As we near the end of the year, and many of us enjoy a breather from the workplace, books beckon once again—both as beach reads for our perfect winter weather and as great gifts for the readers on your list. Once again, we asked Mitch Kaplan of Miami’s seminal indie chain Books & Books for his latest recommendations. Fantasy and reality blur in Murakami’s latest, a photography volume captures 70 years of American history, a reporter sheds new light on Emmett Till’s murder, and more.
FICTION
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
Murakami, 21st century literature’s ultimate chronicler of the lovestruck but isolated young man, returns with a critically acclaimed tale that riffs on one of his earliest stories, “The Town and its Uncertain Walls.” Fantasy and sober reality continue to converge in the magical realism that is the author’s trademark. This time around, his unnamed narrator, a high-school loner—and cat guy—meets a fellow misfit at a high school awards ceremony, and swiftly falls in love with her—only to discover later that her seemingly corporeal form is merely a projection of her “real” self, which lives in a realm of unicorns, handless clocks, shadowless people and, yes, uncertain walls. His efforts to discover the elusive town come to fruition on his 45th birthday, when he slips down a proverbial rabbit hole and ends up with a job as a book custodian in the city’s “dream library.”
NONFICTION
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
None of the previous laments, hymns, odes and stories about the savage murder of Emmett Till and its subsequent show trial in segregated Mississippi—from Bob Dylan’s “The Death of Emmett Till” to the 2021 feature film “Till”—can do justice to the enormity and consequentiality of the new reporting in Wright Thompson’s The Barn. Thompson, who grew up on a family farm 23 miles from the scene of the murder, dives deep into both the victims’ and the killers’ lives and lineages to unearth new information about a hate crime that was all too deliberately covered up by history. Thompson not only reveals the location of the four-hour murder and torture of 14-year-old Till but implicates more people at the scene. This instant New York Times best-seller reckons with America’s original sin through the prism of one of its ugliest miscarriages of justice.
POETRY
One of the elder statesmen of American letters, Billy Collins is a former poet laureate and the author of now 13 collections of poems. In the niche world of poetry, he might just be one of the style’s exceedingly rare household names. But don’t let his imposing oeuvre and international reputation deter you from diving blindly and headfirst into this collection, which borrows its name from the famous Coleridge couplet (“Water, water, every where,/Nor any drop to drink.”). The 83-year-old wordsmith is at the top of his craft in these 60 new poems, which exalt in the joys, mysteries and surprises of everyday life, effectively finding the uniqueness in banality, and vice versa. One poem in particular, about an astronaut reciting Emily Dickinson in space, has been cited by NPR as one of Collins’ best poems ever. The writer’s usual simplicity of language renders his works easy to read, but like many a literary onion, their layers are a pleasure to peel back.
GIFT BOOKS
Magnum America: The United States
A soldier in full military gear glancing back at the camera, a cigarette dangling from his lips; James Brown in backstage repose, taking questions from the media; Martin Luther King Jr. embracing his supporters from the passenger seat of a convertible. These are just a sample of the indelible images contained within Magnum America. This “Magnum” has nothing to do with the arms maker of the same name but instead to Magnum Photos, a cooperative dedicated to the sill image that was founded in 1947 by such titans of the camera as Robert Capa, Maria Eisner and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Many more photography giants have since joined or been selected as honorary members, and their finest work is compiled in this lush volume, which charts the United States—and its influence abroad—decade by decade, from the ‘40s through the 2020s. At $150, this coffee table book is an art piece in and of itself, For the photography lover on your list, I can’t imagine a better holiday gift.
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