Where are the wrong books, please?
July 8, 2010
I’ve run across some interesting lists lately. My favorite is The Best Bad Books You’ve Never Read. This obviously isn’t a shopping list, rather a hilarious column by a reader whose bookshelves include Crabs on the Rampage and God Is for Real, Man. He’s also the author of Bad Book Club: One Man’s Quest to Uncover the Books That Taste Forgot. It’s available on Amazon’s Kindle or via U.K. sellers. Robin Ince writes:
“It’s easy to find a classic – there’s no epic journey required to get your hands on one. How much trickier it is to track down exquisite drivel, horribly misguided prose plumbing unimaginable depths, dreadful hacks who traverse the mundane to make the bland blissful. You can’t walk into a bookshop and say: ‘Where are the wrong books, please? Do you stock any books that should never have been published?’”
A more useful list is Publisher’s Weekly’s Start-ups for Fall: First Fictions. Here are 10 debut novels considered promising. You get a plot summary, a pitch from the publisher, first lines of the novel and more. One of the 10, The Wake of Forgiveness, has gotten attention from a few other sources and is on my own list for fall books to consider.
Tired of the predictable beach reads? Here’s some eclectic choices from Library Journal’s Classic Returns: Reprints, Updates, and Bargains. An odd list of four, for sure, that includes The Trade by Fred Stenson — “One critic likened it to Lonesome Dove with beavers replacing cattle. Fans of that book and sprawling adventure stories in general will go for this.”
The beavers provide a nice segue to Audubon Magazine. Its online edition published a list of Top 11 Climate Change Books. No escape reading here, but the topic fits the moment, considering we’re boiling up in this hot summer of 2010.
Finally, to settle things down a bit, In Defense of Privacy: The 20th Century’s Most Reclusive Authors. No real surprises in the list of Marcel Proust, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy and Harper Lee, but the stories are interesting. (I didn’t know Pynchon studied under Nabokov at Cornell.) The source, Flavorwire, explains “…we decided to examine why a few authors of a certain age chose to shut themselves away from the media, and in some cases, from publication and society, as well.”
New books to anticipate
January 6, 2010
January
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
This is Ferris’ second novel. I’m hoping it will be as sharp-witted and delightful to read as his first, Then We Came to the End, which I listed as one of the best books of 2007. Publishers Weekly gave The Unnamed a starred pre-pub review.
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Smith tells the story of her romance and life-long friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. From the publisher’s website: “Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.”
February
Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan
Written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, this book focuses on the fateful battle that ended French rule in Indochina and set the stage for the U.S. Vietnam war. From the publisher’s website: “A veteran of the French Army, Ted Morgan has made use of exclusive firsthand reports to create the most complete and dramatic telling of the conflict ever written.”
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
From an author profile in Publishers Weekly: “…a collection of engagingly fresh essays not just about Russian literature but about people who are enamored with it following a deceptively simple premise of traveling to where the authors – Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevski [sic] – traveled while they were writing their novels.”
Something Is Out There: Stories by Richard Bausch
Bausch is one of our present-day masters of moving short fiction that’s richly endowed with unforgettable scenes and characters. Library Journal gave it a starred review and writes, “A powerful, disturbing and significant book for fans of heavy-hitting fiction.” The publisher’s website says the book offers “eleven indelible new tales that showcase the electrifying artistry of a master.”
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Skloot is getting a lot of pre-publication kudos for this science book about an African-American mother of five who, being treated for cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951, had tissue samples taken from her body without her knowledge. They became HeLa, the first “immortal” cell line and one of the most important tools in medicine. Library Journal writes, “While there are other titles on this controversy, this is the most compelling account for general readers, especially those interested in questions of medical research ethics.”
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
I used to know a reader who was so infatuated with the works of this witty, cynical Brit that he traveled to Amis readings and kept a picture of the author and himself on his desk at the office. So, in his honor, I list the new Amis novel in February, where it’s available first in the U.K. (It’s coming to the U.S. in May.) The pre-pub description says the novel is a comedy of manners and a nightmare (quite a combo) about a 20-year-old literature student in Italy during the 1970s.
March
The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe, translated from the Japanese by Deborah Boliver Boehm
A new novel by Nobel Laureate Oe about the friendship between a writer and film director and the latter’s suicide. From the publisher’s website: A “…far-ranging search to understand what drove his brother-in-law to suicide. The quest takes [the writer] to Berlin, where he confronts ghosts from both his own past, and that of his lifelong, but departed, friend.” While this is fiction, Oe’s brother-in-law, a famous film director in Japan, jumped to his death in Tokyo in 1997, according to Publishers Weekly.
Rumored Islands by Robert Farnsworth (poetry)
Farnsworth’s new collection is scheduled for “Spring 2010,” according to the publisher’s website, so I’m placing it in the month of the first day of spring. Publisher’s Weekly describes the collection as “poems of wonder and shame, loneliness and ‘the strange, sun-spun fabric of the world.’” The book currently is not listed on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Orders might have to come directly from the Harbor Mountain Press.
April
Solar by Ian McEwan
McEwan’s website says this is an “engrossing and satirical novel which focuses on climate change.” Library Journal says it’s bound to be controversial because the protagonist, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, “gets slashed by the media after he says that most physicists are men because of differences between male and female brains.” According to The Guardian: “McEwan found himself under a similar kind of fire last summer, besieged by the media after he told an Italian newspaper that he ‘despise[d] Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest’.” Looks like he’s working it out in his fiction.
What Becomes: Stories by A. L. Kennedy
A new collection by this Scottish author of rich, absorbing stories. Released in 2009 in the U.K., The Guardian’s review said: “These are wonderfully textured pieces, varying from sentence to sentence, mood to mood, committed to capturing the precariousness and unsteadiness of individual mental landscapes.”
Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
A novel about a 17-year-old high-performing, conscientious girl tempted by drugs and alcohol. This is Lamott’s third book about her character Rosie who appeared in Rosie and the Crooked Little Heart.
Preview: new poetry
October 10, 2009
Marie Ponsot’s newest poetry book, Easy, is due to be published by Knopf this month. Ponsot is in her late 80s, with five previous poetry books to her name. She’s won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and I have a feeling, from what I’m reading about this new work, it could be stunning.
I’m not familiar with Ponsot, so I found two of her earlier works in the online catalog of a nearby library. I stopped there on the way to my workout to pick them up. Evidently, I didn’t read the fine print on the catalog results page because the library’s Information Man said the books had been discarded.
What’s surprising is not the obliteration of the books, rather my standing like an immovable ape in front of the man’s desk, waiting for another answer.
I’m well aware libraries discard (please, deaccession) their books for reasons of bad condition or no readership. But I simply couldn’t digest what he was saying. I wanted to read Ponsot after my workout. I wanted another answer. Couldn’t he offer a banana and say, “Let me check in the back,” like a store clerk? Or, look up availability at another library? Or, even commiserate over the horror of getting rid of a book I wanted?
I said the word “discard” three times, stalling, and then announced, “She has a new book coming out this month,” as if that would highlight some shame on his part.
I later found one Ponsot book at an out-lying library that will transfer the book to my neighborhood library. By that time, though, I’ll have Easy in hand and, if it’s as good as I hope it will be, then I’ll be shopping for first editions of her other books.
10 books to anticipate this fall
September 4, 2009
Summer Beach Reads behind us now, the fall brings with it new books to read by the fire or tucked in bed before turning out the lights. Here are a few I have on my radar screen.
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith (Peguin Group)
Kirkus Reviews says, “Rarely does a book that seems to promise so little deliver so much.” It’s divided into four sections: Reading, Being, Seeing, and Feeling and covers a range of topics.
The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson (HarperCollins)
This is Robinson’s first collection of stories. He’s got a fan base for his best-selling Inspector Alan Banks novels, described as “perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature.” I haven’t read then. I’m thinking this might be a good entry into his fiction.
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)
Publisher’s Weekly has given this autobiography a starred review. Bloomsbury’s website says, “A memoir of the sociel [sic] and sexual lives of New York City’s cultural and intellectual in-crowd in the tumultous 1970s, from acclaimed author Edmund White.”
Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr (HarperCollins)
The HarperCollins website says Lit is about, “getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; and learning to write by learning to live.” Library Journal claims it will be the memoir of the season.
The Humbling by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
The Chicago Tribune says this novel will find favor with Roth fans. From the synopsis, it appears to be in keeping with Roth’s current fictional focus on illness and death, featuring an aging actor.
Family Album by Penelope Lively (Viking)
The Guardian says Lively’s new book ”should be rated as one of her most impressive works.” It also says Lively ”plunges us into an entirely convincing world of bustling family life, yet at the same time keeps her distance with lethally sharp observations.”
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
Kingsolver’s first new novel in nine years gets a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. The protagonist Harrison Shepherd embarks on a journey that begins in Mexico in the 1930s, connecting him to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf)
10 new stories from this Grande Dame of short storywriting.
Invisible by Paul Auster (Henry Holt & Co.)
From the Holt website: “Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster’s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.”
Devil’s Dream: A Novel About Nathan Bedford Forrest by Madison Smartt Bell (Pantheon)
A fictionalized story about a Confederate Civil War General. Pantheon’s description: “Considered a rogue by the upper ranks of the Confederate Army, who did not properly use his talents, Forrest was often relegated to small-scale operations.”
There are no dead
August 5, 2009
In the previous post, I wrote about a book soon to be published by the late William Styron. But Styron’s not the only author publishing from the Great Beyond this Fall.
Charles Bukowski fans can look forward to a new collection of poetry.
Here’s the big news, though.
Knopf will publish, in November, the book Vladimir Nabokov was working on but didn’t finish when he died in 1977 — The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun): A Novel in Fragments.
According to Library Journal (July 2009), the book will have removable facsimiles of Nabokov’s 138 index cards.
Read below to understand what that means, from Knopf’s website (paragraphs inserted by me):
“When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son.
“Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
“His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality—affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.”
A bookshop across the pond
July 14, 2009
Two books with September publication dates in the United States, featured in the post Headlights on September, are already available for purchase at the London Review Bookshop online – or at 14 Bury Place, in London’s Bloomsbury district, should you be heading that way: Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro and Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd
I recently subscribed to the London Review of Books and discovered the availability in an advertisement for the shop. The discovery comes with a bit of a ‘duh!’ factor, considering the books are by U.K. authors.
Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England in 1960. He became a household literary name with the novel The Remains of the Day (1989) about an aging British butler. It won Ishiguro the Booker Prize and became a movie staring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. It’s also his first novel with a British protagonist set in England – his two previous novels (1982, 1986) feature Japanese protagonists.
Kiberd is an Irish writer born in Dublin 1951. He’s a professor of Anglo-Irish literature and drama at University College Dublin. The Irish Times describes him as, “an individual given to responding with his heart, as well as his intellect.”
Kiberd’s Ulysses and Us has been published in the U.K. with a slightly different subtitle from what we’ll see in the U.S.: “The Art of Everyday Living” versus “The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece.”
U.K. Edition
Also of note: A. S. Byatt’s new novel The Children’s Book, with a U.S. publication date in October, is also already published across the pond.
Here’s what the London Review Bookshop writes about it:
“A.S. Byatt’s latest novel, ‘easily the best thing [she] has written since her Booker-winning masterpiece, Possession (1990)’ according to Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times, is a panoramic four-family saga set between 1895 and the end of the First World War.” (Read more.)
All this in case you can’t wait for publication of the U.S. editions. (I couldn’t.) Keep in mind eagerness costs more money. Delivery takes 7 working days, so they tell me. Not bad.
Headlights on September
July 2, 2009
Available August 4, 2009
Around the time I was 10 or 11 years old, I walked into my neighborhood public library on a summer afternoon and had a panic attack. It occurred to me that I might get all the books I saw on the shelves read, and then what?
By the end of that summer, when I’d barely made a dent in the available volumes, I realized new books were published all the time. (Someone likely pointed out the “new books” shelf, and I discovered Santa, indeed, does exist.)
Publisher’s Weekly issued “The Road to Fall Books” this week, reminding me there’s no need for panic attacks once summer reading is completed. Come Labor Day, from the looks of the lists within this PW issue, we’ll be bombarded with a slew of new choices, from the intriguing to the inane.
For the inane category, I’ll offer First Love: Celebrities’ Tales of Virginity Lost, edited by Dana Cook (Firefly Books). According to the PW blurb, Cook “collects more than 100 personal accounts of boldfaced names.” Oh boy. Mark your calendar. It’s out in September.
Of the intriguing category, here are a few coming in September that I’m looking forward to:
Available September 1, 2009
Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow
Homer is blind. Langley is mad from being gassed fighting the Great War. These brothers live together in a crumbling Manhattan mansion, reclusives struggling to survive. A novel that’s based on a true story. Right up Doctorow’s alley. (Random House)
The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage, illustrated by Michael Mikolowski
Savage’s novel Firmin published by Coffee House Press first quietly entered American bookstores in 2006 and then had huge success in Europe. That prompted Bantam to republish it December 2008 – a quirky book about a reading rat living in a bookstore. Savage’s new novel focuses on an editor of a struggling literary journal. If it’s anything like Firmin, it will be wonderfully entertaining. (Coffee House Press)
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece
by Declan Kiberd
Thirty-five years ago I read major sections of Ulysses in a lit class and ever since have wanted to tackle it again but in full. Now’s my chance with Kiberd opening this enduring, complicated classic to ordinary readers with chapter discussions and explanations. Yes, the opportunity is here to embrace Molly Bloom’s final “…yes I said yes I will Yes.” (W. W. Norton)
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
A promising choice for a short story collection. According to the publisher’s website, Ishiguro has put together a cycle of stories that explore themes of music, love and the passage of time. (Alfred A. Knopf)
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Here’s a true account of a man whose passion for books drove him to steal rare, valuable books from libraries, book fairs and stores. From the publisher’s catalogue: “In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.” (Riverhead Books)
Available September 8, 2009
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
David Small is a Caldecott Award-winning book illustrator now telling his shocking 1950s childhood story in a graphic memoir. Small’s website describes the book as “a silent movie masquerading as a book.” The son of a Detroit radiologist, Small suffered under his father’s experiments with radiation. This memoir likely will get huge attention. It’s Small’s first book for adults. (W. W. Norton)
Finally, getting back to that subject of summer panic attacks, Minotaur is publishing Jason Starr’s novel Panic Attack in August. It’s billed as a page-turner and from what I’m reading, it could be just the thing for those dog day afternoons.
Will you be dispensable?
April 22, 2009
The Other Press is publishing The Unit in June, the first novel by Swedish author Ninni Holmqvist
, translated byMarlaine Delargy. From what I read in the press release, it’s sci-fi along the lines of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.
Sci-fi is not a genre that calls to me, although I’ve read the aforementioned classics, and I’m currently reaching the end of an Ursula LeGuin sci-fi classic (urged upon me by a friend who says it’s one of his all-time favorites). What strikes me about The Unit is the unsettling premise of living a necessary life determined by society, let alone the concept that one could be dispensable.
From the press release:
“In the world of The Unit, women over fifty and men over sixty who are childless, and do not contribute in ways deemed productive for society, are designated as ‘dispensable,’ and are expected to contribute in other ways. They are taken to a special reserve bank for physical and psychological experiments, where they participate in various tests – some benign, such as exercise regiments; others more dangerous, such as experimental drug therapy. …each ‘dispensable’ is expected, slowly but inevitably, to donate their vital organs to the ‘necessary’ ones, those outside the Unit.”
The Unit press release also says Holmqvist refrains from giving us simple answers, which is exactly why I’m drawn to read this soon-to-be-released novel.
