Pulitzer-Winning Critic to Publish Book About Reality TV

Before she was a millennial feminist icon, Lindy West was the movie critic for a local Seattle publication. In this essay collection, she reaches back into that toolkit to revisit movies we love and examine why they hold up (or why we try to convince ourselves they do when they don’t). Do not fear: West isn’t out to ruin all of your problematic faves the way she ruined Love, Actually and broke in the internet in 2013. These pieces have as much affection and humor as they do incisive criticism. Bonus: it’s great on audio.

Cultural critic and co-host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, Harris explores the media that shaped her identity and understanding of the world as a young Black woman. She grapples with what it means to like entertainment made by people whose politics/behavior/etc you don’t like and with the ways that the discourse around that question is now shaping pop culture. These essays are joyful, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and funny, and I eagerly await whatever Harris does next.

It’s hard to remember in this moment of streaming overload that prestige TV hasn’t always been a thing. Indeed, HBO basically invented it—and set off a full-blown revolution in how we think about what TV is—when they introduced the world to Tony Soprano in 1999. Gillette and Koblin unpack HBO’s 25 years of paradigm-shifting work to unpack both its influence on the industry and its changing position in a landscape that is now filled with businesses built on the model it pioneered.

Before she “broke up with Hollywood,” Patty Lin wrote for shows like Friends, Freaks and Geeks, and Breaking Bad. By all accounts, it looked like she had it made. But being one of the only women, and usually the only Asian person, in the room is exhausting, and ultimately, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. Here, Lin recounts the years of hard work it took to break into those rooms and the experiences in them that eventually broke her. What do you do when you get your big dream and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

A nerdier writer would have subtitled this book about the rise/fall/rise of romantic comedies something like “A vindication of the rights of rom coms.” Meslow chronicles the invention and evolution of the genre in a series of love letters essays about the films that exemplify the form…and a few flops that tarnish its reputation. If you can’t pass up a rewatch of When Harry Met Sally or Crazy Rich Asians, this one’s for you.