Month: March 2017

March 2017 Book List

From a Google Image Search

It’s Spring (sort of) and this is the season when lots of new books appear on the market so I present to you my March 2017 Book List. Although you will find lots of repetition on these lists each source also offers some unique titles. If you just want a good story, nothing too esoteric, go the Amazon section of the list. If you have global tastes Publisher’s Weekly should satisfy, and if you like to get your book advice from the New York Times then that source is also represented in this list. For the truly compulsive, go for all three.

Nonfiction titles, for some reason, are getting longer and longer so they are, generally, easy to spot. If you are a true reader you probably wish to devour each new book and all of the older ones too. If you were to have a fantasy room it would probably have a comfy chair surrounded by piles of classic and newly-minted books. But if you set out to read each book that was published from February through Mid-March this year you would have to read a little bit over 6.5 titles per day. So don’t be discouraged if you are unable to meet your admittedly unrealistic book reading goals. You have a lot of company.

Publisher’s Weekly

Feb. 6th

Civil Wars: A History of Ideas by David Armitage (NF)

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin (NF)

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (NF)

Schadenfreude, a Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For by Rebecca Schumen (Memoir)

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag trans. from the Kannada by Srinath Perur

Make Yourself Happy by Elini Sikelianos (NF)

Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular by Derek Thompson (NF)

The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease by Meredith Wadman (NF)

Feb. 13th

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble

In Full Velvet by Jenny Johnson

We are Okay by Nina LaCour

Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma by Larry Millett

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker

The Last Night at Tremore Beach by Mikei Santiago

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt

The Undesired by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith (NF)

The American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Feb. 20th

Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach

American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution by A. Roger Ekirch (NF)

Spook Street: A Novel by Mick Herron

Running: A Novel by Cara Hoffman

Rusty Puppy: A Novel by Joe Lansdale

Optimists Die First by Susin Nielsen

The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test and the Power of Seeing by Damion Searls (NF)

Encircling by Carl Frode Tiller trans. from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland

Feb 27th

The Accusation by Bandi trans. from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Short Stories that offer glimpses of North Korea)

The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon (Bio)

Alpine Apprentice: A Memoir by Sarah Gorham

Walking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen trans. from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston

Daughter of the Pirate King: A Novel by Tricia Levenseller

The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek

The Gene Machine: How Genetic Techniques are Changing the Way We Have Kids – and the Kids We Have by Bonnie Rochman (NF)

The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World by Anne Marie Slaughter (NF)

Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson by Christina Snyder.

The Hate U Give: A Novel by Angie Thomas

Please Bury Me In This by Allison Benis White (Collection of suicide stories)

Velocity by Chris Wooding (YA Apocalyptic novel)

Camanchaca by Diego Zúniga trans. from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

March 6th

Taduno’s Song: A Novel by Odale Alogiun

The Price of Illusion: A Memoir by Joan Juliet Buck

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Memoir)

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

Ill Will by Dan Chaon

Lenin’s Roller Coaster by Daniel Downing

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hornett

Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch (NF)

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

No Friends But the Mountains: Dispatches from the World’s Violent Highlands by Judith Matioff (NF)

The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico

Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World by Benjamin Reiss (NF)

The Photo Ark: One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals by Joel Sartore

Goodbye Days: A Novel by Jeff Zentner (YA)

March 13th

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayeri

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis

In Between Days by Teva Harrison (Memoir, Cancer battle)

Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

Himself by Jess Kidd Atria

White Tears by Hari Kunzru

The Family Gene by Joselin Linder (NF)

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper

March 20th

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

Lola: A Novel by Melissa Scrivner

Girl in Disguise by Greer Macallister

Find Me by J S Monro

Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching from Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem by George Prochnik (NF)

City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker (NF)

The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavic (F)

The New York Times Book Review

Feb. 3rd

Too Close to Happy by Daphne Merkin (Memoir, Depression)

The New Brooklyn by Kay Hymowitz (NF)

Disaster Falls by Stéphane Gerson (NF)

The Weapon Wizards by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot (NF)

Upwardly Minded: The Reconstruction Rise of a Black Elite by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor (NF)

Fiction

A Great Place to Have a War by Joshua Kurlantzick (NF)

The Men in My Life by Patricia Bosworth (NF)

The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Best and Latest in Crime Fiction

Rather Be Devil by Ian Rankin

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

What You Break by Reed Farrel Coleman

The Lost Woman by Sara Blædel trans. from Danish by Mark Kline

Books Recommended this Week

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims (NF)

A House Full of Females: Plural Marriages and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (NF)

Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan (NF)

The Crossing by Andrew Miller (F)

The Patriots by Sana Krasikov (F)

Once We Were Sisters: A Memoir by Sheila Kohler

Feb. 12th

Fiction

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron

The Evening Road by Haird Hunt

On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Nonfiction

Why Time Flies by Alan Burdick

Six Encounters with Lincoln by Elizabeth Brown Pryor

(Middle East)

The Attack by Loic Daewillier

The Arab of the Future 2 by Riad Sattouf

Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden

The Girl from the Metropol Hotel by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B Tyson

Generation Revolution by Rachel Aspden

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Lévy

Black Edge by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Feb. 19th

Fiction

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Dibble

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

The Dance of Jakaranda by Peter Kimani

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

Autumn by Ali Smith

Fiction in Translation

Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux Chauvet

The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen

The Ninety-Ninth Floor by Jan Fawaz Elhassan

The Great and the Good by Michel Déon

Nonfiction

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

Two about Silicon Valley

Valley of the Gods by Alexander Wolfe

The Kingdom of Happiness by Aimee Groth

At Utmost: A Devotional Memoir by Macy Halford

Cannibalism by Bill Schutt

Best and Latest Crime Fiction

Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham

Racing the Devil by Charles Todd

Snowblind by Ragnar Janasson

Walk Away by Sam Hawken

Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay (lost Harlem novel)

Feb. 26th

Fiction

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

The School Days of Jesus by J M Coetze

The One Inside by Sam Shepard

A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

Journeyman by Marc Bojanowski

Nonfiction

Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport

Pretending is Lying by Dominique Goblet

How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

All the Lives I Want by Alana Massey

Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine

When Police Kill by Frank Zimring

Unwarranted by Barry Friedman

Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

March 3rd

Fiction

A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman

The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky

The World to Come by Jim Shepard

Argentine Fiction

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarae

Nonfiction

We’ll Always Have Casablanca by Noah Isenberg

High Noon by Glenn Frankel

Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin

Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a Memory by Aldo Schiavone

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall

Food Fights and Culture Wars by Tom Nealon

Reality is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli

The Islamic Jesus by Mustafa Akyol

Robert Lowell – Setting the River on Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings

Best and Latest Crime Fiction

What You Don’t Know by Jo Ann Chaney

I See You by Clare Macintosh

The Dime by Betty (Riz) Rhyzyk

Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James

March 12th

Fiction

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Before the War by Fay Weldon

Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Nonfiction

Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes

Can’t Just Stop by Sharon Bagley

Convergence by Peter Watson

Divided We Stand by Marjorie J Spruill

The Brain Defense by Kevin Davis

The Gestapo by Frank McDonough

Abandon Me by Melissa Febo

Amazon

Best Books of March

Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

White Tears: A Novel by Hari Kunzru

The Night Ocean: A Novel by Paul La Farge

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter (NF)

Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, School, or, How to Become an Expert at Just About Anything by Ulrich Boser

All Grown Up: A Novel by Jami Attenberg

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (NF)

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy

Literature and Fiction

The Book of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall

Our Short History: A Novel by Lauren Grodstein

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

White Tears by Hari Kunzru

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg

The One-Eyed Man by Jr. Ron Currie

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett

Edgar and Lacy by Victor Lodato

Celine by Peter Heller

Eggshells by Caitriona Lally

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

Bright Air Black by David Vann

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Mysteries and Thrillers

The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye

Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

Celine by Peter Heller

Ill Will by Dan Chaon

Quicksand by Malin Persson Giolito

The Twelve Lies of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

Murder on the Serpentine by Anne Perry

Biographies and Memoirs

Dueling with Kings: High Stakes, Killer Sharks, and the Get Rich Promise of Daily Fantasy Sports by Daniel Barbarisi

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy

The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown by Catherine Burns

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Earnest Hemingway by Nicholas E. Reynolds

The Price of Illusion: A Memoir by Joan Juliet Buck

South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion

Grace Notes: My Recollections by Katey Segal

Being Elvis: A Lonely Life by Ray Connolly

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last Three Hermits by Michael Finkel

Science Fiction and Fantasy

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles – Book

In Paulette Jiles’ book News of the World, Captain Kidd is in Wichita Falls, Texas, five years after the end of the Civil War, and Texas is in the midst of political upheaval. The Indians are still actively raiding travelers and communities whenever they feel that they need threats to help with treaty negotiations. Captain Kidd is a retired soldier and a printer/journalist forced out of business by the economy and then by the war. His great love of news has stayed with him through all the chaos of recent years. He is a lover of geography, literacy, and all human events in this world.

He has decided to earn his way in the world, now that his wife is dead and his two daughters are grown, by traveling to towns and small cities throughout the west, where newspapers are just about as scarce as readers, holding meetings to read out the “news of the world”. He avoids politics in these contentious times. He likes to read about exotic locations and interesting tidbits from lands people have heard of but will probably never travel to. He gives people a chance to escape the verbal battles that rage around them and marvel that other people live such odd lives and are, perhaps, unluckier than they are. People pay a dime to attend this somewhat cerebral entertainment.

In Wichita Falls he runs into an old acquaintance who works as a freighter, moving merchandise by wagon from a buyer to a seller, or vice versa. His friend Britt, it turns out, has been paid 50 dollars in gold to return a white girl, kidnapped by the Kiowa tribe when she was 3 to her Aunt and Uncle near San Antonio. His friend begs him to take this girl off his hands. Texas is a very big state and San Antonio is far out of Britt’s way. He will lose a lot of money if he takes her all the way home. He will give the gold to Captain Kidd.

“She seemed to be about ten years old, dressed in the horse Indians’ manner in a deerskin shift with four rows of elk teeth sewn across the front. A thick blanket was pulled over her shoulders. Her hair was the color of maple sugar and in it she wore two down puffs bound onto a lock of her hair by their minute spines and also bound with a thin thread was a wing feather from a golden eagle slanting between them. She sat perfectly composed, wearing the feather and a necklace of glass beads as if they were costly adornments. … She had no more expression than an egg.”

Now Captain Kidd does not in any way want to undertake this task. It is the rainy season and rivers are rising and he would have to cross several to get this child to San Antonio. Texas is relatively lawless and there could be bandits on the road. But he is the father of two daughters. And so we have a journey tale as this good man reluctantly undertakes the responsibility to get this child to all of the family she has left, people she does not even know. What happens on that journey, watching these two bond, is a sweet story and sometimes I do love a sweet story.

The author, Paulette Jiles, became interested in stories of children who were kidnapped by the Indians because they gave up their European heritage so easily and they were never happy to give up their second-hand Indian heritage. What was it about life with the tribes which gave children such a feeling of satisfaction and belonging even though it began as a harrowing and totally foreign experience? Of course we will probably never know the answer to this but there is still a part of us all that thinks that Native Americans or Indigenous People, or whatever the politically correct term is today, had a knack for living lightly on the earth and a natural social order which served most of them very well.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang – Book

The Vegetarian (2/2/16)
by Han Kang

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (trans. from the Korean by Deborah Smith) begins with a wife who stops eating meat. When her husband wants to know why she says “I had a dream”. As a reader we are privy to at least the text of her dream but her husband has little curiosity about this dream which returns over and over again. He never explores the dream with her because he thinks that he can be married and just go through the motions of the marriage relationship without any messy emotional subtext. He expects his wife Yeong-Hye to be the same. She will do all the wifely things the role requires and will be completely low maintenance and supportive. If women have fantasies about romantic love, perhaps there are men who have fantasies about no-fuss marriages such as this where no deep feelings are required, each partner simply plays their role.

Yeong-Hye’s vegetarianism is so extreme that it will no longer allow Mr. Cheong to live in his fantasy. The wife he chose for her ordinary ways is in a crisis that is disrupting the lives of her husband and also her family. I am what would be called a “maximillist”, if there were such a classification for people who like plenty of everything and who like it plush and fluffy. I guess the word often used is hedonist, although that word does not really fit. However, personally, I do have some experience with “minimalists” of varying degrees. I have a friend who is a fairly extreme minimalist, who does not even like gifts unless they are things that can be used up; who is so slim that she seems to be almost disappearing. This becomes the case with Yeong-Hye, who becomes so thin that her family tries to intervene, which ends up badly when her father slaps her and forces meat into her mouth.

The scenes change each time this book arrives at a new section. We think we have been transported into another story and that this is perhaps a book of short stories. It is, instead, more like a jazz piano composition that begins with a theme and then rearranges the notes in each new section only to have the main theme reappear and progress in new, but still familiar directions. This is a great book and short; a fast, but horrifying, yet artistically and intellectually satisfying, read.

How do we know so little about ourselves? How do we know so little about each other? Are most people this disconnected from each other? Even though this book is very sexual, it is not sensual. Even when connecting in very intimate ways these people have actually made little if any connection that brings any warmth to their daily lives.

Although we do get glimpses into Yeong-Hye’s young life because in the last section of the composition her older sister In-Hye becomes the narrator and she does, superficially attempt to unravel the reasons for her sister’s behavior, that dream that haunts Yeong-Hye is never satisfactorily explained (or maybe you will think it is). While certainly not a cheerful book, it is gripping and it plays on you like that jazz piano calmly going through its variations, with perhaps a somewhat emotional bridge in the middle.