Hi all. I hope you had a good week. Like many of you, I’m still reveling in Tuesday’s U.S. election night, which was incredible and quite a welcomed surprise. It was awesome voters showed up and put an end to the unfettered bottomless pit of the past two years. Thank goodness! The Blue Wave was exciting to behold, even from three hours north of the border.
Things have been crazy here with two huge windstorms in the past three days that are damaging trees and roofs. I think top gusts are like 60 mph. We’re staying cooped up and tried to batten down the hatches. Luckily yesterday we got out in between storms — when it was quiet — and took a bike ride (see above), yay. The temps have been balmy into the 50s. We might even have 60s this week … sadly the Arctic must be melting.
Meanwhile the Booker Prize will be awarded tomorrow, Monday night in London. So stay tuned for that. Will there be an upset? It might just happen.
And since November is upon us we have much to discuss in new releases. This month there’s new novels by such well-known writers as Ian Rankin, Sara Paretsky, Jeff Shaara, William Boyd, and memoirs by Judi Dench, LeVar Burton, Bob Woodward, and Joe Biden among others. In addition, I’m looking at a few books (listed below), including two that were on my Fall Reading List.
One of the those is Irish author Louise Kennedy’s novel Stations (out Nov. 3) about two precocious teenagers, Róisín and Red, who bond in 1980’s Ireland, and forge a torturous connection that informs their lives over 25 years for better and worse.
Author Min Jin Lee says it’s “a propulsive, powerful novel about first love and regret.” While Elin Hilderbrand calls it “one of the finest novels about unrequited love I’ve ever read.” So what are we waiting for? It sounds sad, but so was Louise Kennedy’s debut novel Trespasses from 2022 and that was good.
Next up is Canadian author Mary Lawson’s novel Solace in Winter (out Nov. 10) about an old widower (Jack) in 1969 whose quiet life is overturned when a hurt dog and then a draft dodger come to his rural cabin over the border. But when his daughter Sally drops by one day, she is unpleased what she sees and changes everything.
Uh-oh sounds like a bummer. We will have to see. I have read all but one of Mary Lawson’s novels and they are all terrific. Mary Lawson is now 80 years old and lives in England but still writes about her rural upbringing in Northern Ontario. Her books are not to be missed.
I’m also curious about British author Kit de Waal’s novel Sweet Pea (out Nov. 3), which was chosen by Jenna as a book club pick. I gather Sweet Pea is about a 29-year-old woman in England who loses everything but keeps going despite her grief and finds love and connection in the most unexpected places.
Author Monica Ali says: “De Waal takes an ordinary life and renders it extraordinary,” while author Bernardine Evaristo calls it “a profoundly compassionate novel of devastating power and emotional complexity.” I have not read the author before so she’s new to me.
Also there’s Lucy Tan’s novel Tiger’s Mouth (out Nov.17) about two tech interns from different backgrounds in New York who become close friends and intense rivals. Jack Chen, is a city college student and Jack Owens, a troubled son of a billionaire, whose paths diverge as they find success.
It’s said to be a thrilling novel about ambition, friendship, and identity … from an author I haven’t read before. Lucy Tan is not related to the famous author Amy Tan … but her debut novel What We Were Promised gained considerable attention when it came out in 2018. So I hope to check out her new one.
Now onto new screen releases. In TV, there’s Season 4 of The Gilded Age (on HBO Max, starting Nov. 1); Season 2 of the British spy series Black Doves (on Netflix, Nov. 5), and Season 4 of Blue Lights, the Northern Irish cop series (on BritBox Nov. 12).
Of these, I’ve only seen the first season of The Gilded Age, which is fairly enjoyable. The show depicts the privileged movers, shakers, and villains in New York’s high society during the robber baron era. It’s new money vs. old money, and shan’t anyone cross that line. The costumes are impressive and actress Carrie Coon makes quite a delectable adversary as the ladder-climbing Mrs. Russell.
In new movies, there’s a couple black comedies upcoming that include Wild Horse Nine (out Nov. 6) with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as doofus CIA agents on a mission in 1973 Chile … as well as the sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (out Nov. 25), which follows former stuntman and now Hollywood-studio fixer Cliff Booth. It is set eight years after the events in the 2019 movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The script is again by Quentin Tarantino but this time David Fincher directs. Brad Pitt is back as Cliff Booth, but Leo DiCaprio is out of the sequel. Elizabeth Debicki is in as a talent agent who hires Cliff on behalf of her client, a TV star played by Scott Caan. Could it be better than the first, or just as weird?
In movie dramas, there’s several unsettling whoppers upcoming with Juliet Binoche in Queen at Sea (out Nov. 6) about a daughter intervening in the lives of her stepfather and mother, who has advanced dementia. The Liberation (out Nov. 6) involves a female Holocaust survivor (played by Carrie Coon) who leaves her family to join a cult. Atonement (out Nov. 10) is a war drama about a troubled U.S. Marine who seeks to reconcile with the family survivors his unit fired on in Iraq in 2003. Josephine (out Nov. 20) is about a child who witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, which stars Channing Tatum as her father. And finally the foreign film Fjord (out Nov. 24) is about an immigrant Romanian family living in Norway who is investigated and comes under the scrutiny of the local judicial system. The film won the Palme d’Or award for best feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and it looks to be a tense doozy.
So watch these at your own discretion; some if not all are inspired by true, real stories. For lighter fare you can always watch the movie Focker-In-Law (out Nov. 25), which is the fourth in the franchise about the Focker family. This time Ariana Grande plays Ben Stiller’s son’s girlfriend who comes to meet the family as the fiancée. Things, I gather, don’t go so well.
In music this month, there’s new albums by Bryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Passenger, James Blunt, U2, and Holly Humberstone among others. I’ll go with U2’s new album Carnaval de Luz (Spanish for Carnival of Light) (out on Nov. 13) as my pick, which is the band’s 16th studio album and celebrates the band’s 50th anniversary since they met in the schoolyard in Dublin in 1976. The last song Torn features the vocals of Dolly Parton, so that’ll be worth checking out.
That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to? Happy November.
