Review: Nest of Worlds by Marek S. Huberath, translated by Michael Kandel

 





Review on the Speculative Fiction in Translation site

Books to Look For (January): Literary Fiction

Against the Country by Ben Metcalf (Random House, 336 pages, January 6)

Metcalf, former literary editor of Harper's Magazine, has written a story about Man versus Nature, in which the people in one rural Virginia town struggle against the unyielding soil and one another in order to survive. Oh, and apparently, "if Gary Shteyngart grew up along the banks of the Mississippi, this is the book that he would write." Well, then, hand it over!



 

Munich Airport by Greg Baxter (Twelve, 272 pages, January 27)

Last year, I read Baxter's slim but powerful novel The Apartment, and was impressed by his intense but spare style. In his latest novel, Baxter tells us about three people who congregate at the Munich Airport to wait for a family member's body in order to return it to America. The three weeks in which they wait for the body to be released is filled with these characters' attempts to grieve and remember.

Cool Maps of Fictional Literary Places

I love maps. Do you love maps? Cause I lurrrrrrve maps.

And when someone brings books and maps together, I basically have palpitations of joy. Now, I can’t read a street map to save my life, but I can pore over maps of cities, countries, and continents for hours. Perhaps it’s because these kinds of maps give me a much larger perspective on the world, reminding me of how diverse and beautiful the planet and its people are.

Maps of fictional places are mesmerizing in another way: they help me visualize entirely imagined worlds in new and fascinating ways. And thanks to talented artists and cartographers, such maps exist for our viewing and studying pleasure.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This recommendation comes from Karena Fagan. You can follow her on Tumblr and on twitter @KarenaFagan.

The Uncommon Reader (2007) by Alan Bennett

"From one of England's most celebrated writers, the author of the award-winning The History Boys, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading."

Books to Look For (January): Biography

Tolkien by Raymond Edwards (Robert Hale, 256 pages, January 1)

This latest biography of the legendary writer and Oxford don draws on a large store of posthumous material and focuses on Tolkien's writing in terms of his academic career and interests. You'll want to check out this new exploration of a writer who had an "astonishing imaginative life."






No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead by Peter Richardson (St. Martin's Press, 384 pages, January 20)

You may not believe it, but the Grateful Dead is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. Perfect time for a book, no? In No Simple Highway, Richardson "argu[es] that the band successfully tapped three powerful utopian ideals—for ecstasy, mobility, and community—[and] it also shows how the Dead's lived experience with these ideals struck deep chords with two generations of American youth and continues today."

From the TBR Shelf #36: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2000) by Dai Sijie

I had heard about this novel for years, but never grabbed it until recently, when I saw it in audiobook form at the library. And as you may already know, I keep finding myself reading fiction and histories about China's Cultural Revolution, and I find the stories of this period fascinating. Well, Balzac takes place while the Revolution is unfolding, and offers a unique perspective on what life was like for those young people exiled to the countryside for "re-education."

Sijie tells the story of Luo and his friend, the unnamed narrator, who as teenagers are sent to Phoenix Mountain because their parents have been branded "enemies of the state" for their bourgeois lifetyles. Living in a hut in the peasants' village, working in the fields, and carrying animal waste haven't erased their memories of culture and education, and when they discover that a friend in another village has a secret suitcase full of books, they become obsessed with stealing it.

Books to Look for in 2015

So many great-looking books are coming out in 2015, and because I like listing and planning, I've pulled together some of the most interesting titles for the first half of this year. Enjoy!


January

"“Twin Peaks meets the Brothers Grimm” (The Telegraph UK) in this intriguing novel featuring a highly contagious book virus, a secretive literary society, and a disappearing author."

Books to Look For (December): History

When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 288 pages, December 2)

With the news that the Nazis were burning millions of books in Europe, the U.S. countered with a program designed to get millions of books into the hands of American soldiers. Thus, 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks that could fit in one's pocket were published and sent overseas. I heard about this book on NPR and found the story fascinating, so this is definitely on my TBR list.




A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion, ed. by Louis J. Parascandola and John Parascandola (Columbia University Press, 360 pages, December 16)

Collected here are stories, poems, essays, and more about Coney Island from writers like Whitman, Crane, Marti, Gorky, Singer, cummings, and Whitehead. After all, "moody, mystical, and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades." I think most of us have at least heard about Coney Island, even if we've never been there. This book looks like it'll convince me to make the trip.

Review: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu

Review on the Speculative Fiction in Translation site

From the TBR Shelf #35: Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson

Consider the Fork (2012) by Bee Wilson

I had heard great things about this book, but never thought I'd be interested in a history of how we cook and eat. Well, Bee Wilson showed me just how fascinating knives, refrigerators, and peelers can be.

You might be thinking, "wut, that sounds so boring," but believe me, it's anything but. Wilson takes us around the world and across the centuries, exploring how different cultures have used such technologies as forks, knives, spoons, graters, coffee-makers, and saucepans to develop their own unique style of eating and serving meals. We learn about the evolution of the hearth into the kitchen, and how the Cuisinart was born when an American businessman with a love of French cooking adapted a machine he discovered while visiting the country.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

This recommendation comes from Nigel Xavier. You can follow him on twitter @XavierNigel.


A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008) by Mohammed Hanif

"Intrigue and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy trying its damnedest to happen. Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide.Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators, including his cologne-bathed roommate, a hash-smoking American lieutenant, and a mango-besotted crow, Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known."