You Still Think About that "Good Wife" Twist
Saw the "Minecraft" movie or are a joiner
Hi friends,
Hope your week is off to a good start. I have a few things to share before diving into this week’s recs:
I’m attending a book talk featuring NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly and
on Thursday evening at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center. If you’re in D.C. come join and say hi.My book club is hosting our third annual romance reader/author happy hour on May 9. You can register here. I hope to see you there.
I interviewed Deanna Raybourne about Kills Well With Others, the excellent sequel to Killers of a Certain Age, one of my favorites of the past few years for CrimeReads.
You can enter to win a Substack coaching session with me — and support an effort to fund a high school library in South Africa — with this raffle organized by Bianca Marais of
.
And, now, what to read if …
You Obsessed Over “The Good Wife”
The Art of Scandal by Regina Black
“The Good Wife,” CBS’s legal drama following Alicia Florrick, scorned wife of the Illinois Governor, ended in 2016 but I still think about it sometimes. This is partly because I adore its spinoff, “Elsbeth,” and because it pulled off a truly remarkable twist. If you want a read my book club described as “The Good Wife” meets Shonda Rhimes, you’ll want to add The Art of Scandal to your TBR.
When Rachel Abbott receives a sexy, explicit text from her husband Matt while at his perfectly planned fortieth birthday party, she knows almost immediately he meant to send it to someone else. After 13 years as a full-time political wife and without a college degree, Rachel knows the prenup she signed will leave her penniless following a divorce. She offers Matt, a rising political star in the Democratic party with a big Congressional race coming up, a deal. She’ll play the role of Black trophy wife to the white progressive politicians until the election in exchange for their house and a million dollars.
Shortly after making their agreement, Rachel meets Nathan Vasquez, a very lost twenty-six-year-old artist. Rachel pushes Nathan to start taking his art seriously; while he forces her to consider what she wants beyond being a political wife. As their connection grows stronger, they consider if a relationship is worth a scandal — and a million dollars.
I love a book with a lot of plot, and The Art of Scandal has A LOT going on. In her author’s note, Regina Black describes imprinting on soap operas and that shines through her book in the best way. Black’s second novel, August Lane, comes out this summer and I’m very excited to see how she builds on a solid debut.
You Saw the Minecraft Movie this Weekend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
“A Minecraft Movie,” a film based on the video game of the same name, hit movie theaters last week. If you’ve already seen it and want more video game goodness, check out Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. (I love this book so much I’m reupping a previous recommendation.)
After finishing Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, I laid on my couch, unable to do anything but think about the book I’d just completed. I’d been obsessing over it while reading and haven’t stopped since finishing — it’s that good.
The novel follows two childhood best friends, Samson Masur and Sadie Green, who reconnect after a chance encounter on a subway platform. Their meeting sparks a creative collaboration on a video game called Ichigo that becomes wildly successful, making Sam and Sadie wealthy and famous in the gaming world. Their friendship is both the defining feature of their lives and a complicated, ever-changing relationship.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about so many things: friendship, grief, love, the creative process and the importance of art — in all its forms — in our lives. I’m not a gamer (I’m the person at the party who watches people play Mario Kart) but Gabrielle Zevin reeled me in with the mechanics of building a game that people would find engrossing. Most importantly, though, Zevin made me love her characters. Sam, Sadie, their friends and families will stay with me for years.
You’re Looking for Where You Fit In
Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford
I recently told a friend that if I had a child in school, I would be a member of the PTA because I am a joiner. I’m in two book clubs, a weekly dance group, multiple alumnae clubs, a few Substack writer groups, etc. Comedian Maria Bamford, perhaps most well-known for her semi-autobiographical “Lady Dynamite” on Netflix, is also a joiner. Her memoir, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult documents her time in groups ranging from a Dale Carnegie course to Overeaters Anonymous.
Bamford has struggled with mental illness since developing an eating disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child. Those struggles made her feel even more isolated and weird in her Midwest town. It’s a feeling that followed her into adulthood and one that she tried to manage through near-obsessive group joining.
With raw honesty and humor, Bamford shares how Debtors Anonymous helped her manage her finances after a psychiatric hospitalization left her with thousands in medical debt and relying on Sex and Love Anonymous for guidance after a breakup left her lost.
Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult made me laugh and cry (warning: there’s a particularly devastating dog death described) and consider my own time as a joiner. As Kathy Sexton put it in Booklist, “In her signature oddball style, [Bamford] honestly and hilariously discusses all…while offering some weighty (yet somehow still funny) analysis of mental health stigma, our broken health care system, and those that take advantage of people in genuine need of help. Those who love Maria Bamford will love this, and those who don’t might by the end.”
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hi. Thank you for your article. It made me think about "The Good Wife", which I very much enjoyed, even though at one point, towards the last episodes I felt it was losing its hold on me. I also loved "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow": I am not a gamer either, but I appreciated some games in the past and always felt they had the "dignity of Art" (with a capital A). I don't mean to sound pompous, but the novel very much stresses the point, while telling the life and sorrows of the characters, and the complexity and dedication to their work.
I LOVED Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult