Also of interest ... in new memoirs
Lay the Favorite by Beth Raymer; Wide Awake by Patricia Morrisroe; Never Tell Our Business to Strangers by Jennifer Mascia; Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg
Lay the Favorite
by Beth Raymer
(Spiegel & Grau, $25)
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It’s no wonder that Beth Raymer was adored by the sketchy characters she met while working in the world of sports gambling, said Elizabeth Minkel in NewYorker.com. Raymer liked them back, no matter their faults, and she proved just as capable of “swindling and throwing money around carelessly.” She writes with true style and real energy, though, and when she takes up amateur boxing to blow off steam, “you can’t help but get in her corner.”
Wide Awake
by Patricia Morrisroe
(Spiegel & Grau, $25)
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Even sleep-deprived readers who seek out Patricia Morrisroe’s memoir of insomnia might tire of her “brittle, not-quite-funny chirpiness,” said Robert Pinsky in The New York Times. But in chronicling her quest for a cure, the veteran magazine writer uncovers a lot of information and shines light on an important story: Whatever we mean by “a good night’s sleep,” our expectations are now manipulated by a drug industry that has a lot of money riding on the answer.
Never Tell Our Business to Strangers
by Jennifer Mascia
(Villard, $26)
Jennifer Mascia doesn’t yet have enough perspective to write about her parents’ criminal careers, said Zachary Lazar in Newsday. Only recently, as they were dying, did she learn that the shopping binges, bankruptcies, and abrupt cross-country moves of her childhood had been the result of family careers tied to murder and the mob. She tries to see her parents’ faults plainly, but her insistence that their love for her redeems them feels like “perfume covering a bad smell.”
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
by Bill Clegg
(Little, Brown, $24)
Former crack addict Bill Clegg never quite wound up in the gutter, said Liz Raftery in The Boston Globe. The successful young literary agent binged on rock cocaine while still solvent enough to afford $500-a-night hotel rooms and whatever booze bill arrived in the morning. But Clegg’s contribution to the addiction genre offers little else that’s distinctive. While his prose is “graceful and poetic,” the narrative he’s assembled is “manic and unfocused.” We see Clegg’s narcissism, but not much more.
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The end of WeightWatchers
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-ups
feature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”