Books: Keanu Reeves’ collaborative creative adventure, Michael Connelly’s new detective and more
Hello all! Here’s what’s up in books this week.
THE BIG STORY
The artist Alexandra Grant, designer Jessica Fleischmann and actor Keanu Reeves have joined forces to create X Artists’ Books, a venture that makes beautiful books that are designed to surprise and engage. They talked to Agatha French about the genesis of and goals for the project.
COP FICTION, CRIME FICTION
Michael Connelly, famed for his Harry Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer mystery series, has a new hero — make that heroine. “The Late Show” follows a female LAPD detective who’s been banished to the overnight shift in Hollywood. Paula Woods has our review.
Meanwhile, Richard Lange gives us a beleaguered contemporary con man who’s down on his luck — although maybe that’s about to change — in his new book “The Smack.” It’s a fresh take on L.A. noir, writes Steph Cha in our review.
STARTING OUT
Meet Zinzi Clemmons, a debut novelist whose circuitous path has brought her to Los Angeles. Her book “What We Lose” is deep in feeling — it was inspired by her mother’s death from cancer — and experimental in form. “It’s very hard for [people] to say, ‘This person writes as a black woman, writes about identity and is also experimental,’” Clemmons says about how others have approached her work. “It has to be one or the other, but not both.”
BESTSELLERS
If you’re hankering for a great summer read, look no further than our paperback bestseller list and “Barbarian Days” by William Finnegan. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for autobiography, is a memoir of surfing — off the coast of California and Hawaii as a young man in the ’60s, then continuing his obsession around the globe, where he turns to observe the diverse communities around him as well as the next wave.
MORE ON BOOKS
Starting in September, Jane Austen will be the first female author to grace British currency. This week, on the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, her 10-pound note was revealed.
Author and screenwriter Clancy Sigal had a fascinating life — romantic partner of Doris Lessing for four years, blacklisted during the Red Scare in Hollywood, acid-taking psychiatric patient, British journalist, USC professor and more. He died last week at age 90.
Shark! Shark week begins on television Sunday (on both the Discovery Channel and Nat Geo WILD) and National Geographic brings us the book “Shark!” with amazing, terrifyingly close-up photographs by Brian Skerry. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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