Every month, the Writer’s Bone crew reviews or previews books we've read or want to read. This series may or may not also serve as a confessional for guilty pleasures and hipster novels only the brave would attempt. Feel free to share your own suggestions in the comments section or tweet us @WritersBone.
Everyone Loves You Back by Louie Cronin
Daniel Ford: Louie Cronin’s debut novel Everyone Loves You Back features everything I could ever want in a novel: Angtsy radio personalities, a bumbling love triangle, a fight with encroaching hipsters, and a New England sensibility. Yes, perhaps I’m biased because the book is set in Cambridge (where I work and across the river from where I live) and Cronin was the producer on “Car Talk,” one of my all-time favorite podcasts, but that doesn’t change the fact that the writing contained in Everyone Loves You Back is top notch. Main character Bob Boland, a humble radio show producer (something else I can also relate to), is trying to hang onto his neighborhood’s identity in the face of “urban treehuggers and uppity neighbors," while also attempting to bed two women after a small lifetime of loneliness and jazz on vinyl. It doesn’t help matters that his buddy Riff’s show, as well as the small radio station as a whole, is in a constant state of flux, or that one of the women Bob desires happens to work with him and the rest of the overnight crew. Wonderful shenanigans ensure (I also wouldn’t come to this novel hungry; Bob likes to eat).
Everyone Loves You Back is a breath of fresh air in the literary market. It’s so hard finding solid, heartfelt prose like this these days. The novel almost had a throwback feel to it; I can almost imagine it being produced as a mid-1990s dramedy (More crunchy and serious than “Wings,” but perhaps featuring a similar amount of mom-jeans and baggy shirts). As I wrote in my interview with the author last month, “Cronin’s passion for storytelling and bubbly optimism is infectious, and translates to every page of her fun debut novel.” Everyone Loves You Back is sarcastic, warm, earthy, and real. Be ready to shower it with plenty of literary love when it comes out on Oct. 21, 2016.
Read Daniel Ford's interview with Louie Cronin.
Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts
Sean Tuohy: The Long Beach Homicide series reinvigorated my passion for the detective stories. Dilts breathed new life into the slowly decaying genre by refreshing the key elements all detective yarns need—interesting characters, a new city or culture to explore, and a solid who-done-it—and putting a modern spin on a gumshoe’s life.
In Come Twilight, we find an author firmly living up to all the potential we saw in the first three books of the Long Beach Homicide series. Danny Beckett's life is going well for the first time in a long time. He's got love in his life, giving him something to wake up for besides his job (which he’s still really good at). Of course, Beckett’s peace (although it’s still a begrudging peace on his part) is disturbed by trouble early on in the novel when someone tries to blow up his car.
Danny wants to put everything on the line to find out who is after him, and try to regain that peace, but is largely sidelined because he’s the victim for once and not the objective, determined investigator. This brings a completely new set of issues that Danny has to wrestle with, which is a perfect match for Dilts’s sensitive, conflicted prose. We’ve been saying Dilts is an author to watch since we started Writer's Bone. It’s time you started paying attention.
The Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
Daniel: Yeah…
Listen, I loved being dropped in the world of Harry Potter again after all this time. I got goosebumps thinking about the gang at Station 9 ¾, I enjoyed seeing all of them become the corporate drones so many of us become after heroic beginnings (even if those heroics happened in your backyard while pretending you’re saving Lois Lane from harm), and I enjoyed the smaller moments between characters like Harry and his troubled son Albus.
But, whoa boy, does that storyline suffer from some serious high school creative writing class blues. Time travel plots? Was the ideas cupboard that bare? The Cursed Child was an amnesia subplot away from being an episode of “24.” And Ron, who I’ll admit wasn’t exactly my favorite character in the original series, is depicted as a cartoonish buffoon. I wouldn’t spend five minutes alone with his Dad jokes. The dialogue between all of the characters seemed forced and corny at times, the already meager plot kind of petered out at the end, and I felt more relief than satisfaction when I closed the book.
The Cursed Child isn’t as awful by any means, and it’s certainly worth a read. I also think it may benefit from a live performance; maybe something is getting lost in translation on the page and would be better suited to the stage. If nothing else, The Cursed Child will remind you how much you loved reading the original series, and may inspire you to pick up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and begin again (which I promptly did).
Bobby Kennedy by Larry Tye
Daniel: There’s something to be said for writing a fair, balanced biography—based on more than 400 interviews and prodigious secondary reading—and walking away a bigger fan of your subject than when you started. Larry Tye managed to do just that with Bobby Kennedy.
Being a liberal Democrat from New England, I am also predisposed to liking the Kennedys, however, I always find myself more interested in their faults than in their glossy, somewhat manufactured public image. Tye strips away all those public perceptions and really gets to the heart of who Bobby Kennedy was and why he mattered. From working with Joseph McCarthy (!!!) and rooting out organized crime to leading John F. Kennedy’s successful Presidential campaign (at an insanely young age), serving as U.S. Attorney General, and being elected to the Senate from New York State, Bobby Kennedy undergoes personal and political transformations that culminate in his spirited, and, in the end, tragic 1968 campaign for President. He’s quotable, shaggy-haired, and fiercely dedicated to his family and his country. As Tye points out, RFK would be skewered in today’s political climate for his evolving views on a whole host of issues, but his legacy should provide evidence that good politicians can change over time without being burned in effigy or eviscerated on social media.
Again, Bobby Kennedy is incredibly balanced, meticulously researched, and totally engrossing. It is not to be missed.
Read Daniel Ford's interview with Larry Tye.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
Sean: Jon Krakauer wonderfully tells the tragic story of Pat Tillman, the NFL player who gave up a $3 million dollar contract and joined the U.S. Army in the days following 9/11.
The book bounces between Tillman's life and the earlier events in Afghanistan—the Soviet invasion, the rise of the Taliban—and then details how Tillman’s life ended following the U.S. invasion. The following cover-up by the Army regarding Tillman's death by friendly fire, and how government officials tried to benefit from his death, are shown in troubling detail. Filled with great interviews and deeply researched, this is a great book that any reader of current events will eat up.
Dead Wake by Erik Larson
Daniel: A lot of nonfiction on this list! I love it.
As I mentioned in my feature essay about my recent trip to Canada, my older brother and I share an affinity for history. Erik Larson is one of the authors we follow religiously, and I’m ashamed how long it’s taken me to pick up Dead Wake. With some helpful nudging from Tom Ford (the principal, not the designer), I finally did and loved every harrowing page.
Dead Wake tells the story of the Lusitania’s doomed trip across the Atlantic. Larson expertly sets the scene, describing a world at war and an isolationist U.S. foreign policy led by a man more intent on getting some from Edith Galt than focusing on global issues. While the stories of those who survived the Lusitania’s sinking, as well as those who didn’t, are heartbreaking, the truly remarkable aspect of this work was Larson’s recreation of life aboard a German submarine. Who wouldn’t sign up for tight quarters, suspect craftsmanship, ever-changing weather patterns, a pissed off Royal Navy, and, oh yeah, the very real threat of sinking to the bottom of the ocean and never being found?
The best part of my reading experience was that Larson himself liked a snarky tweet I sent out while reading the book. You can’t beat that!
Totally engrossed in @exlarson's Dead Wake. Starting to think things don't turn out well for the Lusitania. #history #amreading
— Daniel Ford (@danielfford) July 23, 2016
The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott
Daniel: I lost a bunch of sleep reading J. Todd Scott’s terrific debut novel. The Far Empty rumbles like a freight train, picking up steam as it goes. The novel features meaty, broken characters that weave in and out of trouble throughout the story. The plot keeps the pages moving, but it’s the multiple narratives and internal struggles that forced me to mutter, “Just one more chapter…,” several times after midnight.
Much like Dilts, J. Todd Scott exhibits a muscular, yet sensitive, potential that’s only going to get stronger over time.
And in honor of Scott’s inclusion in this month’s “Books That Should Be On Your Radar,” I went back and fixed the audio on our podcast so we don’t sound like we recorded it in an oil drum. Give is a listen and add The Far Empty to your fall reading list.
Also listen to the audio version of "Books That Should Be On Your Radar!"