April 16, 2024, 5:10 am
It’s mid-April, the time when the best experience of seeing a total eclipse last week—if you’re lucky given the location and the weather—is, for many readers, overshadowed by lunar rain and lightning. If the blue blackness keeps you from wanting to see something new, you’re in luck – I’ve got twenty-two new books to recommend below, from novels and poetry collections to of warnings and provocative stories.
May your to-be-read piles be long and wild—and isn’t that appropriate for April, too?
*
Sunjeev Sahota, A Broken Heart
(Vikings)
“In this thoughtful, searching exploration of tragedy intertwined with contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota gives us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrilling for our time. A Broken Heart sad to read, but in a good way. ”
– Sarah Thankham Mathews
Allen Bratton, Henry Henry
(Anonymous publication)
“Allen Bratton’s Henry Henry beautifully highlights the tension between history and modernity, power and freedom, and fathers and sons. A heart-wrenching examination of the weight of privilege filled with drugs, mats, Catholicism, cigarettes and, yes, love—Henry Henry it’s a tightly scripted party you don’t want to miss.”
– Isaac Fitzgerald
Colin Hughes, Other methods
(Riverhead)
“I wish I knew how Caoilinn Hughes was able to write a book of such depth and gravity that is also fascinating and relentlessly funny. A story about sisters, a book of memories, an account of our collective wrongs, a need for our critical species, Other methods it unfolds in prose that is full of wonderful surprises and shines with wisdom, compassion and beauty.”
—Hernan Diaz
Suzanne Scanlon, Intentionality: Meaning and Madwomen
(Vintage)
“A tribute to Suzanne Scanlon Determination is a heartwarming and enlightening account of a young woman’s struggle with mental illness and the creation of an institution. And using her medical records and journals as well as images and treatment descriptions, Scanlon questions traditional discourses about women and mental illness, crafting a powerful account of her recovery and redemption.
– Natasha Trethewey
Emily C. Bloom, I Can’t Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Wonderful, brilliant, and beautifully crafted first memory. With honesty, wit, stunning prose, and surprising wit, Bloom offers a profound insight into modern parenting, clarifying its challenges through meditation on science, technology, and art. This is required reading for anyone who wants to better understand how love creates deeper and more connected truths. ”
-Chloe Cooper Jones
Gabriel Brownstein, The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud’s Talk Therapy
(Public Affairs)
“Brownstein’s excellent book is part intellectual history, part scientific investigation, and reads like a detective novel. The mystery involves Freud’s most famous patient, and the most satisfying twist is that our basic ideas about the human mind come from this very subject.”
—Joe Weisberg
Corey Van Landingham, Reader, I
(Sarabande Books)
“Corey Van Landingham uses all his imagination and all his experience to deliver moments of humility, humor, sadness and joy. And the real gift of this work is Van Landingham’s ability to turn something ordinary into something sacred in a eloquent way that makes the whole text look like magic….Reader, I it is a restless wave of poetry full of creativity and systematic creativity.”
– Jericho Brown
Leila Mottley, when the light rises
(button)
“when the light rises it is a change of words and worlds, a preparation for being. Poems that focus on the impact of street letters, gender roles, police brutality, and the lost humanity of celebrities; Mottley hasn’t changed a thing, and he’s determined to set us all free.”
–Mahogany L. Browne
Brianna Pastor, Pain is Beautiful
(HarperOne)
“Pain is Beautiful it’s emotional, raw, and powerful. It touches on feelings that are often unrecognized and unnamed. It affects places that usually only know the silence of the night. This book will make you cry and feel visible in ways you didn’t know you needed. I highly recommend you pick up a copy today. ”
—Christine Gutierrez
Max Ludington, The Thorn Tree
(St. Martin’s Press)
“It’s filled with excerpts from some of my favorite books, by Dana Spiotta Eat Document to Don DeLillo The underworldMax Ludington achieved something profound and lasting The Thorn Tree. This book will draw you in and keep you thinking long after you read its last pages.”
-Daniel Today
Karen Jennings, The Crooked Seed
(Hogarth Press)
“The past returns to a woman whose life is taking a turn for the worse in this powerful new book from [South African] Booker Prize-winning author Jennings….With evocative prose and apocalyptic settings, Jennings brings these complex women to life as the world around them slowly crumbles. Readers will be captivated by this compelling book about the destructive power of family secrets.”
–List of books
Gillian Linden, Negative space
(Norton)
“Imagine Fire of the Void pressed into epidemiology week, or Renata Adler looking at the absurdities of motherhood. This is the best comic book I’ve read in years. ”
—Ed Park
Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn, All the World: A Memoir
(University of Texas Press)
“Loose [of] The world is a fascinating memoir of unwavering love and religion, poison and disease, and one family longing for a miracle that never came. Blackburn has proven herself to be a prolific essayist, making this an issue you don’t want to miss. ”
–Chicago Review of Books
SJ Kim, This Quiet Part: Life Between Cultures
(Norton)
“SJ Kim’s poem has a hidden edge: I have never read a more beautiful, poignant and painful account of racism and the abolition of women. It’s a book about finding a toehold in a world where you’d rather slip and fall. It is a book about survival and non-existence. It is necessary to read. ”
– Neel Mukherjee
Helen Tworkov, The Lotus Girl: A Life in the Differences of Buddhism and America
(St. Martin’s Highlights)
“Some books have told us, in an interesting way, how the West began to meet the East in the 1960s and beyond. But none I’ve read cuts through every pretense and every projection with the warmth, the clarity, the unflinching self-awareness of Helen Tworkov’s essential thought….[T]he is a great gift of The Lotus Girl is to share with every reader an intelligent, unflinching, probing question of the mind and how we can begin to change it.”
– Pico Iyer
Monika Zgustova, Night Revolver (trans. Julie Jones)
(Alternate Text)
“The pleasure of writing. Monika Zgustova Night Revolver gives voice to the almost forgotten story of Véra, the wife of the famous writer Vladimir Nabokov. This is just the kind of book I love—one that highlights the importance of a strong, historical woman so that her sacrifices and triumphs are recorded and remembered.”
– Sarah McCoy
Christine Ma-Kellams, The group
(Atria Books)
“The Kellams help readers delve into the surprising nature of the problems that come with fame…. This hilarious story pokes fun at the negative aspects of celebrity and the powerful influence it can have on the world’s most prominent people. As K-pop has become popular around the world, this timely book offers a different perspective on the social pressures associated with fame and the harmful damage it can cause to a person’s mental health.”
–List of books
Asako Yuzuki, Butter: A Book of Food and Murder (trans. Polly Barton)
(Ecco Press)
“A delightful, delightful book review…Butter is an all-out, Michelin-starred thriller that walks the fine line between an Angry Young Woman story and a gripping detective drama and back again. Yuzuki has created characters that are almost Dickensian, with many strange connections….Let this book bring you the words.
–The Times (UK)
James W. Loewen, Nate Powell, The Lie My Teacher Told Me: Adapting to Pictures
(New Text)
“James Loewen’s History of Our Country is everything that most books are not: critical, thought-provoking, anti-racist, caring – and funny. Loewen’s Story irreverent comes to life in the style of Loewen’s classic Nate Powell. Lies My Teacher Told Me. This book is especially welcome at a time when true history is under attack.”
-Bill Bigelow
Adam Cooper, The Museum of Other Peoples: From Colonial Discovery to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions
(Pantheon)
“A clear, informed examination of the history, development and future of museums of anthropology and ethnography….This highly recommended work…challenges preconceptions and encourages readers to think critically on this complex and important issue.”
–Library Journal
Adam Moss, A Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
(Penguin Press)
“In this beautiful book, [Adam Moss] interviews more than forty creators in all disciplines who ‘directed, in as much detail as they could, the evolution of a book, image, photograph, film, comic, song and physical documentation. their style’…including Stephen Sondheim, Louise Glück, Twyla Tharp, and George Saunders….This book is very descriptive….[T]his work is inspiring.”
–Kirkus reviews
Lisa Kaltenegger, Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
(St. Martin’s)
“If you’ve ever wondered if we’re alone in the universe—and Dr. Kaltenegger is sure you have it, start with Alien Earths. With his combined degrees in astronomy and engineering, he offers a basic education in the geology, physics, chemistry, biology, and ultimately mathematics of places like Earth – which he intends to search for. every day (World). He will show you; the answer is in the sky, our window to the universe. Continue reading.”
-Bill Nye
#Vera #Nabokov #delicious #dark #comedy #books #today
