You Hope Scientology Comes Up on the Top Gun Press Tour

Need a twisty thriller or want to learn more about the witch trials

Hi Friends,

Welcome to May. I hope you celebrated Independent Bookstore Day this weekend. I made a trip to East City Bookshop, where I bought Marrying the Ketchups at Emilie Sommer’s recommendation and The Old Woman With the Knife, a buzzy book about a 65-year-old female assassin.

Did you grab anything from an Indie this weekend? Let me know!

And, now, what to read if …

You Want Tom Cruise to Get Asked About Scientology

Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

The press tour for Top Gun: Maverick is heating up, so expect to see Tom Cruise on your TV and computer screen a lot over the next month. Don’t expect the world’s most famous Scientologist to face questions about allegations of abuse in his church, though. During previous publicity campaigns, Cruise’s publicity team prohibited questions about Scientology and will likely do so again. (Elisabeth Moss, another celebrity Scientologist, did just talk about her religion with The New Yorker.)

If you want to know more about Cruise’s relationship with the church — or Scientology in general — Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear is your book. Drawing on thousands of pages of archival research and more than 200 interviews with current and former Scientologists, the veteran journalist documents Scientology’s tenets, its leaders, its attacks on critics, its abuse of members and its relationship with celebrities, including Cruise and John Travolta. The church’s current leader, David Miscavige (whose wife Shelly hasn’t been seen in years), has made supporting Cruise a top priority. Scientology leaders selected a girlfriend for the mega-star after his divorce from Nicole Kidman and even provided low-paid house staff for him.

Going Clear’s underlying question is one I find fascinating: When is a church a religion and when is it a cult? It’s a compelling, well-researched read about a secretive organization with far more power than its size would suggest.

Reminder rec: Amanda Montell’s Cultish examines the way language used by cult leaders, including Scientologists, keeps their followers from questioning beliefs.

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You’re Ready to Be a Member of The Bad Decisions Book Club

Like A Sister by Kellye Garrett*

I think the phrase Bad Decision Book Club was coined by the team at Smart Bitches Trashy Book (a fabulous romance site) to describe the feeling of reading when you should be sleeping, cleaning, doing homework, etc. Like A Sister, Kellye Garrett’s new thriller, is a book that will keep you up all night reading.

Like A Sister follows Lena Scott, a grad student at Columbia, as she attempts to prove the death of her half-sister Desiree was murder — not an overdose. Even though Lena hasn’t spoken to Desiree in two years, after a falling out over Desiree’s drug use, she’s convinced the police are ignoring evidence. Lena’s investigation takes her into her reality-tv star sister’s world and forces her to reconcile with her estranged hip hop mogul father.

Kellye Garrett is a former TV writer who currently works in the entertainment industry, and excels at bringing that world to life. My favorite part of the novel is Lena’s voice. She bounces back and forth between finding clues and commenting on her favorite Real Housewives franchises. Fans of Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells series will find a lot to love about Like A Sister.

If you need extra incentive to read it, I recently interviewed Kellye and will be publishing a Q&A featuring her in the coming weeks.

Bonus recommendations: Like A Sister is one of ten “slump-busting” books I recommended for Time Magazine(!) last week.

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You Haven’t Thought About the Witch Trials Since High School

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

The legacy of the witch trial lives on. Just a few weeks ago, the Scottish first minister issued a formal apology to the 4,000 people — mostly women — accused of violating the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736. While witch hunts took place across Europe (and in the U.S.), historians estimate Scotland’s execution rate was five times the European average.

Rivka Galchen’s novel transports readers to a small town in 1618 Germany, where Katharina Kepler, mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler, is accused of being a witch. Katharina is suspicious for many reasons — she’s lived a longer life than most villagers, she’s a woman managing her own household, and she brews medical concoctions. When one neighbor accuses her, long-time friends fearful of being on the wrong side start to level allegations against Katharina as well. To correct the record, the illiterate woman recounts her saga to her neighbor, Simon, who writes the narrative.

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch is a smart and funny examination of a real historical occurrence (Katharina was really accused of witchcraft while her son studied planetary motion) that resonates in our current moment. As Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles wrote, “Late in the novel, all the most bizarre accusations are enumerated in a list that could pass for Renaissance Twitter — a reminder that our era didn’t invent misinformation; we just made it travel faster.” It’s one of those books that will trick you into thinking, combining wit and plot with well-done social commentary.

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That’s it for me this week. You can catch up on last week’s recs here and read my Q&A with Parnassus’ books Sarah Arnold here.

*I received a free copy of Like A Sister from Libro.fm in exchange for an honest review.

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