What I'm Reading Right Now

Manly thrillers, Arthurian fantasy, love letters to Philly and Santorini, and more

Greetings from Philadelphia! 

I can’t believe we’re coming to the end of summer! It’s been hot, and I’ve been riding my bike, putting the finishing touches on THE GRIFFIN SISTERS’ GREATEST HITS (look for it in the spring of 2025!) writing a new book, following the political news, and reading a lot. 

I read Teddy Wayne’s THE WINNER, which gave me my usual thriller problems – namely, racing through the last 100 pages to find out if the bad guy gets away with it or not. Then I went back and read THE GREAT MAN THEORY, where, again, I ended up hurrying toward the finish line. It was interesting reading them back to back, because they’re both critiques of manliness in America – what it means to be a great man, what it means to be a winner. 

The protagonist of THE WINNER is a law school graduate tennis player from a working-class background trying to find his footing in the world of the rich, white and privileged, and get a job in a law firm; and the great man of TGMT is an academic from a working-class background trying to find his footing in the world of the rich, white, and privileged (and keep his job as a professor). If you read Barbara Ehrenreich’s NICKEL AND DIMED back in the day – the story of how impossible it is for poor people to claw their way out of poetry, the way the systems are set up to keep them from ever getting ahead – think of these books as kind of fictional versions of that. Wayne’s protagonists aren’t poor – just lower-middle-class, or working class – and they’re both learning that being white and male isn’t a guarantee of climbing any higher on the socioeconomic ladder. 

Both books had smart things to say about manliness in the age of Trump, about privilege, and rise-and-grind culture, and the death by a thousand cuts of academia: and what happens when you go from being a full professor to an adjunct, when you lose your health insurance, and you get #MeToo’d over a misunderstanding, and you’re so broke you have to move back in with your elderly, widowed mother, who has taken to watching – and believing – a certain right-wing all-news network.

 It’s hard to be a man these days, except Wayne’s men can’t get out of their own way. Are we supposed to pity them? Root for them? Little bit of both? Both books were completely engrossing, and if the women felt slightly less nuanced – the red-pilled mother, the tough-as-nails career gal, the MILF, the manic pixie dream girl,– it did not befront me much.  

I read Lev Grossman’s THE BRIGHT SWORD – which, yikes, another underprivileged white guy trying to gatecrash the world of his betters! Except in this case, the underprivileged white guy is a knight named Collum, and the world he’s crashing isn’t a law firm or a college but Camelot. Adventures ensue, side characters are introduced, quests are quested, and here’s hoping it won’t be another ten years before Grossman publishes again. Meanwhile, I’m on to THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, which I’ve been meaning to read ever since my Marion Zimmer Bradley days.

I read HOUSEMATES by Emma Copley Eisenberg (set in Philly! Loved it!) and THE SUMMER PACT by Emily Giffin, which made me want to visit Santorini, stat, and JAMES by Percival Everett, which is hilarious, and moving, and observant and smart, and funny! Why aren’t more people talking about how funny this book is! YOU LIKE IT DARKER by Stephen King was a little frustrating, because I’d read almost all the stories when they were originally published, but “Two Talented Bastids,” which takes on the question of where genius comes from, and whether talent’s ever earned, will stay with me for a long time. Same with EVERY LAST ONE by Anna Quindlen, which gives us a content and loving mother, asks the question “What’s the worst thing you can think of,” and then tells the story of what happens after that. Finally, LEAVING, by Roxana Robinson, which is a quiet kind of novel that quietly asks big questions about love and sacrifice and how we balance desire and obligation – what we want versus what we’ve sworn to do – and has an absolute gut-punch of an end.   

If you’ve made it this far, stay tuned! Some BIG NEWS is coming next week! Meanwhile, what’s been on your summer reading list?