yet something momentous seems to have taken place. You want Baker to return to these characters, to show us how Janet and Lacy continue to change and grow, together and apart, in the years — and the summers — to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Janet Planet’ is released nationwide on June 28, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Amid the current crop of summer movies, I can’t think of one that captures the \u003cem>feeling\u003c/em> of summer more evocatively than \u003cem>Janet Planet. \u003c/em>Much of the story takes place in a rustic house in woodsy Western Massachusetts; by day, sunlight streams in through enormous windows, and at night, chirping crickets flood the soundtrack. The celebrated playwright Annie Baker, here writing and directing her first film, has uncanny powers of observation and a talent for evoking time and place. She also has two memorable lead characters and a sharply funny and moving story to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the summer of 1991. The story begins when 11-year-old Lacy, played by the terrific newcomer Zoe Ziegler, calls her mom from camp and demands to be taken home early; her exact words are “I’m gonna kill myself if you don’t come get me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/_aBF_v0gvpQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/_aBF_v0gvpQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The movie is divided into three loose chapters, each one focused on a friend or significant other of Janet’s who becomes a houseguest for a spell. First up is her boyfriend Wayne, played by a gruff Will Patton, who has a daughter around Lacy’s age but doesn’t take too kindly to Lacy herself. He’s soon out the door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second chapter we meet Regina, played by a wonderful Sophie Okonedo, a free-spirited drifter who comes to stay with Janet and Lacy after leaving a local hippie commune — basically a cult, though everyone is careful not to use that word. Regina initially brings a breath of fresh air into the house, though she proves insensitive and tactless, especially around Janet, and soon overstays her welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The third houseguest — Avi, played by Elias Koteas — is Regina’s ex-partner and the leader of that hippie commune. Avi is the most mysterious presence in the movie, and it’s through his short-lived relationship with Janet that we fully grasp how profoundly unhappy she is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The title \u003cem>Janet Planet\u003c/em> has many meanings — it’s the name of the acupuncture studio that Janet operates out of the house. It’s also a passing reference to the nickname that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15396571/van-morrison\" target=\"15396571\" rel=\"noopener\">Van Morrison\u003c/a> gave the songwriter Janet Rigsbee, who inspired a lot of his love songs during their five-year marriage. But the title is most meaningful as it frames our understanding of Janet, whose quiet magnetism really does seem to draw other people, especially men, into her orbit. As we see in Nicholson’s heartbreaking performance, it’s been as much a curse as it is a blessing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the movie’s subtlest achievements is the way it clues us into Janet’s perspective, even as it keeps Janet herself at a bit of a distance. Much of the time we’re studying Janet through Lacy’s eyes, and what’s uncanny is the way Baker captures a sense of the girl’s growing disillusionment — that intensely specific moment when a child begins to see even a doting parent in a clear and not always flattering new light. By the end of \u003cem>Janet Planet\u003c/em>, not much has happened, and yet something momentous seems to have taken place. You want Baker to return to these characters, to show us how Janet and Lacy continue to change and grow, together and apart, in the years — and the summers — to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Janet Planet’ is released nationwide on June 28, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Season 3 of The Bear is out now from FX on Hulu. The review below contains details from the season.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>is a show about scars and ghosts, because it is in so many ways a show about consequences and grief. Not all the scars are visible, of course, and not all the ghosts are dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the opening of the excellent third season, we find Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) alone in the dark, the morning after his new restaurant’s tryout night, staring at a gnarly old scar on his palm and thinking about people who aren’t there. People who have died, but also people he’s hurt, people he doesn’t know how to talk to, people who have changed him for good and for ill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960144']The episode unfolds from there not in a straight line but as a looping, layered look at multiple pieces of Carmy’s life that sit on top of each other like a stack of pancakes you can cut through and expose all at once. One is this difficult morning after he got locked in the walk-in fridge. Some involve events in his family — Mikey’s death and telling Nat goodbye when he moved to New York years ago. Some involve Claire (Molly Gordon), whom he kisses in quick flashes. But mostly, we watch Carmy’s experiences in various kitchens in Chicago, on the east and west coasts, and in Copenhagen. We watch him and Luca (Will Poulter) working for chef Terry (Olivia Colman). We see him learn from chefs Daniel Boulud, Rene Redzepi and Thomas Keller, all of whom appear as themselves. We see more of the damage that was inflicted on him by the cruel New York chef played by Joel McHale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it doesn’t offer up the same pleasures we’re used to, like seeing this big cast yell back and forth, the episode is an example of \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em>‘s greatest strength. Despite its success, the show is creatively restless, always. This is not a conventional episode of TV, let alone a conventional season opener. It’s moody and disorienting, it doesn’t advance the plot a whole lot, and it may take a couple of viewings to understand where in time you’re located. If episodes dropped one at a time, this opener might leave an audience cold. But with multiple episodes available at once, including a much more typical second episode where the restaurant is trying to get ready for its real opening night, creator Christopher Storer and the rest of the creative team can get away with this kind of experimentation, and so they do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960386\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1292px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960386\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM.png\" alt=\"A middle-aged white man with a scruffy beard stands with his head close to a closed door.\" width=\"1292\" height=\"692\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM.png 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-800x428.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-1020x546.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-768x411.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1292px) 100vw, 1292px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Cousin Richie. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The same is true of the episodes that step away from Carmy and Sydney and Richie, even though those three characters are so beloved and mesmerizing. There aren’t any epics in this season on the scale of season two’s brilliant “Forks” and “Fishes,” but there are more intimate opportunities to visit with the rest of the cast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ayo Edebiri (who plays Sydney) directs “Napkins,” a standout episode about Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). Not for nothing, “Napkins” also includes the strongest scene the show has ever done with Mikey (Jon Bernthal), \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em>‘s greatest ghost of all. Abby Elliott and Jamie Lee Curtis hold down “Ice Chips,” in which Nat’s mother, Donna — also, in her way, a ghost — is not the person Nat wants on hand as she prepares to give birth, but Donna is who she’s got.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s this constant push-push-push against the obvious next move that makes \u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>compelling. What earned so much praise in the first season was the grimy, loving clamor of The Beef, so they abandoned it for the team’s pivot to fine dining in season 2, which opened up new possibilities for stories about learning and self-actualization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959918']And now that The Bear exists and can serve food, the focus shifts again. Because what’s at stake, particularly in the late part of this third season, are questions about creativity and excellence. There is, in the real world, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/burn-it-down-maureen-ryan?variant=41105489330210\">push to de-romanticize\u003c/a> abusive behaviors that have long been written off as part of an initiation process that one has to endure in order to become great. And \u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>dives headlong into its own exploration of toxicity and hard work without ever stepping over the line into didactic posturing. Instead, it goes back to those two big weapons that give it the gravity and emotional scale it maintained over its first two seasons: scars and ghosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carmy’s industry ghosts are good and bad. He has worked for Chef Terry, who is kind and creates an environment of high standards but humane treatment — and her restaurant, Ever, transformed Richie’s life, too. But Carmy has also worked for the abusive nightmare of a boss played by Joel McHale. The scars from that job are in his anxiety and self-flagellation, but also in little habits like the neatly cut labeling tape that he attaches to deli containers and the handles of saucepans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be lovely to believe Carmy could never become Joel McHale. But when he unveils his list of “non-negotiables” for The Bear, it’s less the items on the list and more the way he delivers the list — as an impatient authoritarian — that seems ominous. He has become obsessed with getting a Michelin star, and declares that the menu will change every single day, which upends the economics of the business and the work that’s done by Sydney, Richie, Nat, Tina, Marcus, and everybody else who works there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1292px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960387\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM.png\" alt=\"A Black woman stands in a kitchen looking stressed. She is wearing a white t-shirt and black apron.\" width=\"1292\" height=\"706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM.png 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-800x437.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-1020x557.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-160x87.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-768x420.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1292px) 100vw, 1292px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is also a very strong season for Sydney and Richie. Edebiri perfectly captures Sydney’s hesitation about attaching herself to Carmy as his obsessive focus on quality and achievement turns self-destructive. And Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who discovered he was a born fine-dining service guy when he staged at Ever, finds himself trying to protect his dining room and his right to run it. It’s their complicated love for Carmy (and each other), as well as his for them, that makes all of this feel so emotionally urgent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959577']The idea of Carmy becoming one of Sydney’s unhappy ghosts, after all, is almost too much to take, and the lack of reconciliation after the bitter fight between Carmy and Richie through the walk-in door casts a pall over any success they have together. (The character of Claire, who felt under-written even last season, is a far less effective emotional lever, particularly now, when she is almost entirely talked about but never seen.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are, of course, things in the season that don’t work quite so well, though most of them feel less like failure than like excess. There is a little too much of the Fak family, headed by Neil, played by Matty Matheson. Neil is a brilliant creation, played brilliantly, and when he’s part of conversations with the whole staff, his presence is critical to getting the balance of those scenes right. But as the Faks multiply over the course of this season, they get a little too silly, and they also are the source of the only guest appearance out of \u003cem>many \u003c/em>big ones in the show’s history that has ever tipped over into feeling like stunt casting — into seemingly doing a thing just to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960388\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1290px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960388\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM.png\" alt=\"Close up of a rotund man with a moustache and tattooed head.\" width=\"1290\" height=\"886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM.png 1290w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-800x549.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-1020x701.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-160x110.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-768x527.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1290px) 100vw, 1290px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matty Matheson as Neil Fak. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We are also getting diminishing returns by the end of this season from the frequent appearances by real chefs. A lesson to Carmy from Thomas Keller goes on for too long, and a late-season gathering of real chefs, while it has its delights, also feels indulgent. It’s understandable that the show wants to make a spectacle of how beloved it is by the real food world and how much star chefs want to elbow their way into episodes. But unsurprisingly, \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em> gets its best acting work from actors. And detouring into celebrity cameos is tricky at a moment when time with the main cast feels precious and the story is gaining steam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959635']Speaking of which: This is not really a season; it is half a season. It ends with a cliffhanger, “To Be Continued.” It doesn’t resolve either the main plot threads or the emotional tangles that have been built over these ten episodes. That’s a choice the people behind the show have made, and it candidly seems like a perilous one for a project that presumably won’t come back for many months. Because of the exceptional acting and writing, they will perhaps get away with the anticlimax of it (so different from the big thunderclaps of the last two seasons ending), but it might have worked better to give \u003cem>some \u003c/em>resolution to \u003cem>something\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, though, this remains a tremendously creative, audacious show that is full of pleasures both expected and unexpected. The fact that it doesn’t repeat its successes as much as it tries to reshape itself each time around is perhaps like Carmy’s ever-changing menu: It can lead to a certain number of misfires, but it’s a way to show and share all that you can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All Season 3 episodes of ‘The Bear’ are streaming now via FX and Hulu.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Season 3 of The Bear is out now from FX on Hulu. The review below contains details from the season.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>is a show about scars and ghosts, because it is in so many ways a show about consequences and grief. Not all the scars are visible, of course, and not all the ghosts are dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the opening of the excellent third season, we find Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) alone in the dark, the morning after his new restaurant’s tryout night, staring at a gnarly old scar on his palm and thinking about people who aren’t there. People who have died, but also people he’s hurt, people he doesn’t know how to talk to, people who have changed him for good and for ill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The episode unfolds from there not in a straight line but as a looping, layered look at multiple pieces of Carmy’s life that sit on top of each other like a stack of pancakes you can cut through and expose all at once. One is this difficult morning after he got locked in the walk-in fridge. Some involve events in his family — Mikey’s death and telling Nat goodbye when he moved to New York years ago. Some involve Claire (Molly Gordon), whom he kisses in quick flashes. But mostly, we watch Carmy’s experiences in various kitchens in Chicago, on the east and west coasts, and in Copenhagen. We watch him and Luca (Will Poulter) working for chef Terry (Olivia Colman). We see him learn from chefs Daniel Boulud, Rene Redzepi and Thomas Keller, all of whom appear as themselves. We see more of the damage that was inflicted on him by the cruel New York chef played by Joel McHale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it doesn’t offer up the same pleasures we’re used to, like seeing this big cast yell back and forth, the episode is an example of \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em>‘s greatest strength. Despite its success, the show is creatively restless, always. This is not a conventional episode of TV, let alone a conventional season opener. It’s moody and disorienting, it doesn’t advance the plot a whole lot, and it may take a couple of viewings to understand where in time you’re located. If episodes dropped one at a time, this opener might leave an audience cold. But with multiple episodes available at once, including a much more typical second episode where the restaurant is trying to get ready for its real opening night, creator Christopher Storer and the rest of the creative team can get away with this kind of experimentation, and so they do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960386\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1292px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960386\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM.png\" alt=\"A middle-aged white man with a scruffy beard stands with his head close to a closed door.\" width=\"1292\" height=\"692\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM.png 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-800x428.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-1020x546.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.45.38-AM-768x411.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1292px) 100vw, 1292px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Cousin Richie. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The same is true of the episodes that step away from Carmy and Sydney and Richie, even though those three characters are so beloved and mesmerizing. There aren’t any epics in this season on the scale of season two’s brilliant “Forks” and “Fishes,” but there are more intimate opportunities to visit with the rest of the cast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ayo Edebiri (who plays Sydney) directs “Napkins,” a standout episode about Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). Not for nothing, “Napkins” also includes the strongest scene the show has ever done with Mikey (Jon Bernthal), \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em>‘s greatest ghost of all. Abby Elliott and Jamie Lee Curtis hold down “Ice Chips,” in which Nat’s mother, Donna — also, in her way, a ghost — is not the person Nat wants on hand as she prepares to give birth, but Donna is who she’s got.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s this constant push-push-push against the obvious next move that makes \u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>compelling. What earned so much praise in the first season was the grimy, loving clamor of The Beef, so they abandoned it for the team’s pivot to fine dining in season 2, which opened up new possibilities for stories about learning and self-actualization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And now that The Bear exists and can serve food, the focus shifts again. Because what’s at stake, particularly in the late part of this third season, are questions about creativity and excellence. There is, in the real world, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/burn-it-down-maureen-ryan?variant=41105489330210\">push to de-romanticize\u003c/a> abusive behaviors that have long been written off as part of an initiation process that one has to endure in order to become great. And \u003cem>The Bear \u003c/em>dives headlong into its own exploration of toxicity and hard work without ever stepping over the line into didactic posturing. Instead, it goes back to those two big weapons that give it the gravity and emotional scale it maintained over its first two seasons: scars and ghosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carmy’s industry ghosts are good and bad. He has worked for Chef Terry, who is kind and creates an environment of high standards but humane treatment — and her restaurant, Ever, transformed Richie’s life, too. But Carmy has also worked for the abusive nightmare of a boss played by Joel McHale. The scars from that job are in his anxiety and self-flagellation, but also in little habits like the neatly cut labeling tape that he attaches to deli containers and the handles of saucepans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be lovely to believe Carmy could never become Joel McHale. But when he unveils his list of “non-negotiables” for The Bear, it’s less the items on the list and more the way he delivers the list — as an impatient authoritarian — that seems ominous. He has become obsessed with getting a Michelin star, and declares that the menu will change every single day, which upends the economics of the business and the work that’s done by Sydney, Richie, Nat, Tina, Marcus, and everybody else who works there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1292px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960387\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM.png\" alt=\"A Black woman stands in a kitchen looking stressed. She is wearing a white t-shirt and black apron.\" width=\"1292\" height=\"706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM.png 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-800x437.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-1020x557.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-160x87.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.49.39-AM-768x420.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1292px) 100vw, 1292px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is also a very strong season for Sydney and Richie. Edebiri perfectly captures Sydney’s hesitation about attaching herself to Carmy as his obsessive focus on quality and achievement turns self-destructive. And Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who discovered he was a born fine-dining service guy when he staged at Ever, finds himself trying to protect his dining room and his right to run it. It’s their complicated love for Carmy (and each other), as well as his for them, that makes all of this feel so emotionally urgent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The idea of Carmy becoming one of Sydney’s unhappy ghosts, after all, is almost too much to take, and the lack of reconciliation after the bitter fight between Carmy and Richie through the walk-in door casts a pall over any success they have together. (The character of Claire, who felt under-written even last season, is a far less effective emotional lever, particularly now, when she is almost entirely talked about but never seen.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are, of course, things in the season that don’t work quite so well, though most of them feel less like failure than like excess. There is a little too much of the Fak family, headed by Neil, played by Matty Matheson. Neil is a brilliant creation, played brilliantly, and when he’s part of conversations with the whole staff, his presence is critical to getting the balance of those scenes right. But as the Faks multiply over the course of this season, they get a little too silly, and they also are the source of the only guest appearance out of \u003cem>many \u003c/em>big ones in the show’s history that has ever tipped over into feeling like stunt casting — into seemingly doing a thing just to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960388\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1290px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960388\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM.png\" alt=\"Close up of a rotund man with a moustache and tattooed head.\" width=\"1290\" height=\"886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM.png 1290w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-800x549.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-1020x701.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-160x110.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-27-at-11.52.41-AM-768x527.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1290px) 100vw, 1290px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matty Matheson as Neil Fak. \u003ccite>(FX)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We are also getting diminishing returns by the end of this season from the frequent appearances by real chefs. A lesson to Carmy from Thomas Keller goes on for too long, and a late-season gathering of real chefs, while it has its delights, also feels indulgent. It’s understandable that the show wants to make a spectacle of how beloved it is by the real food world and how much star chefs want to elbow their way into episodes. But unsurprisingly, \u003cem>The Bear\u003c/em> gets its best acting work from actors. And detouring into celebrity cameos is tricky at a moment when time with the main cast feels precious and the story is gaining steam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Speaking of which: This is not really a season; it is half a season. It ends with a cliffhanger, “To Be Continued.” It doesn’t resolve either the main plot threads or the emotional tangles that have been built over these ten episodes. That’s a choice the people behind the show have made, and it candidly seems like a perilous one for a project that presumably won’t come back for many months. Because of the exceptional acting and writing, they will perhaps get away with the anticlimax of it (so different from the big thunderclaps of the last two seasons ending), but it might have worked better to give \u003cem>some \u003c/em>resolution to \u003cem>something\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, though, this remains a tremendously creative, audacious show that is full of pleasures both expected and unexpected. The fact that it doesn’t repeat its successes as much as it tries to reshape itself each time around is perhaps like Carmy’s ever-changing menu: It can lead to a certain number of misfires, but it’s a way to show and share all that you can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All Season 3 episodes of ‘The Bear’ are streaming now via FX and Hulu.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Not all successful movies need to be franchises. Most really shouldn’t be. That’s not how Hollywood works, of course, but it’s worth repeating. Because in the case of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em>, now on its third movie with a prequel about a few new characters in New York on the first day of the invasion, the thrill of that fresh idea has waned. And when that happens, what are we left with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960151']There were certainly many questions about the how and the why of the killing monsters with hypersensitive hearing. The internet is full of logic questions and holes if you’re curious. But the beauty of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em> was the silly mystery. We were just dropped into this apocalyptic world with a very simple but challenging rule: If you make a noise, you die. Got it. Scarcity of information worked in its favor as we got to know this family just trying to survive (and deliver a baby quietly!) Its sequel worked mostly because it smartly chose to continue that same journey, picking up exactly where we had left off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Quiet Place: Day One\u003c/em>, directed and co-written by Michael Sarnoski (sharing a credit with John Krasinski), shifts focus from the Abbott family to a new character, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), who is dying of cancer. She is bitter, sarcastic and mean. And taking the “save the cat” idea to its literal extreme, Sam does have one friend: A cat named Frodo. This seems like an unnecessary crutch, simply because if anyone is going to make a hostile character a compelling hero, it’s Nyong’o. Both she and Joseph Quinn, playing a British law student named Eric, have deeply expressive, saucer-sized eyes that make dialogue almost unnecessary. But without a newborn in the mix, the cat adds an extra element of chaos by surviving for more than 3 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-WIb4ATfT8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is something compelling about the idea of what a terminal person might do on the first day of the apocalypse, and Nyong’o is powerful and heartbreaking on this quest for the perfect slice. There’s a beauty in the simplicity and insanity of it. What Eric is doing there, however, is anyone’s guess. He’s a little too underwritten to make much sense of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960332']Also, there are competing forces at play, with \u003cem>Day One\u003c/em> wanting to be both a meditative character study and a thrilling horror movie that gives us more monsters, more carnage, more jump scares and unsettling memories of 9/11. They never quite mesh, and several choices make it seem like the filmmakers were just trying to shoehorn in excitement without much justification. One of the most exciting sequences that captures the terror of Krasinski’s films is when Eric goes to a pharmacy to try to get meds for Sam. It’s simple, efficient and full of dread and tension because it’s a necessary risk, unlike many of the bigger set pieces that feel more strained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately \u003cem>Day One\u003c/em> could have been set around any old apocalypse. Tethering it to the rules of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em>, a smart premise whose novelty is impossible to recreate let alone build a world upon, just holds it back.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ is released nationwide on June 27, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Not all successful movies need to be franchises. Most really shouldn’t be. That’s not how Hollywood works, of course, but it’s worth repeating. Because in the case of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em>, now on its third movie with a prequel about a few new characters in New York on the first day of the invasion, the thrill of that fresh idea has waned. And when that happens, what are we left with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>There were certainly many questions about the how and the why of the killing monsters with hypersensitive hearing. The internet is full of logic questions and holes if you’re curious. But the beauty of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em> was the silly mystery. We were just dropped into this apocalyptic world with a very simple but challenging rule: If you make a noise, you die. Got it. Scarcity of information worked in its favor as we got to know this family just trying to survive (and deliver a baby quietly!) Its sequel worked mostly because it smartly chose to continue that same journey, picking up exactly where we had left off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Quiet Place: Day One\u003c/em>, directed and co-written by Michael Sarnoski (sharing a credit with John Krasinski), shifts focus from the Abbott family to a new character, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), who is dying of cancer. She is bitter, sarcastic and mean. And taking the “save the cat” idea to its literal extreme, Sam does have one friend: A cat named Frodo. This seems like an unnecessary crutch, simply because if anyone is going to make a hostile character a compelling hero, it’s Nyong’o. Both she and Joseph Quinn, playing a British law student named Eric, have deeply expressive, saucer-sized eyes that make dialogue almost unnecessary. But without a newborn in the mix, the cat adds an extra element of chaos by surviving for more than 3 minutes.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/E-WIb4ATfT8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/E-WIb4ATfT8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>There is something compelling about the idea of what a terminal person might do on the first day of the apocalypse, and Nyong’o is powerful and heartbreaking on this quest for the perfect slice. There’s a beauty in the simplicity and insanity of it. What Eric is doing there, however, is anyone’s guess. He’s a little too underwritten to make much sense of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Also, there are competing forces at play, with \u003cem>Day One\u003c/em> wanting to be both a meditative character study and a thrilling horror movie that gives us more monsters, more carnage, more jump scares and unsettling memories of 9/11. They never quite mesh, and several choices make it seem like the filmmakers were just trying to shoehorn in excitement without much justification. One of the most exciting sequences that captures the terror of Krasinski’s films is when Eric goes to a pharmacy to try to get meds for Sam. It’s simple, efficient and full of dread and tension because it’s a necessary risk, unlike many of the bigger set pieces that feel more strained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately \u003cem>Day One\u003c/em> could have been set around any old apocalypse. Tethering it to the rules of \u003cem>A Quiet Place\u003c/em>, a smart premise whose novelty is impossible to recreate let alone build a world upon, just holds it back.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ is released nationwide on June 27, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Taxicab Confessions With Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn in ‘Daddio’",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960333\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1698px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM.png\" alt=\"A male taxi driver looks over his shoulder and looks at the woman in the back of his cab.\" width=\"1698\" height=\"1130\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM.png 1698w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM-800x532.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM-1020x679.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM-768x511.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-26-at-10.46.52-AM-1536x1022.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1698px) 100vw, 1698px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn star in ‘Daddio.’ \u003ccite>(Sony Pictures Classics via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s late at night when Dakota Johnson hops into a yellow taxicab at Kennedy airport in the new film \u003cem>Daddio\u003c/em>. She’s just going home to Manhattan, 44th Street, between 9th and 10th avenues. And her cab driver (Sean Penn) decides to strike up a conversation that will last the duration of this nearly 100-minute ride. There is no “quiet” setting cab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not a horror movie, though for some a chatty driver on an unexpectedly long trip might be close. It’s not the beginning of a wild \u003cem>Collateral\u003c/em>-style night either. No, these two people from different generations, different life experiences and different classes just talk about everything — life, mistakes, technology, human nature, what makes a New Yorker, absentee fathers, affairs, human nature and love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959268']\u003cem>Daddio\u003c/em> was written and directed by Christy Hall, a playwright. Though we are also technically stuck in a cab with Girlie (Johnson) and Clark (Penn), Hall makes it feel rather cinematic, whether her camera is in close up on her actors, a rear-view mirror, a phone screen or letting us breathe for a moment with a shot outside of the cab, on the New York skyline. Claustrophobic it is not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not to say that some of the conversations won’t have you squirming in your skin a bit. The vast majority of those come from Clark, a Boomer with a heart of gold and some ideas about life that haven’t aged particularly well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taboo subjects and ideas that might get a person “cancelled” on social media are of course part of the point of this journey, in which two people who wouldn’t ever find themselves in an extended, soul-bearing conversation with each other under normal circumstances do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJrr2amlFyc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clark is one of those self-proclaimed truth-tellers who believes in his ability to read a person immediately, well-honed after 20 years of driving taxis in New York. He lures his passenger in with flattery about her New York savvy (giving cross streets instead of an address and not worrying about the meter) and shocks her when he’s able to immediately discern that the person she’s dating, and texting, is married. Her guard up a bit at the beginning with short, impersonal responses to Clark, who would ungenerously be described as a chronic mansplainer, but pretty soon they’re both in a therapy session (though mostly for her).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960040']It’s an interesting and captivating pairing of actors, borne out of Johnson’s friendship with Penn (they’re neighbors in Malibu). He’s believable as this working class guy with no filter and she is as a woman with a lot on her mind. Movies like this and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959268/am-i-ok-review-dakota-johnson-coming-out-movie-comedy-friendship\">\u003cem>AM I OK?\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, are a nice reminder how Johnson thrives with material she connects with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daddio\u003c/em>, in theaters Friday, is ultimately a fascinating and imperfect experiment in rich lineage of modest two-handers that take on an epic scope. There are dull moments and off-putting tangents that seem to exist only to provoke, but the message at its core is a nice one about connection and empathy and occasionally uncomfortable intergenerational conversations that don’t end with someone being silenced. It might just have you thinking about starting a random chat with a stranger, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Daddio’ is released nationwide on June 28, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>Daddio\u003c/em> was written and directed by Christy Hall, a playwright. Though we are also technically stuck in a cab with Girlie (Johnson) and Clark (Penn), Hall makes it feel rather cinematic, whether her camera is in close up on her actors, a rear-view mirror, a phone screen or letting us breathe for a moment with a shot outside of the cab, on the New York skyline. Claustrophobic it is not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not to say that some of the conversations won’t have you squirming in your skin a bit. The vast majority of those come from Clark, a Boomer with a heart of gold and some ideas about life that haven’t aged particularly well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taboo subjects and ideas that might get a person “cancelled” on social media are of course part of the point of this journey, in which two people who wouldn’t ever find themselves in an extended, soul-bearing conversation with each other under normal circumstances do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960318\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 810px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960318\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74.jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover showing a family gathered around a pool being filmed by TV cameras. \" width=\"810\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74.jpeg 810w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-800x1067.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-160x213.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-768x1024.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV’ by Emily Nussbaum. \u003ccite>(Random House)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pulitzer Prize-winning \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> critic Emily Nussbaum first conceived her sweeping chronicle of the rise of reality TV in 2003 — shortly after the debut of \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>and three years into \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>. But back then the reception from fellow writers was as icy as public attitudes towards the genre. “You better write that one fast,” she recalls a friend warning her. “Reality television was a fad … a bubble that would pop before I could get anything on the page.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty years later, Nussbaum’s \u003cem>Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV\u003c/em> is a near definitive history of the genre that forever changed American entertainment. The book’s 20-year journey to publication is a tiny mirror of its subject’s rise to the center of American culture. As Nussbaum shows, “Critics had written off reality programming as a fad back in the 1940s, when mouthy civilians first shook up the economics of radio; and in the 1970s, during the flareups over \u003cem>An American Family \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Gong Show\u003c/em>; and then again in the 1990s, when Fox and MTV set out to disrupt the major networks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13960267']The dismissive pattern continued for decades — and critics were wrong every time. The much maligned reality genre has “always been a trap” for someone in Nussbaum’s profession — as a critic you would either “clutch your pearls,” failing to “see the fun in it” or succumb to the temptation to “treat reality too lightly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across 14 chapters, Nussbaum successfully walks a tightrope. Avoiding censure and trivialization, her narrative keenly captures the reality genre “through the voices of the people who built it” — “step by step, experiment by experiment” in riveting, energetic detail. Determined to see it as the makers and audiences did, and to translate the genre’s diversity, appeal and significance to the page, Nussbaum conducted interviews with a staggering 300 people who worked in every conceivable capacity — from network executives to show creators to crafts people and cast members — on some of the most important reality shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From these interviews, Nussbaum fashions a compelling oral history, transforming the scattered highs, lows, and tipping points of a genre constantly in flux into a cohesive exploration of the invention, evolution and importance of the modern reality show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As juicy and provocative as it is analytical, \u003cem>Cue the Sun!\u003c/em> exposes the seamy underbelly of reality TV where that’s needed but also corrects unduly negative, and unfounded, assumptions. For example, on the motivations of the people who become the casts of these shows, Nussbaum concludes: “For many people, doing this kind of television wasn’t a naïve misstep at all — it was a conscious choice to participate in an extreme sport, one whose risks they embraced.” This insight emerges as a common theme across most of these chapters in the voices of wildly diverse on-screen participants — across programs as disparate as the 1970s \u003cem>An American Family\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many critics have painted reality TV in broad strokes, Nussbaum captures fascinating complexity and nuance. Perhaps the most poignant chapter focuses on PBS’s pioneering precursor to modern reality programming. The tip of the spear in an emerging genre dubbed the “dirty documentary,” in a single season \u003cem>An American Family\u003c/em> exploded the traditional nuclear ideal through California’s prosperous Loud family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959693']Putting a microscope to five teenage kids and two parents at odds, for seven months, the show delivered a microcosm of America’s rapid cultural shifts as the Louds navigated infidelity, a son’s sexuality, and divorce. While the filmmakers played it straight, according to Nussbaum, the Louds felt stung by the 24/7 cameras and scathing public reaction. It was a startling precursor of what was to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades later, with the possible exception of a \u003cem>Dating Game\u003c/em> contestant who turned out to be a serial killer, perhaps no episode is as jaw-dropping as the story of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>. Nussbaum’s storytelling reaches the height of its powers in a blow by blow of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em> season one that will give you the creepy crawlies: fleas under the skin, snakes on the belly, parasites in the intestines. But it’s hard to figure what’s more treacherous, the wildlife or the humans committed to making compelling TV at any cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the book’s strengths, at crucial times the accounts of insiders prove insufficient; context and a critical counterpoint are needed. But in its commitment to handing the mic to the makers, the book eschews outside perspectives. There are exceptions: With \u003cem>An American Family,\u003c/em> we gain insight into the challenge of being gay man on TV in the ’70s through snippets of contemporaneous media and viewer letters. The book also nods to criticism of \u003cem>Queer Eye for the Straight Guy \u003c/em>from the gay community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the situation with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/02/20/1232527337/tv-critics-association-bachelor\">race on \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> franchise\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Cue The Sun!\u003c/em> is noticeably quiet. It acknowledges that creator Mike Fleiss stepped down after an internal investigation into allegations of racial discrimination led to a “racial reckoning.” And Nussbaum spoke to one of the two Black contestants from \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>‘s first season, LaNease Adams. Following her stint on\u003cem> The Bachelor,\u003c/em> Adams buckled under relentless public scrutiny and racist online attacks, with mental health concerns \u003ca href=\"https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a33075184/bachelor-alex-michel-lanease-adams-depression/\">eventually sending her to the hospital\u003c/a>. Still, she blames herself for being “naive about racism” and defends the show’s treatment and handling of race. Adams’ comments are fascinating, but not exactly illuminating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959550']Nussbaum declines to explore the perspectives of Black critics and viewers. Given that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/02/21/969943721/in-a-season-highlighting-diversity-the-bachelor-lands-in-controversy-around-race\">\u003cem>The Bachelor’\u003c/em>s racial conflicts were legion\u003c/a>, and Black women are both a vibrant part of the audience and of the critical community, that seems an odd choice. In a complex chapter with plenty of controversy about gender, ethics, and exploitation, maybe there wasn’t room, but it still reads like something is missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite that blind spot, overall \u003cem>Cue the Sun!\u003c/em> is both entertaining and enlightening — full of eye-popping insight and rollicking prose. An enthusiast herself, Nussbaum makes even a reality-show-skeptic understand the appeal. She describes \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> as “a schmaltzy, sexist carnival that doubled, for viewers, as a swoony stunt, the Evel Knievel canyon leap of matrimony.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she writes just as vividly about how \u003cem>Queer Eye\u003c/em> led to the reinvention and precipitous rise of the Bravo network as executive Lauren Zalaznick “gentrified the sketchy neighborhood of reality programming, with all those basic bachelorettes and bug-eating contests,” transforming it into a “glimmering Tribeca of the mind.” There are dueling interpretations of how this new Bravo emerged from the invention of \u003cem>Queer Eye. \u003c/em>But the brilliance of the show, as Nussbaum smartly highlights, is that it was — in the words of \u003cem>Queer Eye \u003c/em>Director of Photography Michael Pearlman — “a pleasant change of pace: a reality show that was all about empowerment, rather than humiliation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bravo’s successes might be the ultimate symbol of a sunnier story about the genre that upended television. But Nussbaum ends in a darker place, explaining how the genre remade American politics by reinventing Donald Trump on \u003cem>The Apprentice\u003c/em>. Love it or hate it, that titillating and consequential tale is the writer’s mic drop to a virtuoso performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bellcv\">@BellCV\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960318\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 810px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960318\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74.jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover showing a family gathered around a pool being filmed by TV cameras. \" width=\"810\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74.jpeg 810w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-800x1067.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-160x213.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/untitled-design-74-768x1024.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV’ by Emily Nussbaum. \u003ccite>(Random House)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pulitzer Prize-winning \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> critic Emily Nussbaum first conceived her sweeping chronicle of the rise of reality TV in 2003 — shortly after the debut of \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>and three years into \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>. But back then the reception from fellow writers was as icy as public attitudes towards the genre. “You better write that one fast,” she recalls a friend warning her. “Reality television was a fad … a bubble that would pop before I could get anything on the page.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty years later, Nussbaum’s \u003cem>Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV\u003c/em> is a near definitive history of the genre that forever changed American entertainment. The book’s 20-year journey to publication is a tiny mirror of its subject’s rise to the center of American culture. As Nussbaum shows, “Critics had written off reality programming as a fad back in the 1940s, when mouthy civilians first shook up the economics of radio; and in the 1970s, during the flareups over \u003cem>An American Family \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Gong Show\u003c/em>; and then again in the 1990s, when Fox and MTV set out to disrupt the major networks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The dismissive pattern continued for decades — and critics were wrong every time. The much maligned reality genre has “always been a trap” for someone in Nussbaum’s profession — as a critic you would either “clutch your pearls,” failing to “see the fun in it” or succumb to the temptation to “treat reality too lightly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across 14 chapters, Nussbaum successfully walks a tightrope. Avoiding censure and trivialization, her narrative keenly captures the reality genre “through the voices of the people who built it” — “step by step, experiment by experiment” in riveting, energetic detail. Determined to see it as the makers and audiences did, and to translate the genre’s diversity, appeal and significance to the page, Nussbaum conducted interviews with a staggering 300 people who worked in every conceivable capacity — from network executives to show creators to crafts people and cast members — on some of the most important reality shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From these interviews, Nussbaum fashions a compelling oral history, transforming the scattered highs, lows, and tipping points of a genre constantly in flux into a cohesive exploration of the invention, evolution and importance of the modern reality show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As juicy and provocative as it is analytical, \u003cem>Cue the Sun!\u003c/em> exposes the seamy underbelly of reality TV where that’s needed but also corrects unduly negative, and unfounded, assumptions. For example, on the motivations of the people who become the casts of these shows, Nussbaum concludes: “For many people, doing this kind of television wasn’t a naïve misstep at all — it was a conscious choice to participate in an extreme sport, one whose risks they embraced.” This insight emerges as a common theme across most of these chapters in the voices of wildly diverse on-screen participants — across programs as disparate as the 1970s \u003cem>An American Family\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many critics have painted reality TV in broad strokes, Nussbaum captures fascinating complexity and nuance. Perhaps the most poignant chapter focuses on PBS’s pioneering precursor to modern reality programming. The tip of the spear in an emerging genre dubbed the “dirty documentary,” in a single season \u003cem>An American Family\u003c/em> exploded the traditional nuclear ideal through California’s prosperous Loud family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Putting a microscope to five teenage kids and two parents at odds, for seven months, the show delivered a microcosm of America’s rapid cultural shifts as the Louds navigated infidelity, a son’s sexuality, and divorce. While the filmmakers played it straight, according to Nussbaum, the Louds felt stung by the 24/7 cameras and scathing public reaction. It was a startling precursor of what was to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades later, with the possible exception of a \u003cem>Dating Game\u003c/em> contestant who turned out to be a serial killer, perhaps no episode is as jaw-dropping as the story of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>. Nussbaum’s storytelling reaches the height of its powers in a blow by blow of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em> season one that will give you the creepy crawlies: fleas under the skin, snakes on the belly, parasites in the intestines. But it’s hard to figure what’s more treacherous, the wildlife or the humans committed to making compelling TV at any cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the book’s strengths, at crucial times the accounts of insiders prove insufficient; context and a critical counterpoint are needed. But in its commitment to handing the mic to the makers, the book eschews outside perspectives. There are exceptions: With \u003cem>An American Family,\u003c/em> we gain insight into the challenge of being gay man on TV in the ’70s through snippets of contemporaneous media and viewer letters. The book also nods to criticism of \u003cem>Queer Eye for the Straight Guy \u003c/em>from the gay community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the situation with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/02/20/1232527337/tv-critics-association-bachelor\">race on \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> franchise\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Cue The Sun!\u003c/em> is noticeably quiet. It acknowledges that creator Mike Fleiss stepped down after an internal investigation into allegations of racial discrimination led to a “racial reckoning.” And Nussbaum spoke to one of the two Black contestants from \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>‘s first season, LaNease Adams. Following her stint on\u003cem> The Bachelor,\u003c/em> Adams buckled under relentless public scrutiny and racist online attacks, with mental health concerns \u003ca href=\"https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a33075184/bachelor-alex-michel-lanease-adams-depression/\">eventually sending her to the hospital\u003c/a>. Still, she blames herself for being “naive about racism” and defends the show’s treatment and handling of race. Adams’ comments are fascinating, but not exactly illuminating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Nussbaum declines to explore the perspectives of Black critics and viewers. Given that \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/02/21/969943721/in-a-season-highlighting-diversity-the-bachelor-lands-in-controversy-around-race\">\u003cem>The Bachelor’\u003c/em>s racial conflicts were legion\u003c/a>, and Black women are both a vibrant part of the audience and of the critical community, that seems an odd choice. In a complex chapter with plenty of controversy about gender, ethics, and exploitation, maybe there wasn’t room, but it still reads like something is missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite that blind spot, overall \u003cem>Cue the Sun!\u003c/em> is both entertaining and enlightening — full of eye-popping insight and rollicking prose. An enthusiast herself, Nussbaum makes even a reality-show-skeptic understand the appeal. She describes \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> as “a schmaltzy, sexist carnival that doubled, for viewers, as a swoony stunt, the Evel Knievel canyon leap of matrimony.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she writes just as vividly about how \u003cem>Queer Eye\u003c/em> led to the reinvention and precipitous rise of the Bravo network as executive Lauren Zalaznick “gentrified the sketchy neighborhood of reality programming, with all those basic bachelorettes and bug-eating contests,” transforming it into a “glimmering Tribeca of the mind.” There are dueling interpretations of how this new Bravo emerged from the invention of \u003cem>Queer Eye. \u003c/em>But the brilliance of the show, as Nussbaum smartly highlights, is that it was — in the words of \u003cem>Queer Eye \u003c/em>Director of Photography Michael Pearlman — “a pleasant change of pace: a reality show that was all about empowerment, rather than humiliation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bravo’s successes might be the ultimate symbol of a sunnier story about the genre that upended television. But Nussbaum ends in a darker place, explaining how the genre remade American politics by reinventing Donald Trump on \u003cem>The Apprentice\u003c/em>. Love it or hate it, that titillating and consequential tale is the writer’s mic drop to a virtuoso performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bellcv\">@BellCV\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>There are a lot of bad comedies about, and supposedly for, senior citizens. It’s especially depressing because the worst offenders, the ones that don’t just feel cheap and lazy but exploitative too, often feature our finest actors. They can take on the air of an unintentional horror film — and not the fun kind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em>, starring June Squibb, is not one of those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her first lead film role, she plays a 90-something who gets scammed out of $10,000 and goes on a mission to get it back. Revenge stories aren’t often (or ever, really) described as sweet, but that’s the magic of \u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em>, the feature debut of writer-director Josh Margolin that opens in theaters this week. It is charming, genuinely funny and a breeze to watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959577']Perhaps it works so well on a fundamental level because Margolin wrote it with his own grandmother (also named Thelma) in mind. Though there is something inherently silly and goofy about the idea of a grandmother on a \u003cem>Mission: Impossible\u003c/em>-style journey, \u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em> transcends its on-paper limitations and becomes something wholly unexpected. Kind of like its main character. This isn’t not just an idea of an old person slotted into a high concept gag. It’s specific and at least somewhat realistic. The scooter she and the late Richard Roundtree (as her friend Ben) ride might be slower than Tom Cruise on foot, but the energy is high and infectious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Squibb is absolutely wonderful at the center of the film, with impeccable comedic timing and full command of her character. Thelma is living alone at 93. She lost her husband a few years prior. Lots of her friends are gone already. But she doesn’t yet see herself in an assisted living situation, or even wearing a life monitor in case she falls. “If I fall I’m toast,” she deadpans. “That’s why I don’t fall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she’s managing pretty well. Her doting 20-something grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger of the first season of \u003cem>The White Lotus\u003c/em>) visits often to help with the computer and just hang out. When he’s gone, she fills her days with all her tasks: Sorting pills, doing her stationary bike exercises, watching YouTube videos, attempting to comment, attempting to backspace and revise typos and accidentally posting blurry photos of nothing to her Instagram stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is until she gets a panicked phone call from someone claiming to be her grandson. He was in an accident, he says, and she needs to send $10,000 in cash to bail him out. By the time the family starts answering the phone, the money is in the mail, and the police are telling them there’s nothing that can be done. Her family, including Daniel’s mom Gail (Parker Posey) and dad (Clark Gregg), basically wash their hands of it. But Thelma has nothing but time, and she wants to do something about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyE_hYkZPPE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margolin’s film was made independently. It debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up for a theatrical release. But he had his team have made it look and feel commercial and buttoned up with a fun ‘60s-inspired score by Nick Chuba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959801']Things really come to life when Roundtree (terrific, in his last role) enters the picture as her reluctant accomplice on their trip from the Westside of Los Angeles to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. She doesn’t drive and needs his refurbed scooter that he’s been going on about — but he’s not about to let her take it on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have a great rapport — an inspired pairing. The Posey/Gregg/Hechinger trio isn’t too shabby either spouting comedic banter that makes them instantly believable as a family unit. One standout sequence involves one of those dreaded Waze-directed Los Angeles left turns across a busy four lane throughway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is ultimately Squibb’s show and she delivers, like she always does. She should have been leading pictures the whole time and finally did something about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Thelma’ is released nationwide on June 21, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There are a lot of bad comedies about, and supposedly for, senior citizens. It’s especially depressing because the worst offenders, the ones that don’t just feel cheap and lazy but exploitative too, often feature our finest actors. They can take on the air of an unintentional horror film — and not the fun kind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em>, starring June Squibb, is not one of those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her first lead film role, she plays a 90-something who gets scammed out of $10,000 and goes on a mission to get it back. Revenge stories aren’t often (or ever, really) described as sweet, but that’s the magic of \u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em>, the feature debut of writer-director Josh Margolin that opens in theaters this week. It is charming, genuinely funny and a breeze to watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Perhaps it works so well on a fundamental level because Margolin wrote it with his own grandmother (also named Thelma) in mind. Though there is something inherently silly and goofy about the idea of a grandmother on a \u003cem>Mission: Impossible\u003c/em>-style journey, \u003cem>Thelma\u003c/em> transcends its on-paper limitations and becomes something wholly unexpected. Kind of like its main character. This isn’t not just an idea of an old person slotted into a high concept gag. It’s specific and at least somewhat realistic. The scooter she and the late Richard Roundtree (as her friend Ben) ride might be slower than Tom Cruise on foot, but the energy is high and infectious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Squibb is absolutely wonderful at the center of the film, with impeccable comedic timing and full command of her character. Thelma is living alone at 93. She lost her husband a few years prior. Lots of her friends are gone already. But she doesn’t yet see herself in an assisted living situation, or even wearing a life monitor in case she falls. “If I fall I’m toast,” she deadpans. “That’s why I don’t fall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she’s managing pretty well. Her doting 20-something grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger of the first season of \u003cem>The White Lotus\u003c/em>) visits often to help with the computer and just hang out. When he’s gone, she fills her days with all her tasks: Sorting pills, doing her stationary bike exercises, watching YouTube videos, attempting to comment, attempting to backspace and revise typos and accidentally posting blurry photos of nothing to her Instagram stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is until she gets a panicked phone call from someone claiming to be her grandson. He was in an accident, he says, and she needs to send $10,000 in cash to bail him out. By the time the family starts answering the phone, the money is in the mail, and the police are telling them there’s nothing that can be done. Her family, including Daniel’s mom Gail (Parker Posey) and dad (Clark Gregg), basically wash their hands of it. But Thelma has nothing but time, and she wants to do something about it.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/lyE_hYkZPPE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/lyE_hYkZPPE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Margolin’s film was made independently. It debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up for a theatrical release. But he had his team have made it look and feel commercial and buttoned up with a fun ‘60s-inspired score by Nick Chuba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Things really come to life when Roundtree (terrific, in his last role) enters the picture as her reluctant accomplice on their trip from the Westside of Los Angeles to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. She doesn’t drive and needs his refurbed scooter that he’s been going on about — but he’s not about to let her take it on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have a great rapport — an inspired pairing. The Posey/Gregg/Hechinger trio isn’t too shabby either spouting comedic banter that makes them instantly believable as a family unit. One standout sequence involves one of those dreaded Waze-directed Los Angeles left turns across a busy four lane throughway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is ultimately Squibb’s show and she delivers, like she always does. She should have been leading pictures the whole time and finally did something about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Thelma’ is released nationwide on June 21, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Still images have been a source of wonder and mythology in the films of Jeff Nichols.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959899']\u003cem>Mud,\u003c/em> Nichols’ Twain-soaked Mississippi fable, seemed derived from the magical sight of a boat held aloft by a tree. \u003cem>Loving\u003c/em>, about a ’60s interracial marriage, took inspiration from tender \u003cem>Life\u003c/em> magazine photographs taken of the real-life couple. Nichols’ latest, \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>, is based on photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of the same name, for which he spent four years with a Chicago motorcycle club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not hard to see what Nichols saw in Lyon’s black-and-white stills. There’s the stylish raw materials — the chrome bikes, the slicked back hair, the black leather jackets. But there’s also a just emerging antiauthoritarian, easy-riding spirit and camaraderie. Like the central figures of \u003cem>Loving\u003c/em>, they are classically drawn outsiders who encapsulate something glorious and uneasy about freedom in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYioWaFdp70&t=10s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the exhilarating first half of \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>, which opens in theaters Friday, Nichols is less compelled to build a narrative around his bike gang, the Vandals (based on the Outlaws) than summoning an intoxicating atmosphere reminiscent of those old photographs. \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> eventually becomes saddled with heavier plot mechanics — you can almost sense his riders growing weary from having to strap narrative devices onto their bikes. The movie wants to ride, but it’s not sure how much story to pack for the trip. But this is a vivid dramatization of the birth of an American subculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The framing device Nichols settles on is Lyon, himself, played by Mike Faist, who’s conducting interviews for his book. His conversations with a woman named Kathy (Jodie Comer) bookend and sporadically narrate the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959796']Kathy, also based on a real person, seems at first an unlikely spokesperson for the gang. She speaks with a thick Illinois accent (an actorly distraction throughout) and has no affection for motorcycle riders. But one night at a bar, she sees Benny (Austin Butler) across the smokey room and, even if she doesn’t admit it at that moment, falls for him. Again, it’s not hard to see why. Butler is by now well removed from Elvis Presley but the suppleness with which he can sink into mid-century America is no less apparent. Benny drives Kathy home, parks his bike outside the place and patiently waits for her boyfriend to skip town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols, a devotee of films like \u003cem>Hud\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cool Hand Luke\u003c/em>, is a filmmaker who works very consciously within classic American idioms. In Butler he has his James Dean, making Tom Hardy his Marlon Brando. Hardy plays Johnny, Benny’s best pal and the one who starts up and presides over the Vandals. (The “whaddya got” clip of Brando from \u003cem>The Wild One\u003c/em> is even briefly seen on a small TV in \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960012\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1700px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960012\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM.png\" alt=\"A man stands with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. At his side, a second man wearing a leather jacket.\" width=\"1700\" height=\"1086\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM.png 1700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-800x511.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-1020x652.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-768x491.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-1536x981.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1700px) 100vw, 1700px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Damon Herriman and Tom Hardy in a scene from ‘The Bikeriders.’ \u003ccite>(Focus Features via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Vandals, as a club, start about as simply as kids might call a tree house to order. They’re a bunch of guys who like riding motorcycles and like talking about them. Simple as that. But men come like moths to a flame, attracted by the tough lifestyle, the cool jackets with patches and a way out of mainstream America. Among them are Cal (Boyd Holbrook), Cockroach (Emory Cohen), Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus) and Zipco (Michael Shannon).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obscenity and motorcycles travel hand in hand,” someone says, with pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early days of the group are, it would seem, a lot of fun. Barroom brawls and riding carefree through corn fields. Most of these guys don’t have much, but they have each other. And their loyalty is total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959670']Kathy isn’t so sure sure. She watches the growing gang — a completely male bunch — with skepticism and fear for Benny. (In a scene teased in the film’s opening, he’s beaten badly enough to be hospitalized.) Sometimes, they throw down purely for fun. They are the original Fight Cub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But soon, Kathy isn’t the only one with doubts at what they’ve created. As their gang grows, what the Vandals embody is less clear, even to Johnny and Benny. Some of the new entrants are coming straight back from Vietnam. Their old hijinks give way to more serious crimes. In one chastening scene, Kathy finds herself very nearly assaulted by its members. The gang — and all its posturing of toughness — begins to feel more like a trap for even its leader. Benny is drawn into a choice between the Vandals and Kathy. The homoerotic subtext is understated but not ignored; when Benny and Johnny discuss their future together, they do it gently and intimately, in the dark, like a secret confession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Vandals’ original ideals disintegrate, it can feel like \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> gets locked into a familiar \u003cem>Goodfellas\u003c/em>-like structure, but with a telling shift in narrator for a drama that’s ultimately about masculinity. This is a movie that’s juggling a lot of contradictory ambitions. It wants to be authentic but it wants to tell a grand America saga. It wants mythology but also naturalism. It’s those instincts that have made Nichols one of the most essential filmmakers of his generation, even if the results have sometimes been underwhelming by a hair. Even his best, most firmly rooted films (\u003cem>Take Shelter\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Mud\u003c/em>) strive for a balancing act that can be elusive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I think it’s those dual impulses — and, again, all the cool jackets — that makes \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> work. The movie is unabashedly romantic about the Vandals but it’s equally dubious about the rugged masculinity they embody, too. \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> has its hands firmly on the throttle just it does the brakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Bikeriders’ is released nationwide on June 21, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "‘The Bikeriders’ Review: Jeff Nichols’ Ambitious Biker Movie Slays | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>Mud,\u003c/em> Nichols’ Twain-soaked Mississippi fable, seemed derived from the magical sight of a boat held aloft by a tree. \u003cem>Loving\u003c/em>, about a ’60s interracial marriage, took inspiration from tender \u003cem>Life\u003c/em> magazine photographs taken of the real-life couple. Nichols’ latest, \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>, is based on photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of the same name, for which he spent four years with a Chicago motorcycle club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not hard to see what Nichols saw in Lyon’s black-and-white stills. There’s the stylish raw materials — the chrome bikes, the slicked back hair, the black leather jackets. But there’s also a just emerging antiauthoritarian, easy-riding spirit and camaraderie. Like the central figures of \u003cem>Loving\u003c/em>, they are classically drawn outsiders who encapsulate something glorious and uneasy about freedom in America.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/PYioWaFdp70'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/PYioWaFdp70'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the exhilarating first half of \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>, which opens in theaters Friday, Nichols is less compelled to build a narrative around his bike gang, the Vandals (based on the Outlaws) than summoning an intoxicating atmosphere reminiscent of those old photographs. \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> eventually becomes saddled with heavier plot mechanics — you can almost sense his riders growing weary from having to strap narrative devices onto their bikes. The movie wants to ride, but it’s not sure how much story to pack for the trip. But this is a vivid dramatization of the birth of an American subculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The framing device Nichols settles on is Lyon, himself, played by Mike Faist, who’s conducting interviews for his book. His conversations with a woman named Kathy (Jodie Comer) bookend and sporadically narrate the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Kathy, also based on a real person, seems at first an unlikely spokesperson for the gang. She speaks with a thick Illinois accent (an actorly distraction throughout) and has no affection for motorcycle riders. But one night at a bar, she sees Benny (Austin Butler) across the smokey room and, even if she doesn’t admit it at that moment, falls for him. Again, it’s not hard to see why. Butler is by now well removed from Elvis Presley but the suppleness with which he can sink into mid-century America is no less apparent. Benny drives Kathy home, parks his bike outside the place and patiently waits for her boyfriend to skip town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols, a devotee of films like \u003cem>Hud\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cool Hand Luke\u003c/em>, is a filmmaker who works very consciously within classic American idioms. In Butler he has his James Dean, making Tom Hardy his Marlon Brando. Hardy plays Johnny, Benny’s best pal and the one who starts up and presides over the Vandals. (The “whaddya got” clip of Brando from \u003cem>The Wild One\u003c/em> is even briefly seen on a small TV in \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960012\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1700px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960012\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM.png\" alt=\"A man stands with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. At his side, a second man wearing a leather jacket.\" width=\"1700\" height=\"1086\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM.png 1700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-800x511.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-1020x652.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-768x491.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-19-at-10.40.00-PM-1536x981.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1700px) 100vw, 1700px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Damon Herriman and Tom Hardy in a scene from ‘The Bikeriders.’ \u003ccite>(Focus Features via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Vandals, as a club, start about as simply as kids might call a tree house to order. They’re a bunch of guys who like riding motorcycles and like talking about them. Simple as that. But men come like moths to a flame, attracted by the tough lifestyle, the cool jackets with patches and a way out of mainstream America. Among them are Cal (Boyd Holbrook), Cockroach (Emory Cohen), Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus) and Zipco (Michael Shannon).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obscenity and motorcycles travel hand in hand,” someone says, with pride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early days of the group are, it would seem, a lot of fun. Barroom brawls and riding carefree through corn fields. Most of these guys don’t have much, but they have each other. And their loyalty is total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Kathy isn’t so sure sure. She watches the growing gang — a completely male bunch — with skepticism and fear for Benny. (In a scene teased in the film’s opening, he’s beaten badly enough to be hospitalized.) Sometimes, they throw down purely for fun. They are the original Fight Cub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But soon, Kathy isn’t the only one with doubts at what they’ve created. As their gang grows, what the Vandals embody is less clear, even to Johnny and Benny. Some of the new entrants are coming straight back from Vietnam. Their old hijinks give way to more serious crimes. In one chastening scene, Kathy finds herself very nearly assaulted by its members. The gang — and all its posturing of toughness — begins to feel more like a trap for even its leader. Benny is drawn into a choice between the Vandals and Kathy. The homoerotic subtext is understated but not ignored; when Benny and Johnny discuss their future together, they do it gently and intimately, in the dark, like a secret confession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Vandals’ original ideals disintegrate, it can feel like \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> gets locked into a familiar \u003cem>Goodfellas\u003c/em>-like structure, but with a telling shift in narrator for a drama that’s ultimately about masculinity. This is a movie that’s juggling a lot of contradictory ambitions. It wants to be authentic but it wants to tell a grand America saga. It wants mythology but also naturalism. It’s those instincts that have made Nichols one of the most essential filmmakers of his generation, even if the results have sometimes been underwhelming by a hair. Even his best, most firmly rooted films (\u003cem>Take Shelter\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Mud\u003c/em>) strive for a balancing act that can be elusive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I think it’s those dual impulses — and, again, all the cool jackets — that makes \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> work. The movie is unabashedly romantic about the Vandals but it’s equally dubious about the rugged masculinity they embody, too. \u003cem>The Bikeriders\u003c/em> has its hands firmly on the throttle just it does the brakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Bikeriders’ is released nationwide on June 21, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "lgbtq-comedians-new-netflix-documentary-review-outstanding-comedy-revolution",
"title": "‘Laughter Is Disarming’: A New Documentary Traces Generations of LGBTQ Comedy",
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"headTitle": "‘Laughter Is Disarming’: A New Documentary Traces Generations of LGBTQ Comedy | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Comedy’s always a reflection of the culture, good and bad,” says Page Hurwitz. Her new Netflix documentary about the history and current state of LGBTQ comedy is proof. Through archival footage, performances and interviews, \u003cem>Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution\u003c/em> spans nearly a century of LGBTQ comedy, including the milestones and setbacks for queer comedians pursuing careers making people laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959601']A multigenerational who’s who of comedy fills this documentary. Lily Tomlin, Rosie O’Donnell, Eddie Izzard, Sandra Bernhard, Billy Eichner, Fortune Feimster, Tig Notaro and Solomon Georgio are among the many performers who recount their personal stories of developing their comedic styles and grappling with homophobia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hurwitz began her career doing stand-up in the late 1990s in San Francisco’s Castro district. Today, she writes, produces and directs comedy specials and TV series. When she started putting the documentary together, she knew there was something she had to get right: “We’re the gays, so I wanted to make it dynamic. There’s nothing worse you could be than banal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZX9LNX3BA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To ensure her documentary had some dazzle, Hurwitz organized a massive event at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles featuring a marquis lineup of LGBTQ comedians. She turned the event into its own \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81170956\">special for Netflix\u003c/a> and interspersed footage from it throughout the documentary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the revelatory moments in \u003cem>Outstanding\u003c/em> are interviews with comedians who might’ve been more famous had they not come out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13958101']Robin Tyler, one of the first comedians to come out on national television, says she was never in the closet. “Closets are vertical coffins,” she declares in the film. “All you do is suffocate to death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler’s comedy career suffered when she included jokes about Anita Bryant in her act. Bryant, the former beauty pageant winner, singer and Christian, was one of the most active voices in the anti-gay crusade. One such joke declared that Bryant “is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s why no one knows her name,” says Hurwitz of Tyler, “And she should be a household name because she’s so funny and so talented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1084px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959921\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM.png\" alt=\"An older woman is viewed in profile, sitting in a chair in a dimly lit room.\" width=\"1084\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM.png 1084w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-800x533.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-1020x679.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-160x107.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-768x512.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1084px) 100vw, 1084px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robin Tyler in ‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution.’ \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hurwitz and a small staff pored over hundreds of archival performances and news footage to show how, from one decade to the next, queer comedians either made strides or suffered, depending on the political and cultural climate of the day. There’s Moms Mabley playing an openly gay character in a movie from the 1930s and the so-called \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cold-war-lavender-scare-and-lgbtq-activism.htm#:~:text=In%201953%2C%20President%20Eisenhower%20signed,losing%20their%20jobs%20and%20reputations.&text=This%20is%20now%20known%20as%20the%20Lavender%20Scare.\">Lavender Scare\u003c/a> during the Cold War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959827']As comedian Scott Thompson puts it in the documentary, “I just thought life can change on a dime and society can change on a dime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thompson points to an “embrace” of gay culture in the 1970s — think disco and Village People — to a complete about-face in the 1980s with the AIDS epidemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It went back 30, 40 years, instantly, almost overnight,” he says. “Gay men in those days were considered vile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959922\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1130px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959922\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM.png\" alt=\"A dapper man sits in front of a purple curtain, smiling and raising a cocktail.\" width=\"1130\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM.png 1130w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-800x561.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-1020x715.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-160x112.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-768x538.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1130px) 100vw, 1130px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scott Thompson/Buddy Cole at The Greek Theatre for Netflix Is A Joke Fest. \u003ccite>(Beth Dubber/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Comedy at that time was incredibly homophobic,” says Hurwitz, “and we had a lot of well-known comedians who were choosing to turn that tragedy into fodder for their hackneyed comedy acts. So, whether it was Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison or frankly, for that matter, Eddie Murphy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But comedians know how to counterpunch and during the AIDS crisis, Sandra Bernhard’s politically charged, cabaret-style performances were a force. As she explains in the documentary, “This became like the next wave of having to be there and jump in full throttle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13958734']Comedian and actor Joel Kim Booster, who’s interviewed in the documentary, says he was “floored” when he saw the final cut of \u003cem>Outstanding\u003c/em>. He says it made him grateful to all of the queer comedians who blazed a trail for his generation. “We were not the ones who busted down the door. We just walked through it,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Outstanding\u003c/em> shows how there are still challenges for gay performers, most significantly transphobic material by big-name comedians. But Page Hurwitz says that LGBTQ comedians will continue to take the stage, make people laugh and change the culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re sharing who you are with the audience and it’s so powerful,” she says, “because laughter is disarming. You make the personal universal, so we can realize that actually, we’re more alike than we are different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959923\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1172px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959923\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM.png\" alt=\"Two drag queens perform at the front of a stage, while a chorus sings behind them.\" width=\"1172\" height=\"790\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM.png 1172w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-800x539.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-1020x688.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-160x108.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-768x518.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1172px) 100vw, 1172px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bob The Drag Queen, Trixie Mattel, Rosie O’Donnell at The Greek Theatre for Netflix Is A Joke Fest. \u003ccite>(Beth Dubber/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Ciera Crawford. The audio story was produced by Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento. The digital was produced by Beth Novey.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Comedy’s always a reflection of the culture, good and bad,” says Page Hurwitz. Her new Netflix documentary about the history and current state of LGBTQ comedy is proof. Through archival footage, performances and interviews, \u003cem>Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution\u003c/em> spans nearly a century of LGBTQ comedy, including the milestones and setbacks for queer comedians pursuing careers making people laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A multigenerational who’s who of comedy fills this documentary. Lily Tomlin, Rosie O’Donnell, Eddie Izzard, Sandra Bernhard, Billy Eichner, Fortune Feimster, Tig Notaro and Solomon Georgio are among the many performers who recount their personal stories of developing their comedic styles and grappling with homophobia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hurwitz began her career doing stand-up in the late 1990s in San Francisco’s Castro district. Today, she writes, produces and directs comedy specials and TV series. When she started putting the documentary together, she knew there was something she had to get right: “We’re the gays, so I wanted to make it dynamic. There’s nothing worse you could be than banal.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/dEZX9LNX3BA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/dEZX9LNX3BA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>To ensure her documentary had some dazzle, Hurwitz organized a massive event at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles featuring a marquis lineup of LGBTQ comedians. She turned the event into its own \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81170956\">special for Netflix\u003c/a> and interspersed footage from it throughout the documentary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Robin Tyler, one of the first comedians to come out on national television, says she was never in the closet. “Closets are vertical coffins,” she declares in the film. “All you do is suffocate to death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler’s comedy career suffered when she included jokes about Anita Bryant in her act. Bryant, the former beauty pageant winner, singer and Christian, was one of the most active voices in the anti-gay crusade. One such joke declared that Bryant “is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s why no one knows her name,” says Hurwitz of Tyler, “And she should be a household name because she’s so funny and so talented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1084px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959921\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM.png\" alt=\"An older woman is viewed in profile, sitting in a chair in a dimly lit room.\" width=\"1084\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM.png 1084w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-800x533.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-1020x679.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-160x107.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.15.12-PM-768x512.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1084px) 100vw, 1084px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robin Tyler in ‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution.’ \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hurwitz and a small staff pored over hundreds of archival performances and news footage to show how, from one decade to the next, queer comedians either made strides or suffered, depending on the political and cultural climate of the day. There’s Moms Mabley playing an openly gay character in a movie from the 1930s and the so-called \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cold-war-lavender-scare-and-lgbtq-activism.htm#:~:text=In%201953%2C%20President%20Eisenhower%20signed,losing%20their%20jobs%20and%20reputations.&text=This%20is%20now%20known%20as%20the%20Lavender%20Scare.\">Lavender Scare\u003c/a> during the Cold War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As comedian Scott Thompson puts it in the documentary, “I just thought life can change on a dime and society can change on a dime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thompson points to an “embrace” of gay culture in the 1970s — think disco and Village People — to a complete about-face in the 1980s with the AIDS epidemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It went back 30, 40 years, instantly, almost overnight,” he says. “Gay men in those days were considered vile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959922\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1130px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959922\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM.png\" alt=\"A dapper man sits in front of a purple curtain, smiling and raising a cocktail.\" width=\"1130\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM.png 1130w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-800x561.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-1020x715.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-160x112.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.19.24-PM-768x538.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1130px) 100vw, 1130px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scott Thompson/Buddy Cole at The Greek Theatre for Netflix Is A Joke Fest. \u003ccite>(Beth Dubber/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Comedy at that time was incredibly homophobic,” says Hurwitz, “and we had a lot of well-known comedians who were choosing to turn that tragedy into fodder for their hackneyed comedy acts. So, whether it was Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison or frankly, for that matter, Eddie Murphy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But comedians know how to counterpunch and during the AIDS crisis, Sandra Bernhard’s politically charged, cabaret-style performances were a force. As she explains in the documentary, “This became like the next wave of having to be there and jump in full throttle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Comedian and actor Joel Kim Booster, who’s interviewed in the documentary, says he was “floored” when he saw the final cut of \u003cem>Outstanding\u003c/em>. He says it made him grateful to all of the queer comedians who blazed a trail for his generation. “We were not the ones who busted down the door. We just walked through it,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Outstanding\u003c/em> shows how there are still challenges for gay performers, most significantly transphobic material by big-name comedians. But Page Hurwitz says that LGBTQ comedians will continue to take the stage, make people laugh and change the culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re sharing who you are with the audience and it’s so powerful,” she says, “because laughter is disarming. You make the personal universal, so we can realize that actually, we’re more alike than we are different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959923\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1172px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959923\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM.png\" alt=\"Two drag queens perform at the front of a stage, while a chorus sings behind them.\" width=\"1172\" height=\"790\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM.png 1172w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-800x539.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-1020x688.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-160x108.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-2.21.41-PM-768x518.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1172px) 100vw, 1172px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bob The Drag Queen, Trixie Mattel, Rosie O’Donnell at The Greek Theatre for Netflix Is A Joke Fest. \u003ccite>(Beth Dubber/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Ciera Crawford. The audio story was produced by Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento. The digital was produced by Beth Novey.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I will be the first to admit I didn’t even know there \u003cem>was \u003c/em>a French shark movie until I saw it appear at the very top of Netflix’s top 10 movies. And it’s not as if it’s hiding anything about its topic: It’s called \u003cem>Under Paris\u003c/em>. You know why? Because it’s all about sharks under Paris. Specifically, it’s about sharks in the Seine. Initially, there are just a couple of sharks. But then, there are a \u003cem>lot \u003c/em>of sharks. And the movie is apparently an enormous hit, although/because it is, while not as silly as \u003cem>Sharknado\u003c/em>, very silly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959801']\u003cem>Under Paris \u003c/em>(aka, to me at least, \u003cem>Sharknadeau\u003c/em>) begins as a standard menacing-creature story. Sophia (Bérénice Bejo, Oscar nominee for \u003cem>The Artist\u003c/em>) is a scientist studying sharks in the vicinity of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a real, depressing thing). She and her team get a signal from one of their tagged sharks, named Lilith, and several members of the team go on a dive to obtain a blood sample. This dive does not go well (I mean, I suppose it goes OK for Lilith), leaving Sophia traumatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years later, a shark-saving group in Paris alerts Sophia that they know where Lilith is: in the Seine. Now, sharks in the Seine are not a real thing, but perhaps the only upside of climate change is the expansion of options for disaster movies. After all, a movie like this can throw its hands in the air and say, “Honestly, you don’t know \u003cem>what’s \u003c/em>possible now that you can go to the beach on Christmas, do you?” So: sharks in the Seine. Not just that, but \u003cem>multiplying \u003c/em>sharks in the Seine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959908\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1230px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959908\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM.png\" alt=\"A woman in scrubs examines a dead, blood-covered shark.\" width=\"1230\" height=\"766\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM.png 1230w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-800x498.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-1020x635.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-160x100.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-768x478.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1230px) 100vw, 1230px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bérénice Bejo stars as Sophia, a shark scientist. \u003ccite>(Sofie Gheysens/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, Paris has an arrogant, careless mayor who, like all government officials in shark movies, suffers from a pathological failure to be adequately afraid of sharks. She has only one priority: making sure that the upcoming triathlon goes off without a hitch. That’s right: The Seine is infested with ravenous sharks at the very moment when crowds of swimmers are about to throw themselves into the Seine at a highly public event. Mon dieu! Now, if it were you or me, perhaps we think to ourselves, “Better to cancel the event in advance than have it canceled on account of all the swimmers being devoured,” but no, the mayor of Paris has no such caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first half or so, \u003cem>Under Paris \u003c/em>unfolds like a fairly classy suspense film about a rarely seen threat. It does not look cheap in the way \u003cem>Sharknado \u003c/em>did, for instance. It’s quite competently shot and edited, it’s tense, and it’s frightening. In other words, it gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnCefPQIH98\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second half, the movie goes fully bazoo. Certain arguments about the sharks’ intentions are resolved when some participants in those arguments are eaten. You get your first of a couple of overhead shots of a shark leaping out of the water, mouth first, the better to show you someone in its jaws (heh) who is thinking, “This seems bad.” Crowds run in terror. Blood gushes. If you are watching the movie in the original French (which I recommend) and you have the English subtitles on, you will see a lot of the caption “[panicked screams].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959670']All this to say: It’s not hard to understand why this is such a hot property at the moment. It gives you half of a fairly normal movie and half of an absolutely wacky one. About half of it is suspense, and about half of it is full-on creature horror, incredibly bloody and with a very (very) high body count. And at the end, there’s no question that just as these sharks are under Paris, the next ones will be under London (or New York, or wherever). If you’re looking for a popcorn movie and you don’t mind a lot of cartoonish gore, you could do a lot worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture\">Sign up for the newsletter\u003c/a> so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on \u003ca href=\"http://n.pr/3xNgYt9\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://n.pr/3ELR3n6\">Spotify\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>Under Paris \u003c/em>(aka, to me at least, \u003cem>Sharknadeau\u003c/em>) begins as a standard menacing-creature story. Sophia (Bérénice Bejo, Oscar nominee for \u003cem>The Artist\u003c/em>) is a scientist studying sharks in the vicinity of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a real, depressing thing). She and her team get a signal from one of their tagged sharks, named Lilith, and several members of the team go on a dive to obtain a blood sample. This dive does not go well (I mean, I suppose it goes OK for Lilith), leaving Sophia traumatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years later, a shark-saving group in Paris alerts Sophia that they know where Lilith is: in the Seine. Now, sharks in the Seine are not a real thing, but perhaps the only upside of climate change is the expansion of options for disaster movies. After all, a movie like this can throw its hands in the air and say, “Honestly, you don’t know \u003cem>what’s \u003c/em>possible now that you can go to the beach on Christmas, do you?” So: sharks in the Seine. Not just that, but \u003cem>multiplying \u003c/em>sharks in the Seine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959908\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1230px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959908\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM.png\" alt=\"A woman in scrubs examines a dead, blood-covered shark.\" width=\"1230\" height=\"766\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM.png 1230w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-800x498.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-1020x635.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-160x100.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-17-at-10.55.57-AM-768x478.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1230px) 100vw, 1230px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bérénice Bejo stars as Sophia, a shark scientist. \u003ccite>(Sofie Gheysens/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, Paris has an arrogant, careless mayor who, like all government officials in shark movies, suffers from a pathological failure to be adequately afraid of sharks. She has only one priority: making sure that the upcoming triathlon goes off without a hitch. That’s right: The Seine is infested with ravenous sharks at the very moment when crowds of swimmers are about to throw themselves into the Seine at a highly public event. Mon dieu! Now, if it were you or me, perhaps we think to ourselves, “Better to cancel the event in advance than have it canceled on account of all the swimmers being devoured,” but no, the mayor of Paris has no such caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first half or so, \u003cem>Under Paris \u003c/em>unfolds like a fairly classy suspense film about a rarely seen threat. It does not look cheap in the way \u003cem>Sharknado \u003c/em>did, for instance. It’s quite competently shot and edited, it’s tense, and it’s frightening. In other words, it gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959869\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 830px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-14-at-11.43.20-AM.png\" alt=\"A book cover with illustration of a woman lying front-first on a couch, one arm hanging over the side.\" width=\"830\" height=\"1212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-14-at-11.43.20-AM.png 830w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-14-at-11.43.20-AM-800x1168.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-14-at-11.43.20-AM-160x234.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-14-at-11.43.20-AM-768x1121.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ by Rufi Thorpe. \u003ccite>(William Morrow)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The cover art and title of \u003cem>Margo’s Got Money Troubles\u003c/em> don’t quite convey the wild ride readers who crack open this new fiction from Rufi Thorpe will take. There’s a reason Apple TV+ optioned it as a series starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning before it was even published. This is a wholly original novel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959775']A brief plot summary: Margo gets knocked up at 19 by her community college professor, has the baby, drops out of school, and discovers OnlyFans, where she flashes herself for money and rates the NSFW pics that subscribers send her, giving them each a Pokémon doppelgänger. But wait — there’s more! Her father, Jinx, is a famous professional wrestler, now retired, who actually introduces her to OnlyFans and helps her grow her audience using many of the same techniques that made him a star in the ring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, her mother, Shyanne, who also had Margo at a young age and now spends considerable time altering her appearance in an effort to attract a man who can provide for her, begs Margo to stop selling visuals of her body for money because, “No man will marry you now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If that’s not strange enough, Thorpe also goes a little crazy with the book’s voice. Margo is always the narrator, but switches often from third- to first-person, because, “It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then rather than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a book that grabs and keeps your attention. Who doesn’t want to hear the end of a story that opens with a baby shower featuring a cake shaped like a big penis? Stuffed with laughs, it’s also filled with sharp insights about celebrity, social media, and what modern success even means.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959530']For all her questionable life choices, Margo is someone readers will root for, and the love story that emerges as the heart of the novel — between Margo and one of her OnlyFans — seems quite plausible in the Internet Age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wouldn’t be fair to spoil the final two sentences of the book, and curses on any reader who now jumps ahead to them, but Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>As \u003cem>Inside Out 2\u003c/em> gets under way, things are looking up for Riley, the hockey-loving kid who moved with her parents from Minnesota to San Francisco in the first \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/10782253/why-the-key-character-in-inside-out-is-the-one-who-isnt-there\">\u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She’s adjusted to her new life, school and friends, and her five personified emotions — who share the high-tech headquarters of her brain — have learned to work together in relative harmony. Joy, voiced by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/tag/amy-poehler\">Amy Poehler\u003c/a>, is still mostly in charge, but now she and Sadness — the incomparable Phyllis Smith — make a great team, along with the other key emotions, Anger, Fear and Disgust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13959577']But now Riley is 13, which means pimples, growth spurts and a much more complicated emotional life. The director Kelsey Mann, taking over for the first film’s Pete Docter, cleverly dramatizes the onset of puberty as a huge disruption for Joy and Company, who don’t know why their usual routine is suddenly causing Riley to undergo wild mood swings. It turns out, a new emotion has joined headquarters: Anxiety, voiced by a terrific Maya Hawke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anxiety has brought along her own team of emotions. They’re basically the three E’s: Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment, voiced by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/ayo-edebiri\">Ayo Edebiri\u003c/a>, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Paul Walter Hauser. Some of this stretches conceptual credibility: Surely this isn’t the first time in her life that Riley has experienced some of those feelings. But that’s part of the whimsical pleasure of the \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em> films: It’s fun to feel your own brain arguing with how it’s represented. It’s also fun to see new regions of Riley’s mental landscape, like the giant ravine that fuels her contemptuous side — naturally, it’s called the Sar-chasm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The story kicks into gear when Riley is sent to an elite three-day hockey camp, where she’s forced to make some tough decisions, like whether to stick with her two closest friends or hang out with the cool older kids. As the pressure on Riley mounts and the competition gets more cutthroat, it’s Anxiety who emerges as the movie’s villain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEjhY15eCx0&t=15s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hawke does a great job of making the character’s polite bundle-of-nerves routine a little more annoying — and sinister — in every scene. Anxiety basically engineers a hostile takeover of Riley’s mind, banishing Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust to the outskirts of consciousness, and setting out to mold Riley into a more successful version of herself. What she’s unwittingly doing is making Riley more ambitious and conniving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Inside Out 2\u003c/em>, in other words, is something of an anti-stress movie, where unchecked drivenness can destroy a person’s true sense of self. It’s hard to argue with that, but it’s also hard not to push back a little. This isn’t the first Pixar movie that’s tried to teach us to lighten up and let things go, a lesson that dates as far back as the first \u003cem>Toy Story. \u003c/em>But it’s always struck me as a bit rich coming from Pixar, given the hyper-ambition and perfectionism that have long defined the studio’s brand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, there is a better, deeper message at the heart of \u003cem>Inside Out 2\u003c/em>, that encourages us to take a more expansive view of ourselves — to acknowledge that we all have the capacity for good and bad. As in the first movie, the goal is to strive for balance, embrace complexity and learn to be OK with imperfection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13958728']I’m trying to do that myself with \u003cem>Inside Out 2\u003c/em>, which, despite its many pleasures, is a pretty imperfect movie. It isn’t nearly as emotionally overwhelming as its predecessor, but how could it be? The first \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em> was a piercing lament for childhood’s end, with Joy and Sadness’ frenemy dynamic as its irresistible core.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Riley’s older and maturing, and it’s natural that her latest adventure should hit us differently. But there are also some bewildering choices here that suggest the story could have used, well, a rethink. There’s one overlong sequence, in which Joy and her friends encounter memories of old cartoon and video-game characters buried deep in Riley’s mind; it’s a cheap gag, and it almost pulled me out of the movie entirely. And there’s a recurring joke, involving Riley’s sense of Nostalgia, that strikes a weirdly sour note. Ironically, it made me feel a little nostalgic myself — for the days when Pixar would have known to leave a bit like that on the cutting-room floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Inside Out 2’ is released nationwide on June 14, 2024.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"link": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
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