“You had to make an appointment with yourself to be by the TV, so it was really special,” recalls Ryfle, an author and co-writer of the Emmy-winning documentary “Miracle on 42nd Street” (and, I’ll note, a friend since our time as young journalists).
“The Japanese films always appealed to me the most. They were intriguing because they took place in a world that was unfamiliar, a culture that was unfamiliar.”
Godzilla, he says, was especially captivating to a dinosaur-loving kid.
“Of course, when you’re younger, you’re into dinosaurs,” he says. “Godzilla seemed like the greatest dinosaur I’d ever seen, and it did all these crazy things, and I just loved it.”
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But back then, beyond a few fanzines or horror magazines, it wasn’t as easy as it is now to find information about less mainstream interests or connect with like-minded fans.
“There really wasn’t anything to read about these films in any detail. And I remember as a child asking a bookstore clerk if there were books on Godzilla, and he actually laughed at me and asked why I would ever want to read anything like that,” says Ryfle. “That stuck in my brain.”
Clearly.
Along with Ed Godziszewski, with whom he co-wrote 2017’s “Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film,” Ryfle is the co-author of the massive new book “Godzilla: The First 70 Years,” a 432-page, nearly 6-pound book filled with stories, interviews, breakout boxes, and more than 900 photos of one of cinema’s most enduring figures. The writing duo will be appearing as part of an overall Godzilla onslaught at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
The book, which features introductions by “Halloween” and “The Thing” directing legend John Carpenter and recurring Godzilla actress Megumi Odaka, is the culmination of an effort by the publisher and Toho Studios to mark the anniversary with the ultimate English-language book examining the narrative and visual history of the films, says Ryfle.
“Dating back to 1954, Godzilla has, of course, gone through all of these different iterations and evolutions and changes and its motivation and its personality and the way it’s depicted on screen, and even the techniques that are used to bring it to life,” says Ryfle, who points to the recent box office success and critical respect for 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One.” “I mean, who would have thought 70 years ago that a Godzilla movie made in Japan would win an Academy Award? It would have been impossible, and yet here we are.”
“It’s a real evolution from the time when these movies were sort of misunderstood and just relegated to the scrap heap of low-budget cinema they were assumed to be.”
“Obviously, there are interesting stories to tell about these movies and the people who made them,” he says. “It’s really kind of a celebration of the people and the culture that they come from. The people who made these movies were proud of the work that they did, because they were basically, by and large, handmade films.”
Unlike other schlocky midcentury genre movies, the original Godzilla films reflected Japan’s experience during and after World War II. The films were a response not only to the devastation caused by the U.S. detonating atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also to the firebombing of Tokyo in which nearly 300 U.S. planes dropped 1665 tons of napalm on the city, creating a firestorm and killing 100,000 people in what the Truman Library Institute called “the most devastating aerial bombardment in history.”
“Godzilla, at its very heart from the very beginning, is a monster rooted in trauma,” says Ryfle. “It’s also really about that collective experience of the war and the struggle and the hardships that people went through – and also the collective experience of the post-war period when the economy was in shambles and there were food shortages and political unrest and unemployment and deprivation of extreme magnitude.”
There are images in the original film that directly correspond to wartime destruction, says Ryfle.“When I’m giving talks about the first Godzilla film, I’ll show stills of Tokyo on fire,” says Ryfle, referring to actual photos taken during wartime bombing raids. “I’ll put up these two pictures side by side … it’s almost like a mirror image.”
As well as exploring the film’s inspirations – such as the original “King Kong,” which had been a huge success upon re-release just a few years before the initial Godzilla film – Ryfle and Godziszewski did interviews and scoured archives for fresh insights – and found things that surprised them despite having decades of experience writing about the films.
“Ed and I’ve been writing together for a number of years and working on a lot of different projects. We actually met 30 years ago at the very first Godzilla convention that they had in Chicago,” says Ryfle, praising his writing partner Godziszewski as “a legend” when it comes to knowing the topic and where to dig up information.
Not only did they discover the audio elements of the iconic Godzilla roar – many of the monster cries were made with different musical instruments, says Ryfle – but they also learned something surprising about the changing face of Godzilla over the years.
“From 1954 to, say, 1975, the suit looks different pretty much in almost every film, and I always thought that that was on purpose. But no, they actually made the suits, at least for about the first 15 years, from the same mold. They just came out differently every time,” says Ryfle, who credits the actor inside the suit, Haruo Nakajima, both for his artistry and his superhuman stamina. “The very first suit was almost unusable. It weighed so much and the interior of it was almost inflexible … the guy tried to walk in it and just tipped over.”
“It was impossible to be inside without suffocating if you were in it for more than a few minutes … it was almost a death sentence to do this stuff,” says Ryfle, adding that Nakajima would sweat out dozens of pounds during filming. “They would have to pour the sweat out of the suit every day, and then dry out the interior for the next day, because it was just a sauna in there.
Though the “man-in-the-suit” aspect could sometimes be viewed as comical, Ryfle says Nakajima’s work was instrumental in the creature’s evolution and popularity.
“I attribute a large part of the success of those movies to Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla for roughly the first 18 years of the first cycle of Godzilla films,” says Ryfle, while also praising the original film’s special effects wizard, director and cast. “He was just a wonderful man who died a couple of years ago. He loved his work, and he’s largely responsible for the personality that starts to come through.”
“He turns Godzilla from a walking nuclear bomb into a character over a period of time,” says Ryfle.
While we discussed a range of topics and there’s much more in the book, Ryfle summed up the project as we were concluding the conversation.
“Someone asked me, like, what was your goal at the start of it?” he says. “We wanted to make the best Godzilla book for the widest possible audience.
“I’ve always felt from the beginning that [the films] were unfairly maligned and misunderstood, and that maybe I could help, especially after I started meeting the creators and realizing what passion they had for their work,and starting to understand how culturally specific these films are.”
But he also understands another reason for Godzilla’s lasting power.
“On a gut level, no matter what’s going on in the film and how quote-unquote ‘serious’ it is as a movie,” says Ryfle, “people really want to see the spectacle of Godzilla destroying things.”
Along with the Comic-Con appearance, the authors will be appearing at Santa Ana’s Frida Cinema on July 28 for a book signing and screening of “Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster!” and at the Japan Center Los Angeles on July 30 for a free talk (registration required) with books for sale from Chevalier’s Books.
]]>Q. Please tell readers about your novel, “Fifteen Wild Decembers.”
Like many readers, I first discovered Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” as a teenager. I was mesmerized by the wild moorland landscape she described and the equally wild characters that inhabited it.
When I finished reading, I turned to the introduction and was surprised to learn that the author of this passionate, violent novel had led a seemingly uneventful life. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Emily lived almost all of her life in Haworth, a remote village in the southern Pennines, hundreds of miles from literary London. She had no friends outside the family and was deeply reserved, silent to the point of rudeness when forced into company. Emily never married and there is no evidence of any romantic connections before her death at the tragically young age of 30.
I was intrigued right away by the disconnect. I wondered how someone of Emily’s background could write a novel which scandalized Victorian readers – a contemporaneous reviewer suggested the author should have committed suicide rather than continue! – and still has the power to shock to this day.
I started writing in my early thirties, around the same time that I moved to Yorkshire. Now within driving distance of Haworth, I was able to explore the wild landscape that Emily had described for myself. And, of course, to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which was once home to family. The museum is so wonderfully curated that you almost expect to find Emily and her sisters working on their novels at the original dining table, in a room which overlooks the graveyard and the church where their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, preached.
I began to understand that Emily’s life here was far more tumultuous than I’d first thought. She and her sisters lived under the constant threat of both penury and homelessness – when their elderly, half-blind father died the parsonage would revert to the church governors, while their attempts to earn a living through teaching or governess work had ended miserably. Added to this, their brother Branwell, the only son and once the great hope of the family, had become addicted to both alcohol and laudanum after a disastrous love affair with a married woman. Visitors to the parsonage are often struck by how tiny it is. There would have been nowhere to hide from Branwell’s despair and the ensuing chaos of addiction. Emily’s home in Haworth was hardly an idyllic writing retreat and yet…
I don’t recall the precise moment I decided I must write her story, but the idea must have lurked somewhere in my teenage brain and then started to evolve during those visits to Haworth.
Q. The Brontës grew up in Yorkshire and you live in North Yorkshire. Was knowing the landscape of the area essential to understanding the family?
It would be a tall order to write about Emily Brontë without having some familiarity with the moorland that surrounds her home in Haworth. Emily was so viscerally attached to this landscape that she suffered breakdowns almost every time she was forced to leave.
After Emily’s death, Charlotte wrote: “My sister loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was—liberty. Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it, she perished.”
In order to imagine my way into Emily’s mind, it was essential to walk in her footsteps, to learn this landscape – so different to the softer, more ordered countryside of the south-east of England where I grew up – for myself. I’ve spent many hours now on the moorland that rears up directly behind Emily’s parsonage home. It’s a very particular terrain: peaty, boggy, windswept, with a bleak beauty of its own: “No life higher than the grasstops, or the hearts of sheep,” as Sylvia Plath once described it. Aside from the reservoirs down in the valley, and the signposts in both English and Japanese to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged inspiration for Wuthering Heights, little can have changed since Emily walked here.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
I listened to Taylor Swift almost exclusively while editing “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” to the extent that major scenes in the book are now inextricably linked in my mind with certain songs, with entire albums.
I could write about this at great length if anyone was ever interested, have a habit of telling people even if they aren’t. And don’t get me started on The Eras Tour.
Q. You’re writing historical fiction, not history. Can you talk about the difference?
You won’t find me deep in the archives trying to unearth new primary sources. To my mind, that’s a job best left to the historians. As a novelist, my work is to absorb and assess the information available – in the case of a family as famous as the Brontës, a great deal of research has already been carried out by people with far more expertise than me – and then to let my imagination work its way into any intriguing gaps in the narrative.
For example, in the prologue of “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” we meet 24-year-old Emily on a boat to Brussels. This trip was instigated by Charlotte, ostensibly so that the two sisters could improve their teaching qualifications at a Belgian school. Charlotte’s fictionalized account of Brussels in her novel “Villette” and her extant letters give us a good idea of what this adventure meant to her. As far as I’m aware though, there is no record of Emily’s state of mind on that boat trip. Given that she loathed to be away from her Yorkshire home, and was possibly already suspicious of Charlotte’s motivations, I hazarded a guess that her mood was less than sunny.
Similarly, we know exactly what the young Charlotte Brontë thought about Cowan Bridge School for Daughters of the Clergy because she reproduced it to devastating effect in “Jane Eyre,” and spoke bitterly about it for the rest of her life, but there is scant record of Emily’s presence at the school, let alone her feelings. Blanks in the historical record such as these are irresistible to a novelist!
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
In my early teens, my mother bought me a copy of “The Greengage Summer” by Rumer Godden. I lost it somewhere along the way, but made sure to buy another copy for my own daughter and now always recommend it to other readers.
It’s the story of 13-year-old Cecil who travels with her widowed mother and family to Hotel Les Oeillets, an idyllic yet faded hotel in the Champagne region of France. Her mother has taken her children there to show them the World War I battlefields, in the hope of curing them of selfishness, but when she falls ill they are thrust into the care of Eliot, a charming Englishman, and the confusing, contradictory, adult world of Les Oeillets.
The book was published in 1958 but stands the test of time. To my mind, it’s the perfect coming of age novel, gorgeously written and capturing perfectly that strange, disorienting experience of being on the brink of adulthood.
Q. What are you reading now?
I find fiction too distracting when I’m deep in edits, so I’m reading a history of Elizabethan England for a possible future project. I’m also still thinking about Graham Watson’s seminal biography “The Invention of Charlotte Brontë,” due to be published in the US this August.
Earlier in the year, I loved “Glorious Exploits” by Ferdia Lennon, a hugely entertaining story of a group of Athenian prisoners in Ancient Sicily who might just save themselves by agreeing to perform a Euripides’ play. And I’ve recently finished RAW CONTENT by Naomi Booth, a beautifully nuanced novel about a young woman overwhelmed by the responsibility of keeping her newborn daughter safe. An added bonus is that the novel is set in York where I live!
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
Social media, press reviews, book bloggers, whatever grabs my eye in the book shop. Recommendations from writing friends are really important too, especially since they’re likely to get their hands of proofs. I find the writing community incredibly generous and supportive, particularly of those who are just starting out and might need a boost from more established authors. I can still remember getting a direct message and an endorsement from Elizabeth McNeal (“The Doll Factory,” Circus of Wonders,” “The Burial Plot”) after she’d finished my previous novel “The River Within.” It meant everything.
Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?
Nostalgia comes into play here, so when it comes to choosing a favourite character I veer naturally towards the books I loved as a child or came to in my early teenager years. There might be a bit of a scrap involving Elizabeth Bennet, Nancy Blackett (“Swallows and Amazons”) and Laura Ingalls Wilder (I know, not a character as such) but Anne Shirley would probably win the day.
My novel-in-progress is inspired by a quotation, the first line of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”:
‘In the middle of the journey of our life I came upon myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
Not so much my reading life, but a tiny yet fearsome English teacher planted the idea in my mind that I could write.
She won’t remember me. I was a bright but unenthusiastic teenager, with no interest in making anyone’s teaching day more enjoyable. I imagined myself to be coolly cynical, too worldly for the classroom. Almost certainly I came across as a massive misery guts. And though I was considered good at English – I read extensively and therefore had a vocabulary and reasonable grasp of grammar – I didn’t much like writing stories. That meant coming up with a plot, which is something I struggle with to this day.
When instructed to write a story about first love, I chose to ignore the hopeless creatures who’d shambled in and out of my teenage world and wrote about Greece instead, a landscape and culture that have enthralled me ever since I first visited at the age of 13.
This plotless ‘story’ was returned to my desk with just one word: ‘beautiful.’ We never spoke of it again and I remained as charmless and unteachable as ever. The idea that I could write something beautiful and worthy of praise must have lodged though, and my love of the Mediterranean landscape remains to this day. My novel-in-progress is set at a beach resort between Naples and Rome.
Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
I’ll happily whizz through any number of books which are plot-driven as long as the rest of the writing isn’t embarrassing. I don’t have a great capacity for retention though, so it takes emotional resonance and a facility for language to engage my mind after I’ve turned the last page.
Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
Independent bookshops are a gift to authors. Should any of your readers ever find their way to my part of England, I can recommend The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, Criminally Good Books in York, and Collected Books in Durham which I discovered via my American writing pal, Patricia Grace King. And if you’re ever lucky enough to go to Haworth, don’t miss the trove of Brontë-related literature, including “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” in the Brontë Parsonage Museum gift shop.
While we’re in Brontë territory, I urge you to walk down the vertiginously steep Main Street – perhaps making a detour to the Old Post Office restaurant which still retains the original counter from where the Brontë sisters posted out their manuscripts – until you find your way to a small but very special bookshop.
Wave of Nostalgia started out as a vintage clothing store but branched out into books during lockdown. These days Diane Park and her team do an incredible job of hand selling books and promoting authors through an extensive events programme. My first-ever “Fifteen Wild Decembers” event was held here and I was lucky enough to return recently for a Brontë themed event in the magical setting of St Michael and All Angels church, where the Reverend Patrick Brontë preached and where all of the family with the exception of Anne, are now buried.
I’m so grateful to Diane and to all the other independent booksellers for consistently supporting my work.
]]>The arrangement of square panels on a white page can unlock potent thrills, whether a story concerns an overpowered alien orphan cosplaying as a mild-mannered reporter or a sad, shiny surfer cruising the cosmos on his board. As the Skirball Cultural Center’s fantastic Jack Kirby exhibit shows, anything goes.
However, works like Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” and the comics journalism of Joe Sacco revealed the format is sturdy enough to handle serious topics and true tales as well – and do it well. This makes sense: There’s an alchemy to combining words and pictures, much like how a great song can blend lyrics and music into something better than its constituent parts.
There are some practical upsides to graphic nonfiction for readers as well.
Serious nonfiction can rack up big page counts – cozying up to Ron Chernow’s 1,200-page Mark Twain biography could feel like entering into a long-term committed relationship with the author.
But graphic nonfiction can reveal a previously unknown chunk of history or a unique life story in a format that allows you to read the whole thing without your legs falling asleep.
And there’s so much excellent work being done in the realm of graphic nonfiction right now – notably in Tessa Hulls’s recent Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic memoir “Feeding Ghosts,” which tells her story of growing up the child of immigrants in California’s Marin County.
There are more quality examples from recent months (even last year), so if you’re looking for a satisfying nonfiction reading experience, let’s get you started:
“Thomas Piketty’s Capital & Ideology: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” by Claire Alet and Benjamin Adam (Abrams ComicArts)
If you never got around to reading the French economist’s 1,100-page tome about the underpinnings of income inequality, this is the book for you. Alet & Adam create a visually fun work with easy-to-read graphics that explore Piketty’s ideas with humor, clarity and a lightness of touch.
“Muybridge” by Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly)
Those iconic 19th-century photographs that revealed the mystery of how a horse runs – and how motion pictures would one day work? Those were the work of Eadweard Muybridge, and he lived quite a life. After emigrating here from England in 1850 and working as a bookseller, he spent months toting equipment to photograph the landscapes of Yosemite, befriended robber barons and nearly died in a stagecoach crash that turned his hair and beard white. Um, he also shot his wife’s alleged lover to death in California. There’s a lot in this delightful book, and the masterful Delisle tells the story with wit and an engaging comic style and even includes Muybridge’s own images in the book
“Remember Us to Life” by Joanna Rubin Dranger (Ten Speed Graphic)
In the first few pages of this graphic memoir about the author’s family history and the Holocaust, a character gives another a copy of “Maus” and you can feel a deep connection between these books. This is a richly researched memoir about the people – who she helps us see as individuals with names, lives and loves – who were brutalized, mistreated and murdered by the Third Reich or who faced antisemitic persecution in other countries. Using simple, affecting artwork along with photos and documents, this is a powerful work of personal history that spans generations.
“10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir” by Jeff Lemire (Dark Horse)
One of comics most interesting and innovative creators, artist and writer Lemire has created a unique body of work, including “Sweet Tooth,” “Black Hammer,” “Essex County” and “Descender,” as well as influential work for DC and Marvel (who’d use Lemire’s run on “Moon Knight” as inspiration for its streaming series). After 25 years in the business, Lemire (who is still in his 40s!) looks back at his work, and this book, which hits stores on July 15, offers a fascinating exploration of a creative life that’s vibrant and ongoing.
“Raised by Ghosts” by Briana Loewinsohn (Fantagraphics)
In this semi-autobiographical graphic memoir, Loewinsohn unearths notes and diary entries from her 1990s youth to tell the story of a teen girl growing up in high school. There’s bonding and breakups with friends, and there’s music and mix tapes to be made. And as befitting a story about a young artist in the making, it’s engaging, affecting and beautifully rendered.
“The Heart That Fed” by Carl Sciacchitano (Gallery 13)
In this moving 2024 memoir, the grown son of a Vietnam War veteran tries to make sense of their tense relationship. The book examines his father’s experiences as a college dropout who impulsively enlisted in the Air Force and gets shipped overseas to Vietnam – and the long years of pain and PTSD that followed.
“This Beautiful, Ridiculous City” by Kay Sohini (Ten Speed Graphic)
In this vibrant, touching and utterly charming memoir, Kay Sohini writes about growing up in India and dreaming of a life in New York City, a place she feels she knows through “Friends” and “When Harry Met Sally” as well as books by Sylvia Plath, Colson Whitehead and Alison Bechdel. When she attempts to leave an abusive relationship, her adopted city takes her in.
“Ginseng Roots” by Chris Thompson (Pantheon)
Two decades after his hugely successful 2003 graphic memoir “Blankets,” Thompson returns with a deeply personal and idiosyncratic work that twines his Wisconsin childhood in the ginseng capital of the U.S. with his later chronic physical (and emotional) pain. The book features Thompson traveling with his brother around their hometown and across the world to learn more about the valuable root and the people who rely on it in this gorgeously illustrated book.
]]>In a paper published in the journal Shakespeare on April 24 — the day after the Bard’s 461st birthday, if you happened to have candles and an extremely large cake on hand — Professor Matthew Steggle, Chair in Early Modern English Literature at University of Bristol, presented research that finds potential significance in the scraps of a letter first discovered in 1978.
Incredibly, the letter scraps were found by accident inside a nearly 1,000-page religious tome housed in the library of the U.K.’s Hereford Cathedral.
The letter appears to have been addressed to “Good Mrs Shakspaire” concerning an apprentice named John Butts (or Butte) and the young man’s interactions with her husband. As well, the letter says that the Shakespaires had lived on Trinity Lane, a street that still exists today in London. If this, in fact, turns out to be true about the Shakespeares, it’s a biographical nugget that has never previously been known and places them living together in London during the period when he wrote “Hamlet,” “Twelfth Night,” and other plays.
The life story of William Shakespeare, as it’s usually told, is that he left Stratford-upon-Avon to make his name in the London theaters. It’s been thought that his wife, Anne Hathaway, stayed behind with their children, separated from him for unknown lengths of time until he returned to spend the last few years of his life in retirement. Then, upon his death, he left her “my second best bed with the furniture,” which scholars still puzzle over whether it’s a loving gesture (as it could refer to their shared marriage bed) or a final snub.
Amazingly, the correspondence wasn’t saved for its historical importance; it was essentially used as scrap paper, as Steggle writes in “The Shakspaires Of Trinity Lane: A Possible Shakespeare Life-Record”: “The two strips of the letter were used by the binders as ‘guards’, or padding to prevent the text block from chafing against the binding they were fitting to it, so the binders evidently regarded these strips as waste paper.”
The book’s publisher was Shakespeare’s Stratford neighbor Richard Field, who was also the playwright’s first printer.
Why wasn’t the 1978 discovery by librarian F.C. Morgan taken more seriously at the time? Steggle explains: “That Morgan did not do more with this discovery is understandable. He had recently celebrated his hundredth birthday, and in fact was dead by the time this note appeared in print. It was a late and startling highlight in a long career spent in English history.”
Steggle’s research was done for his forthcoming book, “William Shakespeare and the Early Modern World,” and throughout his piece, he is careful not to overstate the findings and suggest areas where it might be bolstered or challenged. Steggle answered questions via email about the letter and his research.
Q. How did you find the significance of this piece of letter?
I’m writing a Shakespeare biography, and found the document referenced briefly in one or two places, but nobody actually seemed to know anything about it. Then when I obtained photos of the two fragments, I thought, you could do things with this, especially with modern information technology that previous generations of scholars didn’t have access to.
Q. If true, what might it mean?
There’s this prevailing narrative that the Shakespeares’ marriage was very much an arms-length affair, with the wife as a distant encumbrance while he lived an exciting life in the city – the kind of thing you see in “Shakespeare in Love.” This suggests an alternative scenario in which they are living together, at least a bit, in London, with Anne involved in William’s social networks and financial affairs.
Q. Might there be other scraps to search for?
Yes! It shows that new discoveries are still possible in 17th-century manuscript material, particularly in binding waste. In particular, as I say in the article, it makes one passionately curious about other books, printed like this one by Shakespeare’s associate Richard Field, which might still be in their original bindings.
Q. Is there anything else about this that you’d like to say?
Only that this is part of a number of recent bits of work which are starting to reassess the Shakespeare womenfolk — in particular, the work of Katherine Scheil on other aspects of Anne Hathaway’s life. For a long time it was assumed that they were all illiterate yokels, and maybe that’s a simplification.
Q. Could this explain why there isn’t much original Shakespeare writing or paperwork?
Funnily enough, I’d argue that actually there’s quite a decent paper trail for Shakespeare, by the standards of his day. There are dozens of, individually perhaps rather dry, documents collected on the fabulous site Shakespeare Documented: tax records, law cases, to say nothing of the numerous documents around his professional career. Those are the kinds of things that survive, by and large, whereas more personal papers almost invariably disappear. I’ve spent 20 years looking in archives for people whose lives are only known from half a dozen grubby bits of paper, and William Shakespeare is actually quite lavishly documented in comparison to many of them.
]]>“I know a lot of other people were very affected by the Kavanaugh hearings because it was seeing somebody so many decades later who’s still so affected,” says Kennedy, who spoke from her Brooklyn apartment on Zoom last month. “I wasn’t acknowledging to myself that I was still affected, or that this still ate at me. And it kind of gives you permission when you see somebody after decades still grappling with what happened to them in childhood that you realize, Oh, it’s normal to continue to grapple.”
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That grappling led Kennedy, who has written extensively about inventions and makers, to begin a web search into the creation of what is commonly known as the rape kit, which collects evidence of sexual assault. Kennedy recounts her odyssey in “The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story,” which weaves together her own personal narrative, the origin and implementation of the kit, and the identity of the person who conceived of it.
It had long been thought that a Chicago police officer had come up with the idea in the 1970s, but through interviews and research, Kennedy identified Martha “Marty” Goddard as the woman who’d conceived of the rape kit, assembled its prototype and then, inexplicably, allowed others to take the credit. Then, in the 1980s, Goddard dropped out of sight.
Goddard may have declined credit for her work to get buy-in from law enforcement, but she was no meek pushover. A fearless advocate in the 1970s for what were then referred to as “teenage runaways,” Goddard intuited that sexually trafficked children ended up on the streets because of abuse at home rather than youthful wanderlust. She headed a Chicago task force to study how to improve the policing and handling of sexual assault and its victims, and, as Kennedy argues, Goddard used her position in ways that would fundamentally change policing, forensics and evidence handling.
“The important thing with the Chicago kit was that it was really different in that it was survivor-led, and then became the blueprint for what became the national system,” says Kennedy, adding how later advances in DNA testing meant these kits held even more information than had been initially imagined.
“Once DNA fingerprinting came along, you had all these kits from the ’70s or ’80s that had biological evidence, and then they might have blood or semen or something that you could test,” she says. “That was how the Golden State Killer was found.”
Kennedy spent years on the story, even writing a 2020 piece for the New York Times Magazine about Goddard’s role in the rape kit — which led to a number of people who knew Goddard to come forward to speak with Kennedy.
“I spent a very long time tracking down person after person after person who had known her and worked with her. And the strangest thing about it was that none of them knew where she was. They all said, I was very close to her. I worked with her, but then she just kind of disappeared in the ’80s, and I lost track of her,” says Kennedy.
Kennedy, who writes in the book that her own abuser became a Washington insider, says that she included her own story to underscore how widespread the problem is.
“I decided to put my story in, not because it’s exceptional at all, but because I think it’s just so incredibly normal and part of what so many people go through. I thought that if I wove in my story then it’s also sort of the story of the evolution of this new forensic system,” says Kennedy. “I felt like it was a good lens through which to track how this system affects people and affects the way we think about what happened to us.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. You spent years working on this book. Can you talk about your commitment to the story?
I think the best stories are like that. When I started this in 2018, rape kits were actually in the news then because of the backlog scandals where the kits had not been tested, and so that was sort of the buzz in the background.
I’ve written a lot about invention. I was really interested in the question of what objects are designed by and for women. What does technology look like when it’s made by and for people who are out of power?
One day, I just thought about the rape kit, which was something I’d always been aware of since college but had never really thought about. It didn’t seem unusual at all that police departments would be throwing them out or refusing to test them — that seemed completely on-brand for our world — but what did amaze me when I really thought about it was that the rape kits existed at all.
Q. Initially, you read that a Chicago police officer had created it, but then later determined this wasn’t the case.
I looked it up on Wikipedia at the time and it said that Sgt. Louis Vitullo of the Chicago Police Department invented this kit and created the entire system.
There was very little information. But I kept seeing this name Marty Goddard as sort of his helper and I thought she might be alive … so I set about trying to find her.
Q. How did you finally begin to make headway?
The moment the story really opened up for me was when I located Cynthia Gehrie, who had worked very closely with Marty and had been kind of her partner. It was Cynthia who said, I remember her calling me after this meeting with Vitullo and proposing the idea of creating a rape kit — and a whole system. People tend to focus on the object [of the rape kit], but the power of this is as a system where they’re all connected: All the kits are in a database. There’s hospitals everywhere doing this, there’s trained nurses, there’s trained police officers. It’s not just the kit.
Vitullo was involved, to give him his due, although she did raise all the money and did all the trainings and really did the hard work of getting it into the hospitals and talking to everybody.
Q. You wrote about the rape kit for the New York Times, too.
I did a version for them, and then I just kept going because after I did the story so many other people came forward and had more to tell me about Marty and the kit. I also was able to connect with the Smithsonian and they acquired the original Chicago Vitullo Kit, as it was called. The curators there shared a lot of information, and they were able to do an even deeper dive into materials that I couldn’t get.
There was just so much more of the story to tell. People who hadn’t wanted to talk to me were much more willing after the article came out, like Marty Goddard’s sister. So I just learned so much more about the story itself, and then also that even the rape kit that I learned that the Chicago kit was not the first. There were little experiments here and there.
Q. You write that the city of Santa Ana had an early version, which you credit to P. Lee Johnson, a colorful former Santa Ana police officer, bar owner and politician.
He was really quite an interesting, roguish character, but not the guy you’d want to be creating a rape kit.
In that kit from California, it was written into the instructions that the police officer had the right not to give the kit to any woman he felt was, you know, a prostitute or of loose morals — or if he just didn’t like her.
Marty Goddard was really committed to this scientifically. The scientific way to do this is not about how you feel about the victim of the crime. I mean, it doesn’t matter if this person lives on the street or if they’re a prostitute or who they are — we need to collect their story and their data and evidence from them.
There were probably little experiments like this all over the country, here and there, you know, that just never really got going. The important thing with the Chicago kit that was different was that it was survivor-led, and that became the blueprint for what became the national system.
Q. One of the book’s many surprising elements was that Goddard got support from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy organization, even on the graphic design of the kit itself.
Everybody remembers such different things. Her cousin came to me when I was at the end of the project, more or less just found me. She had these great memories of that party at the Playboy Mansion, and I was just like, ‘Tell me everything.’ It was typical Playboy Mansion stuff, but it was interesting that there was this fundraiser there.
They were deeply involved in this effort, and she was not able to get any help from the Girl Scouts club or the Kiwanis, so she had to go to the Playboy Foundation.
Q. Some of the things you describe are infuriating — the dismissal of victims, the neglect of sex crime evidence, the racism and misogyny and more — were you shocked by what you found?
One of my regrets is that I couldn’t put it all in. But you know, in the ‘70s, nobody talked about the abuse of men. That really got started in the ‘80s.
Q. What accounted for the backlog of these tests — was it just the cost?
People have gone through a really traumatic process in the wake of an attack to then allow themselves to be examined. It’s such a gift that a survivor gives to other people. I mean, they don’t want to do it, but they want to make sure no harm comes to anybody else. And so it’s such a valuable thing to have these kits. And when you see those trashed or thrown away or sitting in a parking garage or wherever, it tells you about the culture in police departments.
The problem of the backlog is, I wouldn’t say it’s solved, but there was a time when there were nearly half a million untested kits, and most of those have been worked through. But it’s so valuable — and not just for identifying perpetrators, but also for preventing false accusations. I dug up through one of the exoneration projects reports that showed a graph of how many fewer false accusations there were.
So in 2010, thanks to a whole lot of activists working really hard, the country began testing all these untested kits. And so there was this flood of data after that, and way more information. The system became more powerful after that. And so in the wake of that, there were a lot fewer accusations against innocent Black men for rape. And I think that’s something that’s not really been talked about enough, because it’s another huge win.
It’s important to exonerate people, but how much better would it be to not put them in prison in the first place?
]]>With Everett, the evening’s winners included Jason De León, who won the nonfiction prize for his book, “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” along with Shifa Saltagi Safadi’s “Kareem Between” for Young People’s Literature; Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s “Taiwan Travelogue” for Translated Literature and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something About Living” for Poetry. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Black Classic Press publisher W. Paul Coates received the Literarian Award, a move that had caused controversy leading up to the event.
Earlier this year, on the eve of the publication of his award-winning novel, Everett sat for a Zoom interview from his South Pasadena home with an array of stringed instruments and music books on the shelves behind him.
As the interview wrapped things up, Everett talked a bit more about books he liked, a formative reading experience, and some thoughts on music – he’s a guitarist as well as painter, poet and novelist. The following Q&A, which has been edited for length and clarity, is from that March interview, published here for the first time.
Q. Is there a book that you often recommend to people?
Not one, no. I do love Samuel Butler’s “The Way of All Flesh.” It’s an amazing novel just for the story, but it’s also so funny. And so I read that, it used to be every year, but now it’s every couple of years. I’m just reminded of how quickly someone can really get a story going.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life?
My father did, just because there were no restrictions as far as what I could pull from the library. And there was, and I don’t remember her name, a librarian – this would have been when I was a teenager – at the University of South Carolina McKissick Library. I shouldn’t have been in that library at all, but she would let me go into the stacks and I would just hang out up there for hours looking through books. I’m sure she’s dead now, but I would love to have had an opportunity to thank her.
Q. A librarian can make all the difference.
And a rulebreaker at that. [laughs]
Q. Is there a fact or piece of dialogue from something you’ve read that has stayed with you?
I’ve been reading about the lost Black composers of the period at the very end of the 19th century. There is a denial of the history of classical music in the U.S. Even one of my heroes, Leonard Bernstein, said at one point, ‘There is no classical music in the US before 1910; there’s no history of it.’
But there were actually Black composers, and they were encouraged by [Czech composer Antonín] Dvořák. Dvořák was brought to the U.S. to direct the National Conservatory in New York because this woman, [Jeannette] Thurber, and some other people believed that there was no serious music with an American character. They brought him in to direct it and to try to help shape it, and when he arrived, he and some other music people in New York, but especially Dvořák, stated that – and he was known for using the folk music of his world to create his orchestral music – he said that the music of America would come from African American and Native American melodies. And then proceeded to employ them.
One of the remarkable things, and this is the thing that I was coming to, is he wrote at that time, The New World Symphony, which is a fantastic work. When we listen to it now, you can’t help but think about Westerns. But it was written in 1893 – there were no Westerns! It’s got motifs of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and things like that in it; it’s just remarkable.
That denial of that influence in American music persists in the resistance of considering Gershwin a classical composer, or Charles Ives. So there’s a lot of a lot of stuff going on there.
Q. Speaking of music: Do you still play jazz guitar?
Oh, I love guitar. I do play and I play differently now since I chopped off the tip of a finger. So it feels different.
]]>Still, the spirit of William Shakespeare, who died in 1616, seems to be having an especially good time right now: In Washington D.C. over the summer, the Folger Shakespeare Library reopened – and a new Shakespeare museum will open in London in 2025. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke announced a U.K. stage mashup of “Hamlet” and his band’s 2003 album, “Hail to the Thief,” and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will do “Othello” on Broadway. Oscar winner Chloé Zhao is directing the screen version of “Hamnet,” Maggie O’Farrell’s moving 2020 novel about the death of Shakespeare’s son, which is scheduled to be out next year.
So is this an especially fruitful time for Shakespearean antics? We reached out to the Folger Shakespeare Library for insight.
“Shakespeare’s works resonate through the ages because they explore the complexities of human nature, emotion, and society through timeless reflections that have continued to influence literature, art and culture today,” said Katherine Harroff, the Folger’s director of engagement, in an email.
Even the Bard’s artistic contemporary (and sometime co-author?), the playwright Christopher Marlowe, is having a moment with “Lightborne,” Hesse Phillips’ novel about the final, intrigue-packed weeks of Marlowe’s life, which is in stores now.
While Shakespeare-inspired works are always coming out, plenty of books – novels, romances, crime, history and nonfiction – are hitting shelves now. (How plentiful? I literally got pitched a new book as I was writing this paragraph.)
So sure, you could pull down the collected plays or practice reciting the sonnets; stream plays from Kanopy, the Globe or Digital Theatre; or watch film and TV adaptations like the star-studded “The Hollow Crown.”
(Drew Lichtensberg’s recent New York Times opinion piece about the state of staging Shakespeare, along with James Shapiro’s book “Shakespeare in a Divided America,” also provide valuable insight on how the political landscape affects our understanding and support of the plays, too.)
But for now, let’s just check out 10 recent books:
“All Our Yesterdays” by Joel H. Morris (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
This debut novel is an origin story of Lady Macbeth, and it’s been praised by novelist Karen Joy Fowler, author and translator Jennifer Croft and writer Liz Michalski, who calls it “as sharp and cutting as an obsidian dagger,” which may be the coolest way to describe anything ever (so please feel free to start referring to The Book Pages this way henceforth).
“Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King” by Dan Jones (Viking)
In this work of nonfiction, the historian, novelist and TV presenter Jones takes on the historical Henry, who Shakespeare graced with the immortal Band of Brothers speech in his play. In a recent review of the book in the New York Times, “Will in the World” author Stephen Greenblatt writes that Jones’s work reveals that unlike the king of the play, the real Henry was “a monster” who had prisoners slaughtered after the battle of Agincourt.
“Marriage & Masti” by Nisha Sharma (Avon)
OK, who’s in the mood for some palate-cleansing romance after that last blurb? In the concluding volume of her “If Shakespeare Was an Auntie Series,” Sharma crafts a clever friends-to-lovers romance based on “Twelfth Night” that includes a shipwrecked yacht, a drunken night and a pretend – or was it real? – marriage.
“Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times” by Rob Eastaway (The Experiment)
Did I say there’d be no math? Well, it would have been a shame to miss this entertaining look at what really counts in the tragedies, comedies and histories. Eastaway, an author and director of a U.K. group that works with teens called Maths Inspiration, reveals he first came up with the idea for the book as a joke – and then found there was actual merit in it. There is plenty of history, science, language and, yes, number stuff here, such as a clever reference in “Othello” to a week as “Eight score 8 hours,” which, it turns out, is exactly how long a week is.
“Practice” by Rosalind Brown (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
This debut novel concerns an undergrad who is stuck in her room working on an essay about Shakespeare’s sonnets. Brown – whose dissertation was on the topic of discipline – takes the reader on a journey through the unchecked thoughts, imagination and fantasies of someone procrastinating on deadline, a compelling topic to write about if I could ever get around to it.
“The Princes in the Tower” by Philippa Langley (Simon & Schuster)
Langley is probably best known for her role in the discovery of the burial site of the real-life Richard III. In this (very) cold-case type of investigation, which stemmed from a project called The Missing Princes Project, she aims to learn the fate of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, Richard’s two young nephews long-believed to have been murdered in the Tower of London.
“Queen Macbeth” by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly Press)
The prolific Scottish crime writer seeks to clear up misunderstandings about the historical Lady Macbeth – whose actual name was Gruoch. The author reimagines the character and has her on the run from pursuers in a novella one reviewer called, “‘Thelma and Louise’ with crossbows.” (Again, feel free to apply that description to this newsletter as well.)
“Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent” by Dame Judi Dench w/ Brendan Hea (St. Martin’s Press)
In this book of interviews with the acclaimed Dench about the many roles she’s played, the theater director Hea initially figured he’d collect stories for an archive, but as he went along he realized that Dench is not only an incisive expert on Shakespearean performance with a photographic memory of lines, costumes and more, she’s also a hoot: He describes her constantly goofing around – creating fake teeth from an orange rind or stuffing her mouth full of popcorn – and dropping the occasional F-bomb. (No, not “forsooth.”)
“She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said” by Harriet Walter (Union Square)
This is the book I learned about as I was writing the introduction. Walter, who’s appeared on “Succession,””Silo,” “Ted Lasso” and the wonderful 1995 adaption of “Sense & Sensibility” among other credits, has written previous books on acting and Shakespeare. Here, she offers thoughts and anecdotes about playing certain roles, provides insights about the plays and writes her own soliloquies in the voice of various female characters.
“The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf” by Isa Arsen (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Set in the mid-1950s, this novel, which is scheduled to be published in January 2025, tells the story of two Shakespearean actors, one of whom has had a recent breakdown following a performance in “Macbeth,” who head out to the New Mexico desert for a production of “Titus Andronicus,” and find themselves swept up into romantic and sexual complications.
]]>That book, “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel,” lands in stores on Nov. 19, and it immediately pulled me in with its sobering, concise summation of the period: “That century brought world wars, revolutions, automobiles, women’s suffrage, death camps and the internet.”
With all that profound change, the jacket copy asked a question as pertinent now as for the previous century: “And for novelists, it posed an urgent question: How to write books as startling and unforeseen as the world we live in?”
Indeed.
In this work of nonfiction, which was 15 years in the making, author Edwin Frank, the editorial director of New York Review Books and founder of its NYRB Classics series, explores 20th-century novels through a personally chosen and idiosyncratic list of 32 titles (that makes allowances for Dostoevsky’s 1864 narrative “Notes From the Underground,” which presages the fiction of the coming century). Frank examines novels by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel García Márquez, Ralph Ellison and W.G. Sebald among them. (And list lovers alert: He includes even more novels to consider in an appendix.)
In one passage in the introduction to “Stranger Than Fiction,” Frank addresses books about World War II, Hans Erich Nossack’s “The End,” which details the firebombing of Hamburg, and Vasily Grossman’s two tomes about the brutal Battle of Stalingrad, “Life and Fate” and “Stalingrad.” Referring to the challenge of writing about these cataclysmic events, he writes “…the imaginative resources of fiction struggle both to engage with and fight clear of unbearable fact.”
Unbearable facts may always be with us. Novels can be welcome distractions, searing indictments or innumerable other things, but the struggle to confront change remains ongoing. Frank’s searching study of the novel, what he calls the “story of an exploding form in an exploding world,” bursts with thought-provoking material, and I look forward to diving deeper into its chapters.
And maybe it’s useful to consider everything we’ve gone through thus far and think – even if it’s difficult to contemplate at times – that maybe we have what it takes to keep on going whether through the darkness or the light.
“How does it all end up?” asks Frank in his introduction.
Then, as now, it remains a good question.
What other books are coming out in November? Let’s take a look at 10 more.
Nov. 5
“Before We Forget Kindness” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Hanover Square)
Need something cozy and comforting right now? In the latest book of the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot from the original Japanese, a fresh batch of characters seek healing or closure at Café Funiculi Funicula by sampling its time-traveling amenities.
“Bel Canto (Annotated Edition)” by Ann Patchett (Harper).
Patchett annotates her award-winning bestseller about a South American hostage situation that ensnares an opera singer, a Japanese businessman, terrorists and more. The author’s notes — criticizing an adverb here, revealing a character who “bores” her there – offer a welcome running commentary on the beloved novel.
Nov. 12
“Didion & Babitz” by Lili Anolik (Scribner)
My colleague Emily St. Martin, who has a story coming about this book and its
author, told me she’s obsessed with this lively work of nonfiction about two iconic Southern California writers and the Franklin Avenue scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Didion and Babitz’s opposites-attract friendship would ultimately repel them from each other; trust that the author shares all those details and more. As Anolik warns: “Reader, don’t be a baby.”
“Lazarus Man” by Richard Price (FSG)
Price, the author of such richly textured novels as “Lush Life,” “Clockers” and “The Whites” as well as indelible work in TV and film that includes “The Wire,” “The Color of Money,” and “The Night Of,” is back with a novel about a collapsing tenement in Harlem and the intertwining lives reacting in its wake.
“Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: A Celebration of Taylor Swift’s Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties by a Swiftie” by Rob Sheffield (Dey Street)
Sheffield is one of the best writers about music and pop culture, and here he takes a complex look – just look at that subhead – at the work of Taylor Swift. As he proved with his terrific essay collection “Dreaming the Beatles,” Sheffield can be endlessly interesting as explores the work of the artists he admires.
“Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures” by Katherine Rundell (Doubleday)
Rundell just published her YA fantasy “Impossible Creatures” here in the States, and she’s already back with a new book of fantastical beasts – except these are real. Whether drawing connections between wombats and Italian painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Shakespeare and Greenland sharks, she fascinates.
“Shy Creatures” by Clare Chambers (Mariner)
Set in a 1960s-era psychiatric hospital, the novel features Helen, an unmarried art therapist carrying on a dreary affair with a married male colleague (who – red-flag – presses bleak novellas on her when she’d rather be reading Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries). Her life gets upended with the appearance of a wild-haired recluse who’s spent decades living hidden away with his aged aunt and turns out to be a talented artist.
Nov. 19
“Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America” by Rita Omokha (St. Martin’s)
Following the murder of George Floyd, which was captured on video by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, award-winning journalist Rita Omokha traveled to 30 states to meet and speak with young Black activists and explore the past one hundred years of work done by younger people in the fight for social justice.
“The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America” by Stephanie Gorton (Ecco)
In the early part of the last century, two women were at the forefront of the campaign for reproductive rights and birth control access. Gorton’s book details how these leaders – Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and Dennett, now largely forgotten – were often at odds and how that affected the movement.
“Gangster Hunters: How Hoover’s G-Men Vanquished America’s Deadliest Public Enemies” by John Oller (Dutton)
Oller’s book follows the action-packed exploits of 1930s-era FBI agents – who often lacked the experience, skills and equipment of their high-flying criminal counterparts – as the G-men chased down gangsters such as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.
]]>When I first learned about Katherine Rundell’s “Impossible Creatures” (after critic Ron Charles praised it in the Washington Post), the U.K. fantasy novel wasn’t yet available here in the States.
Thankfully, the book, about two young people facing a murderous threat, a mysterious landscape and a host of magical creatures, is in stores now. (And the audiobook is too; its narrator Samuel West will be known to readerly moviegoers as book-beset Leonard Bast in 1992’s “Howard’s End” and as a boorish Boris Johnson-type on Apple TV+’s adaptation of Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses.”)
Rundell is coming to Southern California for an event this month; scroll on to find out all about it in the Book Pages Q&A with the author below.
But back before its U.S. publication, I needed my own preciousss copy and wasn’t about to let time or an ocean get in the way of my obtaining it.
I went book shopping in the U.K. … online. Sure, using the internet to buy things is not exactly cutting-edge, but there is still a kind of thrill finding books you can’t obtain here. (OK, it’s thrilling for me.)
Maybe you’ve ordered books from U.K. bookstores, but if not, here’s a few things to consider. First, be forewarned that not every U.K. bookshop ships overseas and some outlets can charge steep overseas shipping rates (so check the shipping cost before you get your heart set on something). Still, if you’re curious, take a look at the offerings at Foyles, Daunt, Waterstones and Mr. B’s Emporium. There are also independent publishers like Unbound (founded by Backlisted podcast host John Mitchinson) and Little Toller, as well as independent and second-hand book purveyors and (though you probably would have more fun going in person) there’s that town full of bookshops in Wales.
Pro tip? Blackwell’s, which, like Foyles, is owned by Waterstones, currently includes U.S. delivery in the price so you don’t pay extra for shipping.
And all-star pro tip? Check to see if you can get the book from your local library or through the global library search engine Worldcat – or ask if your local independent bookstore can order it for you. (There are so many ways to win.)
Some recent books not yet published here that I’ve aimed to get my hands on include “Rare Singles” by novelist Benjamin Myers, the author of “The Gallows Pole” and “The Perfect Golden Circle,” both of which I loved. (And I got one.)
Andrew Hunter Murray, who is a host of one of my favorite podcasts, the funny and smart “No Such Thing as a Fish,” has a new novel, “A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering.” Unlike his novels “The Sanctuary” and “The Last Day,” this one is not out in the U.S. yet. Murray shared the first chapter of the audiobook, which is read by Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt on “Ted Lasso”), and it sounds like complete page-turning fun.
Books about music and nature often have me seeking U.K. copies of, most recently, books such as Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke’s “I Could Read the Sky”; Harry Sword’s study of drone in music, “Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion”; John Higgs’ “The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band That Burned a Million Pounds”; and Pete Paphides’s “Broken Greek: A Story of Chip Shops and Pop Songs,” a book I plan to share with my music-loving Greek friend and former colleague Vanessa Franko (but don’t tell her, OK?).
So this week I reached out to some U.K. bookstores for suggestions that might interest U.S. readers. As of deadline, I heard back from the folks at Mr. B’s Emporium, who thoughtfully assembled a list (with at least one name you might have heard of already in this column) and notes about the books.
Some titles are available in the U.S., but Mr. B’s bookseller Soffi says she hoped this provides “a useful list of U.K. books that we think are quintessentially British reads!”
Here’s what she sent:
“Winter Love” by Han Suyin (republished by Mr. B’s own publishing arm, Fox, Finch & Tepper)
“The Offing” by Benjamin Myers (A shop favourite author)
“Fortune Men” by Nadifa Mohamed (A Booker Prize-shortlisted crime novel set in Cardiff)
“Square of Sevens” by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (A fantastic historical fiction set in the Georgian splendour of Bath)
“Late Light” by Michael Malay (Just won the Wainwright prize and our lovely bookseller Katrina was on the judging board)
“Murder at Snowfall” by Fleur Hitchcock (So British it even includes a scene at Mr B’s!)
“Greenwild” by Pari Thompson (Wonderful magical middle-grade fantasy set in Kew Gardens)
She continued: “I’d also add that often international customers come to us for nice editions of books that are available in the US but we have editions that are only published in the UK, such as our hardback Terry Pratchett collection which is hugely popular for our overseas customers.”
That Soffi and the folks at Mr. B’s jumped into action so quickly didn’t surprise me; my experience with the shop has been great. They offer a Reading Spa – a service of coffee or tea, a big slice of cake and a conversation with a bookseller who will offer up a range of suggestions based on what you like. I witnessed someone enjoying the service when I was there and it looked … magical. But even as a regular nerd off the street who spent hours in there, they were endlessly kind and helpful: talking books, serving tea, letting a child nap in a cozy chair and answering questions until I left with a gigantic tower of books. (Fortunately, I traveled with an empty pack I could fill with all my new friends.)
So as I was calculating the financial hit I’d take to fly over just to eat cake and talk about books, Soffi reminded me of a service available to readers here:
“We also provide our Reading Subscriptions service for many U.S. customers, which is not unlike the Reading Spa where we match a bookseller with a subscriber and send them a bespoke pick each month in the post, meaning we can send U.K. authors not only to the U.S. but across the globe!” she added.
There’s probably no cake, but you can’t have everything.
Katherine Rundell reveals a secret inspiration of ‘Impossible Creatures’
Katherine Rundell is the author a number of books for young people, most recently of the just-published “Impossible Creatures.” She’s also the author of “Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne” and the upcoming “Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures.”
Q. Please tell readers about your new book, “Impossible Creatures.”
“Impossible Creatures” is the story of a cluster of islands in the North Atlantic ocean where all the creatures of myth that mankind has ever invented still live and thrive. That’s all the creatures we’re familiar with – dragons and unicorns – but also creatures we invented and have since half-forgotten, like kankos and kluddes and karkadanns. Into those islands comes a boy, Christopher, from our world; he meets Mal, a girl with a coat that allows her to fly, a baby griffin in her arms, and a murderer trying to find her. They discover that the creatures are in peril, and they will need to rise to the call to save them.
Q. You also wrote “Super-Infinite,” a book about the 17th century metaphysical poet John Donne. What do you wish people knew about him and his work?
He was so wildly original: so funny, so sharp, and so insistent on the power of new, vivid language to cut through your interlocutor’s complacent inattention and leave them gasping. He is a great antidote to exhaustion or boredom – if other books begin to feel flat, he can defibrillate you back into belief in language’s power to galvanise: his writing has electricity in it.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
For children, I often recommend the books of Diana Wynne Jones, a brilliant writer of wryly wise fantasy; Ursula K. Le Guin; and, of course, The Chronicles of Narnia.
Q. What are you reading now?
Virginia Woolf‘s diaries, which has recently been re-released: one of the most magnificent reading experiences of my last few years.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
I was re-reading “A Room with a View,” because it’s my partner’s favourite novel – and loved this: ”Life,” wrote a friend of mine, “is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.” That, and, from the same book: “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.”
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Am I allowed to say my own? I love the “Impossible Creatures” covers, both the American and British ones. I also adore the original “Jaws” book cover.
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I love Timothy West’s reading of the Anthony Trollope’s Barchester novels – he’s just superb. So rich and varied, and a gift to the ear.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
I think my favourite adult novel is “Emma,” by Jane Austen. But I also love, wildly, Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire,” James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”
I love murder mysteries: Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey, especially. And for children, there’s such a wealth of glories: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Tove Jansson, E.B. White, and now B.B. Alston and Katherine Applegate and Kate DiCamillo. Such wonders await them if we can get the books into children’s hands.
Q. Which books are you planning to read next?
There’s a newish Tana French out called “The Hunter,” and I love her work. It has such addictive propulsion to it. But I have to be cautious about when to start it, because once I start, I won’t do anything until it’s finished. And I’m going to re-read Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur.” It was written in around 1470, and it’s a book of such strangeness and precision, such yearning and violence, and such beauty.
Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?
I love this in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s notebook from 1802: “A Principle of Criticism: Never to lose an opportunity of reasoning against the head-dimming, heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its beauties. Every work must have the former—we know it a priori—but every work has not the latter, and he, therefore, who discovers them, tells you something that you could not with certainty, or even with probability, have anticipated.”
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
One of the scenes in “Impossible Creatures” is stolen from a moment when, as research for a book, I took lessons in the flying trapeze. I saw a very talented acrobat land badly, and bend her little finger all the way back to the wrist. She was absolutely fine later, and cheerfully casual about it in the way that trapeze artists are. But I stole that fleeting moment for my book, when Mal is learning how to fly with her flying coat; she bends her little finger all the way back to the wrist. Novelists are alarmingly like magpies: always stealing snippets, pieces that shine, from the world around them.
Q. If you could tell your readers something, what would it be?
I would say, thank you. I’m so grateful for the way readers have embraced the book – it’s been a real colossal delight. My favourite thing has been when children come up to me and say, “I know it’s not real. Obviously, it’s not real: it’s just a book. But … just to check … is it real?”
For more about the author, check out the “Impossible Creatures” website.
]]>Whether you like to follow recipes exactly or tweak them as you go, a new cookbook can turn your dinnertime into an opportunity for creative thinking and sensory stimulation instead of a dose of daily drudgery.
So we went looking and found 10 recently published cookbooks filled with great ideas and gorgeous photos to inspire and feed your soul – or to help you whip up something with whatever is left in the fridge. So whether you’re sharing a meal with loved ones or simply seeking some solo self-care on a quiet evening at home, the following books offer plenty of options.
“Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook” w/ Jose de Meirelles and Philip La Jaunie
Twenty years after this book’s initial publication, Bourdain is even more beloved – and missed – so it’s a joy to reconnect with his practical, authoritative voice on these pages. Take, for instance, his warning about preparing escargots: “… occasionally they like to explode, spitting a boiling-hot, napalmlike mixture of snail fluid and molten butter at your face and genital region while cooking … If you are accustomed to cooking while naked, I would strongly suggest covering strategic areas with an apron.” Raise a glass – and maybe a protective baking sheet – to this wise counsel.
“Bodega Bakes: Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store” / Paola Velez w/ Emily Timberlake
With its gorgeous Burnt Tahini & Concord Grape Cake gracing the cover, this colorful cookbook celebrates family – the dedication page is full of pictures of loved ones – and the multi-ethnic upbringing of author Paola Velez, a self-described “Bronx-born Afro-Latina pastry chef and community organizer”(and a slam poetry-loving, chess club nerd who identified with Urkel from “Family Matters”). Jam-packed with recipes for treats including cookies, pies, brownies, tarts, cakes, flan and her signature Thick’ems, which combine the joys of crunchy and gooey cookies into one, this book is a complete delight.
“Good Lookin’ Cookin: A Year of Meals” / Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George
You probably don’t need me to advocate on behalf of this cookbook by our national treasure Ms. Parton and her sister; you’ll already know if you need it. Organized by months of the year, this homey recipe collection runs the gamut of foods and flavors from nachos to Yorkshire pudding. (The drinks include eclectic recipes for green beer and a Dirt Road Martini.) And while there aren’t that many cookbooks you’d want to experience as audiobooks, you might try this one to hear the sisters talk about the family, friends, and food that inspired the project.
“Healthy, My Way: Real Food, Real Flavor, Real Good: A Cookbook” / My Nguyen
The California-based cookbook author and social media phenomenon is the child of parents who ran a Vietnamese restaurant. She says she embraced cooking after having kids of her own and in search of a better way of eating. Her new book focuses on fresh, healthy recipes that mix influences, cuisines and traditions. So you can find recipes for huevos rancheros breakfast burritos directly across from a page featuring kimchi fried rice. She even has a NSFW recipe, but that just means her oat bars are made of “nuts, seeds, fruit and wheat germ.”
“Matty Matheson’s Soups, Salads, Sandwiches / Matty Matheson
Consult this new book by acclaimed chef and “The Bear” star Matty Matheson for great-tasting recipes – but not for G-rated language or a solid grasp of natural history: “Who was the first person or creature who made soup? A pterodactyl?” Despite his delightfully unpretentious approach – the photos by the aptly named Quentin Bacon feature him eating in cars and at payphones – he’s here to bring great taste to your life with this set of recipes. “Soups, salads, and sandwiches,” he writes of the practicality of this venture, “you could open to any chapter and cook from every day.”
“The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between” / Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho
As readers with good taste will want to know, this cookbook comes with praise from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who writes, “Stripped of Oriental exoticism, this is a cookbook infused with the intense flavors of refugee kitchens and the inauthentic authenticity of the diaspora.” Trained in top-notch restaurants and a “Top Chef” alum, Tu David Phu grew up in California’s Bay Area as the child of Vietnamese refugees, soaking up stories and recipes about his parents’ early lives on the island Phú Quôc. The photo-filled book includes a range of dishes including Cơm Tấm (Broken Rice), Bánh Ít Trần (Sticky Rice Dumplings) and much more.
“Ottolenghi Comfort” by Yotam Ottolenghi with Helen Goh
The latest from bestselling cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi focuses on something we can all use a little bit more of right now: comfort. These 100+ recipes created by a team of four chefs aim to hit a sweet spot between nostalgia and novel, with tasty combinations from around the world such as a French-influenced hummus, a kimchi falafel and Indonesian home fries alongside other more traditional tastes. The recipes focus on how eating can bring communities together, and the dishes here – whether variations on oatmeal or oyakodon – celebrate a sense of togetherness as well as delicious, comforting meals.
“Our South: Black Food Through My Lens” / Ashleigh Shanti
This James Beard Award finalist and former “Top Chef” competitor explores the foods and microregions – as well as her own family’s history – of Appalachia and the American South through her point of view as a Black, queer, female chef. So she offers the flavors and favorites you might be expecting, but she also digs deeper to reframe how readers understand the South – including writing about finding a book by Malinda Russell, who in 1866 became the first Black American to publish a cookbook. As Shanti lays out in the excellent foreword, “Above all, this book exists to amplify your understanding of the complexities of Black food.”
“Pass the Plate: 100 Delicious, Highly Shareable, Everyday Recipes” / Carolina Gelen
If you’ve encountered Gelen’s Instagram, you know she devises simple, appealing recipes with a minimum of fuss (she calls them, “highly doable”). Having grown up in a small Transylvania town watching TV chefs and learning to cook from her mother (as well as stints working in restaurants here in the States), she’s got a flair for food that’s simple and classic and looks and tastes great. And whether roasting citrus slices to add caramelized depth to a simple salad or tinkering endlessly to craft what she deems a “perfect” chocolate cake, she creates recipes that will have you heading to the kitchen to get started. (For a sense of her charming, funny videos, watch the one where Gelen’s mother delivers frank, sometimes withering opinions of her daughter’s book.)
“Rebel Girls Cook”
From smoothies and spam musubi to chili and chow mein, this kid-tested cookbook offers more than a hundred recipes for young people (and the less-young, too) to eat, prepare and enjoy. The book includes anecdotes from chefs like Asma Khan and Rahanna Bisseret Martinez and also cleverly includes (and credits) Marcella Hazan’s recipe for buttery tomato sauce with onion that’s as simple as it is delicious: It’s a terrific gateway recipe for anyone looking to create memorable meals.
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