The Picador Book Room

With temps rising into the 90s on this first official Friday of summer, the Picador team is here again to share the heat wave edition of their Friday Reads.

As usual, Darin has multiple books on tap, including Gillian Flynn’s much-hyped Gone Girl, Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, and The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje.

Gabrielle just finished the original Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

…and my jaw is still on the floor. I never read it as a kid and never saw the movie so my knowledge of it going in was peripheral—but definitely Disneyfied. This book is nothing like what I expected, and for the better. Because I like to go into a book without a lot of information, I just started the intro by Umberto Eco on the train this morning and can’t wait to read the afterword by Rebecca West.

This weekend I’m psyched to start Revenge, the new novel by Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa. Picador is publishing it in February 2013 as a paperback original, and I am the way-excited publicist working on it. Here’s what our editors have to say: “Macabre, fiendishly clever, and with a touch of the supernatural, Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge creates a haunting tapestry of death—and the afterlife of the living.” Seriously. 

Justin is “already enthralled” just after cracking Open City by Teju Cole.

Elianna is doing some serious soul-searching with Please God, Find Me a Husband! by Simone Lia.

Picador publisher Stephen is unintentionally celebrating Novella Month with Alan Bennett’s newest, Smut, a pair of novellas which “explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people’s public appearance and their private desires.”

Alaina is reading Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick, one of several books scored at BEA. When she inevitably finishes that on the long bus ride to Washington D.C., Christopher Tilghman’s The Right-Hand Shore is waiting in her bag.

Finally, The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music by Dylan Jones (@DylanJonesGQ) has been keeping new dad James up even later than usual this week. (The cover shown here is from the UK edition, but Picador will be publishing the book with a new cover in November 2012.) Stay tuned for more of James’ ruminations about this one in the coming days.