HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Tom Lake: Ann Patchett

2. Fourth Wing: Rebecca Yarros

3. The Exchange: John Grisham

4.The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: James McBride

5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Gabrielle Zevin

6. Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus

7. The Fraud: Zadie Smith

8. Roman Stories: Jhumpa Lahiri, Todd Portnowitz (Transl.)

9. Lady Tan’s Circle of Women: Lisa See

10. The Secret: Lee Child, Andrew Child

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Woman in Me: Britney Spears

2. The Creative Act: A Way of Being: Rick Rubin

3. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon: Michael Lewis

4. Elon Musk: Walter Isaacson

5. Be Seen: Find Your Voice. Build Your Brand. Live Your Dream.: Jen Gottlieb

6. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen: David Brooks

7. Enough: Cassidy Hutchinson

8.The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder: David Grann

9. Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir: Werner Herzog

10. Being Henry: The Fonz … and Beyond: Henry Winkler

MASS MARKET

1. Elvis and Me: Priscilla Presley, Sandra Harmon

2. Animal Farm: George Orwell

3. Dune: Frank Herbert

4. Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories: Oscar Wilde

6. American Gods: Neil Gaiman

7. Jurassic Park: Michael Crichton

8. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams

9. In the Company of Witches: Auralee Wallace

10. Hiroshima: John Hersey

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Trust: Hernan Diaz

2. A Court of Thorns and Roses: Sarah J. Maas

3. The Way Forward: Yung Pueblo

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: Taylor Jenkins Reid

5. The Thursday Murder Club: Richard Osman

6. All the Light We Cannot See: Anthony Doerr

7. The Shards: Bret Easton Ellis

8. The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho

9. The Cat Who Saved Books: Sosuke Natsukawa

10. Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology: Shane Hawk (Ed.), Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Ed.)

“This is for people (ages) three to 93. Clearly children are going to love it because it’s vibrant, it’s colorful, and it’s beautiful. But because of the ubiquity of the Seuss stories throughout the years, parents and grandparents, anyone who grew up with those stories will enjoy it,” said Jonathan Sanford, chief operating officer of Kilburn Live, co-producers of The Dr. Seuss Experience. Kilburn Live is also the company behind The World of Barbie interactive attraction, which ran in Santa Monica earlier this year.

The immersive Dr. Seuss theatrical pop-up opens on Friday, Nov. 10 at Santa Monica Place and runs through the end of the year.

It’s made up of nine different spaces inspired by different Dr. Seuss books and guests can walk through through areas that were created straight out of the pages of the iconic children’s books.

“Each room is a take on the book with the central theme of that book being highlighted,” he said.

The walk-thru will include characters and landscapes from books like “The Cat in the Hat,” “Horton Hears a Who!,” “The Lorax” and others.

In the “Cat in the Hat” room, guests will meet the mischievous cat and the fish, the lone voice of reason, as they are pulled into the story.

“You will go into the room that is full of mess and disorganization and disarray and the fish from the book will be telling people ‘No, no, no, don’t do that,’ whereas the cat, and we have a live performer, is telling you to make a mess,” Sanford explained.

And get ready for a challenge in the “The Sneetches” room since that is an interactive mirror maze, while in “The Lorax” room people will walk through the Truffula Trees where kids can hop on swings and meet the Lorax, too.

People will also need to pay attention as they walk through a field of waist-high flowers in the “Horton Hears a Who!” room.

“The idea is that you’re listening to hear the Whos on those flowers. And several flowers actually do have sounds and if you listen carefully you will hear them,” he said.

Besides the walk-thru of the books, people will also see a Dr. Seuss art sculpture, a Dr. Seuss Museum with original artwork and books, along with a reading theater for guests to listen to Dr. Seuss stories.

The Dr. Seuss Experience

When: Various time slots starting at 10 a.m. Wednesdays-Sundays through Jan. 31, 2024

Where: Santa Monica Place, 395 Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica

Tickets: $31-$37 at losangeles.experienceseuss.com

Now Los Angeles-based author Deanne Stillman shines a light into a little-known corner of this tale with “American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and his Mother,” publishing Nov. 7 from Melville House. 

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Stillman is best known for her evocative nonfiction that explores brutal histories in the West, with such titles as “Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines and the Mojave,” “Mustang,” “Desert Reckoning” and “Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship Between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill.”

“American Confidential” continues Stillman’s oeuvre exploring the dark side of the American psyche. It delves into the troubled life of a man who, she argues, was the prototype of the disturbed “lone gunman” behind current mass shootings. But it also examines the peculiar and powerful dynamic between Oswald and his mother, Marguerite, who seemed consumed by a need to matter and was fueled by resentment toward society.  

Stillman says she has been “reading and thinking about” the JFK assassination for years, and waded through thousands of pages of conspiracy coverage and testimony before investigative commissions to “find things that were of interest to me regarding Oswald’s family coming from family members themselves. That’s where the keys are buried and revelations are to be found.”

Recently, I emailed with Stillman, whom I have known since “Twentynine Palms” entered the zeitgeist in the ’00s. Here’s our exchange, edited for clarity and space: 

Q. Why does this event continue to capture our collective imagination?

Oswald was like Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar, or even Pontius Pilate, who ordered Christ’s killing. Killing JFK was a betrayal of tremendous magnitude, not that Oswald knew Kennedy or was in his orbit, like the others, but it was an act of unfathomable treachery, a shot in the heart of the country, it shattered all manner of checks and balances. 

It has also led to a wave of conspiracy theories without end – and given that the government was lying at the time about Vietnam and many other things, that was understandable – but this ongoing conspiracy madness regarding any consequential thing that happens is now destabilizing the country. When it comes to Oswald, Norman Mailer, whose book “Oswald’s Tale” informed mine, has said that people couldn’t believe that a figure who mattered little, a cipher like Oswald, could take down JFK, a man of great stature and value. This guy? You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, this guy.

In my view, there was what I call an inadvertent “conspiracy of one,” formed by Lee and his mother together, in a desperate and inadvertent campaign to matter. So in the end, Oswald is Travis Bickle [the main character in the movie “Taxi Driver”], posing with his rifle for a Polaroid taken by his wife, essentially saying, “You talkin’ to me? Ma, do you see me now?”

Q. As you note in the book, it is thought that the assassination of JFK has been written about more than any other single day in history, including more than a thousand books and innumerable essays and articles. There have only been a few that concentrated on Oswald and his mother’s unique and seemingly toxic relationship. What more did you feel needed to be uncovered?

Actually, there’s just one that’s about Oswald and his mother Marguerite, not counting mine, and that’s called “A Mother in History” by Jean Stafford and like most of the other major books on the JFK assassination, it came out decades ago. It was foundational to “American Confidential,” and just one of two of the many about the assassination written by women, not counting mine. 

What is missing from all of these books is a placement of the Oswalds in a deep cultural context, in the way that I like to look at things. For instance, buried in most of the coverage is the information that Marguerite Oswald’s father was a streetcar conductor in New Orleans. What streetcar exactly? I started to wonder and as I looked into this thread – and bear in mind that we’re talking about Lee’s grandfather – I realized that for various reasons, he was probably a conductor on the Desire line, immortalized by the Tennessee Williams play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” And then I started thinking about how that echoed in the Oswalds’ life. The play is about a family of little means brutalized by Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando in the movie) and the more I thought about this, the more I knew that there were parallels to what was going on between Lee and his wife, the beatings and emotional violence, as I recount in my book, who lived in shabby apartments in New Orleans and elsewhere. 

There was also the fact that Lee loved riding the subway while he and his mother lived in the Bronx. He carried maps and marked out routes and spent a lot of time riding those rails. I suggest that this was possibly a way of connecting with his grandfather, who died before Lee was born; most likely, he had heard tales of his service on the Desire line, which went right past their house.

Also, I realized that Marguerite had grown up during the Depression – something that I haven’t seen explored elsewhere – and in particular, during the time of Huey Long, the populist demagogue who was governor of Louisiana, a smarter precursor of Donald Trump. His famous slogan was “Every man a king, every woman a queen,” and that was all about the fact that many in the country were destitute. 

Marguerite herself worked a series of menial jobs and was a single mother with three sons. One of her jobs was as a greeter for the Fort Worth Welcome Wagon in the 1950s. I placed her in such a scene, recreating what this task entailed and the desperation of a woman who would never be welcomed anywhere – and she knew it. Her class resentment festered over the years and she passed it on to Lee, who defected to the “worker’s paradise” of Russia, then saw that workers were being exploited there as well, and returned with a deep need to take down the king. And this was JFK. The focus on conspiracies in most other coverage has led people far afield from this central truth about the Oswald family.

 Q. What other realizations did you have about Lee while researching this book?

In my view, Lee foretold the mass shooters of today. [“Taxi Driver” director] Martin Scorsese recently said that nowadays, there are many Travis Bickles. This is what I say in my book. In a way, it all started with Oswald; the famous image of him with his rifle is not unlike Bickle in front of the mirror with his. It should be noted that Artie Bremer, who tried to assassinate Alabama governor George Wallace in 1972, cited Oswald in his diaries, and he was the inspiration for Travis Bickle. Since then, some of today’s mass shooters have also referenced Oswald, and many now pose for selfies with their weapons just before they go on a rampage or stream it live.  

Q. Another recent book, “The Final Witness” by Paul Landis, suggests Oswald was indeed part of a conspiracy. Does that matter to you? 

Yes, it does. It will be interesting to see if this new book by a former Secret Service agent, which throws “the magic bullet” theory into question results in a new appraisal of what happened. But I think what we know for a fact still points to Oswald as the lone assassin. After killing JFK and fleeing, he killed a cop who confronted him in the streets, and then – and this isn’t something that is often talked about – he tried to kill one of the cops who was trying to arrest him in a movie theatre where he was hiding. Had he succeeded, it would have been his third murder of the day. All of that speaks for itself and certainly is not the behavior of an innocent man. 

Q. Throughout the book, you allow yourself to imagine dialogue and what people might have been thinking. Can you talk about the role you feel a writer’s imagination has in reporting nonfiction? 

I bring speculation into all of my books, as well as elements of fiction, such as how people are shaped by interior and exterior landscapes. Sometimes fiction is the only way to tell the truth, especially when the moment-to-moment facts about a particular scene aren’t known. I often imagine scenes involving my characters, as if they are in a play, which they are. In this story, such scenes are informed by how Lee and Marguerite talked, which I knew from reading many accounts including first-person statements to investigators and conversations with those around them. Place is also an element, as it always is in my work. Here we have New Orleans, Fort Worth, the Bronx, and Dallas where Oswald and his mother lived. I think they moved about 22 times by the time Oswald was 17. I wanted to take a look at how certain locations informed Lee’s life, and this hasn’t been written about elsewhere. Fort Worth – its slogan “Where the West Begins” – is a key element here. 

Q. What do you hope readers take away from “American Confidential”?

I never second-guess readers, but I would like people to stop dividing the question of gun violence in this country into one or another answer. We need to talk about what goes on in families and pathologies that are created and what happens when unfettered access to guns is thrown into the mix. We are now at an impasse – and we have just had another mass shooting.

Stillman will be in conversation with journalist Tom Teicholz at Book Soup in West Hollywood on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m.

Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

I recommend different books according to the occasion, but I often find myself recommending Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred” as an introduction to her work. It’s a fantasy story with horror elements, although she is best known for writing science fiction. But it truly answers the question: What would it have been like to go back and forth in time to the antebellum slavery era?

Truly horrifying, but also insightful.

Q. What are you reading now?

I have a couple more short stories to finish in the anthology Jordan Peele helped curate called “Out There Screaming.” It’s so good that I really don’t want it to end!

Q. How do you decide what to read next?

I hear a lot of buzz about books on social media, so once I’ve heard enough raves, I run over to grab the audiobook.

Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

The earliest true impact of a book was Alex Haley’s “Roots,” which I read when I was 11. In some ways, that might be the book that has had the MOST impact on me overall, given how often I use historical fiction as a tool for teaching as well as horror. I read “Roots” and watched the miniseries, and soon after I did a school project called “My Own Roots” that my father drew illustrations for, based on an incident from our true history. Here’s a blog post about it.

Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?

I have not yet read Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys,” which, like my new novel “The Reformatory,” is set at a fictionalized version of the Dozier School for Boys. I started to read the first page, but there was an immediate reference to Boot Hill, where my great-uncle Robert Stephens was buried, and I haven’t yet been able to go on. It felt very personal, and I expect the story is probably sad.

Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind?

Gloria Naylor’s “Mama Day” was electrifying to me because it centered a Black woman protagonist in a story of the metaphysical. I’d never experienced that blending in a story, and it really helped me better understand that I could write stories closer to my own experiences. Up until that point, the “canon” in my creative writing studies had steered me toward writing non-genre stories about white male characters having epiphanies. So “Mama Day” was completely eye-opening about a different way literature could look and feel.

I can’t think of a book I read that specifically felt exclusionary: I may have started books like those many times, but I do not finish or remember them.

Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading? 

I love the way Nnedi Okorafor uses grief and elements of science fiction in her short story “Dark Home” in “Out There Screaming.”

Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?

The late L.A. Banks always had GREAT book covers with her protagonist Damali Richards, a vampire huntress, in books like “Minion” and “The Awakening.” She was so far ahead of her time! Those Black women were fierce and stylish, and they were appearing long before some other publishers were willing to put Black women on their book covers.

Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?

I love, love, love audiobooks! The vast majority of my reading is on audio, since I can listen to audio while I’m walking, doing the dishes and driving. Robin Miles is my all-time favorite narrator, although I’m very curious to hear the audiobook for “The Reformatory” just released featuring Joniece Abbott-Pratt.

Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?

Although I primarily write horror, the majority of my reading used to be comprised of so-called “literary” fiction or historical fiction, especially by Black authors. But lately, there is so much high-quality horror from so many different kinds of writers that horror is now 80 percent of my reading.

Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?

Some of my favorite books are newer horror novels: “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones. “The Spite House” by Johnny Compton. And “Jackal” by Erin E. Adams.

Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?

I want to catch up on “A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James, which is in my queue. And I can’t wait to read “All the Sinners Bleed” by S.A. Cosby. I’ll also read anything Attica Locke has coming up.

Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

So many, but I’ll really start with my parents, the late Patricia Stephens Due and my 89-year-old father, John Due. My father was ALWAYS either reading or writing in my memory, so he set a great example as a reader. And my mother was sure to stock our house with encyclopedias, Black history comic books, and classics so we would have rich reading lives at home. She also made sure we had our library cards.

Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?

The cover or plot will catch my attention, but I can usually tell from the first page whether or not a book has characters with depth or enough psychological realism to convince me that the story is actually happening and I can forget I’m reading a book. All these years later, I remember a line from Stephen King’s “The Shining,” when Jack Torrance thinks of the hotel manager as an “officious little prick.” And I still remember how he wrote that the cat, Church, in “Pet Sematary,” walked with a “lurch.” And I often cite how Walter Mosley described a refrigerator handle so well in one of his novels that it brought the entire kitchen to life. Sometimes there is a kind of specificity of language that is entirely immersive.

Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share? 

Once, I was reading a novelette called “The Devil in America,” which is free online and it’s a horror story told in a fractured, nonlinear way that kept me off-balance from the start. And an early reference to Arthur McDuffie, a motorcyclist beaten to death by Miami Police in my youth, outright shocked me, since I’ve rarely heard him mentioned outside of Miami.

I was sitting outside with my computer, engrossed with this story, when a branch from the bushes behind me brushed the back of my neck…and I SCREAMED.

I’m a horror writer myself, and even as a reader I rarely feel the kind of “jump scare” from a movie theater, but I often chuckle when I remember that moment.

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

I almost stopped writing “The Reformatory” when I heard that “The Nickel Boys” would be published. Colson Whitehead is one of my favorite writers, I knew it would be impactful (it won a Pulitzer!) and I didn’t think there would be room left for another novel fictionalizing the Dozier school. Luckily, my family and my agent encouraged me to keep writing.

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The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE

• • •

Next on ‘Bookish’

The next installment is Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. as authors Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, Tess Gerritsen and David Ulin join host Sandra Tsing Loh and Samantha Dunn to talk about books. Sign up for free now.

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• Dive into all of our books coverage

And now the duo, along with producer Nicky Birch, are approaching the podcast’s 200th episode later this month. When smartphones have no shortage of bad news to deliver, Backlisted’s episodes about ready-to-be-rediscovered titles can feel like a balm to readers and devoted listeners.

“If you enjoy reading, you’ll probably want to hang out with the people we like talking to because the common interest is, fundamentally, shared enthusiasm,” says Miller, an author of several books who cohosts the twice-monthly show with Mitchinson, who is the co-founder of Unbound, the crowdfunded publishing house that originally bankrolled the podcast. “So if you want to hear people who love reading talking about reading in a way they hope communicates that love of reading, join us.”

Related: Sign up for our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

Miller, who does deep reading and research to prepare for episodes, recalls how he and Mitchinson miscalculated what the gig would entail. “It won’t be that much work because, you know, me and Johnny are both pretty well-read,” he remembers thinking. “How hard can it be?”

“We’ll have read them all,” Mitchinson chimes in, mocking their initial naivete. 

“Very foolish,” Miller laughs, shaking his head in mock shame. “Hubris, in fact! Eight years of paying for that hubris.” 

The opening pages

When we meet up across an ocean and several time zones on Zoom, it’s a lovely Southern California morning here and a dark, chilly Sunday evening in the U.K. where each resides. Mitchinson, who has an impressive beard, a love for English village life and a warm, reassuring manner, is nursing a cold after hosting an Unbound event at the London Literature Festival for its bestseller, “42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams,” that featured appearances by Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry, Caitlin Moran and others. 

Despite this, he and Miller, whose books include the memoir “The Year of Reading Dangerously,” repeatedly postpone their dinners to discuss the show for two hours without complaint or lack of enthusiasm. If you’re a fan of the show, which I am, it was a delight.

The podcast, they tell me, had been Mitchinson’s idea. With experience in bookselling, publishing, and television, he understood that the industry focused all its time, energy and money on the latest thing. 

So he pitched Miller the idea of doing the opposite. 

“I’d been carrying around this idea, ‘Why is it that all the books podcasts are about new books?’” says Mitchinson, who approached Miller, a former bookseller himself, after seeing him do a performance based on “The Year of Reading Dangerously.’

After “several significant lunches,” jokes Miller, they had a plan. A very simple plan.

“I can remember us saying, ‘Well, we don’t want to clutter it up too much. We don’t need a massively sophisticated idea,’” recalls Miller. “Is it just old books?”

Reader, it was just old books.

“One of the delightful surprises of making the show for all this time is that the concept didn’t need to be any higher than that,” says Miller.

“Our listeners are often people who just want to feel there are others out there in the world who feel as passionate as they do about what you can get out of reading,” says Miller. “It’s finding new good stuff to read. It’s really not a high concept.”

Turning 200

If you’re a reader and haven’t listened to the podcast yet, well, you’re fortunate to have nearly 200 episodes ahead of you. The show is made for book lovers by book lovers, and so it has pretty much everything one would want in it: intelligence, humor, and lots of book recommendations. As well, they advocate on behalf of books that may be challenging or require greater effort to get into. 

“We’re both believers that actually most books — nearly all books — have something to recommend them. The idea that ‘Life is too short for bad books’? Hey, guess what? There are no bad books,” says Miller. “‘The book didn’t grab me, quote-unquote?’ Well, no, that’s not the book’s job. It’s your job to grab the book. You’ve got it the wrong way around. You will get out what you put in.”

The spark generated by the two hosts was immediately apparent — the first episode in November 2015 was intended as a test run, but the discussion of J.L. Carr’s “A Month in the Country” went so well they ended up releasing it.

“It wouldn’t work if John and I didn’t have a rapport, and that rapport is just one of those very lucky things. If we’d recorded those 45 minutes and stumbled over one another and not found one another either insightful or amusing, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you today,” says Miller. “We feel very lucky.”

“We had a clear idea  of the kind of books we wanted to talk about,” agrees Mitchinson. “We tried it and it worked, so we kept doing it. We hadn’t researched or focus-grouped what would work.”

“In a sense, we began with the perfect one and we’ve been trying to work our way back ever since,” says Miller.

That philosophy extends to the sister podcast Locklisted, which is a twice-monthly podcast for contributors to the show’s Patreon that they launched during the pandemic. Along with producer Birch, who both Miller and Mitchinson praise as the integral third member of the endeavor, they discuss not only books but music, movies, TV and more.

“I love books, but I don’t just love books,” says Miller. “I love music and it’s such a buzz for me to talk to people and share with them this latest record I found or TV thing I’ve found.”

“For me, Locklisted is always fun … we’re narrowcasting with Locklisted to quite a small, enthusiastic group of people,” says Mitchinson. “The truth is that, when we’re doing our job well, we’re pursuing our own interests. That’s what people want us to do. They want us to find stuff that we like.”

Profiles encouraged

New Backlisted listeners might be shocked to find that the hosts aren’t arguing about the merits of the books or the other’s opinions. They aren’t arguing at all. They listen to each other and their guests and respond with insightful, intelligent comments. 

“One of the things I’m most proud of with Backlisted is that we manage to be funny, I hope, and bring out the humor in the discussions without dumbing down. John and I both have felt for many years, Why should serious discussion preclude enjoyment?” says Miller.

Backlisted has focused on lost classics, lesser-known works by well-known authors, out-of-print gems and occasionally, an idiosyncratic favorite (such as “Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius” by Terrance Dicks, which was a terrific read when I tracked it down). 

The authors they’ve discussed include the well-known — Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, Willa Cather, Raymond Chandler — as well as those less familiar, such as Rosemary Tonks, Lore Segal, Elizabeth Jenkins and many more. 

As well, the guests include authors, educators, publishers and podcasters, such as Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, musician Billy Bragg, librarian and author Nancy Pearl and Weston International Award winner Robert Mcfarlane among them.

The show has even influenced the publishing world, spurring Tonks’ works back into print as well as drumming up interest in books like “All the Devils Are Here” by David Seabrook and “Haunts of the Black Masseur” by Charles Sprawson (not to mention Miller’s enthusiasm for Anita Brookner, which has without a doubt raised the late writer’s profile and sales, and Mitchinson’s regular support for a range of nature writing).

Never-ending stories

But at the heart of it all, the podcast is an enjoyable hour with smart people having an informed conversation about books. And that takes work.

“I don’t think I can just turn up and pontificate on the subject of Kurt Vonnegut without having read more than one book by him. So it’s kind of a mixture of fear and conscientiousness. I don’t want to talk rubbish; I want to know what I’m talking about because if I know what I’m talking about, it will make a better show,” says Miller, who credits Birch’s editing ability for keeping the conversational flow tight.

“It’s sort of a paradox that at times you feel almost overprepared — you’ve read too much — and there’s so much you want to say and so much you want to get in there, but actually, you have to kind of hold back and let go,” Mitchinson says.

Miller says you can feel it when it’s a good episode.

“You know when something happens in the room,” says Miller, recalling the episode devoted to the novel “Riddley Walker” with Max Porter and Una McCormack. “I can remember looking at John and basically going, ‘This is fantastic.’ It wasn’t down to us. It was down to the book, the guests, a live audience on that occasion, all creating something really special in that moment and thinking, ‘Oh, wow, brilliant, and it’s being recorded.’”

“You can’t really force that. All you can do is turn up every couple of weeks and sometimes it just crackles and it happens,” says Miller.

As for the podcast’s milestone 200th episode, they’re working on it.

“How can you sum up 200 episodes of something that you’ve been doing for eight years? Well, we don’t know. But we’ll figure it out,” says Mitchinson, then adds with a smile. “Is it completely pinned down? No, it is not.”

“People say, ‘Hey… do you worry about running out?’” says Mitchinson, incredulous at the question. “Do we worry about running out of great works of literature? Uh, no.”

They’re both clear that they have no plans to stop any time soon. There’s still so much to read and discuss.

“If we stop enjoying it — when it becomes work — we just won’t do it. We’ll figure out something else to do,” says Mitchinson.

“But it hasn’t happened yet,” says Miller.

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Exchange: John Grisham

2. Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus

3. Tom Lake: Ann Patchett

4. Let Us Descend: Jesmyn Ward

5. Demon Copperhead: Barbara Kingsolver

6. The Secret: Lee Child, Andrew Child

7. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: James McBride

8. Roman Stories: Jhumpa Lahiri, Todd Portnowitz (Transl.)

9. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Gabrielle Zevin

10. Fourth Wing: Rebecca Yarros

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Woman in Me: Britney Spears

2. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen: David Brooks

3. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism: Rachel Maddow

4. The Creative Act: A Way of Being: Rick Rubin

5. Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things: Adam Grant

6. Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life: Arnold Schwarzenegger

7. Romney: A Reckoning: McKay Coppins

8. Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir: Werner Herzog

9. Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America: Heather Cox Richardson

10. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon: Michael Lewis

MASS MARKET

1. Animal Farm: George Orwell

2. The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger

3. American Gods: Neil Gaiman

4. Macbeth: William Shakespeare

5. And Then There Were None: Agatha Christie

6. Night Shift: Stephen King

7. Elvis and Me: Priscilla Presley, Sandra Harmon

8. Dune Messiah: Frank Herbert

9. The Name of the Wind: Patrick Rothfuss

10. Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses: Sarah J. Maas

2. Trust: Hernan Diaz

3. Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology: Shane Hawk (Ed.), Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Ed.)

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: Taylor Jenkins Reid

5. The Thursday Murder Club: Richard Osman

6. A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara

7. The Midnight Library: Matt Haig

8. A Court of Frost and Starlight: Sarah J. Maas

9. Circe: Madeline Miller

10. The Silent Patient: Alex Michaelides

Saturday’s one-day festival in Twentynine Palms had a book fair, author signings and panel discussions on such topics as crime fiction in the Mojave Desert, Western writer Louis L’Amour and the challenges facing independent bookstores.

That latter panel had one of my favorite moments.

During the Q&A, a man wondered if the small booksellers could give him a fair, nonjudgmental response to his internal conflicts about buying books online from Amazon instead of from them.

Bookseller Jean-Paul Garnier of Space Cowboy Books replied tersely: “I can give you a two-sentence answer. If you shop locally, your money stays in the community. If you shop on the Big A, your money leaves the community and goes to the richest man in the world.”

The man did not follow up.

A session about UFOs in the desert was, not surprisingly, the best attended.

An audience of 70 heard about musician Gram Parsons’ lost science fiction film “Saturation 70,” the subject of an upcoming book by Chris Campion, and from a couple who talked about their personal encounters, plural, with spacecraft.

Leslie Shaw said she had seen fast-traveling “white balls” in the desert sky in 2005 and again in 2022, “moving the way they move, not a banked turn.” Her husband, Stephen Shaw, said he’d “been experiencing stuff since the age of 3,” including visits by entities that “have followed me to six different addresses.”

Moderator Paul Cullum said of the Shaws’ tome “Who They Are: And What They’re Up To”: “I can’t do justice to the theme of your book because it is very complex.”

But he summarized it by saying that the couple believes aliens are living underground in caverns, that the aliens are sanctioned by the federal government and that they met with presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

“They only met with Eisenhower,” Leslie corrected him. “They didn’t meet with Truman.”

The aliens’ loss, I’m sure.

I only went into this much detail because in my line of work, you can never go wrong writing about UFOs.

The festival drew some notable desert writers, among them Tod Goldberg, Deanne Stillman, Ivy Pochoda, Kim Stringfellow and Claire Vaye Watkins.

The first panel was cheekily titled “Where the Hell is Twentynine Palms?” I’ll try to come back to that angle in an upcoming desert dispatch.

In the meantime, that the Desert Book Festival existed at all is somewhat remarkable.

“It’s like a very dusty L.A. Times Festival of Books,” joked Ruth Nolan, the poet and prose writer. She added: “I’ve lived here my whole life and I never thought I would see something like this here.”

Co-organizer Patrick Zuchowicki said the 278 who attended and the 36 authors seemed pleased, that social media buzz was positive and that downtown had noticeably more foot traffic.

Zuchowicki and his wife, Francoise Lazard, know how to stage events. Hourly book signings took place in the courtyard behind their store, Corner 62, with the seven panels and a book fair across the street at the city’s new Community Center.

(The center’s basketball court was not the coziest place for author panels, but the bleacher seating for the audience was kind of fun.)

The couple is so gung-ho for the Desert Book Festival, they were already planning a second, two-day festival for Nov. 8-9, 2024 before this first festival happened.

“I’m happy, I’m happy,” Zuchowicki told me toward the end of the day Saturday. “I think it’s a good basis for the next one.”

Audiobooks (or ‘books’)

“Does an audiobook count as ‘reading’?” was the provocative headline on Cati Porter’s Inlandia Literary Journeys column in our Sunday editions. Her answer was yes. Mine would be too. We are both, as it turns out, belated converts to audiobooks.

As I’ve meant for some time to write a column on the subject, I’ll consider this the prompt to do so. Email me at dallen@scng.com with your thoughts, yay or nay, on whether audiobooks count as reading and why or why not. Let the microchips fall where they may.

Airplane book

Ontario International Airport is an unlikely venue for a book signing. Yet what’s called The ONT Author Series launches — or takes flight? — on Thursday, Nov. 2 as former USC and NFL linebacker Devon Kennard signs his investment book “It All Add$ Up” from 10 a.m. to noon at Terminal 4’s Gate 407.

If you’re willing to use the ONT+ program for a digital visitor pass and pay for parking, you can attend too. Still, this is probably more geared to travelers who need reading material.

It’s too bad Cormac McCarthy died or he could sign his novel “The Passenger.”

Chin music

Curtis Chin spoke to Cal Poly Pomona students about his new book, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir.” It’s about growing up Asian and gay in Detroit in the 1970s and ’80s around his family’s multi-generational restaurant, Chung’s Chinese, which lasted from 1940 to 2000.

“My family’s been in Detroit since the 1880s, longer than Ford Motor Co. and Motown Records,” Chin told students (and one visiting columnist) in the University Library on Oct. 26. “My great-great-grandfather moved from Canton, China to Canton, Ohio before realizing there were no Chinese people there.”

Afterward I asked Chin what he’d learned in a Chinese restaurant.

“People always say ‘don’t talk to strangers.’ My parents thought the opposite,” Chin told me. “My parents would talk to customers. If someone had a particularly interesting job, my dad would call the six of us over to talk to him: ‘What’s your job, what do you do, and’” — Chin emphasized the next part with a laugh — “‘how much does it pay?’”

brIEfly

When Orlando Davidson spoke about his detective novel “Baseline Road” at the Claremont Library on Oct. 14, he drew nearly 50 people — one of whom proved light-fingered. Sometime during Davidson’s interactions at his signing table, his cell phone vanished. The phone was sheepishly returned by an absent-minded attendee, who was — of all things — a retired cop. This was the twist ending I didn’t see coming.

David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, straightforwardly. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.

It was during his teenage years growing up in Malaysia that author Tan Twan Eng discovered “The Letter” and told himself he’d write about it one day. 

“I was intrigued by the fact Maugham based the story on a murder trial which had taken place in Kuala Lumpur, where I was living,” Eng said. “The trial happened more than 100 years ago today, and I just found it interesting that nobody I knew seemed to know about it.”

Related: Sign up for our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

Eng uses “The Letter” and its writer, Maugham, as a real-life anchor for his latest work of historical fiction, “The House of Doors,” out from Bloomsbury. 

Maugham is a part-time narrator in the book, which fills in the details of his visit to Penang in the early 1920s (which inspired “The Casuarina Tree”), his interactions with British colonial society and his identity as a not-quite-out queer man in the time after Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for gross indecency. 

He is also a confessor of sorts to the book’s other narrator, Lesley Hamlyn, a (fictional) friend of Ethel’s who feels so stifled by society that she finds an outlet in secretly supporting famed real-life Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen. As the two narrators become friends and grow closer, Lesley slowly reveals more of the events behind the Proudlock case.

In this tale of fact blended with fiction, Eng explores racial privilege, the politics of love and marriage and the conventions that shackled people even at the furthest edges of the British Empire. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What led you to land on W. Somerset Maugham, a real person, as one of the main characters?

With “The House of Doors,” I was, in many ways, trying to do a reverse engineering process. I wanted to explore how Maugham came to write “The Letter.” How did he hear about the story? And how much did he transform the story from its origins? So he had to be there; he had to be one of the main characters. 

I found him fascinating. I did a lot of research on him, and I found that he lived a long life. He was almost 100 years old when he died. When he first started traveling in the early 1900s, he was traveling on steamships. Towards the end of his life, when he traveled to Japan, he flew on a jet plane. So he’s seen a huge span of our modern history. I felt that he would make an interesting observer of events as they happened.

Q. How did you do the research for this book? Were there any texts that influenced you?

For Maugham’s character, I think I read almost every biography about him, as well as all of his short stories and his novels. I also watched a lot of YouTube videos of him talking. I wanted to catch how he sounded and how he acted.

Researching the trial itself was more difficult because not much was written about it, and what there was might not be reliable. So in the end, I tracked down the actual transcripts from the trial. I had to look everywhere for them. The trial took place in Kuala Lumpur, but for some strange reason, the Malaysian archives didn’t have the transcripts. Eventually, I found them in Singapore. The problem was that the quality and standards of court reporting 100 years ago was quite patchy and uneven, with many gaps, so I really had to reconstruct everything. Thankfully, I used to be a lawyer, so that helped … but I still had to fill in a lot of the gaps myself.

When researching Sun Yat Sen, I found maybe two or three books written in English, and I don’t read Chinese, so it was quite difficult. I was fortunate that in Penang, the building that served as his headquarters is today a little museum dedicated to him. So that was useful because I could see the building, I could walk in there and I could imagine what he said. The people running the museum were quite knowledgeable about Sun Yat Sen, so I talked to them for a bit to find out what he was like.

One of the other origins of “The House of Doors,” is a short story by Colm Tóibín. It was called “Silence” and it’s in an anthology called “The Empty Family.” It’s about a real-life woman named Lady Gregory who sits next to Henry James at a dinner party and tells him her story, or variations of it, about publishing her poetry under her lover’s name, because as a woman, her work could not be published. She hoped that something of what she told Henry James would inspire him to write a story about her. When I read that, years ago, I thought, “What a sad, sad story about a woman who did not want to be erased by history, and yet had no avenues to leave a mark on the world.” 

Q. Can you talk a bit about the marriages and affairs in the book? They drive so much of the plot.

After I read through the draft, I thought, “Oh my goodness, this book is about a very angry woman who was enraged by the constraints that society puts on her.” But I realized that you can’t write about a woman 100 years ago without pushing against the limitations society imposed upon them of being a wife and mother. That’s one of the reasons why Lesley is so angry and dissatisfied, because she’s a very intelligent woman, but there’s no outlet for her to express her abilities and her creativity. Sun Yat Sen is sort of an outlet for her to enlarge her world. 

Husbands had more freedom, especially to have affairs outside of marriage, but only to a point. William Somerset Maugham had a daughter with his wife, but was in a long-term relationship with his lover Gerald Haxton. After the Oscar Wilde trials, Maugham felt more compelled to maintain that front because he was terrified that what happened to Wilde would happen to him as well. Wilde’s punishment was a warning to all other gay people at the time.

Q. What draws you to writing historical fiction in particular? 

I’ve always been interested in history. I find it’s not a collection of facts or data, but stories. For a writer, that’s a rich mine of resources and ideas. It’s also fascinating for me to compare the past with what I know today – I’m interested in how the past still influences and messes up the present.

That’s how history works, isn’t it? Everything’s connected. All you have to do is pick up one end of it, then you discover this whole chain and links that lead you to keep digging. It’s fascinating to see what you can find along the way.

Q. What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

I hope they will read “The Letter,” because I wanted both works to mirror each other. The slightest change in how you perceive the events of “The Letter” would affect your understanding of “The House of Doors,” which may shift your perception again, and it would go back and forth until the reader becomes a bit confused as to what is real and what is fiction. That’s the effect I was hoping to achieve – so if people haven’t read “The Letter” before reading this book, I hope they do after.

That’s not even getting into all the free digital materials they offer on apps like Libby, Kanopy and hoopla:  audiobooks, e-books, streaming music and movies, newspapers and more.

What does your local branch have to offer? Stop by, ask and get yourself a card if you don’t have one. (And if you’re feeling it, let the library team know you appreciate them, especially these days when librarians – librarians! – could use a reminder that most people love and appreciate the work they do.)

The other day I learned that not only could I check out a book from a local branch, but I could buy a slice of pepperoni pizza, too. Last Friday, Oct. 20, the Altadena Library District put a book vending machine out in front of the local Prime Pizza.

“The addition of these vending machines is the next step in our plan to expand our footprint and reach areas of the community where we didn’t have a presence before,” Nikki Winslow, director for the Altadena Library District, told me via email. “They will help us provide continuity of service as we move toward closing and renovating our buildings over the next few years. They will help free up our staff to plan events and partner with local organizations.

“But the best part, our patrons can access library materials – like books, movies, hotspots and more – at their own convenience, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

These vending machines aren’t a new thing; libraries in Rancho Cucamonga, Anaheim, Fullerton and other places have had them. I suppose I could have checked one of those out, but as we’ve already ascertained, this one is pizza-adjacent.

So I gave it a test run. It’s simple to use (though the afternoon sun made it a little hard to read the screen) and only requires a library card. It’s got a varied but not unlimited supply of books; I took a chance on “The Reading Adventure” (having not carefully read its subhead: “100 Books to Check Out Before You’re 12” but it was still a fine choice). The book came out easily, and I didn’t have to shake the machine the way you do when you can’t get your bag of chips to drop down.

Maybe it seems a little gimmicky, but it was also fun and will get more use during the planned renovations Winslow mentioned. Plus, you can imagine these modern wonders would be welcome by parks or schools or playgrounds (not all of us want to play tetherball!).

Or, sure, just keep putting them near pizza parlors. I got a slice and an order for home and left thinking: Maybe, in the spirit of reciprocity, library branches could start serving pizza? We can dream.

Have you used one of these machines? What did you think about them? And real talk: Are there better foods to eat while reading?

• • •

Pressing business

On Saturday, my favorite letterpress printer and I headed down to the International Printing Museum in Carson for its 15th Annual Printers Fair and, if you’ve never been, it’s a fun event with hands-on demonstrations, artists’ booths and food and drinks. There are more cards and posters than books, but you could also get some on-the-spot poetry typed up for you from The Typin’ Pint or buy yourself some printing equipment if you had a hankering for a pica stick, an empty type case or several thousand pounds of printing press (depending on what’s on hand).

Meeting and talking to the range of creators is also pretty great, and we checked out books and broadsides from Jessica Spring at Springtide Press, H.A. Peters of Society of Hermits and Carolee Campbell of Ninja Press (some of whom I’d met before through my wife, full disclosure). I’m also always drawn to the colorful work of Melissa & James Buchanan, who are the folks behind The Little Friends of Print Making, who I interviewed in 2017 at Comic-Con, and the legendary posters of Hatch Show Print.

I also met and got a demonstration on how to make prints with a tiny desktop press from Alex Yun of Altadena’s AXIllustration. We looked into the Museum’s Book Arts Institute, which offers classes in letterpress printing, bookbinding and paper arts. Inside, the shop cat jumped up onto a sink and meowed at me to turn on the faucet so she could get a drink, so, all in all, it was a successful day.

Check out printmuseum.org for more information about upcoming events.

Reader Mail

I’ve noticed that a frequent interview question you ask is, “Do you have any favorite book covers?” Have you asked readers? Here are mine from this year and one from last: “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi; “The Vegan” by Andrew Lipstein; “The Shamshine Blind” by Paz Pardo; and “Olga Dies Dreaming” by Xochitl Gonzalez – Eileen Ferris

Hi Erik. Glad to be on The Book Pages. To reply to your query about what I have been reading, it’s “Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, and “The Secret Pilgrim” by John Le Carré, the three concurrently. Well, you asked. – Jimmy Sukeshwala

I am currently reading “The Woods” by Harlan Coben, and I will then be moving on to “The Hiding Place” by C.J. Tudor. … I have been seeking out mysteries, crime thrillers and other books with great plot points to get lost in. When I was small, I took a little longer, I think, to learn how to read. Once I got it down well, I was off and running. I read various genres of books constantly. By 11, I was reading classics like “A Tale of Two Cities” and other Dickens books. It was a lovely way to drop down into another world. I still read at 49 years old for the very same reason. – Beth

And finally, Peter Coogan wrote in to let me know that the story I did on Gerry Fialka and the Finnegans Wake reading group reaching the final page after 28 years has traveled the world, ending up in outlets from Paris and Prague to Pretoria and Poznan, Poland.

Coogan, a longtime member of the group who first alerted me to it, also let me know that the group will be meeting again from 6-8 p.m. on November 7. Go to Fialka’s webpage for more info.

• • •

Read any good books – or seen any great covers – that you want to tell people about? Email me at epedersen@scng.com with “ERIK’S BOOK PAGES” in the subject line and I may include your comments in an upcoming newsletter.

And if you enjoy this free newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone who likes books or getting a digital subscription to support local coverage.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

‘House of Doors’ author Tan Twan Eng read ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ as a child

Born and raised in Malaysia, Tan Twan Eng is an internationally recognized writer of historical fiction. His latest book, “The House of Doors,” is just out from Bloomsbury. Contributor Diya Chacko talked to the author, and here he responds to the Book Pages Q&A.

Q. What was the first book that made an impression on you?

That would probably be “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” by D.H. Lawrence. I was seven or eight when I found it in a book sale. It was very cheap, because I could buy it with my pocket money. I was so proud. I showed it to my parents – and they were horrified. But they did end up letting me read it, and ask them questions if I didn’t understand something.

Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life?

I would say my parents, because of their hands-off attitude to what I was reading. They bought books for me, and there were always books lying around the house. I could read anything I wanted. If I saw something interesting, I could read it. I was lucky that I had parents who let me read anything I wanted. That’s one of the main reasons why I hate banned books and censorship. I find it repugnant.

My father was a banker, and never read any fiction. He would read textbooks on economics and banking, and he found that very enjoyable. I thought that was awful. My mother used to be a computer programmer in the early days, you know, when they had punch cards? She only started reading when I started making her read. I would get books that I thought she might be interested in, like family sagas, and I would tell her, “Come on, just read, read.”

Q. What are you reading now?

I am reading “Number9Dream” by David Mitchell, who wrote “Cloud Atlas.” This is one of his early books. I found it recently in a bookshop, and I realized I hadn’t read it, so I picked it up. He’s an excellent writer. He’s just so talented – I’m sick with jealousy, you know?

Q. Is there a book you’d recommend to others?

There’s this book called “Moon Tiger” by Penelope Lively which I tell everybody to read. She’s amazing; she should be more widely known. Excellent writing. I sometimes reread bits of this book when I just want something to cleanse my mind, to see what good writing is like.

There’s one more that I read last year, that I think people should read: Alison MacLeod’s “Tenderness” It’s a book about D.H. Lawrence and how he came to write “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and what happened afterwards with the obscenity trial. She’s a supremely talented writer; you must read it. It’s really an impressive achievement.

Bestsellers, books, authors and more

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“How to Say Babylon” author Safiya Sinclair describes how she found her voice. READ MORE

• • •

2023’s scariest books

Check out these 20 terrifying books and horror novels to read this Halloween. READ MORE

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Huntington Beach opts to empower community review board to vet children’s books. READ MORE

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The week’s bestsellers

The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE

• • •

Next on ‘Bookish’

The next installment is Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. as authors Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, Tess Gerritsen and David Ulin join host Sandra Tsing Loh and Samantha Dunn to talk about books. Sign up for free now.

• • •

• Sign up for The Book Pages
• Miss last week’s newsletter? Find past editions here
• Dive into all of our books coverage

The reviewers were, of course, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert; the film was of course, “This is Spinal Tap.” This being 1980s Billings, Montana, I had to wait a full calendar year to rent Spinal Tap on VHS, but there is no hyperbole when I say that five-minute TV review permanently altered my cultural awareness and future professional life.

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Screencrush editor Matt Singer’s new book “Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever” tells the duo’s story, from a disastrous 1975 public television debut through the show’s successful syndication years, a plethora of memorable David Letterman appearances, and a rotating cast of co-hosts after Siskel died of brain cancer in 1999 at the age of 53.

Ebert kept the show’s spirit alive, but in 2013, he too succumbed to cancer at the age of 70, his last days poignantly captured in the documentary “Life Itself.”

Singer spoke about the duo and the book. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. You’re a critic. What was your upbringing like in terms of watching movies?

I grew up in suburban Jersey and would go see whatever was playing because that was what kids did, but I wasn’t a budding cinephile or even a movie nerd as a kid. Comic books were my first love.

I don’t remember how I came across Siskel & Ebert — having watched countless hours now, I wish I knew specifically what my first episode was – but by the age of 13, I was obsessed. They were the gateway to me discovering beyond whatever was playing at the Freehold Multiplex. We didn’t have a cool theater, so I would go to Easy Video, which in my mind was massive, as big as a supermarket with all kinds of crazy sections. Siskel & Ebert didn’t just review new movies. They had video recommendations, so I rented whatever they discussed that week. The show was hugely important in developing my love of movies.

Q. That’s the same for me, and your book makes clear, we were not alone.

It was appointment television! And it wasn’t always easy to find. Once they were syndicated, the times slots seemed to shift every September, often later and later into the night. It was self-selecting in that way; you kind of had to earn it. But it also wasn’t a cool thing to be into. At middle school, kids were quoting “The Simpsons” and “Seinfeld,” so it felt like belonging to a secret club.

One of the joys of writing the book, and talking about it in public, is meeting so many Siskel & Ebert fans and coming to understand how so many of us who work in film or just love movies were hugely influenced by them. Maybe we could’ve been out on the playground discussing their humdinger of a disagreement over “Cop and a Half.”

Q. Siskel & Ebert were often accused of dumbing down film criticism. Do you think there was anything to the chastisement? 

In hindsight, the answer is obviously, no. If for no other reason than all of the incredible next-generation filmmakers, like Ramin Bahrani, who credit Siskel & Ebert as an inspiration to create a life for themselves in the movies. Even at the time though, the “dumbing down” argument was about the “thumbs-up” summary and not the show itself. Studios exploited positive thumbs in marketing campaigns and posters for sure, but if you watched Siskel & Ebert artfully and insightfully give their thoughts about a movie, you discovered new films that opened up powerful new worlds, or made you see your own in a different way altogether.

Q. Siskel & Ebert often get compared to a married couple, which seems facile. How do you see the duo?

They were not like a married couple. A marriage with that much yelling and arguing would definitely call for counseling and probably end in divorce. In the book, there’s an Ebert quote where he says their success was because they weren’t a team, they were individuals. I think seeing themselves in that way is the key to their relationship.

For a short while early on, the shows were scripted and it didn’t work. Roger and Gene wanted to be who they were, two hyper-competitive newspapermen who reveled in their hotly contested cinematic debates. They went from enemies to adversaries to friends to having a deep personal bond, but they were never best buddies, didn’t go out to eat after taping. They were thrown together, but what ultimately made them so successful for so long, is the authenticity of their relationship. The unique Siskel & Ebert chemistry never wavered.

Q. A major theme of the book is their competitiveness. By what metrics could they possibly decide who “won” a movie reviewer showdown? 

Theoretically, they could “keep score” by newspaper circulation, but nobody was subscribing to the Tribune or Sun-Times strictly for Gene or Roger. The competition, however they defined it, could have derailed everything. Instead, that combative energy fueled the show. If one or the other had been willing to acquiesce, or worse, give into the other’s viewpoint (which happened exactly once, Siskel changed his thumb from half-heartedly up to down after listening to Ebert’s thoughts on John Travolta’s “Broken Arrow”) it wouldn’t have worked. Even after they became close friends, they would still never budge an inch.

Q. When they united behind something they believed in they could make a difference. I watched a 1982 stand-alone episode, “Changing Attitudes Toward Homosexuality,” that was moving and ahead of its time.

They had power. And they used it. One of the most important Siskel & Ebert episodes is when they came out against colorization of black-and-white films. Using clips, they showed how the “laughable” process defiled classics like “It’s A Wonderful Life.” They didn’t tip-toe around it either, labeling the practice “vandalism” and “cultural butchery.” Their voices were enormous in killing colorization. Ted Turner ended up with a warehouse full of bastardized “Casablanca” tapes.

Q. One of the joys of reading your book in 2023 is going through the YouTube archives. A random 1984 episode features the Tom Hanks raunch-fest “Bachelor Party,” in which Siskel says, “You might recognize the guy from ‘Splash.’”

Watching old episodes, you do get the journalist’s first draft of movie history. Whatever people were talking about in any given week, in any given year, is what they discussed on Siskel & Ebert. In that particular episode, Siskel labels Tom Hanks a “poor man’s Bill Murray by way of Michael Keaton.”It wasn’t until “Big” that they really warmed up to the guy who became arguably the most beloved actor of our time.

Q. Having watched so many hours of Siskel & Ebert, did you find interesting wrinkles about Gene and Roger’s specific tastes in movies?

Broadly, their top criteria was defending filmmakers against interference, championing directors to let them make the movies they wanted to make and say what they wanted to say, even if they didn’t always necessarily agree with the viewpoint.

Specifically, I was fascinated by how often Siskel gave sci-fi movies a thumbs-down. Ebert loved sci-fi, he created his own fanzine as a kid, but Gene had a major hangup with dark dystopianism. He wanted more movies that allowed for optimism about where we’re headed. He hated baked-in cynicism and pessimism about the future.

As for Roger, I was struck by how much he loved dog movies, but after reading the 2009 essay “Blackie Come Home,” it made sense. It goes back to his growing up and losing his beloved Blackie, a wake-the-neighbors dog that his parents got rid of when he was away visiting relatives. I’m sure there are a few thumbs-down in there, but the beautiful essay explains why he gave a thumbs-up to “Benji, the Hunted.” Gene didn’t share Roger’s love for dog pictures. He loathed that movie. Oh boy, did they ever go at one another over it.