Here are our Favorite Books for Fall of 2024!
Lose yourself in Ari Shapiro’s memoir, The Best Strangers in the World, it draws from his years as an NPR host to share the intimate and often poignant stories he’s encountered. Meanwhile, The Secret Public reveals the profound yet often hidden influence of LGBTQ performers on mainstream culture and Anyone’s Ghost weaves a tapestry of haunting tales that blur the lines between the living and the dead.
Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson
August Thompson’s Anyone’s Ghost (Penguin Press. $28. augustthompson.com) is a stunner. Not since Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World in 1990 has a queer coming of age story held such a grip on this reader. Part of what makes both books extraordinary is their recognition that coming of age is rarely contained within a single teenage season or a few college years. Thompson portrays the sort of anguished adolescence that lingers, stretches, and stings over more than a decade. His central couple meets in rural New Hampshire, 2005: Theron, is 15, and has begrudgingly come to spend the summer with his depressive father after moving to California with his mother in the wake of a fractious divorce. Jake is 17 going on dead—reckless, rangy and radiating pheromones. They meet working in a convenience store, where the older boy takes the younger under his wing for a couple months of petty crime, dangerous joyrides, and escalating drug use. The humid withholding of sex through much of the book (by both Jake and author Thompson) will make readers ache and imagine as well, pulling them into the gravity of the couple’s attraction, even as Jake and Theron try to pull away from each other, committing themselves to relationships with women that are genuine, physical, yet not entirely fulfilling. “The rearview need would rise,” laments Jake, blending memory and foreshadowing in this romance haunted by auto wrecks.
The Secret Public by Jon Savage
If Lil Nas X shot a bit of his DNA into a pop music version of 23andMe, the results would unquestionably trace back to Little Richard, whose first hit song’s original lyrics, replaced with nonsense syllables on the record, were “Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it don’t fit, don’t force it /You can grease it, make it easy…” British journalist Jon Savage does right by the 20th century elders of today’s unabashedly uncloseted pop scenesters in his forthcoming The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture, 1955 -1979 (Liveright. $35. x.com/jonsavage1966). Focusing primarily on music, but folding in movies, fashion, and other media, Savage, whose perspective is distinctly British, details a repeated pattern of opposing pressures: Queer artists pushing to express themselves, and distressed gatekeepers pushing back; the gays only gradually gaining ground. Savage offers a valuable contribution to cultural history in exploring the tenuous position of queer talent managers, record company employees, and entertainment journalists working behind the scenes. And when writing about the careers of oft-covered personalities including David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Sylvester, he tightly weaves his observations into the context of the gay rights movement, drawing fresh, nuanced connections. The book should also raise the profile of performers whose queer context has been underappreciated, including Dusty Springfield and seminal 1950s crooner Johnny Ray.
Henri Bendal and the worlds he fashioned by Tim Allis
From its first refrain, Cole Porter energizes his 1934 classic “You’re the Top,” with a spree of namedrop superlatives: “You’re a Bendel bonnet / A Shakespeare sonnet / You’re Mickey Mouse…” While the Bard and the rodent remain familiar, you may be less acquainted with Bendel. Well, make amends before they take away your gay card, and pick up former InStyle editor Tim Allis’ Henri Bendel and the Worlds He Fashioned (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press. $34.95. bit.ly/bendelgram). A talented milliner and dressmaker, Bendel (1868-1936) was perhaps even more skilled at salesmanship and merchandising. Born and raised in Louisiana, he built a personal brand, lending his name to the luxury department store he founded in Manhattan; the first American retailer to import Chanel. With Southern charm, a keen eye for fashion, and famously traffic-stopping window displays, Bendel, who was Jewish, ensorcelled Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and other members of the uptown aristocracy despite the era’s antisemitism. After a brief marriage at age 25 (his wife died just a year later), Bendel built an unusual extended family, sharing a home with his half-sister, her two children, and his two longtime male companions. Author Allis’ book, extensively illustrated with vintage fashion sketches, photographs, and news clippings, focuses primarily on Bendel’s self-invention as a tastemaker and retail mogul. Alas, Bendel left behind little record of his private life, so there’s no telling if Cole Porter was right.
Do Something: Coming of Age midst the Glitter and Doom of ‘70s New York By Guy Trebay
“What exactly I was looking for was not altogether clear,” writes Guy Trebay, recalling a post-fire rummage through the remains of a childhood home in his memoir Do Something: Coming of Age Amidst the Glitter and Doom of ‘70s New York (Knopf. $29. guytrebay.com). This also describes the entire book, for both writer and reader. Rather than attempt to shape life’s experiences into a conventional story, Do Something takes an undetermined amble through memory, akin to the hours-long urban strolls Trebay says have provided some of the most fulfilling experiences of his life. It doesn’t matter where we end up, there will be notable moments and meetings along the way. His father makes and loses millions on men’s cologne. His sister commits armed robbery and ends up in prison. He works as a server at the very gay club where Andrew Holleran set Dancer from the Dance. He parties with Warhol’s factory girls. He doesn’t keep things chronological. He doesn’t get emotional. He finds something interesting, makes note of it, then moves along. He won’t try to force life to make sense. He sees clearly without looking for anything.
AIRPLANE READ OF THE MONTH
The Best Strangers In The World by Ari Shapiro
Listening to Ari Shapiro report from a Syrian refugee camp, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, or aboard Air Force One, it feels as if he’s speaking to you, individually. Of course, you’re one of millions in the radio audience and, as Shapiro explains in The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening (HarperOne. $18.99. arishapiro.work), he’s not working alone. His memoir generously honors the team effort involved in bringing a story from the field to our ears, and the bonds he’s formed with interviewees, producers, local guides, editors, and fellow journalists. That said, as the book makes clear, Shapiro has an unquenchable curiosity and an openness to new experiences that’s uniquely his own. Having spent early childhood as one of few Jews in Fargo, North Dakota and his teenage years as one of the few out queer kids at his Portland, Oregon high school, Shapiro excels in forging meaningful connections and uncovering commonality with people superficially unlike himself. Delighting in novelty and variety, he’s complemented his NPR career with a formidable side gig as a singer over the past 15 years, performing and touring with the acclaimed, eclectic band Pink Martini, and in a cabaret act alongside Alan Cumming. In his down time, Shapiro feels equally at ease nesting with his husband in their Washington home, clubbing on Fire Island, or frolicking at a Radical Faerie gathering in Tennessee. “The more you learn about the world,” he writes, “The more interesting life becomes.”
When you purchase a book from our curated Bookshop.org shop we earn an affiliate commission. The books are independently reviewed by our book editor and the potential commission does not influence the review in any way.
You May Also Enjoy:
Airplane Reads Archive
