You Obsessed Over “White Lotus”

Need a post-holiday pick-me-up or want a white-collar crime book

Hi friends,

Welcome to 2023! I hope your year is off to a great start.

My bookish goal for the year is to read more poetry and essay collections. I’ve always been a little intimidated by poetry, so if you have a recommendation for an accessible book of poems, send it my way. I’m also interested if you have any reading goals for the year. Are you doing any challenges, etc.? Let me know.

One programming note: Next week’s newsletter will come out on Tuesday due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And, now, what to read if…

You Binged “White Lotus”

You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa

I came down with a cold between Christmas and New Year’s and spent a day laying on the couch with the dog, binging the first season of “White Lotus,” HBO’s dramedy about the guests and staff at a luxury resort. (I haven’t finished the second season yet, so no spoilers please.) It combines a mystery — in both seasons the opening scenes establish someone is dead — with dark comedy and social satire.

For a similar vibe, grab You’re Invited by Amanda Jayatissa, a thriller that’s equal parts “White Lotus,” Gone Girl and Crazy Rich Asians. As the book opens, Amaya receives an invitation to her former best friend’s wedding. It’s odd because the two women haven’t spoken in five years. Even weirder, her once-BFF Kaavi is marrying Amaya’s ex, Spencer. Amaya vows to stop the wedding — even if it requires violence. She boards a plane from LA to Sri Lanka, seeing the wealthy community she fled from for the first time in years.

I read a lot of mystery/thrillers, so I’m pretty good at picking up on clues and guessing the ending. Amanda Jayatissa, though, had me predicting twists that turned out to be minor, while missing the big picture right in front of me. The setting — lush and humid — is intoxicating and enticing. I could not put it down.

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You Have the Post-Holiday Blues

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

The first few weeks of the year can be tough. It gets dark super early. We no longer have the holidays to look forward to. It’s cold. (All this plus the guilt of broken resolutions caused a UK travel agency to name the third Monday in January Blue Monday.)

If you’re feeling a little blah, consider reading Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Set in the run-up to Y2K, the book follows Lincoln, an “internet security officer” at a small newspaper. Lincoln thought his job would be to fight hackers and build unstoppable firewalls, instead, he’s tasked with reading all staffers’ emails to ensure employees aren’t wasting time. Lincoln gets caught up in the emails between Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder, two reporters at the paper, who send each other dozens of messages detailing their relationships, and all sorts of non-work nonsense.

The “security officer” knows he should tell the two women to knock off their personal correspondence, but he becomes caught up in their lives — and even thinks he’s falling in love with Beth.

This should be a creepy concept: a big-brother type becomes obsessed with a coworker he’s never met after reading all her email. Yet in Rowell’s hands, it’s quirky and charming. Lincoln comes off as a bit bumbling and overwhelmed, not a stalker, and Beth and Jennifer’s emails are so warm and funny that it’s easy to see how he grew, well, attached to them.

Reminder rec: I suggested The Switch last year for the post-holiday blahs.

You Like True Crime Where No One Dies

Retail Gangster by Gary Weiss

Retail Gangster is the absolutely bonkers story of Crazy Eddie, the scion of an electronics chain in 1970s New York, who also committed one of the biggest SEC frauds in history. Veteran investigative journalist Gary Weiss shows the rise and fall of Eddie Antar is a just as much a family saga as it is a tale of greed and white collar crime.

Crazy Eddie opened his first store (supported by his father) in 1973, using schemes such as not paying retail tax to undercut his competitors. He continued his family’s tradition of skimming profits from their businesses and keeping stockpiles of cash in the attic. The retailer really caught on when it began producing bizarre commercials claiming its prices were so low “they were insane.” 

Encouraged by his nephew/accountant, Eddie took his chain public and used the hidden profits to juice sales reports. Their actions drove up the stock price and made Eddie and his family members millionaires. The Antars came up with ways to trick auditors, manipulate their inventory and swindle Wall Street — until their complex family dynamics caused the house of cards to collapse.

I think my own family is sick of me talking about this book, but it has so many good nuggets in it! Crazy Eddie is one of those characters that would feel almost too much in fiction, but he was all too real.

Reminder rec: For more white-collar true crime, check out Jamie Bartlett's The Missing Cryptoqueen.

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Thanks for reading! I’m excited to have a guest rec from Olivia Crandall today. Olivia writes what if, a hilarious newsletter, where she recently featured haikus about made-for-TV holiday movies. (I love these.) Olivia also runs a bookstagram account.

She suggests Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman:

This book has a branding problem. What looks and sounds like some "gifts-for-grads" hustle culture nonsense is actually a stellar lil' leftist book about death, control, and attention. It's completely changed how I think about time and has me embracing my own finitude (i.e. eventual death) with a sense of freedom and strangeness. If you're looking for approachable radicalization or a permission slip to be a silly little freak while you're still alive, this book is IT. 

I’ll be back on Thursday with a Q&A featuring James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

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What to Read If is a free weekly book recommendation newsletter. Need a rec? Want to gush about a book? Reply to this email, leave a comment or find me on Twitter @elizabethheld.

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