Hi Bookworms. How is your spring coming along? We have winter here trying to stick around, with 5 to 10 cm of snowfall forecasted today through Monday. I have to remind myself it’s good for the drought, otherwise I’m so ready for spring. It’s almost April for goodness sakes.
It can be a pretty month in places with plenty of bloom (down south), but April also gets a bad wrap for being the tax month, which isn’t fun, especially if you have to file in two countries. It’s usually sort of a brown month up here, so it’s a good time to go away. And luckily I have a one week trip planned to Southern California near the end of the month to meet up with family and to celebrate my grandniece’s first birthday.
If I didn’t have that trip, I’d likely have flown to one of the No Kings rallies in the U.S. yesterday. I hope some of you had a great day speaking up for democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and peace among other things. It’s so important. The turnout was excellent and I hope it sends a strong message … that people aren’t just going to roll over and let everything go to hell in a handbasket in U.S. cities and the country. I saw Wake Up America signs and many other really good signs from afar, but I would’ve liked to have been there in person. I hope you’ll share your photos if you were there.
Last night, we saw the movie Project Hail Mary at the theater … and eeeek I didn’t think it was half as good as The Martian movie. It lost the suspense (and science) of the novel …. judging from what my husband said. He read and liked the book and I still have only read The Martian.
Still it has some charm with Ryan Gosling. But it felt a bit to me for a younger audience and it was quite sentimental sort of like “ET in Space” or “Ted Lasso in Space.” It wasn’t really for me, but I know some have really liked it, so see for yourself. I will stick to getting to the book (and all its science, lol) sometime.
And now let’s see what’s coming out this month. There’s a plethora of new fiction, including those by such well-known authors as Emma Straub, Rachel Khong, Maria Semple, T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley, Sally Hepworth, Tom Perrotta, Anthony Horowitz, and Mark Helprin among others.
I’ve been looking at these and I’m a bit curious too if Ben Lerner’s new novella Transcription (due out April 7) will be any good. It follows a narrator who breaks his phone while attempting to record a final interview with his 90-year-old artist mentor, “forcing him to reconstruct the interaction, blending themes of technology, memory, and pandemic-era life.” While I’m not usually a big fan of “autofiction” where the author’s the protagonist, I might try Lerner again after years ago liking his quirky 2014 novel 10:04.
Next is Julia Langbein’s novel Dear Monica Lewinsky (due out April 14) about a 40-year-old woman who looks back on how an affair with a college professor decades earlier when she was a student abroad in France derailed so much of her life. Told in flashbacks of her six weeks in France in 1998, it’s interspersed with her prayers to Lewinsky and retellings of the lives of historical martyrs that paid a price.
Said to be both funny and a feminist examination of female desire and male power, author Kevin Wilson blurbed: it’s a “fascinating novel about the past, reckoning with … the person you once were and still somehow continue to be. It’s incredible that Julia Langbein navigates this territory with such humor.” So count me in.
There’s also Willy Vlautin’s new novel The Left and the Lucky (out April 14) about an unlikely friendship between a lonely 40-something house painter, Eddie Wilkens, and Russell, his next door neighbor in Portland, Ore., who’s an eight-year-old boy struggling with a difficult home life. While Russell’s life disintegrates, he begins to wait in Eddie’s backyard for him to get off work, where he’s introduced to a world of misfit characters and an old dog that seal Russell and Eddie’s bond.
Bleak but uplifting, the novel is said to be a realistic portrayal of American life and an examination of how circumstance shapes our lives and our need for human connection. I have not read Vlautin before but his critically touted novels often champion the underclass and those overlooked.
For honorable mentions this month, I’m also looking at these notable novels to check out:
- Honey in the Wound (out April 7) by Jiyoung Han — about a mysteriously gifted Korean family confronting the brutality of Japanese colonialism.
- Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead (out April 14) by Mai Nguyen — about a grieving mother who surprisingly finds hope working at a funeral home. And:
- Last Night in Brooklyn (out April 21) by Xochitl Gonzalez — about “two Brooklyn women who forge identities and careers in their rapidly gentrifying borough” … from the bestselling author of the novel Olga Dies Dreaming. Have you heard of these?
On the screen this month, there’s the TV series adaptation of The Testaments (on Hulu, starting April 8), which Atwood wrote as a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve read the books, which are eye-opening forebodings, but watching the dystopian story about the prospects of the women in Gilead might be a bit too bleak or scary right now. So perhaps the fifth and final season of Hacks might have a few laughs (on HBO Max, starting April 9). Or maybe Season 2 of Beef (on Netflix starting April 16), which involves dueling couples, might be a good diversion. The new season stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan among others.
Then there’s always Season 2 of the British crime show Criminal Record (on AppleTV, starting April 22). I just watched the first episode from Season 1 and I like that actress Cush Jumbo (formerly of The Good Wife and The Good Fight) is one of the detectives. The show is gritty and there’s lots of scenes from the streets of London. Have you seen any of these shows?
A couple other new series I’m sort of on the fence about: The Audacity (on AMC, starting April 12), which stars Zach Galifianakis among others, is a drama series that takes a satirical hammer to the rich techies of Silicon Valley.
While Margo’s Got Money Troubles (on AppleTV+, starting April 15) is based on the 2019 novel by Rufi Thorpe about a young single mom (played by Elle Fanning) who creates an online persona to keep afloat in which she dabbles in sex work. Nick Offerman and Michelle Pfeiffer star as her parents and Nicole Kidman as a lawyer trying to help her. It should be a doozy.
Lastly in music this month, there’s new albums by Holly Humberstone, the Arkells, the Foo Fighters, Bruce Hornsby, Ringo Starr, and Noah Kahan among others. I’ll pick Noah Kahan’s new album The Great Divide coming out April 24. It’s his fourth studio album and features the song Porch Light, which you can hear here. Noah grew up on a tree farm in Vermont and now lives in Massachusetts. He’s been a singer/songwriter to watch.
That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to? Have a great week.
