What to read, what to watch
We’ve got enough nonfiction in our lives now (even if much of its believability is questionable). So when presented with some empty hours, it seems sensible to give in to the attention-diverting appeal of novels and streaming narrative videos.
With that in mind, here’s what we’re reading. Some of these books are terrific. Others not so much. All are sufficiently distracting to fill in gaps in time that are far too heavily occupied with following the news, which doesn’t do much for improving anyone’s state of mind.
1. Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler. The latest in a lineup of beautifully written books that don’t really go anywhere, this gentle microcosm of 40-something tech geek Micah Mortimer’s unexceptional life inches one step forward, two steps back, in his half-hearted quest to break down the barriers between himself and others.
Tyler’s 2015 book A Spool of Blue Thread covered several generations and family perspectives; although much broader in scope, not much happened in it either, which didn’t seem to matter.
Camino Winds by John Grisham. The best that can be said about Grisham’s second book in the Camino Island series is that, along with a hurricane, a murder, lackluster police work, twists, turns, and lots of Florida beach scenery, it’s got decent dialogue.
My fondness for Grisham’s books has faded over the course of his writing career. I met him in the early 1990s, when Democrat-Gazette photographer Staton Breidenthal and I drove to a book-signing event at That Little Bookstore in Blytheville to interview him for the cover of High Profile. He was incredibly accommodating and forthcoming, which endeared him and his nonstop output of mysteries to me, even if I’m not a fan (except for A Painted House, his strongly autobiographical
2001 novel).
Weather by Jenny Offill. Don’t be fooled by this novel’s compact size and noncommital cover. It’s a fascinating incremental journey by a seemingly ordinary librarian/wife/dog owner/ mother in New York who, in a series of abrupt yet related paragraph-length descriptions, starts to lose her grip on practicality as she slides into a tantalizing, fearful, funny, and weird world heading toward apocalypse. I couldn’t put it down.
Northernmost by Peter Geye. Novels set in frigid climates come in handy when Arkansas heats up, so this might be a good time to get into this dense, elegant story, set in 1897, of a Norwegian fisherman who is given up for dead after disappearing during a seal hunt above the Arctic Circle, then returns to his impoverished rural home just in time for his own funeral and the realization that his relationship with his wife is in bad shape.
It’s not a fluffy beach read; attention must be paid to time and place. That’s because the fisherman’s story is artfully juxtaposed with that of his descendant Greta, an American journalist researching her family’s history even as her own 20-year marriage disintegrates.
If reading sounds too fatiguing, remember that there are audiobooks that do the heavy lifting for you.
Don’t say there’s nothing to watch on TV. Taking a look beyond superior offerings like Better Call Saul and The Plot Against America, here are our household’s current preferences. Don’t ask how any of these series ends, as I am winning the battle against bingeing.
No Offence is a flashy, fast, funny and complicated British cop drama concerning the Greater Manchester Police. The boss is Detective Inspector Viv Deering (Joanna Scanlan), a mouthy, daring plus-size powerhouse supported by a crew of fanatically devoted officers as they pursue provocative cases such as a serial killer of teenage girls with Down syndrome and an investigation of tough-as-nails crime boss Nora Attah (Rakie Ayola). We turn on subtitles; the Manchester accent is tough to follow (it’s filmed in Manchester), which can be distracting when trying to follow the nonstop action on the screen. Never a dull moment.
Little Fires Everywhere is a terribly written melodrama, set in upper-middle-class Shaker Heights, Ohio, in the 1990s. Squaring off for dominance are privileged, self-absorbed Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) and her seemingly perfect white-bread children and husband and newly arrived Mia Warren (Kerry Washington), a smoldering, temperamental artist, and her teenage daughter Pearl, who tries to get along with her snarly mother while struggling to fit into both worlds. As bad as this is, I continue to watch it, if for no other reason than to see how much more ridiculous it can get. And it’s not even filmed in Shaker Heights.
Unorthodox feeds the desire to learn about cultures and practices of the Other in this balanced, compassionately written drama about a young Hasidic Jewish woman, born and raised in Brooklyn, who escapes the confines of her rigidly structured life in an arranged marriage and makes her way to Berlin, where the future looks bright. Then that accursed past threatens to catch up with her.
The Restaurant is an intriguing Swedish series that takes viewers through time and space to Stockholm at the end of World War II (don’t miss the opening film clips of goings-on there during that period) where gorgeous, saucy, smart, and troublemaking Nina Lowander, along with her brothers (one a dorky self-serving criminal, the other a saintly perfectionist) and steely mother, run a popular high-end restaurant, with all the drama and power struggles that come with it.
It’s subtitled, which is obviously helpful, but the actors’ physicality and facial expressions, as well as their tones of voice, aid mightily, letting viewers in on what’s being said.
You’ve probably got a list of go-to programming, either streaming or airing weekly. Feel free to share: kmartin@adgnewsroom.com.