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      Kevin Kwan, Author of ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ Talks About His New Novel

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      A reader of Kevin Kwan’s books could be forgiven for expecting him to make a grand entrance at lunch in Beverly Hills — in a Lamborghini, perhaps, or wearing a slick pair of shades.Instead, on an unseasonably brisk Tuesday in April, Kwan walked into the private dining at Crustacean with a tentative tilt to his head, as if clearing a low roof. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, a blue cardigan and hair cut for maximum pensive tucking behind ears. Picture David Foster Wallace minus the bandanna.Kwan immediately moved a vase of white roses from one table to another — “Do you mind? So we can see each other?” — then hugged Crustacean’s chef, “the great Helene An,” whose garlic noodles make a cameo in his new book, “Lies and Weddings,” coming out on May 21.To understand Kwan’s reputation for fabulousness, consider his oeuvre. His debut novel, “Crazy Rich Asians,” published in 2013, has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 40 languages. A Broadway musical is in development. The movie version was the first since “The Joy Luck Club” to feature a majority Asian cast.Kwan’s next three novels covered similar territory: wealthy people behaving decadently and questionably, but usually with heart and always with panache. They were best sellers too. At one point, the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy occupied the top three spots on the paperback list, landing Kwan in an elite clique of authors including Colleen Hoover.The Times’s film critic described “Crazy Rich Asians” as “a busy, fizzy movie winnowed from Kevin Kwan’s sprawling, dishy novel.”Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How I Met My Father

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      “What took you so long?” he said.Fathers don’t fare well in my fiction. They are white supremacist killers and domestic abusers. They trick their wives into becoming pregnant. They have affairs. They abandon their families.My biological father, Albert Coleman Bryan Jr., was 22 when I was born. He was a dashing air force pilot who flew off into the wide blue yonder, leaving my mother and me grounded.He had red curly hair and freckles and a charming grin. It’s a face I don’t remember, if indeed I ever saw it. My parents split up around the time I was born.I grew up tasting the bitterness of my father’s absence, especially at Christmas, when he sent me expensive presents. My mother would hand them to me without a word, and I would know to go into my closet to open them.By then, she had remarried. In addition to a stepdad, I had a brother and sister. Our stockings were filled with bananas and oranges, little else.In my closet, I would open the presents from my father, with cards signed by his secretary or someone in a store. Among the many gifts over the years, he sent me a pearl necklace, a portable typewriter and a birthstone ring. I’d know to tuck them away in my closet and never to mention them to my brother and sister.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defeat Is Agonizing. In These 2 Books, It’s Also Thrilling.

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      If you love stories about beautiful losers, consider Brian Moore’s novel about an alcoholic virgin or Benjamin Anastas’s tale of an inferior twin.Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesDear readers,I am not an ideal viewer of major sporting events for many reasons, but one in particular is how terrible I inevitably feel, beyond all reason and actual personal investment, for the losing team. While confetti and Gatorade rain down on the champions of whatever Super Bowl/World Series/Grand Prix, my eyes always go to the runners-up.Objectively, I know that the defeated ones are in almost every other regard already winners: fit gods with ropy quads, admired, adored and no doubt absurdly well compensated. And yet here they sit with slumped shoulders and wet eyes, like small boys left at a bus stop. Oh, cruel world!Fiction, though, is another story. Give me your losers and laggards, your pokey puppies who limbo right under rock-bottom expectations and then have to go home and lie down. For a few hours at least, novels with protagonists like these allow me, one of so many busy bees in New York City’s go-go honeycomb, to flail vicariously, a smug literary tourist among the lonely-hearts and lost souls.To be clear, that is in no way a synonym for storytelling that is inert or hopeless or dull. The main characters in this week’s selections may lead lives of quiet desperation or mere beige mediocrity, but their tales are told with sharpness and verve, real flair in the failure.—LeahWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Mother’s Day, Here Are 2 Novels That Get Babies Right

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      Barbara Kingsolver’s debut, and a bad seed’s beginnings.Monika Chatterton/Connected Archives x KintzingDear readers,For the past few months I’ve been on a scavenger hunt. Where are the fully realized babies in fiction? I wasn’t after infants who are incidental to the plot; I wanted babies whose babyhood was essential to the story.I shouldn’t be surprised by this itch. It has been the year of the baby for my loved ones. Blink, and a friend’s little bundle of semi-consciousness has grown to the size of a koala. What’s going on in there, little guy?Look, babies freak me out. Whenever I’m around them I worry about doing something that will forever alter their lives, like holding a bottle at the wrong angle or making curse words sound cool. But I don’t see them exiting my life any time soon, and this is an irrational, unbiological fear that I’d like to overcome. Enter literary exposure therapy.My holy grail? A bouncing, gurgling Chekhov’s gun. If a baby appears in the first act, I expect it to start crawling by the last. I’m pleased to share the results of my spelunking: a can-do, women-run novel from Barbara Kingsolver and a deeply weird, overlooked British story that puts a baby’s existence into grotesquely brilliant prose. The children are our future; teach them well and let them lead the way.—JoumanaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kristi Noem’s Book: Four Takeaways

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      After a rough start to the rollout of her memoir, the South Dakota governor has continued to defend shooting her dog and to deflect on a false story about meeting Kim Jong-un.In one sense, Kristi Noem has had a wildly successful rollout of her new book: America can’t stop talking about it.But all the chatter is not for the reasons Ms. Noem, the conservative governor of South Dakota, might have expected when she finished “No Going Back,” a memoir that recounts her political career. The book appears aimed at raising her profile as a MAGA loyalist while former President Donald J. Trump weighs his choices for running mate. Just a month ago, Ms. Noem had been widely seen as a contender.Instead of talking up her conservative bona fides, however, Ms. Noem has spent the last week on national television defending a grisly account in the book in which she shoots her dog in a gravel pit. The killing of the dog, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer named Cricket, has drawn bipartisan criticism and scrutiny.The book, published on Tuesday, includes a number of other noteworthy details, some of which Ms. Noem has discussed in recent interviews. Here are four takeaways.At one point in Ms. Noem’s book, she describes a phone conversation she had with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Republican presidential candidate. Ms. Noem claims the exchange was threatening, which Ms. Haley’s spokeswoman denied.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesNoem has a lot of criticism for other Republicans.Ms. Noem’s account of her time in office — first as South Dakota’s sole House representative and then as governor — includes many stories that broadly criticize Republicans for their electoral failures, while also targeting figures who have drawn the ire of Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Mine ‘How To Get Rich’ and Other Trump Books For Quotes

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      Prosecutors cannot force Donald J. Trump to testify at his criminal trial in Manhattan, but that does not mean they can’t use his words against him.On Tuesday, the prosecutors unearthed a series of damaging excerpts from books that the former president wrote, plucking out passages to help make their case against Mr. Trump. In essence, they called a past version of Mr. Trump to testify against his future self.In his own words, Mr. Trump described how he kept a focus on minute details and watched every penny that left his accounts, corroborating a core component of the prosecution’s case as they argue that he knew that his company falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star.On cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, suggested that a ghost writer had been responsible for these words.Mr. Trump’s written words also described how he sees sexual potential in women that he encounters, a salient point in a trial tethered to encounters with women that he is accused of covering up. “All the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me,” he wrote.Prosecutors introduced the damning excerpts by questioning Sally Franklin, a witness who is an executive and editor, to read excerpts from “Trump: How to Get Rich” and “Trump: Think Like a Billionaire,” both of which were published by Ballantine, a Penguin Random House imprint.The jury heard Trump’s written words: “Every dollar counts in business, and for that matter, every dime.” The text continued, “Even in high end shops, I bargain,” adding, “I hate paying retail.”This was not the first time jurors heard Trump in his own words. Last week, prosecutors played video clips of him talking, and they have questioned witnesses about Mr. Trump’s infamous statement on the set of “Access Hollywood” that he would grab women by the genitals.But the judge would not allow prosecutors to play the tape for jurors, a decision that elevated the importance of the book passages, or any other opportunity to use Mr. Trump as a witness against himself.It might not be the only opportunity for jurors to hear from the former president. Although the prosecution cannot legally call him to testify, Mr. Trump could take the witness stand in his own defense, though it is unclear whether he will do so.For now, jurors heard his words via Ms. Franklin, who read ominous passages in which Mr. Trump spoke of how he treated his perceived enemies.“For many years I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back,” she read from a book by Mr. Trump. It continued: “When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.”As jurors listened, Mr. Trump’s smiling image on a book cover was plastered on screens across the courtroom, a sharp contrast from the scowl he sported throughout the testimony. More

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      How Many of These Novels Can You Guess Based on Very Simple Summaries?

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      Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s multiple-choice quiz designed to test your knowledge of books and literary culture. This week’s challenge asks you to identify five famous 20th-century novels based on a very simple one-sentence plot description.Just tap or click on the title you think is correct to see the answer and a snippet of the original coverage in The Times. After the last question, you’ll find links to the titles in case you’re looking for a something to read. More

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      Jerome Rothenberg, Who Expanded the Sphere of Poetry, Dies at 92

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      His anthology “Technicians of the Sacred” included a range of non-Western work and was beloved by, among others, rock stars like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave.Jerome Rothenberg, a poet, translator and anthologist whose efforts to bring English-language readers into contact with creative traditions far outside the Western establishment — a field he called ethnopoetics — had an enormous impact on world literature and made him a hero to rock musicians like Nick Cave, Jim Morrison and Warren Zevon, died on April 21 at his home in Encinitas, Calif. He was 92.The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Matthew Rothenberg.By ethnopoetics, Mr. Rothenberg meant poetry from Indigenous and other non-Western cultures, often rendered in ways very different from the strictly textual, including oral, performance, ritual and myth.He introduced the idea in 1967 with his book “Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries From Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania,” a wide-ranging anthology that introduced readers to ancient Egyptian coronation events, Comanche peyote songs and Gabonese death rites.Mr. Rothenberg’s “Technicians of the Sacred,” first published in 1967 and later reissued twice with new material, introduced readers to ancient Egyptian coronation events, Comanche peyote songs and Gabonese death rites.University of California PressSuch work, he said, was just as complex and vibrant as the Western canon, if not more so. He went on to deepen his argument across scores of books, many of them anthologies, in which he wove together different traditions — Jewish mysticism, American Indian, Dada — and then connected and contextualized them with extensive commentary.“I’ve expanded my searches into forms of poetry that have been hidden from our view but have much to teach us about the sources and resources of poetry that would allow us to fill out the picture,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2017. “I also believe that the new forms of poetry developed by our own experimental poets can allow us to see a greater range of poetry in places and cultures distant from us.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More