Camille Bordas’ new novel, “The Material,” mines both of those meanings to deliver an entertaining and perceptive story that somehow manages to bring us close to half a dozen (or more) characters in a novel where the action spans half of a single day.

Bordas brings this ensemble together under the umbrella of the first fine arts masters program for stand-up comedy at an unidentified downtown Chicago university. We are introduced to the faculty: Kruger, a successful comic who has recently made a turn as a dramatic actor in a Meryl Streep movie, and Donna, the only woman on the faculty, with a long and successful career as a touring comic who has never managed to take the next step to stardom.

The students include Olivia, who is suffused with ambition, and whose self-loathing translates to a sardonic misanthropy, and also Artie, a sweet-natured young man without an apparent edge who worries he is too good-looking for comedy, a fear his classmates and professors are only too eager to reinforce. Artie has a crush on Olivia. Olivia has no time for crushes.

There is also Murray Reinhardt, a super successful older comedian who is scheduled to join the faculty as a visitor, but is also going through a period of scandal that may make him toxic.

The stand-up MFA is clearly modeled on graduate creative writing programs — a milieu I know well — where the intersection of ambition, unrealized talent, jealousy and insecurity can lead to significant angst and self-doubt. Making the students stand-ups rather than writers turns the volume on these emotions to eleven, as the students see part of their work rise above their peers. There’s a reason why a comedian who has done well is said to have “killed.”

There is very little plot — the primary locus of action moves from a student workshop in the afternoon to a performance at the Empty Bottle in the evening — but Bordas still manages to create story tension simultaneously around everyone’s fate as a performer (their comedic material), and what is revealed about the characters (the material of one’s life) through incredibly fluid use of close third person narration that manages to move seamlessly from character to character even inside the same scene.

Every character has something weighing on their minds. Kruger’s father, who is living in a retirement home in the suburbs, has recently fired a gun in a bar, an incident Kruger has paid to cover up. Olivia’s twin, Sally, is on her way to Chicago that evening, and Olivia fears her sister will throw an emotional wrench in her plans to impress Murray Reinhardt. Reinhardt is dealing with the fallout of his scandals and lamenting the separation from his ex-wife and son Augie, who is a law student in Chicago, and the reason he has accepted the teaching position. Artie’s brother is a heroin addict who has gone missing… again.

“The Material” is primarily a novel of questions: What is the line between comedy and not comedy? How do we figure out what lives we’re supposed to live? What is the right way to love another person?

Is improv comedy an abomination as compared to the art form of stand-up?

What I ultimately appreciated about the book is that Bordas does not seek answers to these questions. Instead, they are probed, held up for scrutiny through different angles and different characters.

Because how could there be answers to these questions? In truth, our lives will always serve us more material, at least until our inevitable ends.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder” by David Grann
2. “Seven Steeples” by Sara Baume
3. “The Hunter” by Tana French
4. “Chenneville” by Paulette Jiles
5. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason

— Mike C., Chicago

This is a gritty one, but I think Mike can handle it: “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy.

1. “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid
2. “Roman Stories” by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. “The President is Missing” by James Patterson and Bill Clinton
4. “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge
5. “Boundary Waters” by William Kent Krueger

— Carol B., Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin

It’s been a while since I recommended one of my recent favorites, so that’s what I’m doing for Carol: “Mercury Pictures Presents” by Anthony Marra.

1. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
2. “The Last List of Mabel Beaumont” by Laura Pearson
3. “One Year After You” by Shari Low
4. “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah
5. “The Measure of a Man” by Gene Getz

— Suzanne O., Mt. Prospect

For Suzanne, I’m recommending the understated romance and deep feeling of Kent Haruf’s “Our Souls at Night.”

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As I’ve written in the past, while it is popular to recommend “beach reads” at this time of year, I’m not a huge fan of reading on the beach. Too hot, too sandy, too many other people. No, for me, summer is hammock reading season. Hammock reading season calls for a little different type of book from a typical “beach read.” A beach read needs to be a propulsive page-turner that requires less direct attention to extract their pleasures.

A hammock read hits a quieter, more contemplative tone, the kind of book you look up from and think about as you sway gently in the breeze, maybe with a little dog — or in my case, two dogs — curled up at your side.

Here’s a mix of new and old books that will serve you well if you want to while away an entire day in the hammock.

“The Lager Queen of Minnesota” by J. Ryan Stradal: Stradal is particularly great at walking the line of sentiment without falling into saccharine sentimentality and breaking the spell. A novel about two sisters separated by circumstance and unsettled feelings that ultimately surrounds us with the experience of what it means to negotiate what we wish for in life when those wishes are not necessarily in the world’s plans. You’ll also learn a lot about beer, which seems right for summertime.

“Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance” by Alison Espach: Not necessarily a light read given that it’s about our narrator (Sally) dealing with the aftermath of a sudden tragedy from her childhood, but the humor with which Espach infuses Sally turns her into excellent company as she moves through different eras of her life, all of them both marked by and distinct from the tragedy of the past.

“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman: Yes, another book where death is central, but this book, about a group of septuagenarians in a rural U.K. retirement village who take to solving crimes, is what they call a hoot. Osman’s scenes crackle with expert comic timing and he manages to sketch in fully rounded characters even while unspooling an involving mystery. We’re up to four novels in the series now, so if you like the first one, you might have a good chunk of your summer reading figured out.

“Vacationland” by John Hodgman: Hodgman has had a long career as a television (“The Daily Show”) and podcast (“Judge John Hodgman”) humorist, as well as the author of several very funny books. “Vacationland” details Hodgman’s struggles with both middle age, and the beaches of Maine. A great choice for those of us who are suspicious of beaches, and have given in to our essential nature as hammock-bound readers.

“Falling” by T.J. Newman: OK, in the spirit of beach reads, I’m including one true, highly plotted, white-knuckle page-turner about a pilot, a flight attendant and the pilot’s wife (and mother of his children) trying to stop a terrorist attack against all odds. I never had any idea how the various plot dilemmas were going to be solved — maybe because sometimes the solutions seemed to appear out of thin air — but this is a real throwback thriller, reminiscent of 1970s action pulp novels. You’ll rip through it in a sitting.

My pile of hammock reading books looks like it would take me well into next year to get through, even with many hours per day in the hammock.

We all better get busy making sure we’re not too busy to read.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Straight Man” by Richard Russo
2. “Since We Fell” by Dennis Lehane
3. “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead
4. “We Begin at the End” by Chris Whitaker
5. “The Trading Game” by Gary Stevenson

— Tim M., Oak Park

For Tim, I’m recommending some classic crime/noir, “The Killer Inside Me” by Jim Thompson.

1. “Whalefall” by Daniel Kraus
2. “The Bandit Queens” by Parini Shroff
3. “The Book of Dreams” by Nina George
4. “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride
5. “The Phoenix Crown” by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang

— Linda R., Blue Island

I’m inspired by one of the authors on Tim’s list, but I’m going with a different book, “Empire Falls,” by Richard Russo.

1. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
2. “The Idea of You” by Robinne Lee
3. “Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
4. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
5. “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” by John Boyne

— Barbara B., Houston, Texas

“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi is a book with an ingenious structure telling a literal family story over eight generations, starting in Africa’s Gold Coast and winding its way to the present day. It really is a masterpiece that anyone should make time for, but it’s a particularly good fit for Barbara.

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Munro was a giant of contemporary literature. That’s what the Nobel, and a lifetime achievement citation from the Man Booker International award, and the three Governor’s General awards from her native Canada evidence. But it seems strange to think of an unassuming person who primarily wrote about people from the small south Ontario town she came from via the seemingly humble form of the short story as a giant. That the characterization is undeniably correct is a testament to her unique talent, and her persistent drive to look deeper into the lives of her characters.

Her first short story collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades” in 1968 won that year’s Governor’s General award (Canada’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize), announcing a writer who had arrived fully formed. Her early stories often explored the struggles of girls and young women trying to find a place in the world that seemed hostile to their desires. In the story, “Boys and Girls,” from “Dance of the Happy Shades,” the young narrator in the rural town endeavors to avoid the domestic life of her mother, but also learns that the male-dominated spaces can be hostile to someone with other dreams.

Munro’s early prose is lowkey and spare, moving inexorably to an epiphanic moment where both the character and the reader are often surprised by a sudden swell of emotion or insight.

Munro’s style remained perfectly controlled throughout her career, but over time, the palate of her technique expanded, particularly in her use of a third-person omniscient narration and temporal shifts that allowed her to peer into the minds and motives of any character at any time.

This is perhaps best evidenced by her most famous story, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” collected in 2001’s “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” and later adapted into the 2006 movie “Away from Her” starring Julie Christie as the central character Fiona.

The story opens by describing the home Fiona grew up in, where she lived when she first met her eventual husband Grant: “Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish.”

Notice the incredible control and economy in the technique that manages to establish facts about Fiona’s background, and to give us Grant’s perspective on this information. This omniscience allows Munro to cover lots of storytelling territory in a limited amount of space on the page, as well as to zoom into moments where she peers into her characters’ deepest selves.

“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” shoots forward 50 years and we come to know that Fiona’s mind is failing and she will be moving into a care home where Grant will continue to visit her, even though she has little sense of who she is. One day Grant arrives for his visit and understands that his wife appears to be in a relationship with a man living at the care home, and complications ensue.

It is a juicy set-up, ripe for dramatic events, but Munro’s style was to always complicate the situation at hand, to use her unfailing eye to reveal layers to her characters beyond the perception of just about any other writer. By the end, the reader is aswirl in the full range of the characters’ competing desires.

We will not see a writer of this caliber again.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” by Victor Hugo
2. “Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune” by Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
3. “Sutherland Springs: God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town” by Joe Holley
4, “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr
5. “A Thousand Ships” by Natalie Haynes

— Robert O., Chicago

For Robert, I’m recommending a powerful historical novel told in an ingenious fashion, “The Report” by Jessica Francis Kane.

1. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
2. “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese
3. “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett
4. “Billy Summers” by Stephen King
5. “Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany” by Stephen E. Ambrose

— Linus P., Chicago

For Linus, I’m recommending one of Richard Russo’s longer novels that allow for a lingering ride with his always sympathetic characters. The book is “Bridge of Sighs.”

1. “The Second Life of Mirielle West” by Amanda Skenandore
2. “The Great Divide” by Cristina Henriquez
3. “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson
4. “The Three Miss Margarets” by Louise Shaffer
5. American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy” by Bob Welch

— Barb R., Morris

I think Barb will be fascinated with Kate Moore’s “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women.”

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

I would compare her to Michael Jordan except that she also essentially invented the celebrity book club for the modern era, so Oprah Winfrey is more like James Naismith (the inventor of basketball) combined with Michael Jordan (the greatest player of all time).

Over the years, Winfrey has demonstrated the taste of a discerning reader who wants to feature books and authors that offer some challenges — Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead and Marilynne Robinson, for example — but also provide straight-up pleasure during the reading. For Oprah, books aren’t cultural medicine, they’re essential life sustenance.

Sure, she’s made some missteps (I’m thinking “American Dirt”), but even MJ missed some shots.

Since the end of her daily show, Winfrey now exists as a kind of emeritus figure, still weighing in with a new choice every so often, but not necessarily having the same cultural weight, and also not having nearly the same amount of juice to drive sales. Don’t get me wrong, if Winfrey anointed my book, I’d jump for joy higher than Jordan at the peak of his slam-dunk powers, but there was a time when she really could get an entire nation reading a book.

In her wake, two celebrity book club colossi have risen, Reese’s Book Club (Reese Witherspoon), and Read with Jenna (Jenna Bush Hager). I have taken it upon myself to tell you which one of them is the closest inheritor of the spirit of Oprah.

Reese’s Book Club kicked off in 2017, and similar to Oprah’s, primarily features fiction with the occasional memoir or self-help book (e.g., “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone” by Brene Brown). Her Sept. 2018 pick, “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, went on to sell more books than any other in the year 2019, and has sold more than 20 million copies, making it one of the most popular books of all time.

Multiple book club choices have been adapted for the screen through Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company, including Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere” and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones and the Six”, in addition to “Where the Crawdads Sing.”

That’s some Oprah-like power.

Read with Jenna started as a monthly feature on the Today Show in March 2019, and displays Bush Hager’s desire to frequently challenge the reader with some grittier literary reads, such as Elizabeth Wetmore’s “Valentine,” which is a powerful but wrenching emotional read about the aftermath of a brutal assault on a teen girl in a 1970s Texas oil field.

Bush Hager also occasionally elevates books without blockbuster expectations, such as Lee Cole’s “Groundskeeping,” a sweet coming-of-age novel about an adrift post-college kid. Another pick, “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar, was released as a paperback in the U.S., not the sign of a future bestseller.

Like Winfrey, Bush Hager also dips into classics like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History.” Read with Jenna, more so than Reese’s Book Club, feels like the books are being chosen by a passionate and engaged reader with very specific tastes.

To me, that sounds like Oprah.

In the end, these two celebrity book clubs demonstrate the incredible legacy of Oprah’s original book club. Witherspoon is more likely to hit on something that connects with the popular zeitgeist and moves mega copies.

Bush Hager is modeling what it’s like to be a reader who wants to share their favorites and provide a varied reading experience.

In the end, which flavor you prefer is up to you, as it should be.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones
2. “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande
3. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
4. “The Lindbergh Nanny” by Mariah Fredericks
5. “The Silent Sisters” by Robert Dugoni

— Barb Z., South Bend, Indiana

I think Sue Miller’s “The Lake Shore Limited” has the kind of drama that Barb is looking for.

1. “Great Circle” by Maggie Shipstead
2. “The Wind Knows My Name” by Isabel Allende
3. “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett
4. “Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano
5. “American Royals” by Katharine McGee

— Geri D., Chicago

For Geri, I’m recommending one of my favorite books from the Read with Jenna selections, “Infinite Country” by Patricia Engel.

1. “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2. “Dead Lions” by Mick Herron
3. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
4. “Isaac’s Storm” by Erik Larson
5. “The Bomber Mafia” by Malcolm Gladwell

— Dean T., Chicago

For Dean, a true classic of historical narrative storytelling, Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff.”

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

This sensation can feel a little mystical. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has read a book while simultaneously wondering where everything in the book could be coming from.

It’s been a frequent sensation for me when reading the novels and stories of Lydia Millet, a writer whom I’ve been reading for nearly 25 years, starting with her strange, satire from 1999 that now seems like it comes from a different world, “George Bush, Dark Prince of Love” in which the first Bush presidency is treated as a kind of erotica by the rather unhinged narrator.

Millet’s books often traffic in humor, but other than that, you never quite know what you’re going to get. Her Pulitzer Prize finalist story collection, “Love in Infant Monkeys” is a series of fantastical tales about celebrity encounters with non-human species. “Sweet Lamb of Heaven” is a chilling political thriller mixed with horror. “The Children’s Bible” takes on an almost mythic cast in telling the story of a group of children stranded by a storm on a vacation island, left to fend for themselves because the adults are so feckless. “Dinosaurs” is the story of a man who decides to walk nearly across the country and once he does so, he rebuilds his life while living next door to a family with glass walls in their house. Somehow it manages to be both heartwarming and menacing.

The bounds of Millet’s imagination seem limitless.

Millet has now gifted us with a new book from her unique and lively mind, a book of essays this time, “We Loved It All.” The book is significantly informed by Millet’s work at her day job at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving as much of the Earth and its species as possible.

“We Love It All” is an exploration of the world’s creatures, both animal and human, and it is a beautiful and sad book that is also profoundly uplifting and heartening. Each chapter is largely unstructured, jumping off from a thought — like how we appropriate animals for our commercial spokespeople — and allowing that thought to unfold in search of insights. Those insights come constantly.

Much of what Millet catalogs is what we have lost from the world, the creatures that used to roam the Earth but are now extinguished, often through the carelessness of man, as with the auk, a giant flightless bird. Millet writes about how the men tasked with capturing species for a collector came upon a breeding pair who looked, according to the men, “quite dignified.”

Millet writes “Despite the dignity, two of the men strangled the nesting pair, and a third smashed their egg under a boot.”

Millet mixes a clear cold gaze with great warmth without descending into sentiment or sentimentality. This makes the power of her observations of man’s swath of destruction of the natural world and our failure to appreciate its wonders all the more potent.

Toward the end of the book, Millet likens the writing she does now to a “form of prayer.”

“What could be more honest than a prayer?” she asks. “What’s more heartfelt than begging?”

She continues, “The truest language of all is a plea for mercy. You can pray to God, of course. But you can also pray to other people.”

Here then is the hope, the reminder along with the book’s title that in the end, we can choose each other, and in that choice, we choose love.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “We Are Too Many” by Hannah Pittard
2. “Burn It Down: Power, Complicity and a Call for Change in Hollywood” by Maureen Ryan
3. “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” by Jonathan Rosen
4. “My Search for Warren Harding” by Robert Plunket
5. “Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood” by Ed Zwick

— Sean G., Highwood

For Sean, I’m going to recommend a classic work of Hollywood fiction to go with those nonfiction books he’s been reading, “The Player” by Michael Tolkin.

1. “Harold” by Steven Wright
2. “Knife” by Salman Rushdie
3. “The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon
4. “Open Secrets” by Alice Munro
5. “How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life” by John Fahey

— Robert M., Chicago

Something tells me that the invention and wit of Kiese Laymon’s “Long Division” is a good match for Robert.

1. “The Hour I First Believed” by Wally Lamb
2. “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” by Lisa See
3. “The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride” by Joe Siple
4. “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
5. “The Women” by Kristin Hannah

— Leanne A., Park Ridge

“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout is not for the faint of heart, but it delivers such a satisfying emotional blow, that I have to recommend it to Leanne.

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

The focus on reviewing new books — and don’t get me wrong, the books I write about here are often new — is actually a little silly, given that a book’s age is not linked with its worth. Books more than a few months old are not like the carton of milk you forgot in the back of the fridge that turns into rotten sludge.

If I missed a book when it was published, but read it now, why shouldn’t I review it?

Perhaps you should take this preamble as my justification for writing about a book that was published in 2018, but in truth, talking about Joe Dunthorne’s “The Adulterants” requires no justification because regardless of when it was published, it’s a wonderful blend of humor and pathos that manages to balance those emotions better than anything I’ve read in recent memory.

“The Adulterants,” set in 2011, is the story of Ray Morris, a young married man with a pregnant spouse (the uniquely named Garthene) who wants nothing more than to be able to afford a miserable townhouse in his Swansea hometown.

Ray lacks ambition, he is flighty and plain-faced. He works as a tech writer churning out listicles about which electronic gewgaw consumers should buy. His life revolves around Garthene and a small circle of more charismatic friends. Other than his overwhelming (and sometimes overboard) love for Garthene and his unborn child, as the novel opens you wouldn’t think that Ray has much going for him, and then things suddenly get worse.

After being swept up in street protests while he and his friends were picnicking in the park, Ray becomes the (literal) face of anarchy, and we are subjected to a series of moments of self-sabotaging where the wrong move could not be clearer, and yet Ray seems to take this path every single time.

If you are wondering how a book described this way can entertain, much of the pleasure is in the snap and pace of Dunthorne’s scene work. The novel opens with Ray at a party without Garthene, who is working nights as a nurse. All of his thoughts appear to be with his absent wife, until the comely Marie invites him upstairs, and Ray (the idiot) finds himself sitting upright under the covers of the bed belonging to Marie and her handsome and strong husband Lee.

Lee arrives on the scene and things both expected and unexpected happen. That combination is a hallmark of the novel as Ray repeatedly self-sabotages, but the consequences are not always immediately apparent.

Some readers will not take to “The Adulterants” because Ray is “unlikable,” but I would like to know how we’ve come to equate being flawed and human with being “unlikable.” I don’t know that I liked Ray, but I thought he was very funny, and even (or especially) when he was about to do something that was not going to turn out well, deeply sympathetic.

Who among us is not like Ray, wishing we had more than we’ve been given, being uncertain about our own worth in the world, experiencing insecurity about the force of our own feelings for another and whether or not those feelings are returned in kind?

“The Adulterants” moves toward a conclusion that is not happy so much as real, and because of this is rather thrilling.

I bought “The Adulterants” well over a year ago after seeing it recommended on social media. It sat in my pile of unread books all that time. I’m glad an impulse caused me to pluck it out. You might check it out for yourself.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man” by David Von Drehle
2. “His and Hers” by Alice Feeney
3. “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests” by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
4. “Running Blind (Jack Reacher Book 4)” by Lee Child
5. “Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice” by Elle Cosimano

— Kevin K., Arlington Heights

Kevin is a great candidate for Lisa Lutz’s Spellman series, which starts with “The Spellman Files.”

1. “James” by Percival Everett
2. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
3. “Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson
4. “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
5. “All the Light You Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr

— Lisa P., Morton Grove

These are some of the most read literary novels of the last 10 or so years, so I’m going to go with one that is maybe not likely to be as known to Lisa: “Morningside Heights” by Joshua Henkin.

1. “Wittgenstein Jr” by Lars Iyer
2. “Brainwyrms” by Alison Rumfitt
3. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith
4. “So Much Blue” by Percival Everett
5. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

— Blain T., Madison, Wisconsin

For Blain, I need a book that’s going to be at least a little unusual and challenging. I’ve got it! “Subdivision” by J. Robert Lennon.

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

The show’s source material, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith, is one of my desert island books. The novel is a sui generis portrayal of a character without apparent conscience, but whom we nonetheless feel great attachment to. Other writers have been trying and failing to write Ripley-esque novels for generations.

Previous adaptations of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” such as the 1999 film starring Matt Damon as the titular character, have not necessarily been terrible, but they also have failed to truly capture the essence of the indelible character Highsmith put into the world.

“Ripley,” written and directed by Steven Zaillian, and starring Andrew Scott, demolished my skepticism. It is a stunning success in terms of transferring the spirit and impact of the book to the screen.

The chief challenge of filming Ripley’s story is that the novel is narrated by Ripley himself, giving readers insights into the mind and behaviors of a man who cares little for others. In his 1999 review of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Roger Ebert calls Damon’s Ripley a “monster,” which is true in the external sense, but is not how Ripley is experienced in the novels when events are rendered through Ripley’s point of view.

With the interiority of the novel form removed, providing the audience a deep understanding of Ripley is a monumental task.

One clear advantage over a two-hour movie is that “Ripley” the series unfolds over eight episodes, giving us a chance to establish greater intimacy with the character. There are numerous scenes where we’re asked to watch Ripley alone on the screen, and the stunning black and white cinematography and Zaillian’s painter-like framing of each scene prove immersive.

The atmosphere of the visuals and the extended time that’s allowed for unfolding Ripley’s trajectory draw us into a foreign and stylized world. We follow Tom Ripley from his rat-infested New York apartment, as he gets by on petty schemes, to Italy, where he hooks up with the trust fund dilettante Dickie Greenleaf, ostensibly to persuade him to return to the U.S. at the behest of Dickie’s father.

Tom quickly sees an opportunity in ingratiating himself with Dickie while claiming to Dickie’s father that he’s working for Dickie’s return. After years of knowing in the abstract that money is the key to life, Ripley sees up close what kind of life money allows for, and he will not be returning to his previous impoverished existence.

The combination of script and Scott’s performance results in the same effect as Highsmith’s first-person narration in the novel. We understand where this so-called “monster” is coming from, to the point where even his most terrible actions do not seem so monstrous.

Scott’s portrayal is an absolute marvel in its layering. Ripley the character is always performing for the people he’s interacting with, often awkwardly, even poorly at times early on as he is weird with Dickie and Dickie’s girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning).

But as Ripley familiarizes himself with the character he is becoming, he grows more and more comfortable in the milieu of the ultra-wealthy, and Scott’s performance grows with it. It is as if one mask is falling as another slips into place. Occasionally, sparked by the vestigial rage of his previous poverty, the mask slips — as in a scene where Ripley faces off with a police inspector — and the tension is delicious.

Many books are successfully adapted for the screen by altering the essence of the original to accommodate the different medium. In this case, Zaillian uses the unique properties of film to nail Highsmith’s original exactly.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” by Robert Dugoni
2. “The Storm We Made” by Vanessa Chan
3. “An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country” by David Finkel
4. “Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
5. “The Little Liar” by Mitch Albom

— Tricia K., Oak Lawn

I think Tricia will be well-served by Gail Honeyman’s “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.”

1. “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” by Walter Isaacson
2. “Killing Crazy Horse” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
3. “Holmes, Marple, and Poe” by James Patterson
4. “Total Control” by David Baldacci
5. “Suspect” by Scott Turow

— Mike P., DeKalb

I think Mike will enjoy the long and involving journey through Larry McMurtry’s western epic, “Lonesome Dove.”

1. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
2. “When She Was Good” by Philip Roth
3. “The Stories of John Cheever” by John Cheever
4. “Solo Faces” by James Salter
5. “The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray

— Sean M., Chicago

Sean’s list is a job for Walker Percy’s indelible novel of the search for meaning, “The Moviegoer.”

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I recall singing it in sixth-grade choir, and can even remember the opening lyrics:

Happiness is finding a pencil.
Pizza with sausage.
Telling the time.
Happiness is learning to whistle.
Tying your shoe for the very first time.

I wondered how closely Gopnik’s vision of happiness might track with the sensibilities of the crew from Peanuts.

Pretty closely, as it turns out.

Gopnik opens the book by asking, “What is happiness?” and suggesting that happiness is a pursuit, as in that key clause from our country’s Declaration of Independence. What that pursuit entails, and how we know if we might have arrived at the desired destination is the meat of the book, with Gopnik working from a personal moment of great happiness, when he locked himself in his teenage bedroom with a guitar and pursued the knowledge of a handful of rock ‘n’ roll chords from the Beatles songbook.

Gopnik declares that 50 years on he is “not much better” at the guitar than he was at the end of that first week, but also that the period of self-study in which he discovered some measure of the Beatles magic for himself became the “foundation for almost everything meaningful thing I’ve done in my life since.”

Gopnik draws a distinction between “accomplishment” and “achievement,” where accomplishment is rooted in an internal sense of having done something interesting and worthwhile, while achievement is rooted in external reward, having fulfilled the imperatives of the demands coming from an outside force.

Because I spent many years teaching writing, and remain significantly involved in education in regards to how we teach writing, I couldn’t help but think about how much of the experience of school has become focused on achievement over accomplishment, and the obvious detriment this has when it comes to our pursuit of happiness. Students must relentlessly achieve without the accompanying satisfaction of accomplishment. It’s not mysterious why students are more and more disengaged from school.

“All That Happiness Is” becomes a kind of call to respect the necessity and benefits of experiencing that sense of accomplishment and how once that happens, the work necessary to garner achievements comes more naturally. If you look at the lyrics to “Happiness,” you’ll see a similar sentiment. Finding meaning in what you accomplish is the key to happiness. The song ends with:

For happiness is anyone and anything at all
That’s loved by you.

Ultimately, to be happy, both Gopnik and the Peanuts chorus suggests, you have to gravitate towards that which truly fulfills you. I can relate. Even after a dozen years, I still get a kick out of the achievement of writing a column in my hometown newspaper.

But I get more pleasure out of the accomplishment of starting with a small notion – like the link between a song you remember from childhood, and the book you just read — and trying to follow that notion until I’ve discovered something for myself that I could in turn share with others. This is one of the most pleasurable things I do every week, which is why I never take a week off.

It took me maybe 20 minutes to read “All That Happiness Is,” not much of an achievement, but the full worth of a book isn’t in how long we took to read it, but in how long it lingers in our lives. In this case, Gopnik has accomplished much.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Bullet That Missed” by Richard Osman
2. “Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange
3. “Lakota Woman” by Mary Crow Dog
4. “Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red” by Harry Kemelman
5. “Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase” by Roger G. Kennedy

— Dixie D., Lincolnwood

For Dixie, I’m feeling some Geraldine Brooks, with the specific pick being “Horse.”

1. “Middlemarch” by George Eliot
2. “Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850” by Linda Colley
3. “The Eyes and the Impossible” by Dave Eggers
4. “The Edwardians” by Vita Sackville-West
5. “Voltaire in Love” by Nancy Freeman-Mitford

— Michal S., Chicago

For Michal I’m going with a novel that’s the first of a trilogy. If it connects, he can then keep going: “Fifth Business” by Robertson Davies.

1. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz
2. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
3. “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman
4. “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett
5. “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride

— Harriette E., Wheeling

Harriette is getting a recommendation for one of my favorite reads of the last few years, the deeply comforting “Search” by Michelle Huneven.

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Update: This story has been changed to correct the name of author Hernan Diaz.

The first book we read was a collection of short stories titled “Lost in the Funhouse” by John Barth. I opened the book to the first story, “Frame-Tale,” which had provided instructions for cutting a portion of the right margin from the book, and then twisting and pasting that portion of the page into an endless Möbius strip which read, “Once upon a time there was a story that began.”

(Read that sentence over and over again as though you’re following the Möbius and you will begin to experience a kind of hypnotic effect.)

Here was someone who thought of stories as primarily opportunities for play. I had never seen a writer do something like this before, and quite frankly, I found it thrilling. On April 2, John Barth, the author of “Lost in the Funhouse” along with dozens of other books including classics of — literature, “The Sot-Weed Factor” and “Giles Goat-Boy,” died at the age of 93.

Barth coined the term “literature of exhaustion” as a shorthand descriptor of writers like himself, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Jorge Luis Borges and other postmodernists who used their work to interrogate the nature of storytelling itself. For a time in the ’60s and ’70s, the postmodernists were giants. Barth won the National Book Award in 1973 for his novel, “Chimera.” Pynchon won the prize in 1974, and should have won the Pulitzer for “Gravity’s Rainbow,” as the book was unanimously endorsed by the judging panel, before it was rejected by the broader committee, resulting in no award that year.

In the ’60s and ’70s, Barthelme published hundreds of pieces in the New Yorker. Several stories from Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse” first appeared in Esquire before winding up collected in the book.

Today, it is difficult to find much of the DNA of these artists in the fiction that garners wide public attention. I say this not necessarily as a criticism — though the writers I’ve listed are among my all-time favorites — but as an observation. Even in the early ’90s when I was in college the energy of the postmodernists had begun to fade as evidenced by how a dedicated and voracious reader like yours truly had never been exposed to this kind of writing until winding up in a college course.

Barth often cited Scheherazade, the storyteller of “One Thousand and One Nights” as his chief inspiration. He wanted his work to be imbued with the kind of energy that was sufficient to forestall your own execution. This attitude resulted in works like 1966’s “Giles Goat-Boy” about a human boy raised as a goat who only comes to discover his humanity when he goes to “college,” which in the book is a stand-in for all of planet Earth.

Trying to explain the plot of the book is futile because the plot is not the point. “Giles Goat-Boy” is an attempt to embody all of humanity, our myths, our desires, our psychoses, and spin them into a tale that absorbs the reader.

Some called the novel genius, others trash, but what I most remember is that I’d never read anything like it, and probably haven’t since.

Rest in power, Mr. Barth. Your work is a gift to this reader, at least.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Mean Spirit” by Linda Hogan
2. “The Hearing Trumpet” by Leonora Carrington
3. “So Big” by Edna Ferber
4. “The Expendable Man” by Dorothy B. Hughes
5. “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel

— Ellen L., Chicago

Ellen is well acquainted with reissued classic novels from earlier times, which makes me think she’ll be able to track down a copy of W.M. Spackman’s “An Armful of Warm Girl.”

1. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
2. “The Last Green Valley” by Mark T. Sullivan
3. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann
4. “Fairy Tale” by Stephen King
5. “An Officer and a Spy” by Robert Harris

— Mark O., Indian Head Park

Lauren Beukes is sort of one of a kind as a writer of fantasy suspense, and I say that even when confronted with a list of books that contains Stephen King. The specific pick is “Broken Monsters.”

1. “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2. “The Zone of Interest” by Martin Amis
3. “Commandant of Auschwitz” by Rudolf Höss
4. “Man in the Holocene” by Max Frisch
5. “Danton’s Death” by Georg Büchner

— Tonia L., Chicago

For Tonia, I’m recommending a strange and mysterious novel by John Fowles, “The Magus.”

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

The book is “The Wig” by Charles Stevenson Wright, which I first read maybe a decade ago when I was dropping down a rabbit hole of post-war African American writers who had been briefly prominent but had not ultimately wound up in the literary canon in that manner of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, or somewhat later, Toni Morrison. I had read the works of another “forgotten” writer William Melvin Kelley (“A Different Drummer,” “Dem”) and had the fairly obvious epiphany that there must be more writers like this, daring experimentalists writing amazing books who had slipped from our collective grasp.

Wright published three novels in his lifetime, all between 1963 and 1973, “The Messenger” (1963), “The Wig” (1966), and “Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About” (1973). Wright lived until 2008, but never published after 1973 as he apparently struggled with alcoholism.

I’d forgotten about “The Wig” until it was recently featured in a New York Times story about the 22 funniest novels since the publication of “Catch-22” (1961), in which Times critic Dwight Garner, a Wright fan, chose “The Wig” as one of the entries. Garner has aptly described Wright as “Richard Pryor on paper.” “The Wig” hinges on an absurd premise, where a young Black man looking to make a splash in the white world in 1960’s New York City uses an entire jar of hair relaxer to create, in Garner’s words, “hair so resplendent, and later so vividly red” that the narrator believes he will be hailed as a genius.

“The Wig” is a book I flipped over when I read it, having found a copy of the out-of-print title in the library. It is antic and plotless. The narrator, who calls his hair “the wig” does not achieve fame and fortune, but his quixotic travails provide ample opportunity for Wright’s unique perspective on race and business in America, along with the business of race in America.

Reading “The Wig,” I couldn’t believe that it was out of print and I’d never heard of it before. It seemed like obvious genius to me, singular and special. And then I finished the book, returned it to the university library, and over time, let it slip.

There’s an obvious irony here as Wright himself is largely forgotten except by champions like Garner. Since I first read “The Wig” there has been another republishing of Wright’s three novels collected together in 2019, fronted by an appreciation from novelist and playwright Ishmael Reed, but even that looks to be out of print again.

What can I say? I read a lot of books, which means I’m always shoving one book out of my brain as another one arrives. Not having a copy of the book of my own, I didn’t have the visual aid on a shelf for my memory. I’m sure some can relate.

But also, Wright’s work is so singular that it’s not often that I’d be reminded of “The Wig” by reading someone else. Reed has some similarities, but he is a maximalist while Wright’s books are slim. Paul Beatty (“The Sellout”) has the same kind of antic humor, but his work is more sturdily plotted than Wright’s. Reading “The Wig” you have no idea what words are coming next.

Wonderful.

Since I’ve now acquired a very special first edition copy that will sit forever in a place of honor on my shelves, I will not forget this book again.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Wish List” by Ruby Hummingbird
2. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
3. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
4. “The Pecan Man” by Cassie Dandridge Selleck
5. “Sick Puppy” by Carl Hiaasen

— Nancy H., Lake Zurich

This mix of books makes me highly confident that Nancy will take to the work of Barbara Pym. The specific choice is “Some Tame Gazelle.”

1. “Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization” by Neil deGrasse Tyson
2. “The Radium Girls” by Kate Moore
3. “Angela Davis: An Autobiography” by Angela Davis
4. “Cinema Speculation” by Quentin Tarantino
5. “Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement” by John Lewis and Mike D’Orso

— Fran B., Chicago

For Fran, a book that is about both cinema and at least in parts, also the Civil Rights Movement: “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood” by Mark Harris.

1. “The Running Grave” by Robert Galbraith
2. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann
3. “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy
4. “The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill” by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
5. “The Night Watchman” by Louise Erdrich

— Bernadette S., Villa Park

I need a book with some intrigue for sure. How about “Saints in the River” by Ron Rash, which mixes drama and mystery in the small-town South.

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Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.