The Book Review

Since the publication of her first novel, “Love Medicine,” in 1984, Louise Erdrich has written fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s books. Her work has earned multiple awards, including the National Book Award (“The Round House”) and the Pulitzer Prize (“The Night Watchman”).

On this week’s episode, Erdrich talks with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about her new short story collection, “Python’s Kiss.” She reflects on some of the formative experiences that shaped her as a writer, including watching “Planet of the Apes” and growing up in North Dakota, a state that housed hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

She says that writing has been her “only real way of processing” her experiences and that her creative process is full of mystery.

“There’s really no way to control everything that happens in a piece of art. Some of these stories — I wasn’t sure that I had written it,” she said, adding: “And yet, obviously, it was in my handwriting.”

Plus, Erdrich recommends the one book that always puts her to sleep.

Books discussed on this episode:

“Animal Farm,” by George Orwell

“Brawler,” by Lauren Groff

“Winter in the Blood,” by James Welch

“The Pillow Book,” by Sei Shōnagon

“The Death of the Heart,” by Elizabeth Bowen

“Save Me, Stranger,” by Erika Krouse

“The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison

“Austerlitz,” by W.G. Sebald

“The Rings of Saturn,” by W.G. Sebald

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest,” published by Maitland Systems Engineering

 

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

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For more than two decades, Bob Crawford has toured the country as the bassist for the Avett Brothers. But long before he began his career as a musician, he was obsessed with American history. After turning that obsession into two podcasts, he has now written his first book, “America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, From President to Political Maverick.”

On this week’s episode, Crawford talks with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about what it was like writing a book for the first time and the authors who have inspired him. In addition to discussing what he loves about John Quincy Adams, the country’s sixth president and the son of John Adams, Crawford also talks about the research he did for the book. That included scouring Adams’s 14,000-page diary.

“He’s not a perfect man — he’s far from perfect,” Crawford said of Adams. “But he’s so human. He’s suffered depression, and just the humanness in his diary, not to mention the actual historical narrative, is just incredible.”

Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

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Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is a tale of star-crossed lovers: Catherine, the wild daughter of an aristocratic family, and Heathcliff, an orphan whom Catherine’s father brings home unexpectedly. While Catherine’s brother and mother denigrate Heathcliff, depriving him of an education and forcing him into a servant-like role, Catherine forms an intense, almost spiritual bond with her family’s new charge.

Despite their deep connection, however, she marries the scion of a nearby wealthy family — a decision that leaves Catherine yearning, Heathcliff bent on revenge and everybody in their orbit on a path to calamity.

Brontë’s classic has long been a favorite among readers, and the novel is back in the zeitgeist thanks to Emerald Fennell’s recent film adaptation. On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin discusses “Wuthering Heights” with colleagues from the New York Times Book Review.

Other works discussed:

“Wuthering Heights,” the song by Kate Bush

“Twilight,” by Stephenie Meyer

“But Daddy I Love Him,” by Taylor Swift

“Wuthering Heights,” the 2026 film directed by Emerald Fennell

“The Safekeep,” by Yael van der Wouden

“Mexican Gothic,” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The “Wuthering Heights” comics in Kate Beaton’s “Hark! A Vagrant” series

“Villette,” by Charlotte Brontë

“Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier

“The Idiot,” by Elif Batuman

“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” by Alexandre Dumas

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The latest film from the writer and director Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams,” is nominated for four Oscars, including best adapted screenplay. The movie is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name and tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logger in the Pacific Northwest, in stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear prose. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks with Bentley, who wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar, his longtime collaborator, about how he went about translating Johnson’s work into a visual medium.

Bentley first read “Train Dreams” just after college, long before he ever thought of making it into a movie. When producers with rights to the book approached Bentley, he was suddenly worried. “Going back and reading the book again,” Bentley said, “I was like, Oh, maybe this thing is unadaptable.” Set on capturing the spirit of the book, Bentley and Kwedar focused on “the vastness of this small little life,” he said.

“We very rarely have an understanding of our lives in the moment we’re actually living them,” Bentley said. “We only start to understand them when it’s too late.”

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For decades, the director Guillermo del Toro has built a career blending the grotesque and the beautiful in films like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Shape of Water” and “Pinocchio.” Now he’s earned his latest Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s classic novel. On this week’s episode, he talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about discovering the book as a lonely child, how it shaped his worldview and why this screenplay is the one he’s proudest of.

“I always felt the creature is me,” del Toro said of the first time he read the book. “I felt so alone at age 11, and so full of love to give and so full of rage to dispose of. It was a very complicated emotional scope for somebody that young.”

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