Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include the sequel to the dystopian best seller The Bone Season.
The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon; Bloomsbury, 528 pp.; fiction
London already has a long history of memorable ne'er-do-wells — Jack the Ripper, anyone? — but author Samantha Shannon adds dark, shady corners and an amazingly rich and unruly underworld to the city in The Mime Order.
Her previous novel The Bone Season kicked off the young writer's ambitious, planned seven-part fantasy series about clairvoyants living in a dystopian version of the English city circa 2059. They face a nefarious government known as Scion and the otherworldly immortal Rephaim, which give power to this smothering fascist police state and feed on voyants' life force.
While Bone Season was filled with action and exposition as Paige Mahoney led a revolution in Scion's penal colony Sheol I, betrayal and political intrigue take over in The Mime Order.
The sequel begins on a speeding train minutes after Paige, an Irish dreamwalker who's able to invade other people's minds, escapes from her jailers.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four. "Excellent. … Paige makes great strides as a memorable character, and so does her author."
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy; Spiegel & Grau, 384 pp.; non-fiction
A Los Angeles Times journalist's report from the front lines of 21st-century urban crime, focusing on the 845 murders committed in L.A. during 2007.
Paste BN says ****. "Penetrating and heartbreaking."
West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan; Viking, 289 pp.; fiction
A fictional portrait of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's sad yet darkly glittering final years in Hollywood.
Paste BN says ***½. "Fine … almost unbearably bittersweet."
Publishing: A Writer's Memoir by Gail Godwin; Bloomsbury; 224 pp.; non-fiction
Godwin has spent her life writing novels, and she takes us through it all, her first publications, the book tours she was sent on, the best-seller lists she hit.
Paste BN says ***. "An agile, winning book… at its best moments of the same sensible good humor that makes Roger Angell, say, so pleasurable to read."
Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece by Andrew Levy; Simon & Schuster; 368 pp.
Levy explores the soul of Mark Twain's enduring achievement, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the man who wrote it.
Paste BN says ***. "An eloquent argument, wrapped up in rich biographical detail and historical fact."
Contributing reviewers: Brian Truitt, Gene Seymour, Kevin Nance, Charles Finch, Matt Damsker