new york times book review 2017

NYTBR’s 10 Best Books of 2017 & Editor’s Picks

Wcag heading, hooray two nonfiction titles made the new york times book review ‘s “10 best books of 2017” list and five more (plus two honorable mentions) are new york times critics’ top books of 2017 .

LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. A former public defender in Washington, Forman has written a masterly account of how a generation of black officials, beginning in the 1970s, wrestled with recurring crises of violence and drug use in the nation’s capital. What started out as an effort to assert the value of black lives turned into an embrace of tough-on-crime policies — with devastating consequences for the very communities those officials had promised to represent. Forman argues that dismantling the American system of mass incarceration will require a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance.

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser Fraser’s biography of the author of “Little House on the Prairie” and other beloved books about her childhood during the era of westward migration captures the details of a life — and an improbable, iconic literary career — that has been expertly veiled by fiction. Exhaustively researched and passionately written, this book refreshes and revitalizes our understanding of Western American history, giving space to the stories of Native Americans displaced from the tribal lands by white settlers like the Ingalls family as well as to the travails of homesteaders, farmers and everyone else who rushed to the West to extract its often elusive riches. Ending with a savvy analysis of the 20th-century turn toward right-wing politics taken by Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, Fraser offers a remarkably wide-angle view of how national myths are shaped.

Dwight Garner

TRANSIT by Rachel Cusk Faye, the divorced writer who is the narrator of Cusk’s transfixing latest novel, is the same woman we met in the author’s previous novel, OUTLINE . These two short books are part of a projected trilogy, and together they’re already an achievement: dense, aphoristic, philosophically acute novels that read like Iris Murdoch thrice-distilled. We watch Faye move through her days, speaking to friends, old lovers, real estate agents, salon employees, fellow writers, construction workers. Cusk’s writing offers the iron-rich pleasure of voice instead of style.

THE ANSWERS by Catherine Lacey Lacey writes sentences that are long and clean and unstanchable. They glow like the artist Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light tubes. In this, her second novel, she sweeps you up in the formidable current of her thought and then drops you down the rabbit hole. On a certain level, this is a dystopian project; it borders on science fiction. It’s about a young, underemployed and ill young woman, and how she is slowly drawn into an experiment that involves facial recognition software and electromagnetic pulses that can make a person weep or flush. It’s a warm-blooded yet brooding novel about the neurobiology of love. It casts a spell.

Jennifer Senior

LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in America by James Forman, Jr. This superb, shattering book probably made a deeper impression on me than any other this year. It tells the story, beginning in the 1970s, of how prominent African-Americans played a role in lobbying for more punitive measures to fight gun violence and drug dealing, in the quest to keep their neighborhoods safe. Never once did they imagine that their efforts would result in the inhumane outcome of mass incarceration. A tragedy to the bone.

Not on this list but worth mentioning: Joe Biden’s PROMISE ME, DAD .

Parul Sehgal

HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES by Carmen Maria Machado Machado’s debut collection is a wild thing, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link, borrowing from science fiction, queer theory and horror. These eight tales depict women on the verge—survivors of assault, brutal marriages and mysterious afflictions. Machado finds fresh language for ancient horrors.

Janet Maslin

THE DRY by Jane Harper Harper’s swift, dazzling debut thriller is set in a desperately parched part of rural Australia, where nothing is what it seems. The book delivers a twist or shocker or sneaky trick on virtually every page. Harper may be the all-time best advertisement for online courses in fiction writing. Her follow-up, coming in February, will be set where there’s mud.

Finally, thanks to Bill O’Reilly for OLD SCHOOL (written with Bruce Feirstein). He’s right about many things, particularly when it comes to the rigidity of thought on college campuses. But the very idea of a morality lecture from O’Reilly made this the best unintended humor book of 2017.

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The New York Times Book Review’s Best Books of 2017 Available in Large Print!

The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to  The New York Times  in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry.

Annually, the editors of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s top ten books. As a leading publisher of large print, Thorndike Press is proud to carry three of these books for 2017.

“Spellbinding.”  — starred, Booklist “Timely and resonant.”  — Publisher’s Weekly, Top 10 Most-Anticipated Literary Fiction of 2017 “[H]eartbreakingly relevant.”  —Library Journal “It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a roadmap to our future . . . This book blew the top off my head. It’s at once terrifying and, in the end, oddly hopeful.”   — New York Times Book Review

“. . . their stories are deeply affecting, in no small part because of Ward’s brilliant writing and compassionate eye.” — starred, Publishers Weekly “Lyrical yet tough, Ward’s distilled language effectively captures the hard lives, fraught relationships, and spiritual depth of her characters.” — starred, Library Journal “ Sing, Unburied, Sing  is many things: a road novel, a slender epic of three generations and the ghosts that haunt them, and a portrait of what ordinary folk in dire circumstances cleave to as well as what they — and perhaps we all — are trying to outrun.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] beautifully written portrait. . . . Chernow doesn’t gloss over Grant’s struggle with alcoholism or his tendency to trust shady operators.  However, his willingness to protect the gains of freemen and to fight the KKK was an example of the moral courage he consistently displayed.  This is a superb tribute to Grant, whose greatness is earning increased appreciation.” — starred, Booklist “The definitive biography for the foreseeable future.” — Publishers Weekly “As Americans continue the struggle to defend justice and equality in our tumultuous and divisive era, we need to know what Grant did when our country’s very existence hung in the balance. If we still believe in forming a more perfect union, his steady and courageous example is more valuable than ever.” — New York Times Book Review

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The Books We Loved in 2017

By The New Yorker

In a year that too often seemed like fiction, my favorite novel was one that felt utterly true to life: “ Conversations with Friends ,” by the Irish writer Sally Rooney . It tells the story of Frances, a watchful, sharp-witted college student in Dublin and her best friend, Bobbi, who together fall into a risky intimacy with Melissa and Nick, a couple in their thirties with glamorous artistic credentials and a fraying marriage. Like the best coming-of-age novels, it captures the beautiful confusion of being an intelligent young person with lots of ideas about the world and no clue how to live in it. Much has been made of Rooney’s gift for capturing the gab of others, as advertised in her title. But fiction is really the medium of thought, and Rooney, who writes with commanding, unself-conscious lucidity, proves a terrific portraitist of Frances’s mind, with its peaks of humor and insight and troughs of poignant self-delusion. This is the first novel that Rooney has written; I was so engrossed in its world that when I finished it, I flipped back to the first page and read it straight through again. I hope her next book comes soon.

If there were a way to invite the protagonists of 2017 fiction to a lunch in their honor, I’d propose seating Frances next to Selin, the exquisitely awkward heroine of Elif Batuman’s début novel, “ The Idiot .” Selin, too, is a college student with a mightily bookish brain and a paucity of knowledge gleaned from experience. Thinking of her shuffling around Harvard’s silent, snowy campus without her gloves on (she lost them again), or in a tiny village in Hungary, where she has gone for the summer to teach English out of severely misjudged love for an elusive math major, makes me laugh even now. On Selin’s other side, I’m tempted to put Christina, from the short-story collection “ Sour Heart ,” another notable début, by Jenny Zhang. True, Christina, the daughter of Chinese immigrants living in a series of squalid apartments in New York, is only a kid, but she has a startlingly adult way of expressing herself, and so much rude, buoyant energy that she seems to practically bounce off the page; I think her brashness would do Selin some good. I also want to include Z, the mercenary girlfriend-experience prostitute from Katherine Faw’s “ Ultraluminous ,” which has much to say about the kind of obscene obeisance that certain men want from women, and the lengths that they will go to get it. The novel has a meticulously polished surface and a molten, furious core; I read it a few weeks before the #MeToo revelations began, and it has hung in my mind like a backdrop to everything that has followed since.

And if real, flesh-and-blood people would deign to join this table of make-believe, I’d extend an invitation, too, to Grace Paley , whose short stories, essays, and poems, collected together for the first time in this year’s “ A Grace Paley Reader ,” were politically and artistically galvanizing to me, and also a source of deep comfort during this bitter year. Next to her must go her fellow West Villager Tamara Shopsin , whose memoir “ Arbitrary Stupid Goal ” is a paean to her childhood in and around her family’s legendary restaurant down on Bedford Street when Greenwich Village still felt like a village and weirdos ruled the roost. It’s hard to reflect on the lost past with a love that doesn’t dip into maudlin nostalgia, but Shopsin makes it look as easy as pie.— Alexandra Schwartz

At the beginning of 2017, I started working on a Profile of someone who’s secure in his faith ( Rod Dreher , an orthodox Christian); at the end, I wrote about a philosopher who thinks we live in a cruel, pointless universe ( David Benatar , an “anti-natalist” who argues that we should stop having children). In between, this turned out to be the year in which I read about the meaning of life. Two writers, in particular, helped me navigate the territory between believing in God and becoming a nihilist. The first was Daniel Dennett , the philosopher of mind, whom I profiled in March. I deeply enjoyed his newest book, “ From Bacteria to Bach and Back ,” but two of his earlier volumes struck me with particular force: the accessible and elegant “ Darwin’s Dangerous Idea ,” from 1995, and the more academic “ Freedom Evolves ,” from 2003. In the first, Dennett helps us understand what it means to occupy a branch on the tree of life; in the second, he argues that free will is real, and shows how it could have evolved along with the rest of the living world. You may be bored of Darwin by now, and of the reductive, triumphalist rhetoric that often accompanies discussions about evolution and our place in the universe. That’s not what Dennett offers. I know of no other thinker who so convincingly shows how human life, in all its vivid, soulful richness, might make sense as part of a purely material universe.

The other writer was Anthony Kronman, a professor at Yale Law School whose book “ Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan ” took me on a parallel journey. (I profiled Kronman, too .) If Dennett seeks to reconcile the existence of the soul with the physical world—to connect bacteria to Bach—Kronman sets out to do something similar in the humanist tradition: he tries to integrate the many contradictory ways of thinking about life that, as modern people, we want to credit simultaneously. Many of us have intuitions about the sacredness of life but also believe in the scientific method, which leaves little room for the sacred; we find it hard to envision a literal afterlife but want to understand how we might matter after we’re gone. Kronman combs through the history of thought, combining Augustine with Wallace Stevens, or Nietzsche with Melanie Klein, and constructing a belief system of his own invention—“born-again paganism”—which he finds satisfying. You don’t have to read all of Kronman’s “Confessions” in one go, and you’re unlikely to find it all convincing. But his beautifully written book is illuminating and inspiring. It shows that all of us can try, in our own ways, to solve the riddle of existence.— Joshua Rothman

I’ve never read as furiously or as gratefully as I did this year, searching for something that would both take me out of myself and return me to myself, the way only books can. I went on some retrospective expeditions—I had a good streak of reading all of James Salter and Nora Ephron in succession—but there was plenty of wonder released in 2017. I loved “ The Correspondence ,” by J. D. Daniels, a beyond-slim collection of essays (two billed as fiction) that left me feeling drunk and dizzy, like I had been given an injection of a stranger’s soul. I laughed out loud at “ Priestdaddy ,” Patricia Lockwood’s memoir, which works like transubstantiation: no matter what you think you’re looking at on the page, it’s turning into something else. I have been regularly recommending Alissa Nutting’s horrifically funny novel “ Made for Love ,” as well as Jenny Zhang’s “ Sour Heart ” and Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “ What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky ,” two collections that use the short-story format’s mix of intensity and absence to knock you out. “ Evicted ,” Matthew Desmond’s chronicle of Milwaukee poverty, deserved its Pulitzer and then some. “ Meet Me in the Bathroom ,” Lizzy Goodman’s deliciously over-reported oral history of early-aughts New York rock, was a monument to the scuzzy magic that occurs when youth, hedonism, ambition, and talent coincide. I couldn’t put down Sally Rooney’s “ Conversations with Friends ” or Julie Buntin’s “ Marlena ,” both of them début novels about the kind of complicated friendship that determines the course of a young woman’s life.— Jia Tolentino

This year, “ Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction ,” by the science writer and documentarian Britt Wray, reintroduced me to the earth. The book is structured a bit like a conventional high-school science textbook, with diagrams and patient definitions of biological terms. But the subject matter is fringe: Wray tracks the research in “gene-editing, cloning, and selective breeding” that has led a category of brazen scientists to believe that they can bring back species from extinction. What stuck with me more than the ambitious science—which Wray makes exceptionally accessible—is her attention to the paradoxes of human vanity. We meet Stewart Brand, a co-founder of Revive & Restore, an organization that claims it will reintroduce the extinct passenger pigeon. He understands “de-extinction” as humanity’s way of rectifying the ecological havoc it has wrought. His mantra—“We are as gods and have to get good at it”—is as apt a formulation as any I’ve seen for the tenuous relationship between humans and the planet. We are too small for our influence.

I also marvelled at Samantha Irby’s memoir “ We Are Never Meeting in Real Life ,” which contains impressionistic insights on human behavior that feel just as significant as a scientific breakthrough. She is so funny that her essays often leave me breathless. Maria, the protagonist of “ New People ,” by Danzy Senna, is caught in a sort of racial fugue: her cold, intricate surrealism reminds me of the plays of Adrienne Kennedy, whose black female characters furiously negotiate the value of truth. “ Her Body and Other Parties ,” by Carmen Maria Machado, and “ What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky ,” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, furnished me with fables that feel made for our time. And Samin Nosrat’s cookbook “ Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking ” perceives so astutely the reasons why we make our own food: as an attempt to get closer to our bodies, to teach ourselves what exactly it is that we want.— Doreen St. Félix

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

125 years of literary history.

edited by Tina Jordan & Noor Qasim ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021

An ebullient celebration of literature.

A capacious history of the influential publication.

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the New York Times Book Review , current deputy editor Jordan, assisted by Qasim, offers a fascinating selection of reviews, letters, interviews, essays, announcements, book lists, bits of gossip (Colette, on a ship, wore sandals without stockings!), and op-ed pieces published in the supplement since its first appearance on Oct. 10, 1896. Organized chronologically into five sections that comprise around three decades each, and profusely illustrated with author photographs, plates, advertisements, and assorted literary artifacts, the volume amply fulfills the editor’s goal of revealing how the Review “has shaped literary taste, informed arguments and driven the world of ideas in the United States and beyond.” Book critic Parul Sehgal prefaces the selections with an astute essay examining how the Review has covered works by women, writers of color, and writers in the LGBTQ+ community. In its early years, White male perspectives dominated, with reviewers worried about the proliferation and popularity of women writers. Overall, however, the collection amply represents reviewers “contemptuous of anxious gatekeeping,” bringing to their task “nerve, wariness and style.” Anxious gatekeeping, however, as well as wafts of condescension, can be found. For example, in 1904, the reviewer of W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk remarked, “Many passages of the book will be very interesting to the student of the negro character who regards the race ethnologically and not politically, not as a dark cloud threatening the future of the United States.” In 1933, assessing two feminist histories, the Review ’s editor saw the success of the women’s movement as “one of the major tragedies in the history of mankind.” Reviews by acclaimed authors include Eudora Welty on Charlotte’s Web ; W.H. Auden on Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring ; Kurt Vonnegut on Tom Wolfe; and Margaret Atwood on Toni Morrison’s Beloved . A long list of other famous reviewers appends the volume.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-23461-7

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021

HISTORY | UNITED STATES | GENERAL NONFICTION

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2017

New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

National Book Award Finalist

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The osage murders and the birth of the fbi.

by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann ( The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession , 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

GENERAL HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | UNITED STATES | FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY

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by David Grann

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THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“ Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression .” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

Pub Date: April 23, 2024

ISBN: 9780593536131

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | GENERAL NONFICTION

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6 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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This week’s recommended books include two memoirs by writers recalling their parents: “The Whole Staggering Mystery,” by Sylvia Brownrigg, digs into her father’s secret history, and “Did I Ever Tell You?,” by Genevieve Kingston, aims to capture her lost mother on the page. We also recommend two books about Mexico (a history and a journalistic exposé), along with a look at the neurological effects of climate change and a novel that puts U.S. immigration policy front and center. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

THE WEIGHT OF NATURE: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains Clayton Page Aldern

Aldern, a science journalist, asks us to consider the impact of climate change on our brains: According to this alarming book, a warming planet and natural resource depletion will mean everything from angrier, more anxious people to dolphins with Alzheimer’s disease. The litany, he writes, is almost “comically apocalyptic.”

“Aldern is the rare writer who dares to ask how climate change has already changed us.”

From Nathaniel Rich’s review

Dutton | $30

THE WHOLE STAGGERING MYSTERY: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found Sylvia Brownrigg

When Brownrigg’s remote and enigmatic father, Nick, died, his children were left with a key to his past in the form of a mysterious scrapbook. What they found was wilder than they could have possibly guessed: This hippie dropout, seemingly without family, was in fact heir to a British title and had a complex history that included colonial postings, mysterious deaths, lost novels and unexplained estrangements. Brownrigg sets out to discover what, exactly, happened — and does so with style and sensitivity.

“Gets at … the way in which, over generations and in the face of good intentions, family bonds can loosen and die. It’s dreadfully sad, and yet through Brownrigg’s sleuthing, something touching is redeemed.”

From Emma Brockes’s review

Counterpoint | $34.99

AMERICAN ABDUCTIONS Mauro Javier Cárdenas

In his new novel, Cárdenas considers the devastating effects of U.S. immigration policy on Latin American families, using expansive, pages-long sentences full of references to art, mysticism and ominous technologies. The main narrative involves an ailing Colombian man, recently deported from Califorrnia, and the painful choices facing his American-born daughters.

“Cárdenas creates what I’ll call an art-polemic — a melding of play with political purpose. From it, the cruelty of American immigration policy emerges: How else to capture such surreal inhumanity?”

From Gina Apostol’s review

Dalkey Archive | Paperback, $17.95

HABSBURGS ON THE RIO GRANDE: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire Raymond Jonas

Jonas vividly recounts the story of Maximilian I of Mexico, the delusional Austrian archduke who tried to establish an enlightened monarchy on America’s southern border in the midst of the U.S. Civil War. “May my blood end the misfortunes of my new country,” he said as he stood before a republican firing squad, in 1867. “Viva Mexico!”

“Vividly reconstructs how Maximilian’s power was forged and maintained by the sharp end of a French bayonet. … Jonas is astute and judicious in navigating the kaleidoscope of contradictory political ideologies that came together in the Second Mexican Empire.”

From Natasha Wheatley’s review

Harvard University Press | $35

THE WAY THAT LEADS AMONG THE LOST: Life, Death, and Hope Among Mexico City’s Anexos Angela Garcia

An investigation of Mexico’s makeshift drug rehab centers for the poor, Garcia’s book combines anthropological field work with personal history, delivering an unvarnished chronicle of desperate patients, brutal treatment regimes and her own struggles with depression and a traumatic past.

“Offers a view of the war on drugs that differs from the familiar one. … The characters who populate Garcia’s pages reside on the periphery of urban life, and of the conflict itself.”

From Azam Ahmed’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $29

DID I EVER TELL YOU? Genevieve Kingston

In this heartfelt memoir, Kingston reflects on her mother’s death, in her late 40s, from breast cancer and the carefully cataloged notes and gifts she left for her children to open when she was gone. Kingston opens each on schedule, while reflecting that “the person I needed … was not the smiling, gentle mother wrapping birthday gifts” but “all of my mother, not only the softest pieces.”

“Wrenching. … Helped Kingston see the rage and terror her mother had papered over, as well as the steely will she’d summoned to keep going.”

From Kim Hubbard’s review

Marysue Rucci Books | $28.99

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When Reese Witherspoon is making selections for her book club , she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, who died on May 14 , specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope , spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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Former President Donald Trump promised Thursday evening to “make New York City great again” during a raucous rally in the South Bronx, his first major campaign event in the state of his birth since 2016.

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Angry Biden complains press ‘never keep the deal,’ calls Kamala Harris ‘president’ during confused press conference with Kenya leader

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Former Obama speechwriter, ‘Pod Save America’ host to appear on 47th season of ‘Survivor’

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Umpires torched after ‘nonsense’ game-ending interference controversy: ‘One of the worst’

Media Matters hit with sweeping layoffs after defamation suit by Elon Musk, federal probes

Road trippin' Meet the Trump fanatic who travels the country in an RV to sell MAGA merch: ‘We wake up, and we Trump it’

“This is home. 24/7: eat, sleep, everything. Trump all day every day.”

Colombia sets up ‘protected archeological area’ around ‘holy grail’ shipwreck with $17B in treasure

US service member critically injured, airlifted to Israel while working on Gaza aid pier

Ex-‘SportsCenter’ anchor rips Ian Rapoport over ‘intriguing’ Eagles signing

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Tearful NYPD cops rushed to save a badly battered mini-poodle’s life after his owner “snapped” and threw him off a ledge at a Manhattan park.

Cardiac arrest survivors reunited with first responders who saved them in tear-jerking FDNY ceremony

Jfk airport strike by airplane fuel workers during memorial day weekend averted after gov. hochul’s intervention, two nypd sergeants get into shoving match over salary gap: sources.

Off base? Umpire waves off tying home run, ends NJ high school baseball game in controversy

A New Jersey high school baseball has one team up in arms after a controversial call ended a state tournament game between Northern Highlands and Mount Olive on Wednesday.

Liquid Death giving away $400K fighter jet to lucky winner, unlike Pepsi’s 1990s debacle

Yankees starter continues recent dominance with ‘electric’ outing in win over Mariners

Trump leads Biden in six swing states and tied in a seventh: poll 

Sour notes Sean Kingston speaks out after police raided his Florida home and arrested his mother for fraud

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Mica Miller investigation launched by FBI as haunting new footage of her final hours emerges

The Walmart Memorial Day sale is sizzling with deals so low you won’t be able to resist

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Notre Dame calls on Congress to save college sports after game-changing $2.8 billion settlement

Luis Gil has been a Yankees savior as Gerrit Cole’s replacement

Celtics grab 2-0 series lead on Pacers thanks to star’s 40-point explosion

Sending signals Daniel Jones ‘wasn’t fired up about’ Giants’ QB flirtation at NFL draft in rare glimpse at true feelings

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Yankees star’s ‘as good as it gets’ May stretch leaves early struggles in the dust

Superstar’s goal in double OT leads Oilers to Game 1 win over Stars

Going round and round Officer who arrested Scottie Scheffler was previously suspended for doing donuts

Greater attention is being put on the past — including his disciplinary history — of Louisville Metro Police Det. Bryan Gillis.

New video series from The Post takes John Oates back to the Greenwich Village coffeehouse where Hall & Oates played their very first gig

MTA boss Janno Lieber’s $400K pay slammed amid congestion toll fight

Airport ground crew member clings to life and loses leg after taxiing plane runs him over: video

Plug and go NYC startup plans to line streets with stylish ‘trees’ that can charge an electric car in 5 minutes

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Crack in the barrel cracker barrel’s stock in freefall after ceo admits chain ‘just not as relevant as we once were’.

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Sounding off The week in whoppers: The BBC goes to bat for Raisi, Mayorkas pushes border BS and more

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This classic ice cream flavor is on the outs — and diehard fans are devastated

FOX Business’ Charles Payne reflects on crime in Harlem after niece shot by stray bullet: ‘Known violent criminals are roaming the streets’

Domestic 'roar' Katy Perry emerges as the official owner of a $15M California home after a years-long legal battle

Her ownership of this Montecito estate had been hotly contested in court since 2020.

Flight crew are exploiting a major airport security loophole to smuggle drugs, experts warn

Biden’s campaign is hiring a meme manager — but you have to move to Delaware

Harrowing survival story of 36-weeks-pregnant mom who leapt from 20-foot-high window to escape fire: ‘Just fight or flight’

Food fight Gordon Ramsay and Lisa Vanderpump butted heads on ‘Food Stars’: He needed to ‘shut the f – – k up’

Gordon Ramsay and Lisa Vanderpump went head-to-head on a new competition reality show.

Burger King to launch $5 value meal ahead of McDonald’s: report

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Summer of george jason alexander threatened to quit ‘seinfeld’ when george costanza didn’t have enough screen time.

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Robert Downey Jr. playfully attempts to steal Chris Hemsworth’s Hollywood star: photos

Scammers sold fake sports, Pokémon cards in $2M scheme: feds

Celine Dion ‘almost died’ amid stiff person syndrome battle, Hoda Kotb reveals ahead of interview

Best in class This high school prom was like the Met Gala for teens: ‘Can’t compete with these kids’

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Media in disbelief as Republicans like Nikki Haley flock to Trump while Biden coalition frays

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Nice catch Dennis Rodman’s soccer star daughter reveals romance with NFLer in new photos

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Michael Strahan’s daughter Isabella, 19, shares heartbreaking symptom amid brain cancer battle

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Entertainment industry We work remotely from Chuck E. Cheese — our 9-to-5s should be fun, too

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Trump claims Putin will free jailed WSJ reporter Gershkovich for him ‘almost immediately’ if elected

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Mom fined $88K after kids collect 72 clams from Calif. beach thinking they were seashells: 'Ruined our trip'

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Now on decider, chloe fineman reveals she was the one who pitched sydney sweeney’s controversial ‘snl’ hooters sketch: “it was your pervert over here”.

New Book, New Strategy: The 7 Main Things I’m Doing Differently for the Annual Review Book

• May 16, 2024

Est. reading time: 8 min

I recently announced my next major book project: a book on how to complete a year-end life review as a ritual for self-reflection and growth.

I’ve had an annual review practice in some form since 2008, and I can’t think of anything else that has more dramatically impacted my life in that time. I can’t wait to bring this practice, which has existed for a long time among CEOs, executives, heads of state, and creatives, to the wider world.

The first question I’m asking myself as I embark on this years-long journey is, “What do I want to do differently from last time?” 

I’ve documented the process of writing and publishing my previous book, Building a Second Brain (BASB), in great detail, partly so that I can now look back and take stock of what worked and what didn’t.

Here are the 7 strategic decisions I’m making differently this time and why.

1. Think on a 5-year time horizon

The sheer timescale at which traditionally published books operate continues to astound me. As of now, it’s been 5.5 years since I started working on the proposal for BASB, and 2 years since its release in the US – nothing else in my life operates on this timescale.

We recently crossed an incredible milestone – 200,000 copies sold – and yet I still feel that the journey of the book is in its early stages. It’s tempting when embarking on an endeavor like this to focus only on the initial launch, but I’ve learned that it’s critical to think on at least a 5-year timescale.

What kind of book do I want to still be talking about and promoting 5 years from now? What do I want to spend my time thinking about and working on throughout that time? Given that I only have so many 5-year stretches in my career, how do I want to use them?

These are the kinds of questions I asked myself when deciding which book to write next, and vanishingly few topics made the cut. But now that I’ve chosen the most promising one, I’m going to make all subsequent decisions from the perspective of what makes sense on a 5-10-year time horizon.

2. Move toward more intuitive right-brain thinking

For BASB, I made a strong effort to move away from language and concepts that were overly technical, abstract, or rooted in the tech world. I had developed a lot of my thinking while immersed in Silicon Valley, and I knew I needed to broaden my language to appeal to a much more mainstream audience.

Yet even with that effort, the book is still quite skewed toward readers who are relatively tech-savvy. The idea of creating an external repository of personal information in digital form still appeals mainly to people who already think about how to use their technology more effectively.

With my new topic of year-end reviews, I want to continue this shift from a primarily left-brain, analytical lens to a more right-brain, holistic, intuitive, and emotional lens. I want to continue expanding my niche from a small hardcore group of productivity nerds to wider audiences centered around existing habits like journaling, mindfulness, goal-setting, and planning.

This shift will need to be reflected in everything from the words I use to the colors and design of the book’s branding, to the marketing materials we create, to the way I talk about the subject in podcast interviews.

3. Sprints, not marathons

Looking back on the whole experience of writing my first book, one of the most stressful aspects was the ever-present feeling that I had to be making progress on the book at all times . 

Logically I knew that’s impossible – a lot of time is needed for rest and recovery, for family and friends, and for other projects at work. Yet that feeling remained, at the back of my mind, like a subtle pressure against my brain, constantly questioning why I wasn’t advancing on at least one front. Writing a book might feel like a marathon, but even a marathon takes place in a series of shorter sprints!

Something else has changed since last time as well: I have far more responsibilities. 2020 and 2021 were ideal times to write a book in many ways, with the pandemic shutting down the world and our new baby sleeping the days away. Now I have two young kids, a household to manage, and a larger, more complex business with a lot of projects happening in parallel. Oh, we’re also moving to Mexico in a few months!

For all these reasons, I plan on concentrating my writing time in a series of month-long sprints, with the in-between months dedicated to research, gathering feedback, and recovery. For example, my first sprint will be the entire month of June 2024, followed by two months off, and then again in September, with another two months off, and finally in December as work slows down for the holidays. 

I’m hoping this schedule will serve as a forcing function to allow me to completely set aside all my other work duties during the “on” months, leaning on the team to manage the business while I’m away, and then decisively turning off that part of my brain during the “off” months.

4. Recruit beta readers for feedback

My last two books were directly based on a cohort-based course I taught for 6 years, starting in 2016. Several thousand people completed it, and I therefore had a treasure trove of feedback, examples, case studies, and intelligence about what worked and what didn’t.

I’ve been teaching a workshop called The Annual Review since 2019, and over 600 people have taken it, but I have significantly less research this time around. I’ve also not really communicated my ideas about year-end reviews in written form before, except through publishing my own personal reviews .

This time around I’d like to try an approach I’ve seen many successful authors take: recruiting a group of “beta” readers to review the early manuscript and give me direct, specific feedback about which parts resonate and which need to be changed or removed.

5. Only our core platforms matter

Looking back at the numerous marketing efforts we made leading up to and following the last book’s release, I’m left with a sobering conclusion: it is really only our core platforms (which for us are the email newsletter, YouTube, and X) that truly make a difference in the scale of a book’s success.

By this, I mean both their size (the number of followers or subscribers) and just as if not more importantly, the quality of my relationship with those people. Do they like what I have to say? Do they trust me? Are they hungry for more from me?

I recently sat down to analyze Forte Labs’ audience growth since my last book was acquired in March 2020: in 4 years we’ve grown our audience an astounding 28x, from about 20,000 followers to 550,000 across all platforms:

Most of this growth is due to the two books I’ve published in that time, as well as the strong growth of our YouTube channel, both of which have also fueled growth in our email list (the vertical line below represents the date my BASB book was released, creating a clear inflection point in the long-term growth rate of our email list that has persisted to this day):

Last time, we didn’t really have the option of relying solely on my own audience. It just wasn’t big enough. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to bootstrap an audience almost from scratch but looking back, the return-on-investment for those efforts was pretty marginal.

This time around, I’m going to invest all our time, energy, and money into simply growing our audience, which ultimately means more and better blog posts, YouTube videos, social posts, and newsletter content. This offers an additional benefit: once the release is all over, we’re left with the greatest prize of all –  a larger and more engaged audience ready to receive whatever we do next.

6. Create tighter integration with courses

Over the past year, we made a tremendous effort to diversify our sources of revenue away from cohort-based courses. A year ago we made 95%+ of our revenue from cohorts alone, and today none of it comes from cohorts since we’ve stopped offering them altogether.

It was a longer and more difficult transition than I expected, but we now have a much more balanced business based on 5 main sources of revenue: self-paced courses, books, ads and sponsorships, affiliate commissions, and our new flagship, the Second Brain Membership.

For BASB, despite the fact that the book was based on a course, we didn’t do a good job of integrating the book with our courses. This was partly because the live, cohort-based version only took place at certain times of the year, and was about 66x as expensive as the book (or $999), which made it difficult to seamlessly bring book readers into it unless they happened to subscribe to our newsletter.

Even when we came out with a pre-recorded, self-paced version of the BASB course about a year after the book’s release, it too closely reflected the book’s contents, making it seem like a mere rehashing of the same material except in video form (and still at about 33x the price, or $499). 

I plan on avoiding both of these errors this time, by having both a live and self-paced version of the Annual Review course (at accessible price points) ready to go by the time the book comes out, and by creating a seamless path from book to course starting right within the book itself. 

7. Go for the New York Times bestseller list

For the last book, I didn’t purposefully try to reach the NYT bestseller list, mostly because I didn’t think it was possible with my small audience and niche topic. We did reach the Wall Street Journal list, which allowed us to add the moniker “best-seller.” 

This time, however, I plan on making a serious run at the crown jewel of the publishing world: the “Advice/How-To” category within the NYT list, sometimes called the “Mt. Everest” of bestseller lists because it is so difficult to land on. I’m told this requires a specific strategy of maximizing the sale of certain formats (ebook sales don’t count for this list, for example) at specific retail locations (only some of which are included in the official count).

Contrary to a lot of online discourse, I believe bestseller lists (and other forms of demonstrating authority and credibility) absolutely do matter. Part of the “war for attention” that we all fight every day as content creators is a parallel “war for credibility.” The Internet has flooded our world with information of every level of quality, and if anything, people are more dependent than ever on signals of credibility to determine what to pay attention to and believe.

And if nothing else, this goal gives us a new, exciting mountain to climb. People do climb Mt. Everest just for the fun of it, after all.

If you’d like to stay in the know about the progress of my annual review book, sign up for our newsletter below. And if you come across any interesting ideas, material, or people related to the subject, please send it to me at [email protected] .

• Posted in Announcements , Books , Personal growth , Strategy , Writing
• On May 20, 2024
• BY Tiago Forte

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• Local & State

Observe Memorial Day with these events in southern Maine

Tons of towns have parades and ceremonies happening Monday.

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Kids and adults gather at a Memorial Day parade to honor and celebrate veterans in South Portland. Sofia Aldinio/ Staff Photographer

BATH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at 200 Congress Ave. and concludes at Library Park and will be followed by a wreath-laying service at 11 a.m.

BERWICK 11 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at Berwick Town Hall/Sullivan Square and proceeds to Lord’s Cemetery by way of Wilson and Allen streets. After a ceremony there, the parade will continue down Saw Mill Hill Street with a pause at the Somersworth-Berwick Bridge for a brief memorial service for those lost at sea. The parade ends at Sullivan Square with a memorial service honoring area veterans.

BIDDEFORD-SACO Opening ceremony at 9:55 a.m. Monday at Saco City Hall. Parade starts at 10 a.m. from Saco City Hall and proceeds along Main Street and down York Hill into Biddeford, continues along Main Street, onto Alfred Street and finishes at Veteran’s Memorial Park with a closing ceremony at 10:45 a.m.

BRUNSWICK-TOPSHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Topsham Town Hall, pauses for observances while crossing the Brunswick-Topsham bridge, and concludes at the Brunswick Mall.

CAPE ELIZABETH 9 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at the middle school parking lot, turns right on Scott Dyer Road, right onto Route 77 and ends at the village green adjacent to the town hall. A brief ceremony and laying of the wreath will be held at the Village Green after the parade.

CUMBERLAND 8 a.m. Monday. Kids run at Greely High School followed by 5K Run and Remember race at 8:30 a.m. Parade starts at 10 a.m. at Mabel I. Wilson School and ends at the veterans’ monument in Moss Side Cemetery in Cumberland Center, where a ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m. Advertisement

FALMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from 65 Depot Road (Falmouth American Legion) to Pine Grove Park, where a ceremony will be held.

FREEPORT 9:30 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Holbrook Street, heads north on Main and makes a right onto School Street, then right onto Park Street, ending in Memorial Park. There will be a small ceremony in Memorial Park starting at 10 a.m.

GORHAM 11 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Village School (12 Robie St.) and ends at Eastern Cemetery on Johnson Road.

GRAY 11:30 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves the Russell School (8 Gray Park), proceeds to Shaker Road and continues to the Soldiers Monument at the intersection of Routes 26 and 3 for a wreath-laying ceremony. Parade continues north to the American Legion Post (15 Lewiston Road) for a closing ceremony.

LYMAN 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at Waterhouse Road/Mill Pond in Goodwins Mills and ends at the Lyman Town Hall on South Waterboro Road.

NEW GLOUCESTER 9 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Memorial Elementary School (86 Intervale Road) and heads down Intervale Road to Route 100/202 to Veterans Park for a memorial service. The parade will reconvene and go down Peacock Hill Road, then take a left on Gilmore Road. Advertisement

OLD ORCHARD BEACH 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at the corner of Ballpark Way and E. Emerson Cumming Boulevard and proceeds down Saco Avenue, Old Orchard Beach Street to First Street and ends at Veteran’s Memorial Park.

PORTLAND 2 p.m. Monday. The procession starts at Longfellow School (432 Stevens Ave.) and ends at Evergreen Cemetery for a commemoration ceremony.

SANFORD 10 a.m. Monday. The parade starts at the Sanford Armory (88 William Oscar Emery Drive), proceeds up Gowen Park Drive and ends at Central Park.

SCARBOROUGH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Scarborough High School, turns onto Route 114 and then Route 1, past town offices to the Maine Veterans Home and concludes with a ceremony there.

SOUTH PORTLAND 10:30 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Southern Maine Community College parking lot, proceeds down Broadway to the Veterans Monument for a short Memorial Day recognition service.

WELLS 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Wells High School (200 Sanford Road) and proceeds to Ocean View Cemetery for a ceremony and musical performances. Advertisement

WESTBROOK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds down Main Street and will be followed by a ceremony in Riverbank Park.

WINDHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Windham Town Hall and proceeds onto Route 202 toward Windham High School. At 10 a.m., there will be a ceremony in front of Windham’s Veterans Memorial Flagpole at Windham High School.

YARMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Yarmouth High School (286 West Elm St.) and proceeds to the Memorial Green at Town Hall for a ceremony.

YORK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts near St. Christopher’s Church (4 Barrell Lane) and proceeds down York Street to York Town Hall.

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