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Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers
Best of the Millennium Notable Articles
C. Max Magee September 25, 2009 | 15 books mentioned 85 3 min read
One thing I know after working on The Millions for all these years is that the site has some incredibly knowledgeable and avid readers, the sort of book people I loved working with back in my bookstore days and who are the lifeblood of literary culture. And so, even as we were polling our distinguished panel of writers, editors, and critics, we wondered, what do Millions readers think? We polled The Millions Facebook group to find out.
The list our readers came up with was very interesting, and deviated in noticeable ways from that of the Pros. Before I get into the details. Have a look at the two lists below (Links in our panel list go to the writeups we published throughout the week. Links in our reader list go to Amazon):
by Jonathan Franzen
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
by Edward P. Jones
by Roberto Bolaño
by Jeffrey Eugenides
by Ian McEwan
by W.G. Sebald
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
by Alice Munro
by Marilynne Robinson
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Twilight of the Superheroes
by Deborah Eisenberg
by Khaled Hosseini
by Norman Rush
Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis
The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
by Colm Tóibín
Stranger Things Happen
by Kelly Link
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
American Genius, A Comedy
by Lynne Tillman
Unaccustomed Earth **
by Jhumpa Lahiri
by Susanna Clarke
While everyone seems to agree that The Corrections is a great book (it was the panel winner by a landslide), Millions readers put seven books ahead of it, and anointed Oscar Wao the top book of the decade. Our readers have always loved Oscar, so that wasn't a huge surprise, but it was also interesting to see that the readers had a high opinion of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, rectifying probably the biggest snub on our panel list, (along with White Teeth). But then, the readers snubbed The Known World, so who knows.
With a massive field of potential books, snubs were inevitable. Left off both lists were both of Jonathan Safran Foer's novels, David Foster Wallace's Oblivion (his only fiction of the decade), and Denis Johnson's much praised Tree of Smoke. Voters were also dying to include Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. It was ineligible because it was published in Spanish in 1998, but it makes one wonder, what books will seem like shoo-ins for this type of exercise 10 or 11 years from now but are completely under the radar (or still untranslated) today?
Moving back to the books that did make the list, I also loved that the readers included Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book that I've been hearing about from our readers for years, and Half of a Yellow Sun, a book that's always had a lot of support in the online literary community. Also intriguing is the appearance of mega-best seller The Kite Runner.
Finally, if we try to look for a consensus among the two lists, several titles appear on both, but the two with the most support across the entire spectrum of respondents are 2666 and Cloud Atlas, which, if you had to pick just two books to define the literary decade now coming to an end, would make for very interesting selections indeed.
We'll be publishing follow-up pieces in our Millennium series over the coming weeks, so look for those. I also wanted to thank our panel and Millions readers for taking the time to participate in the series. If you enjoyed the series and value the coverage that The Millions provides, please consider supporting the site.
Best of the Millennium
#20: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
John Williams September 21, 2009 | 15 books mentioned
The book's modest, carefully planed language and its concern with primary human needs make it timeless.
John Williams | 15 books mentioned
Essays Notable Articles
The ___'s Daughter
Emily St. John Mandel March 28, 2012 | 15 books mentioned 93 6 min read
To be clear, I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling one's book The ___'s Daughter. I think those titles have a marvelous rhythm to them. And yet one can't help but wonder why there seem to be so many of them.
Emily St. John Mandel | 15 books mentioned 93 6 min read
In Person Notable Articles
Haruki Murakami in Berkeley
Ben Dooley October 14, 2008 | 15 books mentioned 4 4 min read
This past weekend, Haruki Murakami appeared at U.C. Berkeley's Zellerbach Auditorium for a reading of his short stories and a wide-ranging conversation about his work and life. Despite my disappointment with his recent work, Murakami ranks as one of my favorite writers, and it was a pleasure to finally see the notoriously shy writer in person.Zellerbach is a big venue, at least 800 seats, and in an age when lit pundits constantly bemoan the future of literature, I was surprised when I attempted to buy tickets several weeks ago only to find they were sold out. Thanks to the timely intervention of a friend, however, I managed to get a decent seat in the mezzanine, and spent two and a half enjoyable hours laughing along with the capacity crowd at Murakami's understated humor.During the first part of the program, Murakami read "The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes" (from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman) The story, written in the early stages of his career, is a parable about the Japanese literary world and its reception of his first novel. In classic Murakami style, the story follows a Japanese everyman whose seemingly normal life descends into the bizarre. In this case, after responding to a newspaper ad, he finds himself baking cakes for a competition that is judged by cannibalistic crows. The story, in turns hilarious and gruesome, received a warm reception from the audience, with several people, strangely, even laughing at the grim denouement."Sharpie Cakes" was followed by a fascinating discussion on writing between Murakami and Roland Kelts, a writer and lecturer at the University of Tokyo, and questions from the audience. The conversation ranged from Murakami's obsession with jogging to Carl Jung, hitting most of the stops in between, including hints about his newest novel. Some of the highlights (in no particular order and paraphrased in places):On Reader's Questions: Apparently Murakami actually answers all of his fan mail personally. "I like stupid questions. A guy sent me an email about squid. He asked 'are their tentacles hands or feet?' I told him he should give a squid ten pairs of gloves and ten pairs of socks and see what happens."On Inspiration: "I'm observing things, not making them up… I'm not nationalist, I don't write for my country, but for my people… I don't think with my brain. I like my keyboard. I think with my fingers. When I write, it's just a simple joy… I can write about torture, about skinning someone alive. But it's still heartwarming…"On his obsessions: "Elephants, sofas, refrigerators, wells, cats, ears. These things help me to write."On video games: "Writing a story for me is just like playing a video game. I start with a word or idea, then I stick out my hand to catch what's coming next. I'm a player, and at the same time, I'm a programmer. It's kind of like playing chess by yourself. When you're the white player, you don't think about the black player. It's possible, but it's hard. It's kind of schizophrenic."On dreams: "I don't dream. I use my dreams when I write. I dream when I'm awake. That's the job of a novelist. You can dream a dream intentionally. When you're sleeping and you have a nice dream, you're eating or with a woman, you might wake up at the best part. I get to keep dreaming. It's great."On his next novel: He finished it last week. Apparently, it's going to be a doorstop. "I hope you're not a commuter… The new novel is in the third person, from beginning to end. I need that room, because the story is getting more complicated. I need many perspectives."On translations of his own work: "I'm a translator myself. I believe in my translations. If the story is strong enough, it will be translated rightly. I'm a novelist, not a linguist. If the story's good, it will move you. That's the important thing. It's embarrassing for me to read my own work in Japanese. I enjoy the translations of my novels in English, because it's not what I wrote. I forget what I wrote, and I turn the pages, excited to find out what will happen next."On Catcher in the Rye (which he translated several years ago): "It's a dark story, very disturbing. I enjoyed it when I was seventeen, so I decided to translate it. I remembered it as being funny, but it's dark and strong. I must have been disturbed, when I was young. J.D. Salinger has a big obsession, three times bigger than mine. That's why I'm here tonight, and he isn't."On Revision: "The first draft is most important. I have to go through and adjust small things, contradictions. When I stared writing The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, I wrote for an hour, and immediately I felt something was wrong. There was too much going on, so I pulled out that part of the story and wrote another book, South of the Border, West of the Sun."On his favorite music: "I listen to classical music in the morning, jazz in the evening. I listen to rock when I'm driving. I like Radiohead (big round of applause). I like REM, Beck, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Thome Yorke is a reader of mine. He's in Tokyo now, and he wanted to meet me, but I had to be here. It's a huge sacrifice for me… I sing "Yellow Submarine" while I swim. It's sounds like bubbling. It's great. I recommend you try it… I loved the Beach Boys when I was younger. I met Brian Wilson when he came to Tokyo. He's strange."On Berkeley: "Something's wrong with this town."Bonus Link: A Rare Treat for Murakami Fans: Pinball, 1973
Ben Dooley | 15 books mentioned 4 4 min read
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Sonya Chung January 12, 2010 | 15 books mentioned 27 6 min read
Rohan Maitzen says:
I'm surprised not to see Sarah Waters on either list.
Maire says:
I was so happy to see that readers included Jhumpa Lahiri after a snubbing by the panel.
Oh, and ditto Murakami.
Lydia Kiesling says:
I think something to take away from the whole exercise is that it is silly to ascribe merit numerically. Number one, number three, number thirteen—these are basically meaningless distinctions (unless, I suppose, you are running a race). Consider the Modern Library 100, which creates a fairly arbitrary, often ridiculous, hierarchy between books, using basically the same process used for this list (which is, to reiterate, *not* a round-table consensus-type situation, but one based on tallies). Folks seem a little grumpy about The Corrections' number one spot. Of course it feels a odd to call The Corrections "the best novel of the millennium." But I don't see how any of the novels we talked about this week would be less troublesome in that lauded position (unless, naturally, they happen to be your particular favorite).
We're all just having a good time, right?
I would take the readers' list over the panel's anytime. The Corrections is only notable for the Oprah huff, other than that its professorial navel-gazing which is why it was at the top.
K. Grauke says:
I thought that The Interpreter of Maladies came out in '99.
Garth Risk Hallberg says:
What is it with people and "professorial?" I keep hearing this adjective leveled at things I find conspicuously intelligent, but maybe it's meant to denote some tone or rhetorical trait to which I (a quasi-professor) am as deaf as a human to a dog-whistle. Do people hate professors? I've always sort of liked them. At any rate, between Chip, Gary, Denise, Enid, and Alfred, there seems to be something for everyone in The Corrections. But maybe not?
W.S. says:
You conducted a big poll and went through all of the trouble of tabulating and organizing and compiling this list and that's what sits at the top? Why even bother with the whole exercise? One thing has been made definitely clear though: what most professional writers want, more than anything, is not to be the best writers they can be, but the best that the market wants them to be, to be rich and famous. Yawn. So the best example of fiction writing so far this decade is an enormous, encyclopedic novel written by a very tall white guy who wears glasses. The more things change the more they stay the same. I think this comment should end with a cliched statement like that in honor of your cliched, safe, zeitgeist-approved choice.
It's not the destination, it's the journey?
I'm surprised at how _Kafka on the Shore_ did on the reader's list. I felt like it was one of Murakami's weakest novels ever (and maybe that's a testament to his skill and ability).
Both _White Teeth_ and _Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell_ were excellent books. Definitely among my favorites of the millennium.
The whole point is to spur debate, right? Now's when the fun begins. My personal quibble: no Aleksandar Hemon? I nominate Nowhere Man. (Oh, by the way, Hemon is also a tall white man with glasses. Oh well.)
I personally love tall white guys who wear glasses. Sexy!
And is anyone really surprised that the top book is one that's been a commercial and critical success? In order to get the #1 spot, a book had to have the most votes, and it would be difficult for a less well known book to win, simply because the fewer people who have read a book means fewer people voting for it.
I know people who hated The Corrections or thought it mediocre, and that's fair. But I also know people who hate a book simply because lots of other people like it…
That said, I enjoyed The Corrections very much, I had fun nominating my favorite books, and I loved reading the write-ups for all the ones that made the list. I can't wait to get my hands on American Genius and Mortals, two books I knew very little about before the list was published.
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Where oh where is China Mieville? As far as I'm concerned, he's the tops–at least in fantasy/science fiction. But THANKS for excluding the author of Angels and Demons, whats his name!
Tom Beshear says:
EUROPE CENTRAL should be among this august list, but I can only assume few of the Millions voters have read it. It's long and difficult, don't you know, and its subject matter is not trendy. Vollmann's execution of his great ambition is intimidating — few of the authors here (Bolano, perhaps a couple of others) could conceive of such a project, let alone complete it. And following its example will not make you a more marketable young writer.
Sorry to be so snarky, but, really….
Also, KAVALIER AND CLAY, TREE OF SMOKE, and OMEGA MINOR
Shipsa01 says:
How about Netherland?
The stand-out quality of The Corrections, and the reason it deserves a spot at least near the top (if there has to be a list at all), is that it's a genuine novel of social criticism (that is, not social criticism masquerading as a novel, or vice versa). Franzen deserves praise for revitalizing the form. It's more Jane Austen than John Updike.
Interpreter of Maladies did come out in '99, and as such, should be disqualified. (That's not to take away from its quality or the quality of Lahiri's writing. Just that it doesn't meet the criteria for inclusion.)
I think both of these lists are full of great novels and story collections. The comments are focusing largely on what wasn't included and the consensus seems to be that the big, difficult novels got the shaft. I'm not sure this is entirely correct, as 2666 placed pretty highly on the list. Perhaps a book like Tree of Smoke lost out because it's taking a while for readers to digest it, but again, 2666 puts the lie to that theory. To suggest that a book like Europe Central didn't make the list because nobody must've read it is nutty. I read it. It wasn't in my top 5. It's an incredible book and it digs into consciousness in a way I'd never seen before, but I happen to think The Corrections is a better novel. Big and difficult doesn't always equally better and more impressive, despite what the commentors on this site so often suggest.
While I agree with Tom, I still wouldn't give it anywhere close to the top spot. I thought it was pretty middling, and I don't necessarily think we need any sort of "return to form" in an era where new voices, traditionally kept out of mainstream publishing, are finally coming to the forefront.
I think Junot Diaz deserves that number one.
But hey, great list! It's nice to just have a compiled list of suggested contemporary reading, which – for some reason – is difficult to come by. (But I'll take suggestions) .
C. Max Magee says:
Dang it – several sources I looked at said 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, but I guess that's just when she won the Pulitzer… So, Unaccustomed Earth got several votes – how about we swap that in (and counting the combined votes she got for her three books, Lahiri deserves to be on there.)
I think the panel's list is stronger, but both are missing some key books… but that's always to be expected. I enjoyed these lists!
Oops, I was one of the people who nominated Interpreter of Maladies on my reader's choice list, and somehow also convinced myself it came out in 2000. But Unaccustomed Earth is great! I'm curious, did The Namesake get many votes? I've never liked it as much as her short stories.
Actually, Laura, it looks like The Namesake didn't get any votes, but Unaccustomed and Interperter got almost the same number, and combined would have moved Lahiri up the list a few spots (it seems like most folks agree with you that Lahiri's short stories are where it's at).
Garth:
I think "professorial" has become a synonym for "intellectual." On the one hand, I understand how someone would criticize a writer for this trait. Some writers, like many professors, can take the soul out of a story. The heady language, the "ideas," obfuscate the feelings and emotions.
But, for the most part, the label of "professorial" is lazy. I've heard the tag thrown at Pynchon and DFW, for example, but I've encountered some of the most beautiful, well written, emotion-filled passages in both of their books.
I understand the criticism some readers have about "The Corrections." The language, at times, does seem to take on the self-pity and cynicism of its characters. I too struggled with this, and I think it's fair to call attention to it– as many notable critics have. But, overall, I'm certain Franzen was well-aware of this. So the questions should be why does he write like this and, secondly, is he successful? In all, Franzen has an incredible talent for family drama, and the book is incredibly well-written and challenging– two traits any great novel should have.
What I don't agree with are the knee-jerk reactions to the book. Franzen tends to catch the same lazy criticism as Pynchon and Wallace and Delillo. And you are right to challenge the term "professorial" in this case, which, in essence, is a cynical attack on ambition. These attacks, many of which come from those who haven't read the books in question, stem from a misunderstanding about the writing process and, in general, irreverence for authors who experiment and try to push the form.
Most writers, to counter W.S., aren't out to be famous. To accuse Franzen of this is ridiculous because "The Corrections" is an anomaly. Serious writers with literary ambitions don't make the long dollar– most artists without a mind for entertainment aren't the ones living in luxury.
And irreverence: this is a trend I don't understand. Many like to bash "high-art" as pretentious and elitist and snobbish. It's as if great art is all a facade, a hoax. The people who make it are intellectuals and the people who consume it want to look smart. No, great art is ambitious, challenging, and requires a finer taste.
And to "The Millions" crew and the writers who participated: thanks for the list. I don't agree with some of the books, but who cares? The numbers game is a matter of preference, and there isn't a dud on the list. Thanks for sparking conversation, reminding me of books I've read, and encouraging me to read the books I haven't.
I have to agree with PJ about Aleksandar Hemon. Nowhere Man didn't make a big splash when it was published, but it is (I hope) one of those books that will keep growing in stature as the years pass. Few writers have ever captured the dislocations of the refugee/exile experience as vividly as Hemon. The book is structurally dazzling, and the way Hemon reinvigorates the English language puts native speakers on notice that their mother tongue has grown tired of being taken for granted and has found herself a new lover.
I'm okay with the White Teeth snub because, though it's a fantastic book, the ending's pretty damn lame. I wonder if Tree of Smoke didn't make it because, well, it's massive, and it's hard to vote for something you can't finish.
Right. Most writers long to live in penury and anonymity. Especially writers like Franzen, which would explain his habitual need to tell other people why whatever it is he is working on at any given moment is exactly what the publishing world, and the reading public, needs.
I think the problem with your argument is your example. Franzen is a middlebrow novelist working with traditional material to make what amounts to more of the same. The Corrections is just another in a long line of novels that flatters its audience into thinking that their lives have some kind of universal truth to them, as if a Chef, a Writer and a Businessman are avatars for all of humanity. The Corrections, to me, said nothing new about anything and did it in a way that was neither innovative nor exciting. I guess that it was picked number one by the panel shouldn't really come as a surprise when you see who made up the panel.
Poornima says:
I too think Oscar Wao deserves the top slot (and agree about Hemon and would have loved to see Colum McCann somewhere) but as some have observed the rankings are pretty subjective anyway.
On a separate note, while I am amused at some of the sharp rhetoric flying around, I also think it's great to see so many so passionate about books and reading. Three cheers to the Millions for sparking such lively conversation!
PScott says:
The lists are very solid top to bottom, but am I the only person surprised by the lack of love on either list for Atwood's Blind Assassin? Seems like a rather prominent omission.
I'm also curious if any of Philip Roth's books from the decade got any votes.
I voted for the Blind Assassin, PScott! That was the one I felt sad about.
W.S., there are undoubtedly things to be said against The Corrections, but you're getting a touch personal there.
PScott,
I considered a couple of Roth books — namely The Human Stain — but in the end, they didn't make my top 5. If we did this same thing for the 90s, I might have picked American Pastoral #1 overall. There were actually quite a few authors whose best work seemed to happen in the late 90s, and as such, just missed the cut.
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It's interesting that The Corrections has been labelled "professorial," considering that the occupation and the ivory tower are the target of some keen (and hilarious) satire in Franzen's novel. Also, evidence for Franzen's beliefs in the pleasures of writing and reading is all over the place. Alas, the suggestion that something is trying to be intelligent does leave the impression of elitism. As readers, though, it's up to us to enter a dialogue with the writer and not just approach art as a cheap fix, but as a means of communicating something of value. I think Franzen does this well.
Mad Professah says:
I love Oscar Wao and Jhumpa Lahiri! I got two copies of The Known World for m birthday years ago and COULD NOT FINISH IT! I just lost interest in the plot around page 300, and did not feel like slogging through to the end.
I actually read Middlesex last week and loved it. I read Cloud Atlas earlier this year and enjoyed it qute a bit (except the longest story in the middle). The Road I was forced to read by my book club and thought it was okay.
I have read 9 of the top 20 "readers choices" (6 of the top 10) but almost none on the critics list.
I look forward to reading The Corrections soon.
It seems unfair to exclude The Savage Detectives considering its English translation came later and its impact was most certainly felt in this millennium as opposed to the last.
Also, I found it more inventive than The Savage Detectives in nearly every way: http://wwtawwta.blogspot.com/2009/05/2666.html
p.s. W.S. = Will Speers?
I'm very surprised that "Life of Pi" did not make the list. Regardless of what you think of Yann Martel's other work, this one should stand the test of time.
Life of Pi? Really?
Went searching for Norman Rush's Mortals, found it in the remainders at Book City in Toronto for six bucks. Not bad.
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Out Stealing Horses is a personal favourite. I was pleased and surprised to see it in the Pro list as it seldom gets a mention
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Shout out to "Gould's Book of Fish", by Richard Flanagan.
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"The Corrections" is the best novel of the millennium, so far? C'mon. Seriously?
How utterly boring.
That choice is more a reflection of a writerly clique than the book's worthiness.
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For the record, I have read six of the twenty critics' choices and seven of the twenty readers' choices. The Corrections is one of those. I was underwhelmed. Franzen can write a sentence, but the book lacked depth.
As one example of a flaw, the scene with the talking poo is derivative of Mr. Hanky of South Park fame. Mr. Hanky has been around since 1997, so South Park gets credit. And, I guess, my biggest problem with the book was that Franzen seemed primarily interested in zaniness (like the fish down the pants which seemed for all the world like a Seinfeld (Kramer) bit.) rather than saying anything new about the human condition. And, no, his one-dimensional shots at big pharma, the cruise industry, etc. do not qualify.
Still, the two lists are outstanding and provide the spur I need to catch up on some of the millenium's best (if sometimes overrated) writing.
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Lisa N.R. says:
I was so pleased to see Austerlitz make both lists; I admire Sebold so much and I'm planning on starting The Emigrants soon. What is it with our need to "rank" in order, by number? I like the idea of bounded sets or intersecting circled sets of favorites instead of lists. With a list, where do I start…at the top? I'm interested in the intersections and what else is being read. I'm probably gonna start with Gilead, Cloud Atlas, and Never Let Me Go, based on how near they were on the list to other favorites that I've read. It's all so…whacked. But what a great load of fun.
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I contributed titles, but none of mine made it in the top 20…I figured they wouldn't, but I'd love to see the entire list of submitted titles if that exists somewhere! It's fun to see which titles got chosen the most, but I'd be more interested in seeing everything that was nominated and how many votes each title received. Max, would that be a possibility?
Hi Leah, Thanks for taking part. I'm not sure if we'll be publishing the readers' list of titles – probably not – but we have published the panel's list.
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S. Forrest says:
Corrections??? How can that be? It is a novel of cartoons.
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Ted Schaefer says:
Very high on my top 20 list would be Kathryn Davis's "The Thin Place," Kate Walbert's "A Short History of Women," and Jane Gardam's "Old Filth."
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Larry Belling says:
My fave book of the decade is "Sacred Games" by Vikran Chandos. How can these idiots omit it?
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I've read only Murakami, but looking forward for top-list… Thanks!
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Haruki Murakami and the Art of the Day
Kevin Hartnett May 24, 2010 | 15 books mentioned 12 5 min read
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Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2014 Book Preview
Editor July 7, 2014 | 15 books mentioned 19 28 min read
2014 has already offered a literary bounty for readers, including new books by E.L. Doctorow, Lorrie Moore, Teju Cole, and Lydia Davis. The second-half of 2014 is looking even more plentiful, with new books from superstars like Haruki Murakami, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Marilynne Robinson, Denis Johnson, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood and quite a few more. Here at The Millions, we're especially excited that three of our long-time staff writers — Edan Lepucki, Bill Morris, and Emily St. John Mandel — will soon have new books on shelves. All three books are winning impressive advance praise.
The list that follows isn't exhaustive – no book preview could be – but, at over 8,000 words strong and encompassing 84 titles, this is the only second-half 2014 book preview you will ever need. Scroll down and get started.
California by Edan Lepucki: Millions staffer Edan Lepucki's first full-length novel has been praised by Jennifer Egan, Dan Chaon, and Sherman Alexie, and championed by Stephen Colbert, who's using it as a case study in sticking it to Amazon. A post-apocalyptic novel set in a California of the not-too-distant future, California follows a young couple struggling to make it work in a shack in the wilderness — dealing with everyday struggles like marriage and privacy as much as dystopian ones likes food and water — until a change in circumstance sends them on a journey to find what's left of civilization, and what's left of their past lives. (Janet)
Motor City Burning by Bill Morris: Bill Morris made his literary debut 20 years ago with Motor City, a novel set amid the rich history of 1950s Detroit. Since then, he's pursued various other interests, writing a novel set in Bangkok and contributing frequently to The Millions as a staff writer. But as anyone who follows Bill's essays can tell you, his hometown is rarely far from his mind. Now, with the Motor City much in the news, he returns to explore class, race, bloodshed and baseball in the 1960s. (Garth)
The Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique: Tiphanie Yanique follows her much lauded story collection, How to Escape From a Leper Colony, with "an epic multigenerational tale set in the U.S. Virgin Islands that traces the ambivalent history of its inhabitants during the course of the 20th century." That's according to Publishers Weekly, who gave The Land of Love and Drowning a starred review. Yanique's debut novel has been receiving raves all over the place; in its starred review, Kirkus called it, "Bubbling with talent and ambition, this novel is a head-spinning Caribbean cocktail." (Edan)
Friendship by Emily Gould: Gould, who put the gawk in Gawker in the middle part of the last decade, turns to fiction with a debut novel that at times reads like a series of blog entries written in the third person. In the novel, two friends, Bev and Amy, are trying to make it as writers in New York when Bev gets pregnant. The question of whether Bev should keep the baby, and what Amy should think about the fact that Bev is even considering it, turns the novel into a meditation on growing up in a world built for the young. (Michael)
Last Stories and Other Stories by William T. Vollmann: Vollmann has over 30 years and damn near as many books earned a reputation as a wildly prolific novelist. Still, almost a decade has passed since his last full-length work of fiction, the National Book Award-winning Europe Central. Here, he offers what may have started as a suite of ghost stories… but is now another sprawling atlas of Vollmann's obsessions. Stories of violence, romance, and cultural collision are held together by supernatural elements and by Vollmann's psychedelically sui generis prose. (Garth)
High as the Horses' Bridles by Scott Cheshire: To the distinguished roster of fictional evangelicals — Faulkner's Whitfield, Ellison's Bliss — this first novel adds Josiah Laudermilk, a child-prodigy preacher in 1980s Queens. Cheshire makes huge leaps in time and space to bring us the story of Laudermilk's transformation into an adult estranged from his father and his faith. (Garth)
The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai: The second novel from Rebecca Makkai (after 2011's The Borrower) moves back and forth in the 20th century to tell a story of love, ghosts, and intrigue. The house for which The Hundred-Year House is named is Laurelfield, a rambling estate and former artists' colony in Chicago's wealthy North Shore. Owned by the Devohr family for generations, it now finds Zee (née Devohr) and her husband returning to live in the carriage house while she teaches at a local college and he supposedly writes a poet's biography. What he does instead is ghostwrite teen novels and uncover family secrets. (Janet)
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway: Having written about ninjas, spies in their eighties and mechanical bees in his last two novels, Nick Harkaway is in a tough spot if he wants to top himself this time around. All the indications are that he may have done it, though — Tigerman sees a powerful United Nations carry out a cockamie plan to wipe out a former British colony. The protagonist, a former British soldier, takes it upon himself to fight for his patch of the old empire. (Thom)
Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya: Yelena Akhtiorskaya is one of New York's best young writers — funny and inventive and stylistically daring, yes, but also clear-eyed and honest. Born in Odessa and raised in Brighton Beach, she's been publishing essays and fiction in smart-set venues for a few years. Now she delivers her first novel, about two decades in the life of a Ukrainian family resettled in Russian-speaking Brooklyn. An excerpt is available at n+1. (Garth)
The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil: "And then one day when the lake ice had broken and geese had come again, two brothers, twins, stole a little boat and rowed together out towards Nizhi." In an alternate Russia, twin brothers Yarik and Dima work together at Oranzheria, the novel's titular "sea of glass" greenhouse, until their lives veer into conflict. Weil's exquisite pen and ink illustrations "frame the titles of all 29 chapters and decorate the novel's endpapers," making the book, literally, a work of art. If The New Valley, Weil's lyric first book of linked novellas, is any indication, this new book will be memorable. (Nick R.)
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami: Murakami's previous novel, 1Q84, was a sprawling, fantastical work. His latest is just the opposite: a concise, focused story about a 37-year-old man still trying to come terms with a personal trauma that took place seventeen years earlier — when he was unceremoniously cut out of a tight knit group of friends. The novel has less magical strangeness than most Murakami books, and may be his most straightforward tale since Norwegian Wood. (Kevin)
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas: Thomas spreads his canvas wide in this 640-page doorstop of a novel, which follows three generations of an Irish American family from Queens, but at heart the book is an intimate tale of a family's struggle to make its peace with a catastrophic illness that strikes one of its members at precisely the wrong moment. Simon & Schuster spent more than a million dollars on this first novel whose author was then teaching high school in New York, thus assuring that the book will either be the fall's Cinderella story or a poster child for outsized advances given to untested authors. (Michael)
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay: Is it "the year of Roxane Gay?" Time suggested it in a review of Gay's new novel, An Untamed State; when asked (in a self-interview) how that made her feel, she said, "First, I tinkled on myself. Then my ego exploded and I am still cleaning up the mess." It's as good a glimpse as any into the wonder that is Roxane Gay — her Twitterstorms alone are brilliant bits of cultural criticism, and her powerful essays, on her blog, Tumblr, and at various magazines, leave you with the sense that this is a woman who can write dazzlingly on just about any topic. In her first essay collection, we're promised a wide-ranging list of subjects: Sweet Valley High, Django Unchained, abortion, Girls, Chris Brown, and the meaning of feminism. (Elizabeth)
The Kills by Richard House: House's vast tetralogy, at once a border-hopping thriller and a doorstopping experiment, was longlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize in the U.K. Taking as its backdrop the machinery of the global war on terror, it should be of equal interest on these shores. (Garth)
Before, During, After by Richard Bausch: Since 1980, Richard Bausch has been pouring out novels and story collections that have brilliantly twinned the personal with the epic. His twelfth novel, Before, During, After, spins a love story between two ordinary people – Natasha, a lonely congressional aide, and Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest – whose affair and marriage are undone by epic events, one global, one personal. While Michael nearly dies during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Natasha's error on a Caribbean shore leads to a private, unspeakable trauma. As the novel unspools, Before and During prove to be no match for After. (Bill)
Your Face In Mine by Jess Row: Possibly inspired by the ageless Black Like Me, Jess Row tells the story of Kelly Thorndike, a native Baltimorean who moves back to his hometown and discovers that an old friend has gotten surgery to change his race. At one time a skinny, white, Jewish man, Martin is now African-American, and he's kept his new identity secret from his friends and family. Martin tells Kelly he wants to come clean, and the two become mired in a fractious, thought-provoking controversy. (Thom)
Flings by Justin Taylor: "Our faith makes us crazy in the world"; so reads a line in The Gospel of Anarchy, Taylor's novel about a Florida commune of anarchist hippies. The original sentence comes from Don DeLillo's Mao II, an appropriate literary mentor — Taylor is equal parts hilarious and prescient, capable of finding the sublime in the most prosaic, diverse material. On the first page of the collection's title story alone: labor history, love, and "an inspired treatise on the American government's illegal 1921 deployment of the Air Force to bomb striking mine workers at Blair Mountain, West Virginia." (Nick R.)
Augustus by John Williams: There are things that are famous for being famous, such as the Kardashians, and then there are things that are famous for being not famous, such as John Williams's Stoner. Since its publication in 1965, the "forgotten" work has enjoyed quite a history – metamorphosing from under-appreciated gem into international bestseller and over-praised classic. Indeed, it's forgivable at this point to forget that Williams's most appreciated work was actually his final novel, Augustus, which split the National Book Award and earned more praise during its author's lifetime than his other books put together. Interestingly, readers of both Stoner and Butcher's Crossing will here encounter an altogether new version of the John Williams they've come to know: Augustus is an epistolary novel set in classical Rome. It's a rare genius who can reinvent himself in his final work and earn high praise for doing so. (Nick M.)
Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle by Lydia Davis: In the early 1900s, Bob, Son of Battle became a popular children's tale in England and the United States. Focused on a young boy caught up in a rivalry between two sheepdogs on the moors between Scotland and England, the story eventually found its way into Lydia Davis's childhood bedroom. Alas, the years have not been kind to the thick Cumbrian dialect in which it was written ("hoodoo" = "how do you do" and "gammy" = "illness," e.g.) and the work fell out of popularity as a result. Now, however, Davis has updated the work into clear, modern vernacular in order to bring the story to an entirely new generation of readers, and perhaps the next generation of Lydia Davises (if one could ever possibly exist). (Nick M.)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven is Millions staff writer Emily St. John Mandel's fourth novel, and if pre-publication buzz is any indication, it's her best, most ambitious work yet. Post-apocalyptic tales are all the rage this season, but Mandel's intricate plotting and deftness with drawing character makes this novel of interlinked tales stand out as a beguiling read. Beginning with the onslaught of the deadly Georgian flu and the death of a famous actor onstage, and advancing twenty years into the future to a traveling troupe of Shakespearean actors who perform for the few remaining survivors, the novel sits with darkness while searching for the beauty in art and human connection. (Anne)
The Secret Place by Tana French: People have been bragging about snagging this galley all summer, and for good reason: Tana French's beautifully written, character-driven mysteries about the detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad are always a literary event. Her latest concerns a murder at an all girls' school, and detective Frank Mackey's daughter Holly might just be a suspect. My fellow staff writer Janet Potter said The Secret Place is damn good, and if you're smart you will trust Janet Potter. (Edan)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: David Mitchell has evidently returned to his genre-, time-, and location-bending best with a novel that weaves the Iraq War with punk rock with immortal beings with the End Times. This is a novel that had Publisher's Weekly asking, "Is The Bone Clocks the most ambitious novel ever written, or just the most Mitchell-esque?" A tall order, either way. A thrill, either way. (Lydia)
Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham: The creator, producer and star of the HBO series Girls — and also, it must be stated, an Oberlin College graduate — has penned a comic essay collection à la David Sedaris or Tina Fey… though something tells me Dunham's will be more candid and ribald. As Lena herself writes: "No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a registered dietician. I am not a married mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in self-actualization, sending hopeful dispatches from the front lines of that struggle." Amen, Lena, amen! (Edan)
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters: After her masterful handling of the haunted house story in The Little Stranger, Waters again taps into the narrative potential of domestic intrusion. This time, it's lodgers rather than ghosts who are the nuisance. In 1922, a cash-strapped widow and her spinster daughter living by themselves in a large London house let out rooms to a young couple. Annoyances and class tensions soon ignite in these combustible confines, and from the looks of it, the security deposit won't even begin to cover the damages. The novel promises to be a well-crafted, claustrophobic thriller. (Matt)
The Children Act by Ian McEwan: McEwan's thirteenth novel treads some familiar ground — a tense moral question sits at the heart of the narrative: whether it is right for parents to refuse medical treatment for their children on religious grounds. Discussing the novel at the Oxford Literary Festival this past spring, McEwan said that the practice was "utterly perverse and inhumane." It's not the first time McEwan has expressed displeasure with religion: in 2005 he told the Believer he had "no patience whatsoever" for it; three years later, he made international news discussing Islam and Christianity, saying he didn't "like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others." (Elizabeth)
10:04 by Ben Lerner: Ben Lerner follows the unexpected success of his superb first novel Leaving the Atocha Station with a book about a writer whose first novel is an unexpected success. Which is actually something like what you'd expect if you'd read that superb and unexpectedly successful first novel, with its artful manipulations of the boundaries between fiction and memoir. The suddenly successful narrator of 10:04 also gets diagnosed with a serious heart condition and is asked by a friend to help her conceive a child. Two extracts from the novel, "Specimen Days" and "False Spring," have run in recent issues of the Paris Review. (Mark)
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood: Some fans will remember well the titular story in Atwood's forthcoming collection, which was published in the New Yorker in December of 2011, and which begins, in Atwood's typical-wonderful droll fashion: "At the outset, Verna had not intended to kill anyone." With this collection, according to the jacket copy, "Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle…" If you aren't planning to read this book, it means you like boring stuff. (Edan)
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel: Just this month, Mantel was made a dame; the reigning queen of British fiction, she's won two of the last five Man Booker Prizes. But Mantel's ascension to superstardom was long in the making: she is at work on her twelfth novel in a career that's spanned four decades. This fall sees the publication of her second collection of short stories, set several centuries on from the novels that earned her those Bookers. Her British publisher, Nicholas Pearson, said, "Where her last two novels explore how modern England was forged, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shows us the country we have become. These stories are Mantel at her observant best." (Elizabeth)
The Dog by Joseph O'Neill: In his first novel since his 2008 PEN/Faulkner-winning Netherland, about a Dutch immigrant in post 9/11 New York, O'Neill tells another fish-out-of-water tale, this time about a New Yorker who takes a job as a "family officer" for a wealthy family in Dubai. Surrounded by corruption and overwhelmed by daily life in the desert metropolis, the narrator becomes obsessed with the disappearance of another American in what Publishers Weekly calls "a beautifully crafted narrative about a man undone by a soulless society." (Michael)
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan: William Finnegan is both a journalist's journalist and one of the New Yorker's most consistently engaging voices. Over the years, he's written about everything from apartheid in South Africa to the broken economy at home (Cold New World now looks prophetic). My favorite of his New Yorker pieces, though, is an insanely long memoir about surfing (Part 1; Part 2) that, legend has it, was crashed into the magazine just before the arrival of Tina Brown as editor. Two decades on, Finnegan returns to this lifelong passion, at book length.
Wittgenstein, Jr. by Lars Iyer: With their ingenious blend of philosophical dialogue and vaudevillian verve, Iyer's trilogy, Spurious, Dogma and Exodus, earned a cult following. Wittgenstein, Jr. compacts Iyer's concerns into a single campus novel, set at early 21st-century Cambridge. It should serve as an ideal introduction to his work. (Garth)
The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim: No one makes chaos as appealing a spectacle as Antrim, whether it's unloosed on the dilapidated red library from The Hundred Brothers, its priceless rugs, heraldic arms and rare books threatened by drunken siblings and a bounding Doberman; the pancake house from The Verificationist; or the moated suburban neighborhood from Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World. His latest is a collection of stories written over the past fifteen years, each of which was published in the New Yorker. The Emerald Light in the Air demonstrates that Antrim's controlled anarchy translates beautifully to the shorter form. (Matt)
Hold the Dark by William Giraldi: Having built a reputation for critical savagery following the hatchet he sank into a pair of Alix Ohlin books in the Times in 2012, Giraldi puts his own neck on the line with this literary thriller set in a remote Alaskan village where wolves are eating children. Billed as an "Alaskan Oresteia," the novel follows a pair of men, one an aging nature writer, the other a returning soldier, who come to learn secrets "about the unkillable bonds of family, and the untamed animal in the soul of every human being." That sound you hear is the whine of blades touching grindstones across literary America. (Michael)
Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas: The title of Christos Tsiolkas's fifth novel — his first since the international bestseller, The Slap — is a nickname for Daniel Kelly, an Australian swimming prodigy so ruthless in the water that he gets likened to the sharp-toothed, predatory fish. But Daniel's Olympic ambitions are thwarted by a crime whose nature Tsiolkas hints at but shrewdly withholds. This novel, like all of Tsiolkas's work, is a vigorous, sometimes vicious argument about what it means to be Australian. As one character concludes, "We are parochial and narrow-minded and we are racist and ungenerous and…" It gets worse, gorgeously worse. (Bill)
Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones: You're showing your age and (lack of) internet bona fides if you admit that you're unfamiliar with Jones's work. For years now the Buzzfeed LGBT editor has been lighting it up at his day job, and also on Twitter, with a ferocity befitting his name. Now, after earning praise from D.A. Powell and after winning a NYC-based Literary Death Match bout, Jones will use his debut collection to prominently display his poetry chops. (Ed. note: check out an excerpt over here.) (Nick M.)
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück: The UK publisher (Carcanet) of Louise Glück's newest collection — her twelfth — describes the poems as "a sequence of journeys and explorations through time and memory." Macmillan describes it as "a story of adventure, an encounter with the unknown, a knight's undaunted journey into the kingdom of death; this is a story of the world you've always known… every familiar facet has been made to shimmer like the contours of a dream…" In other words, Glück's newest work is interested in a kind of reiterative, collage-like experience of narrative — "tells a single story but the parts are mutable." (Sonya)
Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg: In Goldberg's latest novel, infamous Chicago mafia hit man Sal Cupertine must flee to Las Vegas to escape the FBI, where he assumes the identity of… Rabbi David Cohen. The Mafia plus the Torah makes for a darkly funny and suspenseful morality tale. Goldberg, who runs UC Riverside-Palm Desert's low residency MFA program, is also the author of Living Dead Girl, which was an LA Times Fiction Prize finalist, and the popular Burn Notice series, among others. The man can spin a good yarn. (Edan)
Happiness: Ten Years of n+1 by Editors of n+1: Happiness is a collection of the best pieces from n+1's first decade, selected by the magazine's editors. Ten years is a pretty long time for any literary journal to continue existing, but when you consider the number of prominent younger American writers who have had a long association with the magazine, it's actually sort of surprising that it hasn't been around longer. Chad Harbach, Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel and Elif Batuman all launched their careers through its pages. Pieces by these writers, and several more, are included here. (Mark)
Neverhome by Laird Hunt: According to letters and accounts from the time, around 400 women disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War. Years ago, Laird Hunt read a collection of one of those women's letters, and the idea for this novel has been germinating ever since. It tells the story of Constance Thompson, a farm wife who leaves her husband behind, calls herself Ash and fights for the Union. Neverhome is both a story about the harrowing life of a cross-dressing soldier, and an investigation into the mysterious circumstances that led her there. (Janet)
My Life as a Foreign Country by Brian Turner: Brian Turner served for seven years in the US Army, spending time in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq. Since then, he has published two collections of poetry — Here, Bullet and the T.S. Elliot Prize-shortlisted Phantom Noise — both of which draw heavily on his experiences in those wars. His new book is a memoir about his year in Iraq, and about the aftermath of that experience. Turner also makes a leap of conceptual identification, attempting to imagine the conflict through the experience of the Iraqi other. Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried, has praised it as "brilliant and beautiful", and as ranking "with the best war memoirs I've ever encountered". (Mark)
Wallflowers: Stories by Eliza Robertson: Robertson's stories — often told from the perspectives of outsiders, often concerned with the mysteries of love and family, set in places ranging from the Canadian suburbs to Marseilles — have earned her a considerable following in her native Canada. Her debut collection includes "We Walked on Water," winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and "L'Etranger," shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. (Emily)
On Bittersweet Place by Ronna Wineberg: On Bittersweet Place is the second publication from Relegation Books, a small press founded by author Dallas Hudgens. The novel — Wineberg's first, following her acclaimed story collection Second Language — concerns Lena Czernitski, a young Russian Jewish immigrant trying to find her place in the glamour and darkness of 1920s Chicago. (Emily)
The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis: Following on the heels of the acclaimed The Free World, Bezmozgis's second novel is about 24 hours in the life of Baruch Kotler, a disgraced Israeli politician who meets the Soviet-era spy who denounced him decades earlier. (Kevin)
How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran: The feminist journalist and author of How to Be a Woman, once called "the UK's answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one" by Marie Claire, is publishing her first novel. It follows Johanna Morrigan, who at 14 decides to start life over as Dolly Wilde. Two years later she's a goth chick and "Lady Sex Adventurer" with a gig writing reviews for a music paper, when she starts to wonder about what she lost when she reinvented herself. (Janet)
On Immunity: An Innoculation by Eula Biss: When Biss became a mother, she began looking into the topic of vaccination. What she had assumed would be a few hours of personal research turned into a fascination, and the result is a sweeping work that considers the concept of immunity, the history of vaccination — a practice that sometimes seems to function as a lightning rod for our most paranoid fears about the chemical-laden modern world in which we find ourselves, but that has its roots in centuries-old folk medicine — and the ways in which we're interconnected, with meditations on writers ranging from Voltaire to Bram Stoker. (Emily)
Yes, Please by Amy Poehler: The Leslie Knopes among us cannot wait for Poehler's first book of personal stories and advice, in the vein of Tina Fey's Bossypants and Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? In Poehler's delightful New Yorker essay about her job at an ice cream parlor, she wrote, "It's important to know when it's time to turn in your kazoo." Wise words from one of America's most beloved comics and actresses. (Anne)
The Peripheral by William Gibson: William Gibson fans rejoice, for his first novel in four years is upon us. The novel follows an army veteran with futuristic nerve damage wrought during his time in a futuristic kill squad. (Technically, according to Gibson, it's a novel taking place in multiple futures, so it's probably more complicated than that). You can watch him read the first two pages here. If William Gibson were a tense, he'd be future-noir. (Lydia)
Lila by Marilynne Robinson: Marilynne Robinson published her brilliant debut novel Housekeeping in 1980 and then basically went dark for a decade and a half, but has been relatively prolific in the last ten years. After re-emerging with 2004's gorgeous and heartbreaking Gilead, she followed up four years later with Home, a retelling of the prodigal son parable that revisited a story and characters from Gilead. James Wood's description of the relationship between the two books is exact and lovely: "Home is not a sequel [to Gilead]," he wrote, "but more like that novel's brother." With her new novel, Robinson has given those books a sister. The novel tells the story of Lila – the young bride of Gilead's narrator, Rev. John Ames – who was abandoned as a toddler and raised by a drifter. (Mark) (Ed. Note: You can read an excerpt over here.)
Dan by Joanna Ruocco: Joanna Ruocco's kaleidoscopic fictions have been likened to Donald Barthelme's for their dark humor and uncanny occurrences that revel in wordplay. Her stories "map the unmappable wrinkles of the mind," says Laird Hunt, and by bridging disparate ideas creates a synesthesia. In Dan, Ruocco's latest novel, the character Melba Zuzzo finds herself in a rut while living in a male-dominated town in the foothills of a mountain. What ensues is a "slapstick parable" that according to her publisher, Dorothy Project, evokes both the "unabashed campiness of Thomas Pynchon" and the capacious imagination of Raymond Roussel. (Anne)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James: Marlon James follows his stunning and brutal The Book of Night Women with A Brief History of Seven Killings, which depicts the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley, "spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters — assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts." Irvine Welsh calls it "an amazing novel of power, corruption and lies. I can't think of a better one I've read this century." (Edan)
Citizen by Claudia Rankine: "Often a division is made between politics and poetry, and I like to think this is a moment when the intersection is recognized," remarked poet Claudia Rankine, about recently winning the Jackson Poetry Prize. In her lyric hybrid work, Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Rankine investigated media's role in our private lives, taking on television, pharmaceutical marketing, depression, race, and identity in the post–9/11 era. Citizen, her follow-up book, deals pointedly with race and racial aggression in the media and the everyday — from the classroom to the playing field and the public stage — as it traces the effects of racism in our so-called "post-race" age. (Anne)
Some Luck by Jane Smiley: Still best known for her 1991 Pulitzer-winner A Thousand Acres, Smiley returns to Iowa farm country in this ambitious family saga set in the first half of the 20th century. Some Luck is the first installment in a trilogy spanning 100 years in the lives of the Langdon family, starting from its rural Iowa roots in 1920 and following the clan as its five children spread out across America in a time of epochal change. The second volume, Early Warning, is due in spring 2015, with the final volume, which brings the story up to December 31, 2019, set to appear next fall. (Michael)
Reunion by Hannah Pittard: In Pittard's second novel — her first was 2011's The Fates Will Find Their Way, lauded here and just about everywhere else — a failed screenwriter on the verge of divorce agrees to join her family for a reunion in Atlanta after her estranged father commits suicide. It's a nuanced and intriguing study of family and love, money and debt, failure and success, starring one of the most likable flawed narrators to come along in some time. (Emily)
A Different Bed Every Time by Jac Jemc: Six years ago Chicago-based author Jac Jemc started a blog to track the rejection letters she received. But recently the blog's been rather quiet — due to a slew of acceptances, it seems. Jemc's first novel, My Only Wife, was published in 2012 and nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham award; it depicts a husband's obsession with recalling memories of his wife who disappeared five years earlier. When Jemc's follow-up collection, A Different Bed Every Time, hits shelves, expect to encounter stories showcasing Jemc's playful and poetic sensibility, in a book that Laura van den Berg deems "mythic and essential." (Anne)
300,000,000 by Blake Butler: Blake Butler deploys words like chemicals that merge into phrases, coalescing in alternate existences, with familiar worlds distorted. In Butler's third novel, There is No Year, a family survives a disease but is still subject to a scourge of infestations and other horrors and mysteries, including a house with secret passageways and the existence of a duplicate "copy family." Butler began his latest novel, 300,000,000, as a retaliation against the hype surrounding Roberto Bolaño's 2666. The result? A portrait of American violence, told through the minds of a Manson-like cult figure and the policeman responsible for figuring him out, while tracking a trail of violence and descent into psychosis. (Anne)
Sister Golden Hair by Darcey Steinke: In Steinke's new novel, a coming-of-age story set in early-70's Virginia, twelve-year-old Jesse's family is on the brink of collapse: her father has recently been defrocked, and her mother is coming undone. When her father was a pastor, Jesse felt that they were a part of something — "We were at the center of what I thought of as THE HOLY, and our every move had weight and meaning" — but they've drifted into a life of vertiginous weightlessness. (Emily)
Quick Kills by Lynn Lurie: Lurie's first novel, Corner of the Dead, featured a photojournalist traumatized by the atrocities committed by the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru during the 1980s. In Quick Kills, the narrator is a young girl who finds herself on the other side of the camera, the exploited subject of a predatory photographer: "There is fear in my eyes. I see the fear clearly even in the blurred snapshot." This slim work looks to be an unsettling rumination on art, pornography and sexual violence. (Matt)
Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère: This biography of Éduard Limonov, published in France in 2011, won the prestigious Prix Théophraste-Renaudot, which is typically awarded to a novel. Limonov's life makes for good novelistic material: he is founder of the National Bolshevik Party, which "believes in the creation of a grand empire that will include the whole of Europe and Russia, as well as Northern/Central Asia, to be governed under Russian dominance" (Wikipedia), and FSG's English translation (by John Lambert) will be released under the in-case-you-didn't-know title Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia. Typical of Carrère, he approaches his subject essayistically, wrestling with his own attractions/repulsions vis-à-vis the epic Limonov. (Sonya)
The Heart Is Strange by John Berryman: To mark the centenary of John Berryman's birth, FSG is reissuing much of his poetry, including his book The Dream Songs. They're also publishing a new collection, featuring three uncollected pieces along with older examples of his work, that spans the length of his career. From his juvenalia, to the landmark "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," to his later poems, The Heart is Strange puts Berryman's talents on display, which means a new generation will start using the phrase "heavy bored." (For a primer on Dream Songs, check out Stephen Akey's Millions essay.) (Thom)
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: Faber's latest novel – which David Mitchell called his "second masterpiece" after The Crimson Petal and the White – touches on interstellar space travel, cataclysmic events, romantic love, and religious faith. Such broad territory seems befitting for an author claimed simultaneously by the nations of Scotland, Australia, and the Netherlands. (Nick M.)
Hiding in Plain Sight by Nuruddin Farah: Farah is back with another trilogy after his acclaimed Blood in the Sun series. Once again, he explores identity, obligation, family ties, and how politics can interrupt it all. After Bella's brother is killed by Somali extremists, she has to give up her life as a famous fashion photographer and raise his children as if they were her own. Yet when the children's mother returns, Bella must decide what matters more — her family or herself. (Tess)
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson: In an interview last fall, Johnson described his new novel as "kind of a spy story with what we might call serious intentions, on the order of Graham Greene." Johnson, whose 2007 novel Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award, has written a post-9/11 spy thriller concerning a trio of travelers in west Africa; one is a self-styled soldier of fortune, another is being trailed by two spy agencies and Interpol, and all three are hiding secrets from one another. (Emily)
Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford: I was gleeful to learn that Frank Bascombe will return to us after eight years and the threat of oblivion. At a reading in April, Ford reintroduced Bascombe as a 67-year-old Jersey-dweller ruminating on his former home, tipped on its side by Hurricane Sandy. Let Me Be Frank With You will comprise four novellas, each narrated with, undoubtedly, that unmistakable Bascombe verve. (Lydia)
Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet: After the high hilarity of her satirical early work, Lydia Millet reached new emotional depths in her last three novels. This new novel, concerning the discovery of mermaids and the ensuing scramble to cash in, looks to achieve a new kind of synthesis. (Garth)
Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter: Lindsay Hunter's first story collection Daddy's is described by its publisher Featherproof Books as a "collection of toxic southern gothics, packaged as a bait box of temptation." Her second collection Don't Kiss Me, published by FSG (who says big houses don't publish story collections?) is, according to the Tin House blog, "a heterogeneous story collection that holds together… peculiar voices that tend to overlap in areas of loss, self-pity, and hilarity." Hunter is a practitioner of the short-short form and founding host of a flash fiction reading series; no surprise that her debut novel Ugly Girls would be "voice-driven with [a] breakneck pace." Roxane Gay (on Twitter) called it "gorgeously hopeless." (Sonya)
Twilight of the Eastern Gods by Ismail Kadare: Originally published in 1978 and appearing in English for the first time this year, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is the fictional account of the prolific Albanian novelist's time at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow, to which Kadare was recruited in 1958. A kind of factory meant to produce top Socialist writers, the Gorky Institute's prescribed style and disagreeable faculty instead caused Kadare to rethink his calling. Like his other novels, Twilight promises to be a wormhole into strange times. (Lydia)
A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin: Beneath the quiet poetry of Ha Jin's sentences is a searing novelistic ambition; in A Map of Betrayal, the story of a double-agent in the CIA, he explores a half-century of entanglements between China and the U.S., and the divided loyalties that result. (Garth)
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews: The premise of Toews's sixth novel, released to critical acclaim in Canada earlier this year, is simple and devastating: there are two adult sisters, and one of them wants to die. She's a wildly successful and in-demand concert pianist, but she longs for self-annihilation. It's a premise that could easily be grindingly unbearable, but Toews is a writer of considerable subtlety and grace, with a gift for bringing flashes of lightness, even humor, to the darkest of tales. (Emily)
Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014 by Alice Munro: If our guide to Alice Munro wasn't enough, Family Furnishings will feature 25 of her best stories from the past 19 years. It's the first anthology of her work since Selected Stories (1968-1994) and should fill the Munro oeuvre for both lifelong fans and those who found her after her Nobel Prize win last year. Despite her larger-than-life reputation now, these stories remind us what makes Munro one of the best short story writers in the first place — her ability to illuminate quotidian problems and intimacies in small-town Canada. (Tess)
Loitering: New and Collected Essays by Charles d'Ambrosio: In 2005 Charles D'Ambrosio published an essay collection, Orphans, with a small press, and the book won a devoted following. The entire print run consisted of 3,500 copies, but all of them, D'Ambrosio writes in his introduction to Loitering, managed to find their way into the hands of readers, "a solace to me like the thought of home." In Loitering, which consists of the eleven original essays from Orphans and a number of new pieces, D'Ambrosio considers subjects ranging from the work of J.D. Salinger to the idea of home. (Emily)
Why Religion is Immoral: And Other Interventions by Christopher Hitchens: Since his death from cancer in 2011, Christopher Hitchens has refused to leave the party. His voice — erudite, witty, proudly biased — can be heard again in this new collection of his unpublished speeches, a follow-up to his late-life bestseller, God Is Not Great. The word "interventions" in the new book's title is critical because Hitchens's great theme — his opposition to all forms of tyranny, including religious, political and social — led him to support the misinformed and disastrous military invention against the Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein. Hitchens wasn't always right, but as this new collection ably demonstrates, he was never dull. (Bill)
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck: One of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation, Erpenbeck follows up the celebrated novel Visitation with a heady conceit located somewhere between Cloud Atlas and Groundhog Day. The End of Days follows a single character, born early in the 20th Century, to five different deaths: the first as an infant, the second as a teenager, and so on. In each case, her life illuminates the broader history of Europe, which remains ever in the background, dying its own deaths. (Garth)
Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash: In Rash's poem, "Preserves," a family discovers a beautiful springhouse after a funeral, where "woodslats bowed with berry and vegetable." Rash's work is suffused with this sense: a pastoral world is dying, and his sentences are its best chance at resurrection. Longtime fans of Rash's elegiac prose are happy this craftsman is finally getting his deserved recognition. His novel, Serena, will reach theaters later this year, and star Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. In Above the Waterfall, set in North Carolina, a terrible crime brings together a sheriff and a park ranger. The territory might be familiar, but this poet-novelist always delivers. (Nick R.)
The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Mehgan Daum: Thirteen years after it was published, My Misspent Youth holds up as a perennially interesting book of essays, not to mention the final word on being young and broke in New York. In her new collection, Meghan Daum looks at a host of modern anxieties, including the modern wedding industry, Joni Mitchell and the habits of digital natives. Though a lot of her material is funny in the vein of Nora Ephron, there's gravity here, too — as there is in "Matricide", which tackles the death of her mother. Our own Matt Seidel recently featured Daum's editor in a piece on editors' first buys. (Thom)
The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya: Ludmila Ulitskaya only began writing novels after her scientific credentials were revoked for translating a banned novel. The Russian author's commitments to art, activism, and speaking her mind have led her to become one of Russia's most popular living authors. These same concerns guide her fiction, too — called smart, prickly, and with harsh wit — and in this, her latest novel, The Big Green Tent, is no exception. When a poet, a pianist, and a photographer try to transcend oppression in post-Stalinist Russia, their ultimate destinies are far darker than their author's. (Anne)
Skylight by José Saramago: This is Saramago's so-called "lost work," which was written in the 1950s, but rediscovered after the Nobel laureate's death in 2010. The novel features the interconnected stories of the residents of an apartment building in Lisbon in the 1940s. (Kevin)
The First Bad Man by Miranda July: If you're like me, and think about the various Miranda July short stories like favorite tracks on a beloved album, you might be surprised that The First Bad Man is her debut novel. Her short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, was published six years ago and won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; since then, she has, amongst other varied projects, released an acclaimed feature film and a book project inspired by the people behind various PennySaver ads. The novel, which centers around a woman "with a perpetual lump in her throat," chronicles what happens when, after taking her boss's selfish, cruel daughter, her "eccentrically ordered world explodes." (Elizabeth)
Binary Star by Sarah Gerard: Sara Gerard's star is rising. The NYC-based bookseller slash art-mag-employee slash writer drew attention last fall with "Things I Told My Mother," an essayistic inquiry into women's representation in society, spawned by a topless walk the author took through Times Square. This kind of intensity and boldness guide all of Gerard's work — whether concerning other writers, or her own bout with anorexia, addiction, and a stint jumping freight trains, and now in her first novel Binary Star. Binary Star interweaves astronomical research with a story about an unnamed anorexic who burns through her intensely dysfunctional life like a star burns fuel, never to be replenished. (Anne)
Outline by Rachel Cusk: Some travelers collect stories as much as souvenirs. In Cusk's latest novel, a woman writer travels to Greece to teach a creative writing workshop but learns just as much from the tales her fellow travelers tell her. As she listens, she weaves their stories into a narrative of loss, creativity, family life, and intimacy. To keep with the storytelling tradition, the Paris Review serialized the novel, but FSG will publish it for a full narrative experience. (Tess)
Glow by Ned Beauman: Beauman's previous novels, The Boxer Beetle and The Teleportation Accident — the one a fanciful look at eugenics and fascism, the other a genre-bending wonder about an avant-garde set designer in 1930s Berlin — each displayed a learned, diabolical imagination at work. His latest appears just as unhinged. Enrolled in a "continuous amateur neurochemistry seminar" and suffering from a sleep disorder, its hero experiments with the designer drug, "glow," which opens up a gateway into a Pynchonian universe: a disappeared friend, pirate radio stations, and a nefarious Burmese mining company. (Matt)
There's Something I Want You to Do by Charles Baxter: In his first story collection in 15 years, Charles Baxter, a son of the Midwest and venerated writer of fiction, poetry and essays, gives us inter-related tales that are tidily bifurcated into two sections, one devoted to virtues ("Chastity," "Charity," "Forbearance"), the other to vices ("Lust," "Sloth," "Avarice"). Characters re-appear, performing acts both virtuous and loathsome, in stories that are set mostly around Minneapolis but also roam to New York, Tuscany and Ethiopia. The collection's title is a typical "request moment" that animates the stories, resulting in a murder, a rescue, a love affair, an assault, even a surprising gesture of kindness. (Bill)
Bon Appétempt: A Coming of Age Story (With Recipes!) by Amelia Morris: I was such a big fan of Amelia Morris's hilarious, entertaining, and useful food blog, Bon Appétempt, that I tracked her down and asked her to teach for my writing school, Writing Workshops Los Angeles. Now Amelia has penned a compelling and funny memoir about becoming an adult and an artist — both in and out of the kitchen — that is sure to bring her even more devoted readers. If you like Laurie Colwin and MFK Fischer and, I don't know, total goofballs baking cakes while making weird faces, you'll love Amelia Morris and Bon Appétempt. (Edan)
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link: "What I want is to create stories that shift around when you reread them." Few can shake readers awake as well as Link, which makes short fiction her ideal form. She has been called the "George Saunders of the fairy tale," but simply being Kelly Link is enough. Get in Trouble, her fourth collection, gets its title from the sense that in fiction, "there's a kind of cathartic, discomforting joy — a pain/pleasure — in people behaving badly." Her previous fantastical tales have been populated by librarians, cellists, aliens, and fainting goats. Link aims to surprise, which makes her work absolutely pleasing. (Nick R.)
Find Me by Laura van den Berg: Laura van den Berg's fictions often unfurl just beyond the real, with their madcap mix of zany and dreamlike set-ups. Case in point, van den Berg's recent story collection, The Isle of Youth, was peopled by yacht thieves, a mother-daughter magician team, and newlyweds who survive a plane crash. Her first novel, Find Me, continues this surreal, at times catastrophic streak, as it follows Joy, a grocery clerk, cough-syrup addict who's immune to an ongoing plague of memory illness. Joy's resulting hospital stay and cross-country journey plotline sounds like a surreal mash-up of Stephen King's The Stand and Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps. (Anne)
The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa: The 2010 Nobel Prize winner trains his eye on corruption and urbanization in modern day Lima in his latest novel. According to CityLab, "The story follows two parallel tales: an elite Lima businessman who decides to punish his undeserving heirs, and a self-made man in Vargas Llosa's adopted hometown, Piura, who resists an extortionist demand." (Kevin)
Editor | 15 books mentioned 19 28 min read
The Weird 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel that Correctly Predicted the Current Day
Ted Gioia March 25, 2013 | 15 books mentioned 50 6 min read
Six Egyptian Writers You Don't Know But You Should
Pauls Toutonghi June 24, 2011 | 15 books mentioned 17 4 min read


Ahhh, out with the old in with the New. Lots of changes these past couples months. Especially with the holiday and the anticipated New Years Resolutions looming. Here's how I'm gearing up.
My old leopard print shoes. Well loved and worn often. I bought these dirt cheap at Macys a couple years ago and never thought I'd wear them much. I was wrong. The first time I've ever literally worn a hole in something.
My New leopard print shoes. Also on sale at Macys, though not dirt cheap.
My New best friend. The chicken timer will keep me on track today as I tackle a pile of Christmas orders.
Friends and Friends of Friends.
My friend Kat and I are hosting a Craft Tag Sale, Sat. Nov. 20th from 9-3 at the New Bremen Library. I don't have pictures for the wealth of great craft materials we've collected from our friends (and our friends of friends.) We have all kinds of great odds and ends to sell. Teachers might find some cheap craft supplies for their classrooms. Babysitters and parents can find things to purchase to keep the kids occupied over these weeks leading to Christmas. Scrapbookers will find paper by the pound. What else, ribbons, beautiful yarn, a big package of googly eyes that I've harbored for years. I don't remember when or why I bought them but it's time to let go.
Best of all . . . . all the money we make will be donated to Project Happy Christmas. After mourning the loss of their baby, Troy and Amy Grillot decided to take their sadness and apply it towards a worthy cause. Each year in honor of their son Lennon they collect money and donations and help several local families have a merry Christmas.
Sometimes the families are just down on their luck financially, or perhaps they have someone in the family sufferng from an illness. All of which makes the holidays difficult to face. Hopefully we can donate a considerable amount of cash to pass on to Troy and Amy.
Box of 10 Note Cards. Free personalization for the holidays. Plus special price of $9.00 when you order before Dec. 1.


Do you remember Hatred, the game that marketed itself as an extremely offensive poke at modern civilization and our sensibilities only to launch as a boring and uninspired twin-stick shooter?
While the entirety of the gameplay does seem to be a prolonged turret section the destruction physics and explosion effects look really good. Without trying to be sarcastic I think that IS Defense could be an excellent niche game if they focused on those two aspects and ramped up the action to the extreme, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance style. As for the controversial parts of it, they are even more tame and boring than those found in Hatred.
Which brings me to my question of why even bother with controversial themes if you're not going to go all out. I'm not someone that's easily offended so if they decided to do a truthful portrayal of the horrors of war people are experiencing to this day I would've praised their boldness and willingness to show things how they are despite the backlash. Instead all Destructive Creation seems to do is sprinkle a few offensive bits and pieces here and there without any underlying message to give them context.
To conclude this short rant of mine: IS Defense is a potentially good but niche game with some completely pointless and superficial offensive elements added to boost its marketability.
IS Defense is currently going through Steam Greenlight so if you want to make your vote count you can go there but take my advice and don't scroll down to the comment section, nothing of value lies there.


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Showing 9 results related to "state broadcaster".
Iran and China media weigh in on US protests
Both Chinese and Iranian media took the opportunity to point out endemic racism and police brutality in the US as ties between the two countries and Washington deteriorate.
Chinese TV pulls Arsenal match after Ozil's Uighur comments
Football star Mesut Ozil on Friday accused Muslims of staying silent over what he called China's persecution of Uighurs in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, prompting anger from China.
Iran sees some progress on nuclear deal, but not enough
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, said progress was made at talks in Vienna aimed at saving the nuclear deal but probably not enough to convince Tehran to change its decision to go over the deal's core atomic restrictions one by one.
Around 70 dead in South Africa after heavy rains
Multiple dwellings and houses collapsed in the mudslides triggered by days of rains, said KwaZulu-Natal Emergency Medical Services spokesman Robert McKenzie.
Ramaphosa elected president of South Africa
Following the tumultuous 9-year rule of Jacob Zuma, the South African parliament elected his former deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa to be the country's president.
Thousands in far-right march on Poland's Independence Day
Extremists from Sweden, Hungary, Slovakia and elsewhere have joined Polish nationalists in the county's Independence Day celebrations in a public display of xenophobic and white supremacist views.
Britain can reverse Brexit, Article 50 author says
Diplomat John Kerr, who oversaw the drafting of Article 50, says the British are free to reverse Brexit at any time and they are being misled.
Solomon Islands PM loses no-confidence vote
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare loses a vote of no-confidence following a marathon debate.
Multiple blasts at Japanese park kill one, injure three
The blasts took place at a park in Utsunomiya, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Tokyo.
Sugar-based substances can replace plastics and end pollution menace

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