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☆ ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ From Page to Screen
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon” was a gripping history of greed and murder on an oil-rich Osage reservation in Oklahoma. “Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true,” Dave Eggers wrote in his review for The Times. Scott about both the book and the movie, and the sometimes surprising ways they diverge. “Scorsese’s adaptation … is a very different creature,” Scott says. “It’s the same story, but it has such a different feel and texture, and gets you thinking about different aspects of the story.”

Persons: David Grann’s, “ Grann, ” Dave Eggers, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gilbert Cruz, Scott, ” Scott, “, ” Organizations: The Times Locations: Oklahoma

☆ Steven Soderbergh’s Year in Reading
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-12 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Every January on his website Extension765.com, the prolific director Steven Soderbergh looks back at the previous year and posts a day-by-day account of every movie and TV series watched, every play attended and every book read. In 2023, Soderbergh tackled more than 80 (!) books, and on this week’s episode, he and the host Gilbert Cruz talk about some of his highlights. Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:“How to Live: A Life of Montaigne,” by Sarah Bakewell“Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining,’” by Lee Unkrich and J.W. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Persons: Steven Soderbergh, Soderbergh, Gilbert Cruz, Montaigne, ”, Sarah Bakewell “ Stanley Kubrick’s, Lee Unkrich, George, Martha, Philip Gefter, Donald E, Westlake “, Chimamanda Ngozi, Randall Jarrell “, Robert M, Sapolsky

☆ Talking About the 10 Best Books of 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s that time of year: After months of reading, arguing and (sometimes) happily agreeing, the Book Review’s editors have come up with their picks for the 10 Best Books of 2023. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz reveals the chosen titles — five fiction, five nonfiction — and talks with some of the editors who participated in the process. Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:“The Bee Sting,” by Paul Murray“Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah“Eastbound,” by Maylis de Kerangal“The Fraud,” by Zadie Smith“North Woods,” by Daniel Mason“The Best Minds,” by Jonathan Rosen“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,” by Kerry Howley“Fire Weather,” by John Vaillant“Master Slave Husband Wife,” by Ilyon Woo“Some People Need Killing,” by Patricia EvangelistaWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Sting, ”, Paul Murray “, Nana Kwame Adjei, Maylis, Zadie Smith, Daniel Mason “, Jonathan Rosen, Kerry Howley, John Vaillant “, Ilyon Woo, Patricia Evangelista Locations: Woods

☆ How Superheroes Took Over the Multiplex
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Downey lost the Oscar (to Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”), but Marvel won the day. On this week’s episode, Gonzales and Robinson join the host Gilbert Cruz to talk all things Marvel. “We definitely, of course, wanted to write for the Marvel fans,” Robinson says. “But also we wanted to write a book for Marvel skeptics. We wanted to write a book for people who maybe fell in love with Marvel once upon a time, but are maybe slightly falling out of love with it.

Persons: Robert Downey Jr, —, Tony Stark, Downey, Knight, ”, “, Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards, Gonzales, Robinson, Gilbert Cruz, ” Robinson, Marvel, Marvel agnostics Organizations: Marvel Studios, Marvel, Hollywood Locations: Heath

☆ Zadie Smith Drops In; Drew Barrymore Is Eased Out
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-22 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Zadie Smith’s new novel, “The Fraud,” is set in 19th-century England, and introduces a teeming cast of characters at the periphery of a trial in which the central figure claimed to be a long-lost nobleman entitled to a fortune. Smith drew many of the book’s details from the historical record — the trial and the main characters all existed much as they appear in the novel — but as she tells Sarah Lyall on this week’s episode, her archival research was far from dusty or dutiful. “‘Research’ makes it sound really heavy,” Smith says. “It was actually a joy to read about this period and to read books set in the period. We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Zadie, ”, Smith, Sarah Lyall, “, ” Smith, Alexandra Alter, Julia Jacobs, Drew Barrymore, Gilbert Cruz Organizations: Times, Hollywood Locations: England

☆ Stephen King Explains Why He’s a Mystery Writer Not So Big on Mystery
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Stephen King’s new novel, “Holly,” is his sixth book to feature the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her debut as a mousy side character in the 2014 novel “Mr. Along the way, he also tells a dad joke, remembers his friend Peter Straub, and discusses his views on writing and life. “Writing is partially an escape valve, but it’s also a way of understanding what’s going on in your life and what’s going on in a particular story. Those things are part of the reason to write at all, I think,” King says. “I don’t think you should think a lot about the act of writing as you write, because I think that’s counterproductive.

Persons: Stephen King’s, “ Holly, ”, Holly Gibney, Mercedes ”, King, Gilbert Cruz, Peter Straub, it’s, ” King, “, Cruz, Joumana Khatib, Zadie Smith “ Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson “, Homer, Emily Wilson, Emily Weiss’s Glossier, Marisa Meltzer “, Pam Zhang “, Cameron McWhirter Organizations: Holly’s

☆ Amor Towles Sees Dead People
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-18 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway,” contributed an essay to the Book Review recently in which he discussed the evolving role the cadaver has played in detective fiction and what it says about the genre’s writers and readers. Towles visits the podcast this week to chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about that essay, as well as his path to becoming a novelist after an early career in finance. “I remember finishing ‘Rules of Civility’ and feeling like … I don’t know if it’s going to be popular, I don’t know if it’s going to sell, but this is what I wanted to do,” Towles tells Cruz. “It was a great sort of renewal of confidence that I had as a younger person of, yeah, I can do this. And I would have gone on and on and on, I would have written books that nobody read, you know, until I died, I think quite happily.

Persons: Amor Towles, ”, Towles, Gilbert Cruz, Cruz, Sarah Lyall, Richard E, Grant Organizations: The Times Locations: Moscow ”, Lincoln

☆ Swallowed by a Whale, and Other August Books
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you remember your grade school English lessons, then you know that “man vs. nature” is one of the standby plotlines for storytellers, from “To Build a Fire” to “The Martian.” For readers, the appeal of such stories often lies in the “nature” side of that equation: The more daunting the conditions, the more fun it is to read about the hero’s attempt to survive them. Cue “Whalefall,” Daniel Kraus’s gripping new thriller, in which a teenage scuba diver is inadvertently swallowed alive by a 60-ton sperm whale. Sarah Lyall reviewed the book on our cover recently, and on this week’s podcast she discusses its somewhat disgusting charms with the host Gilbert Cruz. “There’s a lot of viscera and gore and gunk and gelatinous things in this book,” Lyall says. “He’s in a gelatinous sea of crud, and the question is, Can he get out?”Also in this episode, Joumana Khatib takes a look at some of the other August books we’re most excited about.

Persons: ” Daniel Kraus’s, Sarah Lyall, Gilbert Cruz, “, ” Lyall, Joumana Khatib

☆ Ann Patchett on Summer Love and Her New Novel
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Ann Patchett’s new novel, “Tom Lake,” is set in northern Michigan during the early days of pandemic lockdown, and centers on a mother telling her grown daughters about the summer fling she had in her youth with an actor who went on to become a big star. “If a person writes a book about a serial killer, no one ever comes back around and says, This isn’t realistic,” Patchett says. It’s — do you want me to put some zombies in my novel? I have been on the receiving end of endless kindness and love in my life. We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Ann Patchett’s, Tom Lake, Alexandra Jacobs, Tom Lake ”, Gilbert Cruz, Patchett, It’s, ” Patchett, Thornton Wilder’s Organizations: Times, Parnassus Locations: Michigan, Nashville, Tenn

☆ Why Is It So Darn Hot?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-28 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s been hard to escape the feeling this summer that, after years of warnings, climate change is starting to make itself felt in everyday life: Floods, wildfires and deadly heat waves have all made headlines for months, and it looks as if July will be the hottest month ever recorded. In that sense Jeff Goodell’s book “The Heat Will Kill You First” — about the real-world costs and consequences of a warming planet — feels particularly urgent at the moment. On this week’s podcast, Goodell talks with Gilbert Cruz about air conditioning, urban heat traps and the effects of extreme heat on the human body, among other things. “I’ve been working on this book for four years,” Goodell says, “and for it to be out now. It sometimes feels like I’m living in my own Stephen King novel.

Persons: It’s, Jeff Goodell’s, Goodell, Gilbert Cruz, “ I’ve, ” Goodell, Stephen King, ”, Jennifer Szalai, Jeff Goodell “, Jennifer Ackerman “, Emily Monosson

☆ Colson Whitehead on ‘Crook Manifesto’ and Harlem in the ’70s
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Gilbert Cruz is joined by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, who talks about his novel “Crook Manifesto,” which picks up the tale of furniture salesman and sometime crook Ray Carney, and what it was like to write about Harlem in the ’70s. He also reflects on his famous post-9/11 essay about New York City. … I felt better writing it, and I was articulating so much about the city I’d never tried to articulate before. And then when it came out, it meant so much to other people. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Colson Whitehead, Ray Carney, ” Whitehead, ”, …, I’d Organizations: Harlem, New, New York Times Magazine Locations: New York City, “, New York, ”

☆ The Year Is Half Over. Here Are the Books You Might Have Missed.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This week on the podcast, Gilbert Cruz is joined by fellow editors from the Book Review to revisit some of the most popular and most acclaimed books of 2023 to date. First up, Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan discuss the year’s biggest books, from “Spare” to “Birnam Wood.” Then Joumana Khatib, MJ Franklin and Sadie Stein recommend their personal favorites of the year so far. Books discussed on this week’s episode:“Spare,” by Prince Harry“I Have Some Questions for You,” by Rebecca Makkai“Pineapple Street,” by Jenny Jackson“Romantic Comedy,” by Curtis Sittenfeld“You Could Make This Place Beautiful,” by Maggie Smith“The Wager,” by David Grann“Master, Slave, Husband, Wife,” by Ilyon Woo“King: A Life,” by Jonathan Eig“Birnam Wood,” by Eleanor Catton“Hello Beautiful,” by Ann Napolitano“Enter Ghost,” by Isabella Hammad“Y/N,” by Esther Yi“The Sullivanians,” by Alexander Stille“My Search for Warren Harding,” by Robert Plunket“In Memoriam,” by Alice Winn“Don’t Look at Me Like That,” by Diana AthillWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Tina Jordan, Elisabeth Egan, Birnam, Joumana Khatib, MJ Franklin, Sadie Stein, “, Prince Harry “, Rebecca Makkai, Jenny Jackson, Curtis Sittenfeld, Maggie Smith “, ”, David Grann, Ilyon Woo, Jonathan Eig, Eleanor Catton “, Ann Napolitano, Isabella Hammad “ Y, Esther Yi “, Alexander Stille, Warren Harding, Robert Plunket “, Alice Winn “, Diana Athill Locations: ”

☆ Revisiting ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Plus the Art of Literary Translation
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On this week’s episode of the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to Juliana Barbassa and Gregory Cowles about the Book Review’s special translation issue, and to Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan about the novel “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” which was published in the U.S. 25 years ago this summer. What makes translation an art? Why do we see so many translations from some countries and almost none from others? Before coming to the Book Review, she spent years reporting and editing international news, and says, “I would often find myself turning to the fiction produced in that place” to really get a sense of it. Also on this week’s episode, Elisabeth Egan and Tina Jordan discuss “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” published in the U.S. 25 years ago this summer.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Juliana Barbassa, Gregory Cowles, Tina Jordan, Elisabeth Egan, Bridget Jones’s, Cowles, “, ”, Egan, Bridget Jones Locations: U.S

☆ Remembering Cormac McCarthy and Robert Gottlieb
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last week was a somber one in the world of letters. June 13 saw the death of the great novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road,” among many other acclaimed books. On this week’s episode of the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner about McCarthy’s work, and with Pamela Paul and Emily Eakin about Gottlieb’s life and legacy. “The two never worked together,” Cruz notes, “but it’s fascinating to imagine Gottlieb — who has argued with historian Robert Caro for half a century over punctuation marks — editing McCarthy, who rejected the use of quotation marks, semicolons and other such frippery. … I don’t know, maybe the two would have gotten along just fine.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Cormac McCarthy, Bob Gottlieb, Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller, John le Carré, Robert Caro, Lyndon B, Johnson, Gilbert Cruz, Dwight Garner, Pamela Paul, Emily Eakin, ” Cruz, Gottlieb —, McCarthy

☆ What It’s Like to Write an MLK Jr. Biography
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Jonathan Eig’s book “King: A Life” is the first comprehensive biography in decades of Martin Luther King Jr., drawing on reams of interviews and newly uncovered archival materials to paint a fuller picture of the civil rights leader than we have received before. “This is a very human, and quite humane, portrait,” our critic Dwight Garner wrote in his review. “I was a newspaper reporter for a long, long time — and you know, working on daily stories, if you got five days to work on a story, it was a luxury. It took me two years to find, even though I knew it was out there, this unpublished autobiography that Martin Luther King’s father wrote. So stuff like that just gets me really, really pumped up.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Jonathan Eig’s, Martin Luther King Jr, Dwight Garner, “, Eig, Gilbert Cruz, I’ve, ” Eig, they’ve, Martin Luther King’s, Nobody

☆ Summer Book Preview and 9 Thrillers to Read
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There’s no rule that says you have to read thrillers in the summer — some people gobble them up them year round, while others avoid them entirely and read Kafka on the shore — but on a long, lazy vacation day it’s undeniably satisfying to grab onto a galloping narrative and see where it pulls you. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks to our thrillers columnist Sarah Lyall about some classics of the genre, as well as more recent titles she recommends. “There’s all this commercial pressure on the writers, and when there’s too much pressure on a writer, they can’t really let their imagination go. She’s probably lost a lot of money because of it. She’s probably given up a lot.

Persons: Kafka, Gilbert Cruz, Sarah Lyall, Donna Tartt’s, ” Lyall, “, there’s, Donna Tartt, She’s, Joumana Khatib

☆ On Reading ‘Beloved’ Over and Over Again
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For readers, a book’s meaning can change with every encounter, depending on the circumstances and experiences they bring to it each time. “I was sexually assaulted on a study abroad program in Kenya.” Tillet says. “And when I came back to the United States, I entered an experimental program that helped people who were sexual assault survivors, who were suffering from PTSD. And so … looking at what Morrison does in her novel, she’s dealing with trauma and she’s moving, going back and forth in time. So I actually experienced this on a personal level.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Salamishah, Toni Morrison’s, “, ” Tillet, Morrison Organizations: The Times Locations: Kenya, United States

☆ Remembering Martin Amis
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The writer Martin Amis, who died last week at the age of 73, was a towering figure of English literature. Amis was “arguably the most slashing, articulate, devastatingly clear, pungent writer of the last 25 years of the past century and the first almost 25 of this century,” Garner says. Just his way with words, his descriptions, the fact that he scorned cliché, scorned outdated language. In my own life as a writer, there are very few writers — of course I’m not a fiction writer, but I study writing — there are only a handful of writers that I think of in the category that Martin Amis is in, which is, if I’m stuck on a piece or I’ve just written a bad sentence, I think: Would Martin Amis ever let this sentence go to print? Not that I can hope to match his sentences, but I hope not to sink to this level where, don’t do that because Martin Amis wouldn’t do it.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

☆ Essential Neil Gaiman and A.I. Book Freakout
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But what if you’re ready to dive in more methodically — where to begin? On this week’s episode, the longtime Gaiman fan J.D. Biersdorfer, an editor at the Book Review, talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about Gaiman’s work, which she recently wrote about for our continuing “Essentials” series. “He constantly reinvents himself.”Also on this week’s episode, Cruz talks with the Times critic Dwight Garner about “The Death of the Author,” a murder mystery that the novelist Stephen Marche wrote with the assistance of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs. in fact a harbinger of doom for creative writers?

☆ Book Bans and What to Read in May
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“It is amazing to see both the upward trend in book bans but also the ways that the process of getting bans has evolved,” Alter says. And most of those were from concerned parents who had seen what their kid was reading in class or what their kid brought home from the public library. Now you have people standing up in school board meetings reading explicit passages aloud.”Also on this week’s episode, Joumana Khatib takes a look at some of the biggest new books to watch for this month. Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:“Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah“King: A Life,” by Jonathan Eig“Quietly Hostile,” by Samantha Irby“Yellowface,” by R.F. KuangWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

☆ Eleanor Catton on ‘Birnam Wood’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On this week’s podcast, Catton tells the host Gilbert Cruz how that early success affected her writing life (not much) as well as her life outside of writing (her marriage made local headlines, for one thing). She also discusses her aims for the new book and grapples with the slippery nature of New Zealand’s national identity. “You very often hear New Zealanders defining their country in the negative rather than in the positive,” she says. … I think that that’s solidified over time into this kind of very odd sense of supremacy, actually. So if you’re a reader who prefers to be taken by surprise, you may want to finish “Birnam Wood” before you finish this episode.

☆ David Grann on the Wreck of the H.M.S. Wager
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On this week’s podcast, Grann tells the host Gilbert Cruz that one of the things that most drew him to the subject was the role that storytelling itself played in the tragedy’s aftermath. “The thing that really fascinated me, that really caused me to do the book,” Grann says, “was not only what happened on the island, but what happened after several of these survivors make it back to England. They have just waged a war against virtually every element, from scurvy to typhoons, to tidal waves, to shipwreck, to starvation, to the violence of their own shipmates. Now they get back to England after everything they’ve been through, and they are summoned to face a court marshal for their alleged crimes on the island. And if they don’t tell a convincing tale, they’re going to get hanged.

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