RELEASE DAY RECOMMENDS : 10.6.2020
Every week the publishing industry opens the gates of brand spanking new books and out comes a deluge of new and possibly amazing releases. And every week our Founder and sometimes reviewer, Noah Sanders, will act as your donut-shaped floatation device to keep you and your brainy little head above the waters of what you should read.
This week: John Birdsall’s gorgeous biography of James Beard, Sayaka Murata’s second book of weirdness to land on American shores, Rumaan Alam’s much lauded return and so much more.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 6th
The Man Who Ate Too Much
John Birdsall
W.W. Norton
You think you want to read a biography of James Beard - foundational foodie, opponent of frozen food, proponent of regional, artisanal cooking - and in the gifted hands of John Birdsall, you do. You really, really do. But more so, Birdsall’s enchanting book on Beard captures the pain and the consequences of living the secret life of gay male celebrity in the 20th Century. Beard’s story - captured by Birdsall in a language as gluttonous as the food he describes in vivid detail - is one of hiding behind his own carefully manipulated persona, of the deep emotional pains he carried with him for his entire life. This is a history of food celebrity, of how our tastes evolved and how one man’s palate was crucial in this evolution. Highly recommended.
Leave The World Behind
Rumaan Alam
Ecco
An upper class family retreats to a remote corner of Long Island for a needed vacation in a luxurious rental home. When the older Black couple who owns the house wakes them in the middle of the night with news of a freak blackout overtaking the city, a weekend rife with tension bubbles to the surface. Alam’s third book has such a juicy premise with so many threads of race and class and parenthood woven into it. This book is getting high praise from many and it is teetering at the top of my to-read pile.
Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country
Cristina Rivera Garza
Feminist Press
Honestly, I’ve been trying to read books, articles, the backs of cereal boxes that don’t drag me down the utter hole that is paying even the slightest bit of attention to the state of, well, everything these days. And though Cristina Rivera Garza’s new book doesn’t fulfill this soft requirement of reading material, well, as it turns out turning your head from the badness doesn’t make it go away. Garza’s book - a collection of journals, essays and more on the violence in Mexico and the US-Mexico border - draws conclusions from a study of literary theory and an analysis of the historical trends that have lead us here, to this point. It isn’t going to be an easy book, but that’s the point - the book is a discussion of collective grieving and the power it has. Seems not only important but necessary.
Earthlings
Sayaka Murata
Grove
Right before the pandemic slammed into the universe, I went on a pretty deep dive into modern Japanese fiction. And though I somehow missed Sayaka Murata’s first book - Convenience Store Woman - her name was always on the periphery of everything else I was reading. Her newest book to arrive in the states - Earthlings - is about a woman who believes she might not be of this Earth when she discovers a vague “power” she thinks might be able to extricate her from the Japanese society she feels so different from. There’s a whole different vibe to modern Japanese fiction, more of a feeling than a narrative, and I’ve always found it to create a sort of ruminative, almost calming head space. Who doesn’t need that these days?
At Night All Blood is Black
David Diop
FSG
David Diop’s newest book starts with an African soldier in WWI France stuffing the guts of his friend and fellow soldier back into his “sacred” vessel and then carrying the body back into the trenches. It is, to be frank, just the start of a brutal - if not savagely gorgeous - tale of a man’s slow unraveling into madness. Diop (translated here by Anna Moschovakis) places us deeply in the head of this soldier and as you watch him descend step by step into truly horrific insanity, you almost start to agree with his rationalizations, to if not support, understand why he might be making the gruesome choices he does. It’s a heavy book - the gore and guts of trench warfare on full display - but a powerful one.
Alexandria
Paul Kingsnorth
Graywolf
Paul Kingsnorth is what you might call an acquired taste. I read Beast his one-character book about a man lost in the moors of rural England, pursued by a possibly imagined monster. It’s heady shit but once you’re knee deep in it Kingsnorth’s originality and his way of breathing ideas into the madness on the page is breathtaking. His newest - Alexandria - the conclusion to his century spanning trilogy - sees the last humans in existence, 1000 years from now, living in the eastern fens of England. They also are stalked by a scary presence - the Alexandria of the title - and in the saddle between one apocalypse and another, they have some decisions to make. It’ll be super weird and super awesome and you’re looking for something to pep up your reading as of late, I wholeheartedly suggest it.
Noah Sanders is reading books and saying things. Just how he likes it.
