![\"6](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2.25_READING_LIST_WEB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vera, or Faith<\/p>\n
By Gary Shteyngart<\/p>\n
Judging by the chapter titles of Columbia writing professor Gary Shteyngart\u2019s latest novel<\/a>, the book\u2019s ten-year-old protagonist, Vera, has weighty responsibilities on her mind: \u201cShe had to survive recess,\u201d \u201cShe had to hatch a plan,\u201d and of course \u201cShe had to hold the family together,\u201d to name just a few. That family consists of her Russian-immigrant dad, her WASP stepmom (whom she calls \u201cAnne mom,\u201d in contrast to her estranged Korean birth mom, known as \u201cmom mom\u201d), and her younger brother. Set in a dystopian near-future full of self-driving cars, authoritative AI bots, and a troubling political climate, Shteyngart\u2019s latest is a smart satire with charm to spare.<\/p>\n \u00a0Just Pills<\/p>\n By Rebecca Kelliher \u201913BC, \u201921JRN<\/p>\n The development of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol in the 1970s and 1980s was in many ways a medical miracle, providing millions of women often lifesaving ways to end pregnancies. In her first book<\/a>, science journalist Rebecca Kelliher delves into their invention, the battle for their legalization, and their adoption around the world, talking to more than two hundred people who have used, administered, and advocated for the pills. In a post-Dobbs America, the fight for abortion rights has become increasingly urgent, and Kelliher\u2019s project is ambitious and timely.<\/p>\n \u00a0The Eternal Forest<\/p>\n By Elena Sheppard \u201920SOA<\/p>\n Before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Elena Sheppard\u2019s grandparents, Gustavo and Rosita, were raising their two girls in idyllic Cifuentes, Cuba. But when Gustavo was placed on a list of political undesirables, the family left for the US, taking only one suitcase and five American dollars. Elena arrived nearly three decades later; she was the first American-born in her clan, but she was raised on her family\u2019s memories of \u201cthat crocodile-shaped island fueled by God and music and sugar money and rum.\u201d She tells those stories<\/a> warmly and elegantly here, weaving together family lore and Cuban history to create a vibrant portrait of exile and repatriation.<\/p>\n \u00a0An Oral History of Atlantis<\/p>\n By Ed Park \u201995SOA<\/p>\n Technology is seeping into every corner of our lives, and the AI revolution threatens to upend the way our world works. So how, in this robot-run society, do we retain our humanity? That question is central to Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Park\u2019s latest work<\/a> of fiction \u2014 a quirky, Barthelme-esque story collection. In one piece, a man contemplates his life via a series of password-recall prompts. In another, a hacker figures out how to make an e-reader splice the texts of books together, creating a disorienting (but maybe revolutionary?) new way to read. Together, the stories are an amusing look at our new normal.<\/p>\n \u00a0The Unbroken Coast<\/p>\n By Nalini Jones \u201901SOA<\/p>\n In a small Catholic enclave of Mumbai, Francis Almeida, a retired history professor teetering on the brink of dementia, runs his bike into Celia D\u2019Mello, a feisty eight-year-old from the nearby fishing village. Missing their globe-scattered grown children, Almeida and his wife take Celia under their wing, and two families\u2019 lives become intertwined in unexpected ways. Nalini Jones\u2019s debut novel<\/a>, which follows the Almeidas and D\u2019Mellos through three decades and countless tragedies, is a lovely and often heartbreaking portrait of a community barreling into modernity.<\/p>\n \u00a0No Ordinary Bird<\/p>\n By Artis Henderson \u201910JRN<\/p>\n When Artis Henderson was five years old, she boarded a small plane piloted by her father, Lamar Chester. Moments later, it crashed, leaving Artis injured and her father dead. For the rest of her childhood, it was referred to as \u201cthe accident.\u201d But decades later, she learned that it hadn\u2019t been an accident at all, and that her beloved father wasn\u2019t who she thought he was. Oddly, this is Henderson\u2019s second memoir about a devastating crash \u2014 her first book, Unremarried Widow<\/a>, chronicled life after her husband was killed in a helicopter accident in Iraq. There\u2019s more drama to her new book<\/a>, a stranger-than-fiction story packed with sabotage, betrayal, and international intrigue. But at the heart, both books are about gut-wrenching grief, which Henderson writes about with remarkable grace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Vera, or Faith By Gary Shteyngart Judging by the chapter titles of Columbia writing professor Gary Shteyngart\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-10845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}