Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include a new history that explores how GI's became avid readers during the Second World War.
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 288 pp.; non-fiction
The millions of lives consumed by World War II make it easy to overlook the millions of books put to the torch by Hitler's legion. Yet in the years before America joined the battle, Nazi book-burning had become a familiar symbol of terrorism. This mass incineration of words on paper presaged a greater horror.
As Molly Guptill Manning points out — in her history of America's effort to comfort and inspire its soldiers with good books — "a unanimous understanding emerged that the war was not waged on battlefields alone: the ideas a nation espoused were also under attack."
Manning's is a careful account of what it took – a lot – to ensure that U.S. fighting men had the right stuff to read. In the foxholes of the Pacific, or hunkered on the beaches of Normandy, soldiers read avidly. By Manning's reckoning, they rescued F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby from obscurity, made a pop phenomenon of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and kept controversial books such as Strange Fruit and Forever Amber in print.
Paste BN says **** out of four. "Crisply written and compelling."
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 228 pp.; fiction
This international espionage caper with some post-9/11 twists tells the tale of a NATO operative who shares a shady past with an African soldier of fortune.
Paste BN says *** ½. "Johnson makes a crisp and credible foray into Graham Greene territory."
Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson; Harper; 288 pp; non-fiction
Johnson tracks hard-working and dedicated archaeologists in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Machu Picchu.
Paste BN says ***. "The people Johnson encounters are quirky as well as dedicated."
Becoming Richard Pryor by Scott Saul; Harper, 587 pp.; non-fiction
New biography of the stand-up comedian examines his successes and crack-ups, many of his own making.
Paste BN says ****. A "thorough, balanced and intelligent account."
Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995 – 2014 by Alice Munro; Knopf, 620 pp.; fiction
A story collection from the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Paste BN says ****. Munro "proves that she can do more in a single story -- stylistically, emotionally -- than most writers can do in an entire novel."
Contributing reviewers: Matt Damsker, Kevin Nance, Bill Desowitz, Gene Seymour, Carmela Ciuraru