Back in 2013, I read and enjoyed Matthew Specktor‘s American Dream Machine — a novel about Hollywood, fathers, and the ways in which the entertainment industry has evolved over the decades. This year, Specktor has a new book coming out: Always Crashing in the Same Car. It’s pitched as a blend of memoir and criticism that “explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment”. I’m really looking forward to giving this a read. Here’s the synopsis:
In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother’s cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or “cracking up,” he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of “success” and “failure” that haunt the artist’s life and the American imagination.
Part memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, Always Crashing in the Same Car explores Hollywood through a certain kind of collapse. It’s a vibrant and intimate inspection of failure told through the lives of iconic, if under-sung, artists — Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, and Hal Ashby, among others — and the author’s own family history. Through this constellation of Hollywood figures, he unearths a fascinating alternate history of the city that raised him and explores the ways in which curtailed ambition, insufficiency, and loss shape all our lives.
At once deeply personal and broadly erudite, it is a story of an art form (the movies), a city (Los Angeles), and one person’s attempt to create meaning out of both. Above all, Specktor creates a moving search for optimism alongside the inevitability of failure and reveals the still-resonant power of art to help us navigate the beautiful ruins that await us all.
Matthew Specktor’s Always Crashing in the Same Car is due to be published by Tin House in North America and in the UK, on July 27th, 2021.
Like a lot of people who don’t live there, I am fascinated by Los Angeles. It’s a city I’ve visited only three times, but each time it captured my imagination. My favourite crime series is set there (Connelly’s Bosch), many other favourite novels are set in or around Los Angeles, and I’m also fascinated by the workings and behind-the-scenes of Hollywood. I have not, however, read much general history or non-fiction about the city and/or region. This summer, there are a couple of books that have caught my attention. The first is Everything Now by Rosecrans Baldwin. Here’s the synopsis:
I’ve been reading a lot of German history for work, this year. Starting from the formation of a unified Germany, and stretching to the end of the Cold War, it’s been an interesting exercise. I’m always on the look-out for new books that offer something slightly different to recommend to students and others who might be interested. There are, of course, entire libraries available covering Hitler’s rise and WW2. Many of these books follow a similar approach, which is fine but a tad repetitive. So, when I spotted David McKean‘s Watching Darkness Fall on Edelweiss, it caught my attention: it is an account of FDR’s ambassadors in Europe’s response to Hitler’s rise. I’m really looking forward to reading this. Here’s the synopsis:
Ever since Kevin Durant said he was going to leave the Warriors and go to the Nets, the Brooklyn team has been creating a bigger stir than normal. Fellow superstar Kyrie Irving also joined the team in 2019. Steve Nash was named their new coach. Then, following a rather strange series of events last month, the Nets added another superstar in James Harden. The Nets are currently #2 in the East, and with the three powerhouse players, it’s almost inevitable that they’ll get deep into the playoffs, if not make the finals. It’s safe to say that interest in the team is high. This summer, some of that interest will be served by Matt Sullivan‘s new book, Can’t Knock the Hustle. Pitched as “David Halberstam’s classic The Breaks of the Game meets Michael Lewis’s Moneyball for the modern age”, it covers “the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets’ Superstars of Tomorrow”. Here’s the full synopsis:
Yesterday, 
An excellent account of life in the NBA bubble
Mike Brooks‘s first foray into epic fantasy, the God-King Chronicles series, arrives this year! The first novel, The Black Coast, is already out now in the UK (published by 
And, for those who have already had the chance to read the first novel, here’s the synopsis for The Splinter King…
I first read Smith’s work when I was an intern at a publisher (way back in 2012), and I read his debut that had been submitted: I was immediately struck by how well he writes, and he became an author to watch. This year, A. J. Smith returns with The Sword Falls — the second novel in his 
Civilian Reader 