This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
The margins of my books are filled with handwritten annotations such as “Absolutely not” and “STOP IT!!!!” and “girl get UP.” These are not necessarily critiques of the story; some are expressions of high praise. Several of my favorite titles are full of characters who utterly vex, agitate, and perturb me. I know I’m not alone in this; my colleague Lily Meyer, in a recent Atlantic essay, found Andrew Martin’s Down Time, a novel full of irritating people, to be a useful reflection of the society we live in. I agree with her, and I’ll go a step further: Let books be annoying.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:
Characters—in both fiction and nonfiction—should be as exasperating as people can be. As Meyer writes, “Annoying characters let us admit that we might be annoying too.” I’m on record praising Alison Bechdel for letting the main character of her long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, be a huge, neurotic drag. I’m also moved by memoirs that neither valorize nor sanitize the author’s bad behavior. “Own your mistakes!” I might scribble in gel pen. I like watching a person make a bad decision and fully recognizing why they’re doing it. This register of writing feels especially human.
Some novelists make their characters so annoying or self-absorbed that the reader can only cringe; although I appreciate biting satires, this isn’t exactly what I mean to celebrate. I really adore a book that has affection for its difficult characters. I recently read Daniel M. Lavery’s forthcoming novel, Meeting New People, about an older woman named Barbara—and Barbara is a pill. Yet you can tell that Lavery likes her despite everything, and you can imagine why someone (someone with the same personality traits, perhaps) might like her too.
At least Barbara hopes so. She’s on the hunt for a new best friend, having burned through nine different ones over the course of her life thus far. We can see, from the first chapter, why Barbara’s most recent bestie, Susan Montgomery, is done with her: Barbara is deeply opinionated about petty things. She can be brusque and grating, especially with her son and her young co-workers. At the same time, her discernment (especially when it comes to the culinary arts—she is a talented home cook who works at a deli) is frequently sharp and delightful; her judgments render her unique and robust. I might not be cut out for the role of Barbara’s 10th best friend—she would have a lot to say about my weight—but I loved reading about her.
That’s the thing about books. If Barbara, or another character, is making me bang my head against the wall, I can just close the novel and move on with my life. But sometimes I like to salt my days with a person who simply grinds my gears. I might yell aloud to the empty hall; I might text everyone I know about a character’s foibles and idiocy (and tell them to read the book too). I’ve been known to, infrequently, throw my reading material across the room. Or I might just blacken more margins. Writing “I HATE THIS” inside a book can be another way of saying “I love you.”
Illustration by Haley Jiang
The Seinfeld Theory of Fiction
By Lily Meyer
Annoying characters let us admit that we might be annoying too.
Read the full article.
What to Read
Lords of the Realm, by John Helyar
That sports are big business is hardly news, but Helyar’s book shows just how much the story of professional sports is truly that of organized labor—and how ugly things can get. Lords of the Realm is a classic profile of the relationship between the men who own baseball teams and the men who play for them. The book covers more than 50 years of history, beginning in the early 20th century and ending on the eve of the 1994 strike, which famously canceled the World Series. Again and again, Helyar illuminates undeniable connections between the people who ran baseball then and the people who still do. In this sport, he demonstrates, rich men with family money have long attempted to hold down working-class players, many of them men of color, who have only a few years of earning power—and he then explains how the players’ union built itself up out of self-protection before engaging in regular, protracted battle. Though the book is now more than 30 years old, it could not feel more relevant: Baseball’s current collective-bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season, and yet another labor fight over a potential salary cap (something the union has fought for decades) is brewing. — Will Leitch
From our list: Seven books that will change how you watch sports
Out Next Week
📚 Ghosts of Fourth Street, by Laurie Hertzel
📚 Son of Nobody, by Yann Martel
Your Weekend Read
Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic
When Claude Met Claude
By Matteo Wong
Earlier this month, San Francisco’s de Young Museum unveiled its newest exhibition, “Monet and Venice,” which is dedicated to the impressionist painter’s beautiful and meditative canvases of the floating city. And Anthropic, perhaps having seized on a marketing opportunity, is one of the show’s lead sponsors. Through tomorrow, visitors are able to partake in a temporary “interactive experience” that Anthropic set up in a room adjacent to the galleries. Essentially, the AI firm turned two typewriters into interfaces to chat with Claude. You type in a question about the exhibition, and Claude, based on information about Monet that the museum provided, such as exhibit labels, punches out an answer onto the same sheet of cream cardstock.
Read the full article.
When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight.
Explore all of our newsletters.
