Publisher's Weekly Review
"This is a book of true stories the way I remember them. I'm sure I'll get a few things wrong," suggests the mega-bestselling novelist in this blithe blend of personal asides, fan trivia, and hot takes. The dozens of sections skim the major stages of Patterson's life, including his childhood in Newburgh, N.Y., his early love of reading, his aspirations to become a writer, his time in the advertising industry (where he claims to have coined the slogan "I'm a Toys 'R' Us Kid"), and his astonishing commercial success as a novelist. As Patterson makes crystal clear, readers in search of a straightforward and detailed autobiography won't find it here ("Robert Caro or Walter Isaacson, I'm not")--but they'll get the lowdown on his first kiss (name, Veronica Tabasco), insights into his craft, and colorful accounts of the many celebrities he's crossed paths with, among them Hugh Jackman and Charlize Theron, both of whom "look amazing in real life. Also, they don't seem full of themselves." Occasionally, Patterson's jocular style feels at odds with his material, as when he glibly weighs in on the U.S.'s systemic problems: "It isn't white, Black, or brown... it's jerks." Still, this uncut look into the famed author's mind is sure to intrigue his many fans--and critics.(June)
Library Journal Review
In Also a Poet, New York Times best-selling author Calhoun blends literary history and memoir, examining her relationship with her father, art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared passion for Frank O'Hara's work as she draws on taped interviews he conducted for a never-completed biography of O'Hara. In Somewhere We Are Human, distinguished writers/activists Grande and Guiñansaca compile 44 essays, poems, and artworks by migrants, refugees, and Dreamers that help clarify the lives of those who are undocumented. Featuring a selection of letters exchanged by Ernest Hemingway and his son Patrick over two decades, Dear Papa was edited by Patrick Hemingway's nephew Brendan Hemingway and his grandson Stephen Adams (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Horn's Voice of the Fish uses fish, water, and mythic imagery to illuminate the trans experience, with travels through Russia and a devastating injury the author suffered as backdrop. Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath looks back on childhood summers as both joyous memory and obvious idealization in The Summer Friend, also considering a close friendship with someone from a very different background. Starting out with his nearly dying on the day he was born, the world's best-selling novelist has some amazing stories to tell in James Patterson by James Patterson (250,000-copy first printing). Having probed the lives of Mary Shelley and Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's wife and daughter, acclaimed biographer Seymour takes on Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea in I Used to Live Here Once.
