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Matt Buckingham
Copy editor
What he’s reading: The Helen West Mysteries by Frances Fyfield
“The plot descriptions of these British police procedurals from the late ’80s and ’90s, starting with A Question of Guilt (1988), may sound routine, almost dull. But Fyfield’s ability to get in the minds of her characters, coupled with her expertise as a retired London criminal lawyer for the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, makes them anything but. ‘Why am I reading this?’ you’ll ask yourself. Then you’ll pick up the next one.”
Anthony Effinger
Staff writer
What he’s reading: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
“I’m reading it because it’s my book club book. Also rereading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for work!”
Maxx Hockenberry
Sales director
What he’s reading: The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti
“A really fun, engaging history of ancient Rome told through the lens of class struggle, propaganda, and the violent suppression of popular reform. Parenti flips the conventional narrative around Rome as an empire defined by democratic virtue on its head, instead painting a very different picture of a bloated, fragile, increasingly paranoid and isolated hegemon consumed by imperial expansion, oligarchic dominance, and the systemic subjugation of both colonial populations and its own working masses. Parenti also exposes how the propaganda of ‘mob rule’ has long been weaponized by elites and echoed uncritically by the media. This book is a refreshing, cathartic and cautionary tale that draws an alarming number of parallels between ancient Rome and the modern American empire.”
Aaron Mesh
Editor
What he’s reading: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
“Oh, look, he’s reading Orwell—what a cliché. But at least it’s a different Orwell. The truth is, I usually have three to five books going at a time, and rarely finish anything but the detective fiction. Still, facing a nine-hour flight to Heathrow, this slim volume by the master of first-person reportage felt like an opportunity to get a 30,000-foot perspective on the squalid conditions in Portland. The poor will always be with us. Any day, we could be the poor.”
Sophia Mick
Graphic designer
What she’s reading: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
“I picked it somewhat at random off my roommate’s shelf, though I was familiar having seen it on my parents’ bedside tables in the early 2010s. It’s been both an escapist and consuming read. I can’t put it down, which is what I’m looking for in a book these days, something gripping enough to soften the tug of my phone screen. Set in the early aughts, the themes still feel too relevant, given post-9/11 politics, the rise of the internet, and decimation of the environment, but the tenderness at its core has left me feeling hopeful.”
Rachel Saslow
Arts & Culture reporter
What she’s reading: I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally
“I have been mainlining celebrity memoirs. This one, by New York City restaurateur Keith McNally of Balthazar fame, is propulsive and wry, and dishes the goods on McNally’s famous customers, such as Anna Wintour, Patti Smith and Lorne Michaels. If escaping into 40-year-old gossip is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I also can’t handle anything too heavy lately, so the fact that I Regret Almost Everything opens with McNally attempting suicide in 2018 after a stroke and I still kept reading—no problem—shows that my capacity for darkness is seriously warped right now.”
Toni Tringolo
Executive director, Give!Guide and Friends of Willamette Week
What she’s reading: Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan
“I didn’t know much about Lafayette going into this biography, other than he was important to both the American and French revolutions. And even then, I didn’t know the particulars. My blind spot is making this a thrilling read despite the pedantic writing. Lafayette’s achievements seem never ending, and it’s incredible to see his ideals play out.”
