No one knows anything. Everyone claiming to know something is lying. The odds are 50-50, always, even if they say the odds are different. And though it can be a delicious hell to watch cable news and scroll on your phone all night, it does not make actually the election get decided any faster. In all likelihood, there will be nothing to know until well past midnight, if not several days from now. It is perhaps unreasonable to expect anyone who cares about this country to truly log off in any real way, but perhaps you can make your evening less miserable as the polls close. What if you could go to the bookstore and pick up something that would be gripping enough to stop you from watching Steve Kornacki zoom in on some random county that is behaving slightly differently than it did four or eight years ago? What if you could escape this mortal level of hell by entering your imagination guided by a sure hand?
Well, you could try! The key to choosing a good book for election night is that it must be engaging, plot-heavy, and more desirable than your phone. You must be so mesmerized by what is happening that you are more invested in the next page than you are in the results out of Fulton County, which, remember, you cannot affect with your television-watching. This is both a high bar and a low bar for fiction to clear. Also: The book should not explicitly contain material that reminds you of the election, and it should not be so highbrow that if you check your phone every 10 minutes (you are allowed to cheat, and will) you will lose the plot.
We have compiled a list of such books for you, should you wish to try to read tonight:
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The first thing to know about The Princess Bride the book is that it is, in my opinion, one hundred times better than The Princess Bride the movie, which is a pretty good movie! My dad gave me his copy when I was in middle school, and I devoured it. At the time, I didn’t know that the book’s real author, William Goldman, is pretending he has abridged a bloated, occasionally tedious history by a fictional author, S. Morgenstern (leading me down a fruitless rabbit hole trying to find S. Morgenstern’s original text). But this metafictional frame is tremendously funny, with Goldman interjecting throughout the book to comment on Morgenstern’s obsession with trends in cabbage crops or other eccentricities, and sprinkles the novel with a welcome bit of satire to cut through what we expect from a tale of true love and high adventure. Yet the love and adventure are the heart of the book, which is a flamboyant ode to pirates, princesses, revenge, poisoning, chess, monarchical bureaucracy, torture, resurrection, and a whole lot of kissing. I was actually going to read another book on this list tonight, but I think I’ve just convinced myself to go back to S. Morgenstern for a guaranteed good time. —Sabrina Imbler
Shine On, Bright And Dangerous Object by Laurie Colwin
Nothing is a better distraction from the horrors of the world than the pettiest drama of all time. In this Laurie Colwin novel from 1975, the heroine’s husband dies and then she decides that she probably likes his brother better. Iconique! Dramatic! Dumb! —Kelsey McKinney
Underworld by Don DeLillo
I read the first 100 pages or so on a plane yesterday, so I am specifically just recommending the 50-page prologue, which also functions as a self-contained short story about Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning home run in 1951. I’m a pushover for any novel with vivid imagery from old eras of baseball, and DeLillo has that in spades here. But he puts his own spin on this legendary event by jumping around the Polo Grounds through personalities both fictional and world-famous. Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, and J. Edgar Hoover are all in the stands and given plenty of words, but so are the everyman fans in the outfield, hoping against hope that the Giants can prolong their magic. The climax, told through the eyes of broadcaster Russ Hodges, is the sport at its most poetic, that repeated “The Giants win the pennant!” refrain setting a rhythm for the unforgettable hysteria to follow. Read this if you want some great baseball writing. —Lauren Theisen
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Hear me out. The Da Vinci Code is shit from a butt. BUT. There's a reason it set all kinds of sales records. It is incredibly easy to read, which would not normally be a selling point for a book for an adult, but definitely is on a night your mind will be racing and your hands will be itching to check your phone. Every chapter is like two and a half pages and ends on a cliffhanger. Nobody says or does anything in a way a normal person might. Nothing about Brown's writing tics in this famous pan is exaggerated. The book is 400-some pages and you can finish it in a night. It is a book for babies, yet tonight you will have the brain of a baby—irritable, distracted, comfort-seeking—and thus it is a book for you.
And if you're craving those ever-enjoyable pseudo-historical Catholic conspiracies packaged in a way that doesn't insult your intelligence, there's always The Name Of The Rose or Anathem. —Barry Petchesky
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
Our own Jasper Wang recommended this book to me a couple of years ago, and I flew through it. I have always loved mysteries and been a big fan of Agatha Christie. Yokomizo’s locked-room novel about a young newly married couple who are gruesomely murdered is constructed so perfectly that when the reveal hits, you feel satisfied and thrilled. —Kelsey McKinney
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Every year, I hit a point where I become totally illiterate. And every year, I turn to the pages of The Other Boleyn Girl to revive my fevered brain. If you’ve seen the 2008 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, then you know exactly what you’re in for. Importantly, that will not include historical accuracy. Philippa Gregory is famously a little loose with the facts of Mary Boleyn’s life (most historians agree that Mary was most likely the older sister) but honestly, who cares? This is a book that goes down as easy as a hot toddy; the details are sumptuous and of Gregory’s oeuvre, it’s the closest to a bodice-ripper. And at 664 pages, it’ll keep you occupied for a nice long time. —Rachelle Hampton
The City & The City by China Miéville
I read a lot of detective fiction, and I always appreciate it when we get the dead body pretty quickly. I prefer when the mystery to be unraveled is strictly Who killed this person and why, and not commingled with Which of these characters is going to end up dead in Chapter 10? In The City & The City, we’re off and running with a dead body in the third paragraph. A far-reaching murder investigation is the perfect way to explore the fully-fledged setting of Besźel and Ul Qoma, which are two city-states occupying the same geographical space. Citizens of each city pass each other on the same streets but learn to "unsee" one another, based on clothing and gait. I was about a third of the way through the book when I took a break to walk the dog with my wife, and as soon as I excitedly explained the conceit of the novel to her, she matter-of-factly said, "Oh, so it's an allegory about income inequality." And I was embarrassed to admit that actually, I was so enthralled by the ingenuity of the setting and the pace of the plot that it had not yet occurred to me that I was supposed to take any larger lessons from the story. So, if you'd like to read a book tonight about income inequality in our political systems that's so propulsive it might take you 100 pages and a helping hand to realize that's what it's about, I could not recommend The City & The City more highly. —Jasper Wang
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
I have never been madder than when I learned that this brilliant, fun fantasy novel was written by a man who is an engineer at Intel. How dare he be good at science and this! It’s a fantasy book about people who live inside a giant library and are ruled by a man called the Father, who is suddenly (strangely) missing. Dead? Who is to say? —Kelsey McKinney
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
I have nothing to say here that hasn't been said. I'm just writing this blurb on the chance that you, like me, have a reflexive and self-destructive tendency to avoid anything that's been universally praised. Let me tell you, after having finally taken the plunge on the trilogy earlier this year, that it's not possible to praise it enough. Even better than advertised. —Barry Petchesky
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
If what you need tonight is a gentle hand to push you out of reality while going “shhh,” I recommend reading Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, the first in a fantasy series set at a Yale where magic exists and is controlled by the university’s secret societies. I read this while I lived in New Haven, so it was extra thrilling for me, but my cousin informs me that it’s also great having never been to Connecticut. I love fantasy worlds that are mostly realistic and rooted in history (blame Harry Potter!!), and these are deeply reported for being fantasy novels. You get histories of Yale, New Haven, and the societies, as well as super-accurate geography. My memory of reading this, and its sequel Hell Bent, is disappearing into the novel for hours at a time and only resurfacing to reality when my body required tending to. Say bye-bye to the world and say hello to Galaxy “Alex” Stern. (Yes, that’s the protagonist’s name. Stay with it.) —Alex Sujong Laughlin
Beach Read by Emily Henry
A romance is a great choice for election night. Maybe the horniness will distract you! Emily Henry is the current reigning queen of heterosexual romance novels, and in my opinion Beach Read is a stunner. A girl who writes genre and a boy who writes lit-fic create a swap pact to try and write the other’s type? Brilliant. Let me gobble it up. —Kelsey McKinney
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
Are you looking for a good book to get lost in tonight? OK, go read another blurb then, because I'm here to recommend Sweet-motherfucking-bitter. It is a long-running bit in Defector Slack that I have read Sweetbitter multiple times despite claiming to hate it, but I think I finally understand why those two things can live in perfect harmony. Sweetbitter washes over the reader in a perfect encapsulation of "no thoughts, just vibes," only the vibes are a combination of deliciously described food and wine items with a soupçon (food term) of relationship drama between an incredibly boring protagonist and her somehow even more boring crush.
That latter part is whatever, but the reason I'm recommending Sweetbitter to you tonight, besides committing to this particular bit, is that the food descriptions and the overwrought restaurant procedures are actually quite delightful to read and luxuriate in. When author Stephanie Danler describes the thrill of eating a first oyster, it makes me want an oyster. When she describes a fancy wine spritzer as a hangover cure, it makes me want to be hung over. In perhaps the scene I return to in my head the most, when she writes of the camaraderie that only comes with a late Szechuan dinner with your overworked coworkers, I want to be as boringly 20-something as the main character.
I don't think Danler has a particularly deft hand in describing a variety of stock restaurant-comma-hipster character types, but she does have a knack for describing a scene, from the decor to the noise to the food accompaniments. So, while a lot of Sweetbitter is simultaneously pretentious and facile, the overall product works as a breezy distraction, one whose only negative effect might be in making you DoorDash some crispy beef and Tsingtao beer. There's no way to connect on a deeper level with the material here, and that's exactly what I'd want to read when trying to just let an evening fly by unattended. —Luis Paez-Pumar
Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón
This is the best book about dogs, Venezuela, or Venezuelan dogs I have read this year. A guy’s wife divorces him, then her weird-ass father wills him a big estate and some other stuff if he promises to turn the estate into a shelter for lost and abandoned (mostly abandoned) dogs. There’s a bristling aura of menace that undergirds the book, but it’s weirdly optimistic, and without spoiling anything, I can confidently say that the Simpatia Por El Perro Foundation would produce and sell absolutely heinous merch; that shit would be so ugly. —Patrick Redford
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin is the only person to win the Hugo Award for every single book in a trilogy, and the minute you start The Fifth Season, you can tell why. The characters are fully built out; the world is constructed immaculately and interesting. It’s a work of such elite imagination that you cannot help but get lost in it. Plus, there are three of them, if this dreaded hell extends on for days! —Kelsey McKinney
You can find all of Defector's book picks to distract you from doom in this handy list.
