What to read next: 'The Perfect Couple,' ‘Dinner with the President,’ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s memoir, and more
This week’s reading recommendations include the novel behind a star-studded new Netflix series, a story of presidential palates, a moving memoir, a book without a single recipe that will still make you hungry, and more. Happy reading!
As the campaign continues to heat up after the first debate this week, I’m thinking of a more genteel presidential activity: what’s for dinner at the White House. Dinner With the President, one of our Best History Books of 2023, is a fascinating look at how politicians and power wielders have broken bread over the years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and how the meals are often so much more than what’s served on the plate. In this “gripping gastronomic history,” as my colleague Erin Kodicek so brilliantly refers to it, we also learn who had an appetite for squirrel stew (Lincoln, Garfield, Eisenhower), and who expertly used dinners to negotiate tricky compromises and political wins (and who made gaffes at the dinner table). We also see the drawbacks of not having a coordinated food policy in the US, and its vast—and sometimes unexpected—consequences. Food for thought. —Lindsay Powers, Amazon Editor
Out this week, Elizabeth Strout's latest is a perfect way to start fall. “All of these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.” In a world where it’s easy to feel isolated and alone, Elizabeth Strout has the miraculous ability to make us feel not only seen, but understood. That is truer than ever in Tell Me Everything, which brings us back to beloved Crosby, Maine, and the endearing characters we’ve met before (if you haven’t met them yet, don’t worry; this is a lovely place to start). Strout is such a keen observer of life, and this book is full of empathy and wisdom and humor as we watch Bob Burgess and his circle of friends consider the value of their lives and those of the people around them. This is a novel about the beauty of connection—a timeless theme, but particularly in today’s world, essential. —Abby Abell, Amazon Editor
I started this new Netflix series adaptation over the weekend and ended up binge-watching it. Now, I really want to read the novel! A wealthy Nantucket power couple is about to host an extravagant wedding for one of their three sons when a body is found and everyone becomes a suspect. Secrets, betrayals, and cracks in the family’s patina of perfection start coming to the surface, and the result is juicy and suspenseful. The series has a star-studded cast: Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning, and Liev Schreiber, to name a few, so this week’s ‘what to read next’ recommendation is for a show to watch, and a book to read, no matter which order you put them in. —Seira Wilson, Amazon Editor
I’ve never been a chef, never experienced the pain of trying, unsuccessfully, to conceive for over a decade, never been divorced, and never experienced the sting of my family turning their backs on me because I didn’t live up to their expectations. But 42-year-old chef Jyoti has experienced all of the above. And, as she sits at a restaurant table on a piazza in Florence, she’s left to ponder, “Who was she now that everything she’d built in the first half of her life had been taken away?” With a smart, vibrant, relatable tip of the hat to Eat, Pray, Love, this good Indian girl uses food (I swear, no book, even a cookbook, has made me as hungry as this one—the descriptions of food, both Indian and Italian, are beyond tantalizing) to reckon with questions of identity, family, love, and culture, while discovering how to make staying true to herself part of starting over. Bellissima. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson made history when she became the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. And her memoir, which published last week, follows the time-honored tradition of memoirs by Supreme Court Justices. And, like her predecessors, this one has already become a bestseller. With honesty and care, Jackson details her childhood, struggling to maintain the impossible balance of working and motherhood, and her path to the highest court in America. My colleague Kami Tei has been raving about this book—and read it one sitting on a plane. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
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