The Books Briefing: The Wellness Dystopia

A novel that captures the allure of the scam

“The trick—and delight—of [Chang-rae] Lee’s novel is that it forces readers to sit with their confusing desires, to question the appeal of the things we don’t or can’t or shouldn’t have.”

📚 My Year Abroad, by Chang-rae Lee

Netflix / The Atlantic

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix show is painful to watch

“The show’s unifying assumption is that there is science beyond ‘science.’ The series is a stylized argument for all that might be achieved, on behalf of the body and the soul and the culture that contains them, if humans could look beyond the dull contingencies of fact.”

📚 Goop Press books

🎥 The Goop Lab, on Netflix

Tomas Schuler / EyeEm / Getty

The interior lives of hoarders

“[Kate] Durbin’s work has what the A&E show lacks: a capacious sense of humanity, a nuanced understanding of how consumerism might shape compulsions, and a deeply expressed empathy for the subtleties of life under capitalism.”

📚 Hoarders, by Kate Durbin

🎥 Hoarders, on A&E

Denise Crew / Netflix

Tidying Up With Marie Kondo isn’t really a makeover show

“Paradoxically, the exercise of cultivating empathy for the things that surround us, rather than encouraging materialism, seems to lead Kondo’s clients to also have empathy for one another, and for themselves.”

📚 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo

📚 Spark Joy, by Marie Kondo

🎥 Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, on Netflix

Moolkum / Schankz / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic

Suicide Club takes on the tyranny of wellness

“Suicide Club shows the symmetry between upward striving and dark desire, how the fundamentally human pursuit of more—more pleasure, more beauty, more clarity, more life—can manifest at once as self-indulgence and restriction.”

📚 Suicide Club, by Rachel Heng

About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she’s reading next is The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel.

Comments, questions, typos? Reply to this email to reach the Books Briefing team.

Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up.