Sep 23

Sep 23 RELEASE DAY RECOMMENDS : 9.23.2020

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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: action and adventure, why hipsters are so burned out, a searing tale of immigration in the United States (if there is any other kind) and the impact of war on women. It’s a good one.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22nd

Make Them Cry
Smith Henderson & Jon Marc Smith
Ecco

Smith Henderson wrote a much acclaimed book a while back entitled Fourth of July Creek. Though it’s been sitting on my mental bookshelf (the infinite one that never seems to grow smaller) I haven’t read it, but from everything I can surmise, it’s a stark, literary exploration of survival and masculinity in the near-wilds of Montana. Literary critics loved it. I love this: that in the aftermath of a well-received piece of fiction Henderson has decided to write what looks - from the sports car tearing ass across the cover - like a good old fashioned bit of pulp thriller. Though literary stars turning towards genre can be disastrous, I am beyond curious to see what Henderson and his co-author, first time novelist Jon Marc Smith can do with the story of a prosecutor-turned-DEA agent who’s tossed face-first into action-packed conspiracy. You do too. I know it.

$26 Bookshop

Conditional Citizens : On Belonging in America
Laila Lalami
Pantheon

Laila Lalami’s Conditional Citizens is a book that needs to be read right now. A book about the path of becoming a United States citizen and the gaping holes in our system that allow for systemic racism and a caste system to continue to thrive. This is a story - Lalami’s story - about the long shadow of racism that extends into every nook and cranny of our immigration system. This is a book about how white, male landowners are still locked into the top of the social hierarchy and how our systems of immigration support this. Our country is a tangled mess right now and Lalami’s book helps to shine a light on what this tangled mess does to the individual trying to operate within a broken system.

$24 BOOKSHOP

$18 BOOKSHOP

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields:
War Through the Lives of Women
Christina Lamb
Scribner Book Company

Not to just pile on the depressing recommends list, because good-lord-almighty-Noah-can-you-just-recommend-something-with-cute-puppies-on-the-cover (the answer is emphatically, no), but Christina Lamb’s new book looks pretty grimly, fascinating. Lamb’s an award-winning war correspondent who co-wrote Malala’s book and now turns towards what she knows best - the treatment of women during the tragedies of war. Clearly, because this is 2020, the pictures Lamb paints aren’t pretty ones, but they are necessary. She turns a light on the grim outcomes of war on women in a series of essays framed as a journey into the darker violence of countries like Congo, Rwanda, Bosnia and more. The bookflap copy indicates this is an uplifting book, and though I find this hard to believe, I do think if we are granted an expert’s eye on a subject, no matter how dark, it is only, always enlightening. And enlightenment is never a bad thing.

Can’t Even:
How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
Anne Helen Petersen
Houghton-Mifflin

I am late-era millennial (a fact I learned recently and cringed at the ideal) and as I flounder through the later years of my thirties, I do often wonder: how did I get here? And: can I blame the whole “millennial” thing for my own failures? Here’s hoping Anne Helen Peterson’s newest book provides some amount of answers. Peterson digs into what seems to be the defining descriptor of a generation - burnout. How did we get here? When did everything we do become fuel for a financial fire? When did paying back our debts become our most important goals? When did every passion suddenly just become fodder for scrounging a buck? Peterson, the author of a massively viral Buzzfeed article on the same topic, will guide us by the hand. And if being a millennial means anything, it means having someone guide me by the hand.