The first edition of our new book recommendations newsletter.
Hi, Vox Culture readers â we wanted to tell you about our new books recommendations newsletter, Next Page. We thought you might be interested! This is our first edition; [you can sign up here](. Next Page is a newsletter written by senior correspondent and book critic Constance Grady. She covers books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. Read her latest work on [our site](. Next Page is a newsletter written by senior correspondent and book critic Constance Grady. She covers books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. Read her latest work on [our site](. Welcome to Next Page! Iâm so glad to see you here. Iâm Constance Grady, Voxâs book critic. Between the avalanche of new releases that come out every month and the enormous back catalog of existing books, it can be hard for readers to sort through the chaos. This is why this newsletter exists. Each month, I'll send a handful of book recommendations, both old and new, to help you find your next great read. Iâll also include some fun pieces from around the literary world. If you want even more recommendations, [consider becoming a Vox member](. Youâll receive exclusive access to a special edition of [Ask a Book Critic]( once a month, where Iâll offer members personalized book recommendations. Email me at constance.grady@vox.com with your reading desires, and I might answer them in the next member email. With that, letâs get into the books. Since [Alice Munroâs death]( last month, Iâve been rereading [The Beggar Maid,]( her 1987 novel-in-stories, and thinking about what a perfect book it is. The novel-in-stories form is maybe one of the most beautiful variations on the novel, and itâs a structure Munro innovated and mastered. It means a collection of short stories featuring the same characters which, when compiled into a single volume, become a long narrative about them. You might think here of Jennifer Eganâs A Visit From the Goon Squad or Sandra Cisnerosâs The House on Mango Street. In The Beggar Maid (published outside the US as Who Do You Think You Are?), the short stories are about Rose, a bright and awkward girl growing up in small town Canada, and her stepmother Flo, who Rose both admires and is ashamed of. You follow Rose from her clumsy childhood up to her glamorous adulthood, watching the way her life is informed by the impoverished small town sheâs left behind. Each story in the cycle stands on its own, discrete and shining like a pearl, and then Munro strings them all together into something new like beads on a necklace. If you havenât read Munro before, The Beggar Maid is a good place to start. If youâd like something else to read, letâs see what we can do for you. ON THE SHELF ð [The Virgin in the Garden]( by A.S. Byatt While weâre on the subject of memorial readings! A few months ago, we also [lost A.S. Byatt](, author of Possession and a longstanding favorite of mine. Byatt, who was also an English professor, wrote primarily bookish novels about academics. She had a deep sense of the pleasures of reading and analyzing a text, and she had an impeccable eye for writing about color. Byatt novels are always streaked with descriptions of peacock greens and deep rich crimsons and shadowy mauves, so that reading them feels like standing beneath a stained glass window. Byattâs best known for the Booker Prize-winning Possession, but the book of hers thatâs been speaking to me most lately is her 1978 novel The Virgin in the Garden. Itâs about a family of academics, all very clever and varying degrees of unhappy, who are roped into putting on a play about Queen Elizabeth I to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The great joy of it for me is Fredericka, the youngest daughter of the family, bursting with bratty joy at her own erudite intelligence. Thereâs no one else in fiction quite like her. [You Dreamed of Empires]( by Ãlvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer This is an absolute wonder of a new novel from Ãlvaro Enrigue, an institution in Mexico whose work only recently became available to English-language readers. (You Dreamed of Empires is Enrigueâs third book to be published in English.) It takes place over the course of a single day in 1519, when the Spanish conquistador Cortés arrives at the imperial palace of Moctezuma in what is now Mexico City. Cortésâs troops are ragged and unwashed, âprovincials, nobodies, hicks,â who are fixated on âthe juice of rotting fruit they bring from their own lands.â The Tenochtitláns (rendered Aztecs by the rude Spanish) are, in contrast, magnificently wealthy, at the seat of a massive empire, and lavished with such marvels as quilts, grasshopper tacos, and magic mushrooms. (Moctezuma spends a lot of his page time in this novel tripping.) We know how history ends â but in Enrigueâs playful, hallucinatory prose, it feels entirely possible for things to go in different directions. [The Ministry of Time]( by Kaliane Bradley The Ministry of Time is an unbelievably satisfying read, one I could not put down. Published just last month, it takes place in a near-future London where the British government has developed the technology to time travel. To test it, theyâve extracted people out of historical death traps and into the present moment. Our unnamed narrator is a government bureaucrat hired to help one such time traveler adjust to the present as his live-in companion. Of course they fall in love, but thereâs a lot more to it than that. The narrator references [Graham Greeneâs midcentury wartime spy novels a lot](, and thatâs more or less the best comparison for this book. Think: smoke-filled rooms full of intrigue, hard-won camaraderie that is all the more precious for existing in so desperate a time, a protagonist who is never quite as innocent as she would like to believe herself. To that mix, Bradley adds time travel, romance, and a sophisticated exploration of the ways post-colonialism shapes our minds. I gobbled this book up in a matter of days. You will, too. OFF THE SHELF ð - In the New Yorker, Katy Waldman [explores what Covid did to fiction](.
- Dracula is an epistolary novel, made up of dated diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings. This delightful Substack [sends excerpts from the book]( to your inbox on the dates referenced in the original story.
- In an escalation that should surprise none of us, the people who went after school libraries [are now going after public libraries, too](.
- A question advice columns were built for: [Should I warn my family about the sex scenes]( in my book?
- At the Paris Review, Lucy Schiller [explores the strange formality of internet prose](.
- [BookTok isnât actually a community]( driven by fans, writers, influencers, or even publishers, argues Jezebel. Happy reading, Constance ð² For more thoughts from Constance Grady, follow her on [X](, [Threads](, or [BlueSky](. [Become a Vox Member]( [Vox Members get access to Ask a Book Critic, a special monthly newsletter of personalized book recommendations from Constance straight to your inbox. Members will also receive a behind-the-scenes look at our journalism, including Q&As with editors, daily logs from reporters in the field, bonus podcasts, opportunities to contribute to Voxâs stories, and so much more. Support our journalism and join our community.]( [Become a member]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=scotus). View our [Privacy Notice]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1701 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.