Hut's Place

Weekly Words About New Books in

Independent Bookstores

March 17, 2024

New Hardcovers - A Bold Retelling of an American Classic, and Dishing the Dirt on

Tech Industry Bigwigs

James by Percival Everett. Although several of his novels, including The Trees, Dr. No, and Telephone, have been book prize finalists and indie bookstores have been big fans, Everett has flown slightly under the literary radar over the years. That changed last year when American Fiction - the Oscar-winning film adaptation of his book Erasure - became one of the year's most talked-about movies. Now, with his new novel, a nuanced and compassionate retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim, Everett appears poised for greater mainstream appreciation.

While many narrative set pieces of Mark Twain's classic remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s character is the star of this journey. Everett has given James (his preferred name in this story) agency and a depth of humanity that belie stereotypes presented by Twain. The result is a story that casts a radically new light on an American classic

Among the slew of sterling reviews is this one from The New Republic: "Everett's James isn't out to displace Twain's book. It's carrying out a bolder, more ingenuous, and, characteristic of its author, more subversive agenda...Everett endows Jim with greater dimension and nuance than his original creator did. Huckleberry Finn provided Jim with courage, dignity, and virtue. James bestows upon him the greater, if more complicated, privilege of full (if not yet unfettered) humanity."

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher. Award-winning journalist Swisher has spent much of her career reporting on the tech industry, beginning in 1997 when she was a San Francisco-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She has also written for The New York Times and is now the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway. Over the years, she developed a track record of breaking news from within the tech world; her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of "listening in the heating ducts."

So who better to dish the dirt on some of tech's most powerful players? Part memoir and part history, Burn Book is the inside story about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world - informed by her deep knowledge gleaned in part from interviews with all the big names, from Bezos to Gates, from Musk to Zuckerberg and many more. Not surprisingly, it's mostly not a pretty picture, but Swisher remains guardedly optimistic about tech's potential. That said, with the oncoming explosion of AI technology, she does hope the book's main takeaway will resonate. “Don’t get fooled a second time,” Swisher said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. “We need our government to make these (technology-industry) people accountable and that has not happened. We need them to understand consequences because they certainly haven’t done us right on the damaging parts of technology. We need to stop letting them off the hook.”

Brett Kavanaugh Accuser Tells Her Story

One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford. The woman who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault tells her remarkable story in a new memoir sure to make some waves - at least temporarily. Ford recounts the months she spent trying to get information into the right hands without exposing herself and her family to dangerous backlash. The book reveals riveting new details about the lead-up to her testimony and its overwhelming aftermath and describes how she continues to navigate her way out of the storm.

Kavanaugh is, of course, safely ensconced on the Supreme Court, so One Way Back isn't going to change the current status quo. But given the less-than-impactful response evoked by Ford's testimony, particularly from the almost-exclusively white male contingent of Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, this book serves as an important reminder that women remain second class citizens in a large swath of the political world. Ford's account of her gutsy and difficult decision - and its overall reception in an influential political arena - should be viewed, in my mind at least, as a motivating tool in the ongoing fight against men in power who seek to control women's bodily rights.

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WHY THE COLUMN?

Hi, I'm Hut Landon, and I'm a bookseller in an independent bookstore in BerkeIey, CA.

My goal here is to keep readers up to date about new books hitting the shelves, share what indie booksellers are recommending in their stores, and pass on occasional news about the book world.

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