What to Read in May and Other Book News

Big lives: May’s celebrity memoirs and bios

In Bits and Pieces by Whoopi Goldberg (May 7), the actor, 68, writes about her upbringing — back when she was Caryn Johnson — in the New York City projects with her loving mother and brother, the kind of people who “give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be.” Goldberg narrates the audio version of her memoir and, fun fact, also narrates the audiobook of John Grisham’s latest, Camino Ghosts, out on May 28.

You Never Know by Tom Selleck (May 7) features the Magnum, P.I. star, 79, spinning tales from his long career — including his big break, which he landed after appearing on The Dating Game (even though he wasn’t chosen for a date!) when he was a college student.

In What a Fool Believes by Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser (May 21), McDonald, 72, with the help of friend Reiser, 68, captures the highs and lows of his life in music, including with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan.

And Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller (May 21) is a biography of the late wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., who, the publisher asserts, was “a multifaceted woman worthy of our attention regardless of her husband and untimely death.” The glamorous young couple, along with Bessette-Kennedy’s sister, Lauren, died in a 1999 plane crash off the coast of Massachusetts.

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: ST. MARTIN'S PRESS / KEVIN LYNCH)

A chat with Kristin Hannah  

Hannah’s latest novel, The Women, about a young woman who joins the Army to become a nurse during the Vietnam War, has been solidly perched atop the bestseller list since its February release. The author, beloved for books such as the cinematic World War II–era novel The Nightingale, will answer questions about The Women and her career in an interview with Shelley Emling, editor in chief of AARP’s The Girlfriend. The live event on May 21 at 7:30 p.m. ET is free, but you need to be a member of The Girlfriend Book Club, a private Facebook group, to watch. It’s easy to join.

I also spoke with Hannah about the book, how it’s set to be adapted for film (Warner Bros. already snapped up the rights) and the upcoming movie version of The Nightingale.

Jazz fans, take note!

It’s been 125 years since Duke Ellington’s birth, on April 29, 1899, which makes this release rather timely: The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie Transformed America (May 7) by Larry Tye, author of the biographies Satchel and Bobby Kennedy. Tye’s research included some 250 interviews focused on these brilliant jazz artists, who, the author says, were influential beyond the world of music: “Duke, Louis and the Count helped kick-start the Civil Rights revolution,” Tye told me in an email exchange about his book. “I hope readers see that these three maestros’ legacies off their bandstands are at least as compelling as on.”

If that strikes a chord (ha), also check out the recently released 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan (March 5), who describes how another trio of music greats came together in 1959 to create one of the most (if not the most) popular jazz albums of all time: Kind of Blue.

And we can’t forget Ella (May 7) by Diane Richards, a former background vocalist for Whitney Houston. Her novel is based on the life of Ella Fitzgerald — specifically her teenage years, when she embraced singing and music as a refuge from her family’s Depression-era struggles. Fans could pair Richards’ story with the 2023 biography Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by Judith Tick, which Kirkus Reviews called, “as masterful and wonderful as its subject.”

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Simon & Schuster; HarperCollins; Macmillan; Getty Images)

News shorts: Barbara Walters, a famous motorcycle and motherhood in fiction

• Last week (April 23) brought the release of Susan Page’s entertaining biography The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, previously wrote bestselling biographies on Barbara Bush (The Matriarch) and Nancy Pelosi (Madam Speaker). That makes The Rulebreaker part three in an unplanned “badass women of the Silent Generation” trilogy, she said in an email exchange with our writer, Ken Budd, who highlights nine things you might not know about the groundbreaking journalist, famous for her high-profile interviews with world leaders and A-list stars.
• Now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.: the late author Robert Pirsig’s motorcycle — a 1966 Honda Super Hawk — which was at the crux of his revered 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values. A fictionalized account of the author’s 17-day motorcycle journey from Minnesota to California with his son, the book has sold some 5 million copies (I remember loving it, decades ago). The bike is the centerpiece of the museum’s exhibition Zen and the Open Road, which opened April 15 to mark the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication.
• And in time for Mother’s Day, there’s The Book of Mothers: How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood by Carrie Mullins (May 7). Mullins, a journalist and parent of two young sons, looks at moms in classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Beloved and The Joy Luck Club and how readers’ understanding of them has been shaped by our evolving culture. Take Marmee, the mother in Little Women, for instance. Viewed as “sweet, sexless, pious and adept with a needle and thread,” Mullins writes, yet she was also — people forget — mad as hell. “I am angry nearly every day of my life,” she says to daughter Jo. Bottom line: It’s complicated being a mom.

Let us know if you have a favorite book about motherhood in the comment section below.