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☆ The Author of ‘Impossible Creatures’ Tucks Big Ideas in Tales of Wonder
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-19 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“We lived in places where you could wake to wildness,” encountering “monkeys and snakes and various kinds of incredible birds,” she said. “They paid us to memorize the poems,” Rundell said of her parents. “I was a very mercenary kid, and had quite a retentive memory.”Her books are infused with loss, something she encountered early on. When she was 10, her beloved sister Alison died from a congenital illness at the age of 16. “She was the most gentle person I’ve ever met, and so when we lost her, I just knew I would never meet anyone like her again, and I never have.”

Persons: Rundell, ”, John Donne, ” Rundell, “, Alison, “ I’m Locations: Britain, Harare, Zimbabwe

☆ Olympic Marathon Course Lets Amateurs Inside the Ropes
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-11 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Stephanie Jacquet, 49, is not an Olympic athlete, nor any kind of athlete at all. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever run anything,” she said. The Marathon for All, as it was called, was the final grand flourish of an audacious Summer Games organized around the revolutionary idea that Paris itself could be a stadium, not apart from the sports but at their center. Half were men and half women; they came from 127 countries and went off in waves, the last leaving just before 1 a.m. And in a nod to the Olympic year, each race had a total of 20,024 entrants.

Persons: Stephanie Jacquet, ”, Tamirat Tola, Paris Organizations: Games Locations: Paris, Versailles, Ethiopia

☆ Dear Pentathletes: Enjoy Your Last Ride. Get Ready for the Obstacle Course.
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-10 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The farrago of a sport that is the modern pentathlon owes its rarefied existence to Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, who, according to legend, imagined it as a test of mettle for a typical French cavalry officer. Caught behind enemy lines, such a man might have to fence with and shoot at his pursuers; run toward safety; swim across a body of water; and ride away on a random horse he happened to encounter. But many things that made sense in the 19th century seem less persuasive in the 21st. So, drifting toward obsolescence and facing eviction from the Olympics after an accusation of horse abuse in the Tokyo Games, modern pentathlon’s governing body voted in 2021 to overhaul itself for the contemporary era. While the pentathletes at the Paris Games are indeed riding horses over a series of jumps as part of the event, they will face an entirely different fifth discipline when they get to Los Angeles in 2028: a race the organizers are calling a “‘Ninja Warrior’-style obstacle course.”

Persons: Pierre de Coubertin, ” Organizations: Tokyo Games, Paris Games Locations: Los Angeles

For most of the athletes at the Paris Olympics, the accommodations are to be endured, rather than enjoyed. In the name of sustainability, the beds at the Olympic Village feature cardboard frames and inflatable mattresses. To the horror of the French, the British have even complained about the food. They are spending the Games in a temperature-controlled, tastefully appointed housing complex set amid the ornate splendor of Versailles. Life, at the Olympics, should be good for the horses.

Persons: tastefully, Charlotte Dujardin Organizations: Paris Olympics, International Equestrian Federation Locations: Versailles

☆ Champagne, Soft Piano and No Lines: Luxe Life at the Olympics
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-02 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s called the Golden Garden Hospitality Experience, and it begins with door-to-door taxi service and a queue-free entrance. Go to any big sports event and you will find people having more rarefied experiences than you. The Summer Games in particular have long been known for the extravagant perks they dole out to dignitaries, corporate sponsors and other constituents of the Olympic-industrial complex. Such benefits used to be out of reach for most Olympics ticket holders. While third-party vendors have always offered luxury ticket packages, the deals came with some uncertainty because the sellers weren’t sanctioned by the Olympics.

Persons: It’s Organizations: Games, Paris Games Locations: Versailles, Champagne

☆ At 45, He Vies With Women Half His Age, Seeking an Olympic First
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-06 | by ( Sarah Lyall | Daniel Dorsa | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Artistic Swimming team practice for the Olympics — their bodies upside down, their legs scissoring in the air in perfect time, like frenzied offshore wind turbines — you will notice two things. First, the sport is much harder, and possibly even more insane, than you thought. His name is Bill May, and he is the only man on the team. A rule change in 2022 cleared the way for men to compete in the sport at this summer’s Paris Games. That means that this is May’s first and, realistically, last chance ever to fulfill his lifelong dream of competing in the Olympics.

Persons: Bill May Organizations: Olympics, Paris Locations: Paris

☆ 3 Sultry, Summery New Thrillers
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-31 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

This month’s thrillers are full of women grappling with misdeeds — in some cases their own, but mostly those of men. We start in Dublin, where Lou Manson, a college professor, is trying as hard as she can to forget the awful thing that happened more than 30 years ago. But when a figure from the past suddenly emerges, it all comes flooding back. “It only takes a second for the terror and guilt to find me,” she says. It’s also about how hard it can be for victims to find peace.

Persons: —, Lou Manson, ”, Fiona McPhillips’s, thrall, It’s Organizations: Catholic Church Locations: Dublin

The best in show competition, essentially a doggie beauty pageant, is the culmination of a multiday canine extravaganza here at Westminster. The winner, with a blink-and-you’d-miss-it time of 28.76 seconds, was an All-American dog named Nimble. Nimble was the first All-American dog — the dog show word for mutt — to take the top spot in the 11 years that agility has been part of Westminster, and he was also the first dog from the 12-inch division to win the competition. Perhaps the best example is Kratu, a rescue dog who has appeared several times at the Crufts dog show in England. Miles, an All-American rescue dog from Erie, Pa., who defeated the odds to become an agility champion and whose unlikely road to Westminster was described in The Times, competed on Saturday in the 20-inch division.

Persons: mutt —, Lark, Hogan, Miles, Christine Longnecker, “ Organizations: The Times Locations: Westminster, England, Erie, Pa

☆ Best in Show: Sage Beats Out an ‘Absolutely Glorious’ Lineup
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Sarah Lyall | Callie Holtermann | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The competition began with some 2,500 dogs from more than 200 breeds, then eventually pared down to a field of seven group champions who vied against each other for the top prize. The best-in-show judge, Rosalind Kramer, who remained sequestered during the proceedings so that she could emerge fresh for the final round, selected Sage over what she called an “absolutely glorious” lineup of dogs. Sage, a three-year-old bitch whose full name is GCHG Ch Surrey Sage, was a surprise win. But she had something about her. She trots daintily, as if running was slightly beneath her.

Persons: Sage, Rosalind Kramer, Billie Jean King, trots Organizations: Westminster Kennel, Sage, Surrey Sage, Billie Jean King National Tennis Center Locations: GCHG, Surrey, Flushing , Queens

☆ The Unwanted Shelter Dog Who Found His Way to Westminster
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-10 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A strange thing happened a few years ago when Christine Longnecker, who teaches horseback riding in and around Erie County, Pa., brought her new rescue dog, Miles, to a class. Instead of waiting quietly with the other non-horses in the barn, Miles suddenly sprinted into the ring and bounded over the fences himself. On Saturday, he is scheduled to compete for the second time in the agility competition at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which will be held in Flushing, Queens. The agility competition might be the rhythmic gymnastics of Westminster, derided as less than by traditionalists, but it’s a growing sport with meritocratic principles and an air of antic fun in its favor. Any dog can compete, no matter who its parents are.

Persons: Christine Longnecker, Miles, “, Ms, Longnecker, antic, they’re Organizations: Westminster Kennel, Westminster Locations: Erie County, Pa, Flushing , Queens

☆ Brittney Griner, in Her Own Words
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-07 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

COMING HOME, by Brittney Griner with Michelle BurfordIf you weren’t following women’s basketball, you probably hadn’t heard of Brittney Griner when she was arrested at a Moscow-area airport in February 2022. “Fear is one thing,” Griner writes in “Coming Home,” her new memoir, describing the stomach-curdling moment when an inspector seized her passport and told her to wait. “But uncertainty, the unknown, a free fall into mystery — that’s much stronger than fear; it’s terror.”At first, Griner naïvely thought she would be fined and sentenced to house arrest. But possession of even a small amount of drugs is a serious offense in Russia, and she was eventually charged with narcotics smuggling. Days later, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Griner found herself a high-profile pawn in a vicious geopolitical battle.

Persons: Brittney Griner, Michelle Burford, Brittney, —, Griner, ” Organizations: Phoenix Mercury, UMMC, Mercury Locations: Moscow, UMMC Yekaterinburg, Russian, United States, Russia, Ukraine

☆ He Was Blinded in One Eye, but Salman Rushdie’s Vision Is Undiminished
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-14 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last May, nine months after the knife attack that nearly killed him, Salman Rushdie made a surprise appearance at the 2023 PEN America literary gala. His voice was weak and he was noticeably thinner than usual; one of his eyeglass lenses was blacked out, because his right eye had been blinded in the assault. But anyone wondering whether the author was still his old exuberant self would have been immediately reassured by the way he began his remarks, with a racy impromptu joke. “I want to remind people in the room who might not remember that ‘Valley of the Dolls’ was published in the same publishing season as Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint,’” he said, riffing on an earlier speaker’s mention of Jacqueline Susann’s potboiler. It was also a triumphant signal that his brush with death — more than three decades after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder over the novel “The Satanic Verses” — had dampened neither his spirit nor his determination to live life in the open.

Persons: Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth’s ‘, ’ ”, riffing, Jacqueline Susann’s potboiler, Jacqueline Susann, Philip Roth’s, — “, ‘, Rushdie, Ruhollah Khomeini, — Organizations: PEN Locations: Iran

☆ ‘The Plane Is Fine’: An Airline Course Looks to Overcome Fear in the Skies
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-02 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The course includes a deep dive into the mechanics and operation of an airplane. The day ends when the attendees — or at least those who didn’t leave early — board an actual plane for a real-life flight. As many as 40 percent of all airline passengers have at least mild apprehension about flying, experts say, and people with serious aviophobia fall roughly into two groups. About 20 percent have “an underlying anxiety that manifests as fear of flying,” said Douglas Boyd, an aviation researcher who runs a fear-of-flying course in Houston. Another 70 to 75 percent, he said, “think that something bad will happen to the plane — there will be a fire, the engine will fall off, the pilot is drunk, it’s going to crash.” (The rest have a hybrid of worries.)

Persons: didn’t, ”, Douglas Boyd, “ Locations: Houston

☆ Move Over, Alan Turing; Meet the Teenage Girls Who Rocked Bletchley Park
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-08 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

THE ENIGMA GIRLS: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets and Helped Win World War II, by Candace FlemingAs war raged in Europe in 1941, Sarah Norton, the 18-year-old daughter of an English lord, received a letter in a plain brown envelope with no return address. “You are to report to Station X at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire in four days’ time,” said the letter, signed by a mysterious “Commander Travis.” “That is all you need to know.”Little did Sarah realize she was being recruited for Britain’s top-secret wartime code-breaking operation. “This is the story of a handful of young women — teenagers really — who left their childhoods behind and walked into the unknown,” Candace Fleming writes in “The Enigma Girls,” her beguiling new account of their contributions. “For most of their lives, they never breathed a word about their war experiences.”We learn about 10 of these real-life conscripts. And there was Diana Payne, just 17, who helped operate the massive “Bombe” machines, which sped up the process of breaking the enemy’s ever-shifting codes.

Persons: Candace Fleming, Sarah Norton, ”, Travis, ” Little, Sarah, —, ” Candace Fleming, Mavis Lever, Dilly Knox, “, Patricia Owtram, Diana Payne Organizations: Bletchley, Britain’s, British Museum Locations: Europe, Bletchley Park , Buckinghamshire, Bletchley

☆ Three Riveting, Slow-Burn New Thrillers
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-24 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In Kit Frick’s THE SPLIT (Emily Bestler Books, 278 pp., $27), Jane Connor gets a call one night from her needy younger sister, Esme. She’s left her husband and wants Jane to drive from suburban Connecticut to New York City to pick her up, even though a storm is raging. Still burdened by guilt after nearly killing Esme in a drunken car crash years earlier, Jane hesitates. Half the chapters, marked “Gone,” play out a scenario in which Jane waits until morning to travel to the city — only to find that Esme has vanished. In the other half, marked “Home,” Jane retrieves Esme that night and brings her to Connecticut — which leads to unexpected complications.

Persons: Frick’s, Emily Bestler, Jane Connor, Esme, She’s, Jane, Jane hesitates, ”, ” Jane Locations: Connecticut, New York City

☆ Murder on a Private Greek Island
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-24 | by ( Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Alex Michaelides, who is best known for his blockbuster first novel, “The Silent Patient,” has a devoted following and a knack for explosive, change-everything revelations. He sets THE FURY (Celadon, 298 pp., $28.99) on a private Greek island where Lana Farrar, a stunningly beautiful British movie star, has gathered a small party of relatives and frenemies. Naturally, the weather will render the island unreachable, and the author will render a character dead. “This is a tale of murder,” the narrator, an unpleasant playwright named Elliot Chase, intones in the first sentence. As he often reminds us, Elliot is unreliable.

Persons: Alex Michaelides, ”, Lana Farrar, Elliot Chase, intones, Elliot

☆ The Best Thrillers of 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-02 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But why does Gabe seem to be reaching toward the distressed woman — something he had been instructed never to do — as she teeters on the edge, then falls? The dead woman, Amanda, narrates some of the chapters from beyond the grave. She wants to make something clear. The book begins with Margo, an outwardly cheerful librarian with a big secret: In her previous job, she was a nurse with a knack for murdering her patients. With her fake name and new identity, she seems to have gotten away with it.

Persons: Gabe, Pippa, ” Hepworth metes, Amanda, ”, “, Laura Sims’s, Margo, Patricia

☆ With Diana’s Death, ‘The Crown’ Enters Its Most Evocative Era
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-13 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In one, reproduced with eerie accuracy in the new season of “The Crown,” Diana, the Princess of Wales sits on a diving board off the deck of a yacht, her long legs dangling above the water. The sixth and final season of “The Crown” begins here, in 1997, on the cusp of one of the strangest and most bewildering periods in recent British history. Diana was just 36, and her death sent Britain into a paroxysm of grief at her loss and rage against the royal family. Over the last five seasons, “The Crown” has been unspooling decade by decade, producing an epic portrait of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, starting with her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947. The earlier episodes could sometimes feel quaint and far away, repackaged history from a semi-distant past.

Persons: ” Diana, Princess, Wales, Dodi Fayed, Diana, Elizabeth Debicki, Khalid Abdalla, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip Organizations: Ritz Hotel Locations: Paris, Britain

☆ Shakespeare’s First Folio Turns 400
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Now known as the First Folio, that volume has become a lodestone of Shakespeare scholarship over the centuries, offering the most definitive versions of his work along with clues to his process and plenty of disputes about authorship and intention. In honor of its 400th anniversary, the British Library and Rizzoli recently released a facsimile version of the First Folio. On this week’s episode, The Times’s critic at large Sarah Lyall talks with Adrian Edwards, head of the library’s Printed Heritage Collections, about Shakespeare’s work, the library’s holdings and the cultural significance of that original volume. “If we didn’t have the First Folio, given that all the manuscript versions of the plays are lost, we wouldn’t have plays such as ‘The Tempest’ or ‘Twelfth Night’ or ‘A Winter’s Tale’ or ‘Julius Caesar’ or ‘Antony Cleopatra’ or ‘Macbeth,’” Edwards says. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Persons: William Shakespeare, Sarah Lyall, Adrian Edwards, Julius Caesar ’, ‘ Antony Cleopatra ’, ’ ” Edwards, “, ” Organizations: British Library, Rizzoli

☆ The Verdict on John Grisham’s Sequel to ‘The Firm’
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Whatever happened to Mitch McDeere, the brash young associate who brought down the corrupt law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke in John Grisham’s game-changing 1991 legal thriller, “The Firm”? Three decades later, Grisham has resurrected Mitch — or Tom, as I like to think of him, because Tom Cruise played him with such seductive charm in the movie — for another outing. The new book, THE EXCHANGE (Doubleday, 338 pp., $29.95), should be a delicious gift to Grisham fans. But once you’ve read it, you might find yourself wishing that Mitch, last seen slipping out of sight while Bendini, Lambert & Locke imploded, had simply decided to while away his days in moneyed obscurity. It is 2005, and despite his earlier experience in corporate law, Mitch — still married to Abby, and now the father of twin boys — has joined the gargantuan international law firm of Scully & Pershing.

Persons: Mitch McDeere, Lambert, Locke, John Grisham’s, Grisham, Mitch —, Tom Cruise, Mitch, Bendini, Abby, —, Pershing, Giovanna Organizations: Doubleday Locations: Bendini, Libyan

☆ 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

☆ Putting Women at the Center of Human Evolution
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The idea is that by examining how women evolved differently from men, Bohannon argues, we can “provide the latest answers to women’s most basic questions about their bodies.” These include, she says: Why do women menstruate? Thanks to regulations established in the 1970s, clinical trials in the United States have typically used mostly male subjects, from mice to humans. For example: “From 1996 to 2006, more than 79 percent of animal studies published in the scientific journal Pain included only male subjects,” she writes. As she points out in “Eve,” antidepressants and pain medications are considered gender-neutral, despite evidence that they affect women differently than they do men. “When we put the female body back in the frame, even people who don’t have female bodies have a better of idea of where we all stand in this huge evolutionary story.”

Persons: Bohannon, ” Bohannon, ” Organizations: National Institutes of Health Locations: United States, Seattle

☆ 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

☆ A Slow-Fuse Tale of Obsession and Marital Claustrophobia
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-15 | by ( Sarah Lyall | More About Sarah Lyall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As summer moves into its most languorous days, it’s a perfect time to dive into books about love, obsession and madness. You would be hard-pressed to find a more unhealthy example of obsession than that of the narrator in Maud Ventura’s MY HUSBAND (HarperVia, 260 pp., $28.99), a cautionary tale about marital claustrophobia translated from the French by Emma Ramadan. “I think of my husband all the time; I wish I could text him all day,” says the woman, a beautiful mother of two who lives in an elegant house in the Parisian suburbs. But she restrains herself. “I know I have to control myself in order to love.”

Persons: it’s, Maud Ventura’s MY, Emma Ramadan, “, ”, restrains

☆ 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

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