#Lee Boudreaux Books

[my-lady-knight]

Favorite Reads of 2020

I take back everything I said last year about how 2019 was a comparatively bad reading year for me. 2020 was even worse. I only read 48 books, I could barely focus on reading even when I did find a book I liked, and, just like last year, I ended up with fewer favorites than usual. Starting in August I’ve been having trouble reading any written media that isn’t TOG fic. And some of my eagerly awaited releases by favorite authors ended up being disappointments (Deeplight by Frances Hardinge and Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee).

2020—the year that keeps on giving.

I sincerely hope 2021 will be a better year in all respects, including my reading habits, but, as with everything else, who knows.

Regardless, here’s my list of favorite reads of 2020, in chronological order of when I read them:

Network Effect by Martha Wells

I’d read the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas when they first came out and enjoyed them, but I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with them. Maybe because they were novellas, and too short to get fully invested? Possibly. As it turns out, Network Effect is the novel-length fifth entry in the Murderbot Diaries that turned me into full-on squeeing fan—SecUnit, aka Murderbot, continues to be its delightfully acerbic, antisocial self, SPOILER makes another appearance and oh how I’d missed this character, the supporting cast is fun and endearing, and the novel-length story means there’s time and space for the brand-new corporate espionage/colonization/alien civilization murder mystery to unfold and spread its wings. (Sounds like a Sanctuary Moon plot tbh). SecUnit is possibly my favorite non-human fictional character atm, and I am now fully on-board for every and any new story in the series.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

When I first heard about this book and read the words “time travel romance”, I immediately went, “Nope, not gonna read.” I don’t like reading time travel stories, and honestly, I was imagining it to be something like The Time Traveler’s Wife, which granted I haven’t read but also sounds like it’d be the opposite of my cup of tea. 

And then I went to a reading where Amal and Max took turns reading chapters – letters written by Red and Blue, enemy agents who repeatedly taunt and thwart the other’s plans to ensure their side is the one to win the time war and who can’t resist smugly outlining just how they’re staying one step ahead of the other – and the prose was witty and gorgeous and clever and intricate, and Red and Blue were snarky and arrogant and talented and fun. I had to read it. And I ended up loving it, this enemies-to-lovers story that is a meld of fantasy and science fiction such that they’re indistinguishable from the other, where the past is as equally fantastical and alien and imaginary as the future, where Red and Blue’s power play transforms into something different and scarier and more intimate than either of them imagined. 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers has done it again, writing a gentle, hopeful story about humans working together out of a share a love and fascination for scientific exploration and wonder for all the possibilities the entirety of space can hold. With the advent of both space travel and technology that alters human physiology to allow them to survive otherwise inhospitable environments, a team of four astronauts and scientists have embarked on a mission to ecologically survey four distant planets and the life forms that inhabit them, from the microscopic to the multicellular—not to conquer, but to record and to learn and to share the gathered knowledge with the rest of Earth. In the meantime, lightyears away, Earth is going through decades without them, and the four of them must also contend with a planet that may have forgotten their existence—or that’s abandoned the entire space and scientific exploration program.

Reading Becky Chambers is the literary equivalent of sitting down with a warm mug of my favorite tea on a bad day – I always feel better at the end and like I can imagine a future where humanity does all the wonderful things we’re capable of doing.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

I started reading this book right as NYC was gearing up to go into lockdown, which should have made this a terrible choice to continue reading since part of the premise is that a combo of multiple stochastic terror attacks and a brand-new, deadly plague upend the world as everyone knows it by causing the U.S. to pass laws that keep people physically apart in public for their own safety and make concerts, theatre, and any other kind of artistic gathering obsolete.

But that’s largely just the set-up, and the real story is that of Luce Cannon, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who played the last major concert in the before times who twenty years later performs in illegal underground concerts, and Rosemary, a younger music-lover who’s only lived in the after-times, and who’s taken a new job scouting out talent to add to the premier virtual entertainment company’s roster of simulated concerts.

It’s a love letter to live music and what it feels like to connect and build community via music in unusual and strange and scary times, the energy involved in making music for yourself, for an audience, exploring the world around you, imagining and advocating for a better tomorrow, and embracing the fear, the possibility, and the power of change, both good and bad. This was the book I needed to read at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’m thankful I ended up doing so.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edited by John Joseph Adams and Carmen Maria Machado

When I end up loving half of the stories in an anthology and greatly enjoying all but two of the rest, that’s the equivalent of a literary blue moon for me. My favorites included the following;

"Pitcher Plant" by Adam-Troy Castro

"Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women" by Theodore McCombs

"Variations on a Theme from Turandot" by Ada Hoffmann

"Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good" by LaShawn M. Wanak

"The Kite Maker" by Brenda Peynado

"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" by P. Djèlí Clark

"Dead Air" by Nino Cipri

"Skinned" by Lesley Nneka Arimah

"Godmeat" by Martin Cahill

"On the Day You Spend Forever with Your Dog" by Adam R. Shannon

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

No one is more surprised than me that Harrow is on this list, given that I am one of approximately three people in the universe who did not unequivocally love Gideon the Ninth. 

And yet the sequel worked for me. 

Maybe because this time I already knew and was used to the way the world and the Houses worked, and I knew to not take anything I read for granted because I could be guaranteed to have the rug pulled out from under me without even realizing. Maybe Harrow’s countdown/amnesia mystery worked better for me than Gideon’s locked room mystery. Maybe the cast of characters was more manageable and fewer of them were getting murdered left and right before I got a chance to get used to them (and some of them even came back!) Maybe it’s that Harrow blew open the potential and possibilities Gideon hinted at and capitalized on just how fucking weird and mind-blowing the whole premise is in a way that felt incredibly and viscerally satisfying.

Also SPOILER happens three-quarters of the way through. That was pretty fucking awesome.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

P. Djélí Clark is a master of melding history and fantasy in ways that are in turn imaginative and clever (his fantastical alternate-history, early 20th-century Egyptian novel A Master of Djinn is one of the books I’m most looking forward to in 2021), while also using fantasy to be frank and incisive about the history of American antiblack racism (as in the above linked story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019). Ring Shout combines the late-nineteenth and early 20th-century history of the rise and normalization of the KKK with Lovecraftian supernatural horror, in which the release of The Birth of a Nation summoned literal monsters (called Ku Kluxes) that became part of the KKK’s ranks. Maryse Boudreaux is a Black woman who’s part of a grassroots organization hunting both the monsters and the human members in order to keep the Klan at bay. However, there’s soon to be another summoning ritual atop Stone Mountain that will unleash even more Ku Kluxes into the world, and Maryse and her friends are running out of time to prevent it from happening.

Maryse is a fantastic character, as are her two friends—brash, unapologetic Sadie and WWI veteran, weapons expert Chef—her mentor and leader of the Ring Shout group Nana Jean, and all the other members of the group who work and fight together as a team and a family. Maryse’s past and the journey she goes on in the book to uncover the truth and stop the summoning is harrowing and heart-stopping, the supernatural elements are both horrific in and of themselves while also undergirding the real-life horror of the KKK and the hatred they engender. It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s eye-opening, and it’s also being turned into a TV show starring KiKi Layne. It’s really, really good.

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

“Stick to the brief.” This is the maxim given to Dietz and all the other soldiers who join the war against Mars, where soldiers are broken down into light to travel to and from their assigned battlefields instantaneously. Only Dietz isn’t experiencing the jumps like everyone else – Dietz, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, has become unstuck in time and is experiencing all the battles in the mission briefs out of chronological order, to the point that Dietz starts to build a picture of a war and a reality that’s been sold to Dietz and everyone else on Earth as pure fiction. 

I’ve always appreciated Kameron Hurley’s stories, but this is the first book where she fully succeeded at writing the book she set out to write—it’s fast-paced science fiction thriller in the form of a loaded gun that takes brutal aim at late-stage capitalism, modern military warfare and the dehumanization of everyone involved on all sides, the greed of ungovernable governing corporations, nationalistic and military propaganda, the mythology of citizenship and inalienable rights, and it’s viscerally bloody and violent without being grotesque in the way all of Kameron Hurley’s books are. Especially important for me, I loved that Dietz went through the entire book not being gendered in any way, shape, or form (those last five pages didn’t exist, what are you talking about), and I love in general that Kameron Hurley is committed to writing non-male characters who aren’t less violent or fucked-up or morally superior to men just because they’re not men.

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Middle grade is a hard sell for me these days, as are books in verse, and I wouldn’t have known this book existed if it weren’t for the Ignyte Award nomination list earlier this year. As it turns out, this book, the story of Jude, a pre-teen girl who wants to be an actress who leaves Syria and the encroaching civil war with her mom to go live in the U.S. with her uncle and his white wife and their daughter while her dad and older brother stay behind, is full of beauty, curiosity, humor, confusion, grief, pain, and joy, and the poetic prose is both lyrical, nuanced, and perfectly fitted to Jude’s voice. I devoured this book in one day, which is the quickest amount of time it took me to read any book this year, including novellas.

Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram

The first book Darius the Great Is Not Okay was one of my favorite books in 2018, and I’m ecstatic that the sequel is equally as amazing.

It’s been approximately half a year since Darius went to Iran, met his maternal grandparents in person for the first time, and found his best friend in Sohrab, and in that time he’s come out as gay, joined the soccer team, got an internship at his favorite tea shop, and started dating for the first time. Darius is also working through some things though—when and if he wants to have sex with his boyfriend, his grandfather’s worsening illness, his dad’s recent depressive episode, his emotionally distant paternal grandmothers on his coming for an extended stay, the fact that he’s getting to know and growing closer with one of his teammates who’s best friends with Darius’s years-long bully, and a bunch else. 

Darius the Great Deserves Better has the same tender and vulnerable emotional intimacy as the first book, more conversations over tea, new instances involving the mortifying ordeal of being a cis guy with a penis, even more Star Trek metaphors, and so much growth for Darius as he works through a lot of hard situations and feelings, and strengthens his relationships with all of the people in his life he loves and cares about. I can’t think of any other book that’s like these two books, and I love and treasure them dearly.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

I had zero awareness of this book until a bunch of SFF authors started praising it on Twitter a couple months before the release date, and I was intrigued enough to get a copy from the library. I loved this book. I happened to be reading it right at the time of the presidential election, and it phenomenally served the purpose of desperately-needed distraction from the agony of waiting out the ballot counts.

It’s book about the power behind borders, citizenship, exploitation, and imperialism, set in a late-late-stage capitalist future, in which a prodigy invented the means to access and travel to slightly divergent parallel universes to grab resources and data – but only if the other universe’s version of “you” isn’t there. It’s the story of a woman named Cara – poor, brown, born in the wastelands outside the shelter, security, and citizenship privileges of Wiley City – who’s comfortably employed to travel to all the parallel worlds no one else can visit, because all her counterparts in those worlds are dead from one of the myriad ways Cara herself could have died growing up. It’s the story of Cara traversing the muddied boundaries between her old life and her new one, the similarities and differences between her own life and that of her counterparts, as well as the figures of power who defined and shaped her and her counterparts’ existences, and solving a mystery involving the unexplained deaths of several of her counterparts and the man who invented multiverse technology.

It’s a story of the permeability of selfhood and self-determination, and complexity of power dynamics of all kinds – interpersonal, familial, collegial, intimate – and the interplay between violence and stability and identity, and how one can be both powerful and powerless in the same dynamic. It’s a story with literary sensibilities that is unequivocally science fiction, written with laser-precise prose that flays Cara open and puts her back together again.

I worry this description makes this book sound dry and removed when reading this book made me feel like I was coming alive every time I delved back into it. This is a book I cannot wait to reread again to experience the brilliance and skill and thoughtfulness and emotion of Micaiah Johnson’s writing. I have no clue what, if anything, she’s writing next, but I have a new favorite author.

Honorable Mentions

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Stormsong by C. L. Polk

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (I feel bad putting it here and not in the first list – it is undeniably a modern classic and a brilliantly crafted book! But I had zero interest in any of the Italy chapters, and I found the way he finally figured out how to access fairy magic by essentially making himself mad to be both disappointing and narratively unsatisfying.)

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi

For my yearly stats on books written by POC authors, in 2020 I read a total of 24 books (one of which was co-authored by a white author), which is fewer than last year (30). However, because I also read fewer books this year overall, this is the first year ever that I achieved exactly 50-50 parity between books written by POC and white authors. I honestly wasn’t expecting this to happen, as I stopped paying deliberate attention somewhere around April or May. Looking over my Goodreads, the month of September ended up doing a lot of heavy lifting, since that’s when I read several books by POC authors in a row for the Ignyte Award nomination period. But also, it does look like the five or so years of purposefully aiming for 50-50 parity have materially affected my reading habits, by which I mean even when I’m not keeping my year’s count in mind, I’m still more likely to pick up a book by a POC author than I was five years ago when I had never kept track at all. My goal for next year is to once again achieve 50-50 parity and to not backslide.

[atths--twice]

Chapter Seven 7/9

Durand Home December 18, 2017 2:30 a.m.

Arielle woke up in a cold sweat, shivering violently, as she laid back down. She pulled the covers tighter around herself, the portable heater humming as it began to pump out more heat.

Another nightmare. Screaming bouncing inside her head, someone crying, and the cold. Always so cold.

“I am safe. I am home. I am safe. I am home,” she whispered the mantra she had been saying to herself, finding it helped to calm her down. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes, the nightlight in the corner letting out a soft light.

Until this happened, she had blackout curtains on her windows, loving it as dark as possible. Now… now the dark was scary and she needed to have a nightlight, like some terrified little child.

Throwing back her covers angrily, she grabbed her robe and turned down the heater, leaving it just warm enough. Closing the door as she left the room, she shivered as she walked down the stairs and into the kitchen to make some tea.

She hoped not to wake her parents or her sister, but there was no chance she would be able to sleep any longer. She would be up most of the night now, the dream world too unpredictable. Once the sun was up, she would take a sleeping pill and sleep when it was safer.

Turning on the electric kettle, she got her cup ready and stood shivering until the water boiled. As the tea steeped, she set it on the dining room table and sighed, looking around at the dimly light room.

Her mother had put up nightlights everywhere to help her feel comfortable and at ease. They gave the room a cozy glow and for that she was thankful, so much out of her control right now.

Sighing again, she noticed the box at the end of the table and she walked over to it. As she looked at the contents, she smiled slightly. Great Grammy Corinne… she had been a character. She had so many stories and she swore they were as real as they could be without being completely factual; a statement which always made Arielle laugh.

She took out the book on top and sat down to look at it as she drank her tea. Reading through the stories, she shook her head at the thought of being a slave, bought and sold at a whim, taken from your family to never see them again. Tears filled her eyes as she thought of being in that situation, the fear they must have felt.

About to close the book, she saw a story that caught her attention, one she had liked and also been terrified of as a child: Elinor and Mary. Rereading the story, she began to feel a chill, her breathing becoming faster.

“Boudreaux…” she whispered, standing up from the table and bringing the book with her and walking to her mother’s study.

Turning on the light above the desk, she opened her mother’s laptop and entered the password, her heart racing. A few taps on the keyboard and she found what she was looking for. She saw the photos of the victims from the second attack and read the articles about it.

Taking deep breaths, she searched for information about the night she and the others were attacked. Finding them, she closed her eyes before she clicked on the links.

“I am home. I am safe. I am home. I am safe…” Opening her eyes, she clicked the first link.

Through tears that never seemed to stop, she read articles and looked at photos. She felt sick and frozen and yet she kept clicking, kept searching. There was something she needed to find, but she did not know what it was.

The last article she clicked on, she ended up on her feet, staring at the computer screen. It was an older article about areas of ruin around the city. Abandoned buildings, homes, churches. Some very old and some more recent.

It was not the words in the article that caused her to rise to her feet however, it was the photographs within it, or more accurately the tag underneath it.

There was a close up photo of a headstone in the church graveyard where they had been attacked. An old headstone that was  missing letters from the first name. Then there was a wide shot of the headstone and the statue across from it. Last was a close shot of the statue: a woman in a long dress, her hands at her breast, head turned to the side and her eyes downcast.  

Photographs courtesy of Sally Sparrow.

“Cera…” Arielle whispered as she sat back down and hit print, the printer whirring quietly to life.

The pages printed out as she began searching for more information about the attacks, specifically the most recent one.

“Oh my god,” she breathed as she saw the list of victim names, finding Cera Lee within them. “Oh…” She stood up, grabbing the pages from the printer and leaving the room, knowing this had been what she was looking for.

She hurried to her bedroom and opened her side table drawer, taking out her cell phone and turning it on for the first time in weeks. The battery was nearly dead and she plugged it in, pacing the room as she looked at the clock.

Five in the morning.

Shaking her head, knowing if he was feeling like her, he would be awake. She picked up the phone and scrolled through her contacts, pressed send and closed her eyes, hoping she would get through.

Three rings and the phone was answered, though no words were spoken.

“Hello? Davis?”

“Arielle.”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Arielle… this is gonna sound crazy… but I’m… I’m almost to your house…” He sounded confused and not sure why he was driving to her house in the middle of the night.

“Good. I’ll going to get dressed and be out in a minute. We have some things we need to do.”

____________________

She was crying again, the sound echoing all around him. He could hear her, far away and right beside him, and he wished for the millionth time that he could reach her and hold her hand. Tell her it would be okay. But he was frozen in place, his body heavy even as it felt weightless.

Her sobs grew louder and he closed his eyes thinking of her smile and how her kiss had made his heart race.

Farrah.  

T… Tyler? Tyler is that you?

His eyes flew open and he stared into the ever pressing darkness.

You can hear me? How? Why now?

I… I don’t know. Are we… speaking?

I don’t know.

He shook his head, not sure what to do or how this was possible. He had wanted to help her and now she sounded even more upset.

Tyler! Tyler, I… I don’t know where I am. Where… where am I? Where are you?

I don’t know, Farrah. What can you see?

Nothing. I can’t see anything. Just… darkness.

Me too.

What does that mean?

IT MEANS… a voice said, one he had not heard since that night in the graveyard, and he heard Farrah gasp. IT MEANS IT IS ALMOST TIME.

Farrah began to cry harder, deep sobs that broke his heart.

Tyler… I don’t know where I am… please… it’s so cold…

His anger began to grow and he swore when he found out who had done this, who had caused her this pain, he would kill them.

[man-reading]

Gay Authors Andrew Sean Greer and Frank Bidart Win 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in Fiction and Poetry

Two gay writers have taken this year’s Pulitzer Prizes in fiction and poetry. Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company) has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Here’s the synopsis of Less, from Greer’s website:

You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty.  A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else.  You can’t say yes–it would all be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat.  On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms.  In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see.  Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty.  The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket.  There will be his first love.  And there will be his last.

Bidart’s publisher, wrote, of his collection:

Few writers have so willingly ventured to the dark places of the human psyche and allowed themselves to be stripped bare on the page with such candor and vulnerability. Over the past half century, Bidart has done nothing less than invent a poetics commensurate with the chaos and appetites of our experience.

“Half-light” encompasses all of Bidart’s previous books, and also includes a new collection, “Thirst,” in which the poet austerely surveys his life, laying it plain for us before venturing into something new and unknown. Here Bidart finds himself a “Creature coterminous with thirst,” still longing, still searching in himself, one of the “queers of the universe.”

Other notable Pulitzer winners are Kendrick Lamar, for DAMN. Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker also won an award for Public Service reporting.

(source: Towleroad)

[michellekingdom]

I’m so excited to share this wonderful opportunity......my work will be used as the cover for an upcoming Clare Beams novel published by @penguinrandomhouse titled #theillnesslesson. Many thanks @clare.beams @emilymahon_covers and #randomhouse - the book will come out February 2020: . . . . Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, NYPL's Young Lions Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award Clare Beams's THE ILLNESS LESSON, set in 1871, Massachusetts at an all-girls school founded by a discredited transcendentalist and his daughter, Caroline; when the students begin to manifest strange symptoms—rashes, tics, fits, headaches—a sinister physician is called in, forcing Caroline to confront timeless questions about who controls a woman's body and whose voice needs to be heard, to Lee Boudreaux at Doubleday, in a significant deal, at auction, for publication in early 2020. https://www.instagram.com/p/BzMUcOGh2Aj/?igshid=ng8sbmzv9d7q

[whatsheread]

Wrong timing for Mrs.

Wrong timing for Mrs.

BOTTOM LINE: It is not a modern-day House of Mirth. Not even close. Genre: Contemporary Fiction Publication Date: 13 February 2018 Source: Publisher via NetGalley Synopsis from the Publisher: “In the well-heeled milieu of New York’s Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last…

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Less | Author: Andrew Sean Greer | Publisher: Lee Boudreaux Books (2017)

[danyreads]

TITLE: Circe AUTHOR: Madeline Miller RELEASE DATE: April 10th, 2018 READ DATE: May 23rd, 2018 PUBLISHING HOUSE: Lee Boudreaux Books RATING: ★★★★★

is madeline miller an actual goddess? asking for a friend there’s writing and then there’s good writing and then there’s madeline miller’s writing. i knew this already, we all knew this, but going into circe there was something intrinsically different from the song of achilles. the two books are siblings, sure. one overlaps the other, and several characters from one are mentioned in the other. we see some familiar faces. but there’s something about circe’s immortality that makes this book insanely beautiful. it’s a different kind of beautiful than tsoa, for sure. we see life through circe’s eyes as something fleeting and fragile. we travel with her through centuries of experience, of love and loss, of tragedy and happiness. i find it very beautiful how despite the fact that circe is hundreds of years old, the pacing of this book is somehow slower than tsoa’s. circe’s life is presented to us in short but stunning outbursts of life. i can’t with coherent words explain how much i loved this book. it was enthralling and spellbinding. madeline miller is, for sure, one of the best writers alive right now and that’s just the tea, guys. there’s nothing else to say.

GOODREADS LINK

[wellesleybooks]

2018 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists

Fiction

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company)

A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.

In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz (Coffee House Press)

The Idiot, by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press)

History

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis (Liveright/W.W. Norton)

An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems.

Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, by Kim Phillips-Fein (Metropolitan Books)

Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, by Steven J. Ross (Bloomsbury)

Biography

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books)

A deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series, that describes how Wilder transformed her family’s story of poverty, failure and struggle into an uplifting tale of self-reliance, familial love and perseverance.

Richard Nixon: The Life, by John A. Farrell (Doubleday)

Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.

Incendiary Art, by Patricia Smith (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press)

semiautomatic, by Evie Shockley (Wesleyan University Press)

General Nonfiction

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

An examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.

Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-America World, by Suzy Hansen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, by Richard O. Prum (Doubleday)

[stibogram]

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa

A young, biracial Victor, who travelled the world in search for a purpose, returns home and is caught in the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organisation protests. His estranged father, the white chief of police is on the opposite side. The day descends into disorder, following the confusion of the activists, police, and citizens who arrived from around the world with the hope and heart for change. By the days end, the lives of Victor, his father, two police officers in the street, two protestors, and one Sri Lankan delegate will all be forever changed by these events.   

The Seattle WTO protests are told in different perspectives, exploring the motivations of the bystander, the activist, the police, and the politician. This powerful novel is incredibly relevant in today’s times. However, one should take note of the violent imagery. It’s political. Yapa shows unapologetically shows all sides of this protest, sometimes blurring the lines between what is right and what is wrong. This novel is not for everybody. It’s chaotic, powerful, and violent. Written with the heart of protest.   

Favourite quotations;

“He traveled because he knew he did not belong. The home where he had been born was not his home. Something was missing. From him or from his home, he didn't know, and so he wandered.”

“Doing something, he had discovered, anything, however small, that contributed to your meaningfulness of self and surroundings--well, that was the trick. That was the trick to not feel like shit.”

“We are mad with hope. Here we come.”

“But that was the thing with anger. That was the tricky thing about pain. Sometimes it was hiding around a corner just waiting to slice you from stomach to throat.”

“Looking into the man’s eyes. Seeing the fear there. Asking himself, What about an unarmed nineteen-year-old scares an armed police officer?”

Full Title: Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Author: Sunil Yapa

Orig. Language: English

Genre: Novel, Historical Fiction, Political Fiction

First Edition: 2016

Publisher: Lee Boudreaux Books / Back Bay Books

GOODREADS | BOOK RECS 

2020 in books

[tachyonpub]

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter S. Beagle, Jo Walton, and Jeff VanderMeer

The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles and authors from around the web.

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Rina Weisman), Jo Walton (Ada Palmer), and Jeff VanderMeer (Kyle Cassidy)

Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA was named to the NCIBA Book Award Long List.

The NCIBA presents the Northern California Book Awards every Spring. Awards are given in various categories for books published for the first time in the prior year and written by an author residing in Northern California (we make a residency exception for an author whose book is nominated in the Regional Title category).

Fiction                                         

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, Counterpoint, 9781619029224

Sourdough by Robin Sloan, MCD, Macmillan, 9790374203108

Artemis by Andy Weir, Crown, 9780553448122

Less by Andrew Sean Greer, Lee Boudreaux Books, Hachette, 9780316316125

Autonomous by Analee Newitz, Tor Books, Macmillan, 9780765392077

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, Orbit, Hachette, 9780316262347

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, Knopf, Penguin Random House, 9781524731823

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 9781101982242

An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King, Harper Voyager, HarperCollins, 9780062662552

Goodbye Vitamin by Rachel Khong, Henry Holt and Co., Macmillan, 9781250109163

In this Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear, HarperLuxe, HarperCollins, 9780062644299

All the News I Need by Joan Frank, University of Massachusetts Press, 9781625342621

IN CALABRIA by Peter S. Beagle, Tachyon Publications, 9781616962487

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster 9781501178139

Void Star by Zachary Mason, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan, 9780374285067

Dead on Arrival by Matt Richtel, William Morrow, HarperCollins, 9780062443274

Congrats to all the honorees.

Mike Reeves-McMillan at THE REVIEW CURMUDGEON praises Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By the author's own admission, several of the "short stories" in this book are not actually stories. They're exercises in mode, or jokes, or the attempts of someone who knows how novels work but not how short stories work to write a short story

.

This doesn't sound promising, but Jo Walton is such a good writer that she mostly gets away with it in any case. In fact, some of the stories have been published in prestigious publications like Strange Horizons and Subterranean. Unfairly, I occasionally thought, "I wish I had the kind of standing in the SFF community that meant I could get published in those publications by writing a story that isn't a story," but that's not the only thing that's going on. Walton is a deep thinker, a close observer, and a master of language, and all these things shine through, even when her "story" is only an exploration of a clever idea with no real beginning, middle, or (especially) end.

Overall, then, this collection is proof that, if you're a good enough writer, you can write a successful piece of short fiction in a lot of different ways. Not all of the pieces are excellent or weighty, or even original, but those that are lift the average considerably. 

Art: Armando Veve

TOR.COM shares the original Jeff VanderMeer story “This World Is Full of Monsters.”

I Did Not Recognize What Sought Me

The story that meant the end arrived late one night. A tiny story, covered in green fur or lichen, shaky on its legs. It fit in the palm of my hand. I stared at the story for a long time, trying to understand. The story had large eyes that could see in the dark, and sharp teeth. It purred, and the purr grew louder and louder: a beautiful flower bud opening and opening until I was filled up. I heard the thrush and pull of the darkness, grown so mighty inside my head.

I grew weary.

I grew weary and I fell asleep on the couch holding the story, wondering what it might be and who had delivered it to me. But there was no time left for wonder. As I slept, the story gnawed its way into my belly and then the story crawled up through my body into my head. When I woke, gasping my resistance, the story made me stumble out the door of my house and lurch through the dark down my street, giddy and disoriented, muttering, “Do not stop me. Do not stop me. Story made me this way. Story made me this way.”

I felt a compulsion to turn to the left, and then to turn to the left again. Until the story made me stop at the end of the block, where the last fence meets a forest. By now I knew that the story wasn’t a story at all. It had just made me think it was a story so it could invade my brain.

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

[dk-thrive]

But: how to live alone and yet not be alone?

Arthur Less has, for the past decade and a half, remained a bachelor. This came after a long period of living with the older poet Robert Brownburn, a tunnel of love he entered at twenty-one and exited, blinking in the sunlight, in his thirties. Where was he? Somewhere in there he lost the first phase of youth, like the first phase of a rocket; it had fallen, depleted, behind him. And here was the second. And last. He swore he would not give it to anyone; he would enjoy it. He would enjoy it alone. But: how to live alone and yet not be alone?

~ Andrew Sean Greer, "Less: A Novel" (Lee Boudreaux Books (July 18, 2017)

[aboutbigbooks]

Ten new releases

Thanks to NetGalley, I’ve been getting advance reader’s copies of new books in return for honest reviews. There aren’t any big books in this crop (Ill Will comes close), but there’s probably something for everyone. And now, in chronological order, some offerings from the first half of 2017. . .

The Dry (Jane Harper, Flatiron, 336 pp., January 10). 4/5 stars. Returning to his small Australian hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend Luke, Melbourne cop Aaron Falk is convinced by Luke’s parents to take a closer look at the circumstances of his death. Doing so revives his and Luke’s shared past. That past involves a dead girl, and the town hasn’t forgotten. To make matters worse, a drought has everyone on edge. Falk has to negotiate their hostility and secrecy to shine a light into some dark places. A well-paced murder mystery in an unusual setting, with good writing. Reese Witherspoon has optioned it for a movie, and I hope that the movie lives up to the book’s cinematic quality.

Read if: You like who-done-its and police procedurals.

The River at Night (Erica Ferencik, Gallery/Scout Press, 304 pp., January 10). 3.5/5 stars. Four friends (is that a thing? seems like it's usually four friends) go river rafting off the grid in Maine. From the beginning, it's clear that things are not going to go smoothly. The guide is sketchy, they aren't experienced rafters, and one of them is an ER nurse, which is never a good sign in this set-up. This was a decent airplane read, if one-note (ominous from beginning to end.)

Read if:  You enjoyed the 1994 movie The River Wild.

The Impossible Fortress (Jason Rekulak, Simon & Schuster, 304 pp., February 7). 4/5 stars. Billy and his friends are coming of age in 1987, and they come up against, get mired in, or are individually able to resist sex, crime, and the Commodore 64. Light and funny – I read this after reading The Vorrh (Brian Catling), which was really weird and dark, and The Impossible Fortress was a perfect palate cleanser.  

Read if:  You want a mash-up of Stand by Me and Microserfs.

The Futures (Anna Pitoniak, Lee Boudreaux Books, 320 pp., January 17). 3 or 4/5 stars, depending on how you feel about things and maybe how old you are. Around the time I graduated from college, I was telling my hairdresser about how great the movie St. Elmo's Fire was. She basically said, of course you like it - it's about your life right now. I think I feel about The Futures the way she did about SEF. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of Evan and Julia, who are living together in New York after graduation, and also skips backward and forward in time. Julia is really the center of the story and seemed better developed as a character than Evan. As in SEF, there are several men, including Evan, in her life, and drama naturally ensues. Although the book was well written, I think it would have been more compelling without the asynchrony in the telling. Disclosure: For me, The Futures suffered by comparison with A Little Life, which also told the story of college friends in their post-graduate lives in New York. If you haven't read A Little Life, then (1) you might like The Futures more, and (2) WHY HAVE YOU NOT READ A LITTLE LIFE YET?

Read if:  You want the literary companion to St. Elmo's Fire.

Ill Will (Dan Chaon, Ballantine, 480 pp., March 7). 3/5 stars. Dustin Tillman is a therapist, a widower, a father, and the childhood survivor of a mysterious mass murder that was attributed to his foster brother. When his client Aqil – a cop on leave with a strong tendency toward conspiracy theories – gets Tillman questioning his past as well as recent events, things start to fall apart. Told from the perspectives of the various men (Tillman, his son, his foster brother), this book had an appealing premise but the overly introspective characters were ultimately unlikeable.

Read if:  You liked his previous books? You have a lot of time on your hands? Try The Dry first.

The Rules Do Not Apply (Ariel Levy, Random House, 224 pp., March 14). 5/5 stars. “I had been so lucky. So little had truly gone wrong for me before that night on the bathroom floor.” This memoir of how Levy builds a life and eventually a family, loses it, and survives is a deeper, albeit implicit, commentary on feminism and happiness than the explicit, sociological book The H-Spot (see below). Love and loss is a common trope, but Levy’s description of her grief is special and at the same time universal. “Grief is a world,” she writes, “you walk through skinned, unshelled.”

Read if:  You liked Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.

A Criminal Defense (William Myers, Jr., Thomas & Mercer, 382 pp., April 1). 4.5/5 stars. Got this one through an Amazon Kindle special, and I had to include it in this list even though it wasn’t a reader’s copy per se. Myers’s first book is told from the perspective of criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor Mick McFarland, whose plans to mount the defense case of his life are subverted by the fact that everyone is keeping secrets from him. A great, fast-paced read. Looking forward to the next one, due out in 2018.

Read if:  You like Scott Turow’s novels and you don’t mind a change of venue from Chicago to Philadelphia.

The Dinner Party (Joshua Ferris, Little Brown, 256 pp., May 2).3 to 5/5 stars depending on the story. I keep wanting to recreate the magic of Then We Came to the End (2007), so I read this collection even though I’m not a short story person. Other reviewers I’ve heard (including Ferris himself) have basically characterized the protagonists of these stories as a (mostly male) bunch of assholes. It’s true that you wouldn’t want to spend too much time with them, so maybe the short story format is good for that. I personally found them more poignant than some others did. Sure, some were straight-up assholes, but others struck me as just wanting something they couldn’t have, in a childish kind of way: a perfect day, a married coworker. “More Abandon, or What Ever Happened to Joe Pope?” was the tragicomic best of the bunch.

Read if:  You’re a short story person and you can suffer fools.

Ginny Moon (Benjamin Ludwig, Park Row, 368 pp., May 2). 4.5/5 stars. Ginny Moon is 13 years old and autistic. She has a new foster family, a history no one understands that she can’t explain, and a quirky means of meting out justice, including duct-taping your drugs to Maine coon cats, flushing your socks down the toilet, and pooping on your rug (hiding some of the poop in the heat register for good measure). Told from Ginny’s first-person perspective, this is a unique novel that is funny, scary, and ultimately satisfying.

Read if: You’re interested in the inner workings of an autistic mind, you like unreliable narrators, and/or you’re a human being.

The H Spot (Jill Filipovic, Nation, 336 pp., May 2). 3/5 stars. I was looking forward to this release after reading Filipovic’s opinion piece for the New York Times, Why Men Want to Marry Melanias and Raise Ivankas. The premise of the book is fascinating: What would a world designed around women’s happiness look like? Unfortunately, the book is more of a catalog of the things that make women (and also a lot of men) unhappy. There were some moments that felt new and important (e.g., discussion of the new “wellness” dietary rules for women), but also a sense of missed opportunity. What would the world look like if men and women switched places? Would pregnancy be a pre-existing condition? Would men change their names when they married? How would the workplace change?

 Read if:  You can’t get a copy of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. Eat a doughnut while you’re at it.

[man-reading]

Less

by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little Brown, July 18)

Arthur Less is rounding 50 when he receives an invitation to a wedding he refuses to attend—that of his ex-boyfriend of nine years. Instead of saying no, Less goes globe-trotting to avoid the event entirely, creating a new set of problems both comical and poignant. Greer puts a middle-aged spin on the rom-com.

[lezziemanville]

| Answer the 20 questions and tag 20 amazing followers you’d like to get to know better! |

I was tagged by @tinkernix ( you little love )

name | Crystal-lee

nickname | Cree, Creeper, Kit, Birdie, Mare

zodiac sign | Virgo

height | 5′ 5 ½" (though I claim to be 5′6, Deneuve’s height)

orientation | As lesbian as they come. I always wanted to be bisexual but I was a fraud because I’m just not attracted to dudes.

nationality | Canadian transplant in America

favorite fruit | Peaches

favorite season | I truthfully don’t know. I don't feel strongly enough about one particular season and in California it’s summer always practically. But, I do so hate the cold.

favorite book | Life Mask by Emma Donoghue

favorite flower | I love so many flowers. I’m particularly fond of rhododendrons, hydrangeas, those kinds of flowers. Clusters in pale colors. 

favorite scent | Perfume on a warm neck

favorite color | I don’t have one. I’m fond of teal.

favorite animal | Owl

coffee, tea, or hot cocoa | Lady Grey tea 

average sleep hours | Generally about 5-6

cat or dog person | Dogs

favorite fictional character | Favorite? Don't know if I could pick a favorite but since I just re-watched the film again last night, I’ll say Ouiser Boudreaux:

number of blankets you sleep with | 1

dream trip | The Scottish Highlands my ultimate dream.

blog created | A long time ago.

Tagging: @jamieringo @magnass @janetfraiser @ames-78 @badassbettyrizzo @catladycatharsis @sarahlancashire2 @sarahstreep7 @ainecait96 @nervouspearl @culturepopper

[whatsheread]

A tale of two feminist novels

Genre: Historical Fiction Publication Date: 16 January 2018 Source: Publisher via NetGalley Synopsis from the Publisher: “It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone’s lips these days is “flickers”—the silent…

[brunchatthebookstore]

The new "Know Your Publishers" post features Lee Boudreaux Books, which looks for unusual stories & unexpected voices 

Learn more about them here!