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Brian Lehrer: Now a summer reading call in to end the show today with such heavy bleak news all around us, Afghanistan, Haiti, Delta, and Lambda variants. What are you reading right now? Are you reading to escape from the news, or to help you make sense of it all? 646 435 7280, 646 435 7280. Let's just take these last few minutes today to share with everybody what you're reading and what people might enjoy, and how you're picking your books right now. 646 435 7280, 646 435 7280.

Are you choosing books that help add a little context to some of the issues in the headlines lately or are you reading to completely get away from all that in a summer where it's been one difficult story after another? 646 435 7280. I'm looking at The New York Times bestseller list from the week of July 25th, a few weeks ago. Pretty interesting combined print and e-book fiction, The Paper Palace by Miranda Kelly Heller. After an extramarital dalliance, Ella must choose between her husband and her childhood love. That's the number one story that people are going to for fiction on The New York Times bestseller list. Escaping if it is escape into what I guess is romance novel.

Number two is Danielle Steel, Nine Lives. After tragedy upsets her stable family life, Maggie must decide if she will take a risk with a thrill seeker. You get the idea what's on the top of the fiction bestseller list. Another one there number three, Falling by TJ Newman. A kidnapper demands that a pilot crash his plane with 144 passengers on board to save his family. Is that escapist reading or is that news-based reading? I'm not even sure.

Then when we get to the nonfiction list, the number one combined print and e-book nonfiction book on The New York Times bestseller list as of July 25, How I Save the World by the Fox News host Jesse Watters, who this says recounts his career and prescribes ways to defend against what he considers left-wing radicalism. Jesse Watters from Fox has the number one non-fiction book followed by Michael Pollan, This Is Your Mind on Plants, which those of you who know Michael Pollan know that this is a look, as this is described here, at arbitrary beliefs surrounding opium, caffeine, and mescaline which are derived from plants.

That's pretty interesting that the number one book in the non-fiction category would be from Jesse Watters from Fox News. The number two would be from Michael Pollan. I wonder how much crossover there is if those are the two best-selling non-fiction books in America this summer. Are the same people reading Michael Pollan and Jesse Watters on the surface? You'd think not but then who knows? Number three is The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk. How trauma affects the body in mind and innovative treatments for recovery and on it goes. There's some examples of what the bestsellers are this summer.

What are you reading, and is it to give yourself context about the world or to escape from it? We'll take your book picks for your fellow listeners. 646 435 7280 or tweet them @BrianLehrer right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your summer reading lists, escapist or contextual. Maury in Brooklyn you're on WNYC. Hi, Maury. Thanks for calling up.

Maury: Oh, thank you for having me, Brian. I'm a big fan. I am reading, I understand that you had her on the show not long ago, NK Jemisin, her book The City We Became. I must admit, I'm not always a big speculative fiction person even though I love Octavia Butler, but this is fascinating.

She has the characters who have to save the city from a disaster. The superhero-type characters are regular people and they each represent a borough. They embody the spirit of their borough and they come together to save New York City. It's really a lot of fun. Fantastic. Well written.

Brian Lehrer: Sounds great. We had NK Jemisin on in the context of her winning one of those MacArthur Genius awards this year. That's how good a blurb she can put on the back of her dust-jacket, right?

Maury: [chuckles] Yes. It's on the best-seller list too. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Call us again. Thanks for starting us off. That's one New York-oriented book. I think Lisa in Forest Hills has another one. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I always read two. I read a nonfiction and a fiction book alternating days every other day. I'm reading a book called Gotham, which is the history of New York City up through 1898. It's really interesting because there've been so many epidemics in the city's history that made it seem even more dire than it seems right now. Believe it or not, the city's always bounced back so it's interesting to get that perspective. The other book is The Forsyte Saga, which is set in Victorian England. It's like a scandal romance drama. They're both escapists in their own way but I highly recommend them both.

Brian Lehrer: Gotham is great. I get so many books in the course of my work, there are very few that I keep. That one is still on my bookshelf, that history of New York up to 1898. Why 1898? Because that's when what are now the five boroughs came together as one city.

Lisa: Right.

Brian Lehrer: There was a history of New York before it was New York City as we know it. Lisa, thank you for those two pics. Let's see. A couple coming in on Twitter. One person writes The Delusions Of Crowds. I don't know this book but it sounds like it's very relevant to politics today. The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups by William Bernstein or Bernstein. Another one, Yuko on Twitter writes, diving right into the news of this week, West of Kabul, east of New York by Tamim Ansary. Yuko writes I want to get to know a bit more about the country we talk so much about but also know so little about. Thank you for that. Roberta in Inwood you're on WNYC. Hi, Roberta.

Roberta: Hi. I saw in one of the stories about Obama's 60th birthday that he was reading Rumaan Alam and I hadn't. I got Leave the World Behind, which was written last year and it won every award there is. This book is terrifying. To me, it's exactly what we're living through. It's fiction, but it makes you realize where we are. It's an on the beach kind of thing like at 60, it's coming it's going to get us except they don't know what it is and they can't find out. In the meantime, they're in their total normal New York suburban life that we live, which is where we are. I just thought it was fantastic. I couldn't put it down.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that recommendation. Martha in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi, Martha.

Martha: Hi. I decided to go back to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am going to read a book to my homebound friend, she's from Cuba. I'm reading the book to her in Spanish. It's called El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, No One Writes to the Colonel. I'm reading a book again and enjoying it again and reading it to my friend every time I visit her.

Brian Lehrer: That is so wonderful of you. Some of us we might listen to books on tape once in a while, but to have a book read to you by the person sitting there who's reading it, does she react to certain things, and then do you start having conversations about them?

Martha: Oh, yes. It's all about life in Colombia. She's Cuban, of course, so there's a lot in common with their [chuckles] culture. She has a lot of questions. She knows Garcia Marquez. She can't see, she lost her eyesight and so she's just having fun and waiting for me to come every week and read to her.

Brian Lehrer: You've got such a big heart. Thank you, Martha. Call us again. Nelly in Hopewell Junction, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nelly.

Nelly: Hey. Hi, Brian. What a pleasure. I love to speak with you. I've tried many times to get to you because I absolutely love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Nelly: It keeps me informed. Anyway, I recently discovered James McBride. He is absolutely wonderful. I started with Deacon King Kong. The name of the book absolutely tickled me. I picked it up and read it. I couldn't put it down. Wonderful story. He takes poverty and misery and doesn't shy away from it. He tells it in a way that is not teachy but you learn a lot of stuff from it. It also makes you laugh because it's so compelling.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Nelly: Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Then from there, I so-called graduated to the next one, which was The Good Lord Bird that had had the raid on Harpers Ferry, I believe, in the 1800s, and the story of John Brown and the anti-slavery movement. This man, whether is all fiction in this book or not, though I did go into my history books, I checked out that and, in fact, John Brown was not just a fictional character, but a real person who did an awful lot for the anti-slavery movement. Really triggered off the civil war, I think, because of the raid in Harpers Ferry.

I'm saying to myself, boy, if Lincoln had been around back then and seeing what the abolitionists were doing, and also the pro-slavery people were saying, they were not that much different because these were not the generals and these were not the leaders but they were the real people, scrubbing and eking out a living and going with the crowd as we do a lot of times. Anyway, I did discover James McBride and I love him. I'm going to see if I could pick up all of his books, keep them on my shelf, and read them. Wonderful stories.

Brian Lehrer: You know what? He's a great radio guest too. He's been on the show and he is exactly the way you were describing the first book. Very serious things presented in a way that's so palatable and so personable, and warm, and finding humor where there's humor to find going all the way back to his book, The Color of Water, which really first put him on the map. He talks just like he writes and it's really wonderful, James McBride. Nelly, thank you for shouting him out. Bill in Rego Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hello, Brian. I am reading Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well because it's considered to be one of the foundational texts of critical race theory. For me, it's both contextual and escapist. An escape from reading about and trying to do something about the assault on voting rights and democracy.

Brian Lehrer: Derrick Bell was on the show too when he was an NYU professor before he passed away. Now people are looking back at Derrick Bell's work because these are bedrock pieces in what's this term that suddenly everybody knows even if they don't really understand what it is, critical race theory. Can you give us one more seller if possible to do and a soundbite of what you've learned?

Bill: Yes. Wait, I have to get it. It's in the bedroom. First I would like to tell everyone that it's not difficult to read. It's the theory of law, but I guess it's similar to James McBride. It's written in a, I would say, innovative and unique style of partly fictional vignettes. It's very, very, very readable.

Brian Lehrer: Bill, I'm going to leave it there just so I can get one more person on before we run out of time. Thank you for that. Kathy in Brooklyn is going to get, I think, unless she does it in seven seconds, our last book pick for today. Hi, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi. The book that I'm reading right now is called Mistborn born by Brandon Sanderson. It's a high fantasy book. It's really helping with an escape from all the high stress [chuckles] in the world these days.

Brian Lehrer: What does the term high fantasy mean?

Kathy: It's a book in this world where it's all make-believe. It's about magic and this high magic system of being able to have these abilities from the elements around you. It just really helps you get into this new world that's separate from yours.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much.

Kathy: A good escapism.

Brian Lehrer: Ending on the good escapism that gets us into another world, Kathy in Brooklyn. Thanks for all your book picks. So many left on the table. We should do this every week.

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