Daily Archives: October 22, 2024

Jeff VanderMeer! Ben Okri! Peter Singer talks turkey! 24 new books out today.

October 22, 2024, 4:55am

We’re moving ever deeper into October, that month of mundane and marvelous transformations (and, often, political surprises) and, as always, I have new reads to recommend. Today, you’ll find twenty-four new books in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to consider, with established authors and debuts-to-watch both represented below.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
You’ll find a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series and experimental fictions from William Melvin Kelley, as well as intriguing new novels and stories from Poupeh Missaghi, Anna Montague, Laura Imai Messina, and more. In poetry, you’ll find four new collections to check out from Ben Okri, Aditi Machado, Emily Hyland (the Emily, for fans of Detroit-style pizza, of Emmy Squared), and Emily Jungmin Yoon. And in nonfiction, there are stirring memoirs from Sarah LaBrie, Jennifer Neal, and André Aciman, as well as the ever-controversial-and-conversation-worthy Peter Singer on the plight of the turkey; Emily Herring on the charming French philosopher Henri Bergson; Nicholas Fox Weber on the painter Piet Mondrian; a new remembrance of John Lennon and Yoko Ono; and more.
Add some of these to your ever-towering lists! It’ll be worth it, even if one of the tome towers topples. Sometimes, after all, cleaning up fallen books is just how you find your next read.
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Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel(MCD)
“An eerie and evocative coda to [Jeff VanderMeer’s] Southern Reach horror-fantasy trilogy….This foray into the human cost of bureaucratic paranoia and the abandonment of logic to ‘hope, prayers, and blessings’ provokes, mystifies, and challenges readers in turn. VanderMeer’s horrifying declaration of the impossibility of knowing the other is a knockout.”–Publishers Weekly

Poupeh Missaghi, Sound Museum(Coffee House Press)
“To read Sound Museum is to watch The Zone of Interest fall into gentle banter with Tár on an elevator, bringing us so close to the mouth of evil that we can feel her breath. I left this book so unsure how to define character or cruelty, I could barely remember how to walk across the room.”–Aisha Sabatini SloanArticle continues after advertisementRemove Ads

Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library(Overlook Press)
“This is a masterful second book by Messina, author of The Phone Booth at the End of the World (2021); from the richly drawn characters to the slow unveiling of the story to the constant presence of the ocean, nature, and the steep hill that Shūichi lives on—reading this lovingly drawn story is an immersive experience. A powerful, unforgettable tale of love that is made more poignant by the loss that preceded it.”–Kirkus Reviews

Sarah LaBrie, No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir(Harper)Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
“Once I opened this brilliant memoir, I needed to finish it. When I wasn’t reading, I was thinking about Sarah LaBrie’s story, turning over in my mind her most devastating observations about motherhood, madness, and creativity. This book is stunning, one of the best memoirs I’ve read in a decade. No One Gets to Fall Apart deserves a place alongside modern classics like Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle and Tara Westover’s Educated.”–Susannah Calahan

Jennifer Neal, My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant’s Search for Home Across Four Continents(Catapult)
“This is a captivating and unflinchingly honest account of the highs and lows of being a black woman out in the world, coupled with a detailed history of the many global perceptions of race that is both eye-opening and informative. As a black woman who has also lived and worked in Asia, Australia and Europe, so many of Neal’s observations resonate deeply.”–Fiona Williams
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André Aciman, Roman Year: A Memoir(FSG)
“Fans of André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name will swoon for this vivid, heartfelt account of the time he spent as a teenager in Rome….A standout memoir from a master of emotional nuance who always reminds us to ‘look for the human.’–Jessica Olin

Ben Okri, Wild: Poems(Other Press)
“[Okri’s] writing takes on the great riddles of existence—freedom and consciousness, truth and illusion, suffering and transcendence—spinning them into shimmering, allegorical texts…at a time of deep reckoning and crisis…his work feel[s] all the more prescient.”–The New York Times

Emily Jungmin Yoon, Find Me as the Creature I Am: Poems(Knopf)
“I can always depend on Yoon’s poems to achieve tenderness through an unbridled desire to flay history clean from its bones. Not only do these poems edify with knowledge, they’re also revelations of feeling, wonder, and resolve, traveling through routes circuitous and vexed as the finest essays. But most remarkable of all, they position love as a method, a mode of seeing and being, perhaps even a future. Bravo.”–Ocean Vuong

Aditi Machado, Material Witness(Nightboat)
“Material Witness proves itself able to imagine a different kind of living and a different poetic form, one that entails embracing indeterminacy, transformation, and interchange. . . the material witness, struggling to look clearly upon a world from which she cannot find the adequate distance, is not only a dilemma but also an invitation, the conditions of possibility for a kind of work (poetic or otherwise) which will radically transform both self and environment.”–Sammy Aiko Zimmerman

William Melvin Kelley, Dis//Integration: 2 Novellas & 3 Stories and a Little Play(Knopf Doubleday)
“A posthumously published work by a major (if unsung) Black novelist reminds readers of his imaginative brio, verbal ingenuity, and abrasive wit….All you can do is marvel at Kelley’s arresting collage-like portrait of the artist as an intellectual nomad, clinging to the core of what makes him human—and humane. There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here. Also, wisdom and even warmth.”–Kirkus Reviews

Natalie Haynes, The Children of Jocasta(Harper Perennial)
“The legends of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone are told through two interwoven story lines in Haynes’s dark, elegant novel….Haynes’s greatest achievement is imagining a full world surrounding Sophocles’s tragedies, thrusting two minor characters in their respective plays to the forefront and bringing the myths vividly to life.”–Publishers Weekly

Anna Montague, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?(Ecco Press)
“A road trip novel with a tremendous amount of heart—I ached along with the characters, rooted for them, wished them all the best. Truly a novel that asks you to consider the winding, secret path to love that sits lodged in every person’s breast. Anna Montague has written something bright and lovely here, a novel that is above all quietly beautiful.”–Kristen Arnett

Eleni Stecopolous, Dreaming in the Fault Zone: A Poetics of Healing(Nightboat)
“Sure to alter the terms by which we understand illness and health, Eleni Stecopoulos’s deeply original meditation is an aesthetic experience and an education. Composed of lines of flight and incantations, learned excavations, and critiques of cure, Dreaming in the Fault Zone introduces a wholly new language by which to understand illegible pain…should be required reading. This book’s radical incursion is irresistible.”–Mary Cappello

Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People(Basic Books)
“With flair and verve, Herring unveils the life and philosophy of the enchanting and trailblazing icon of change and creativity: Henri Bergson. The result is a fascinating biography and magnificent revival of this brilliant thinker who was once the most influential philosopher in the world. Herring’s beautifully compelling narrative shows how Bergson’s ideas still hold the power to illuminate the human experience and the meaning of life.”–Skye Cleary

Nicholas Fox Weber, Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute(Knopf)
“In Mondrian, the monk of modernism finally gets the flesh-and-blood portrait he deserves. The lifelong ‘quest for the absolute’ does not shelter Mondrian from the temptations of love, the rewards and difficulties of friendship, or the profoundly playful spirit of jazz. Instead they enrich his art. This monk can dance.”–Mark Stevens

Emily Hyland, Divorced Business Partners: A Love Story(Howling Bird Press)
“Divorced Business Partners is an ambitious poetic debut. Hyland covers a universe of emotional ground—one that announces itself in the tradition of Plath, Sexton, and Olds—inviting the reader into the interior of a failing marriage and a breaking heart as it journeys towards healing. The language is precise and sharp. Her work spirits us straight to the red-hot center. We emerge triumphant.”–Délana Dameron

Nate Lippens, Ripcord(Semiotext(e))
“How did I become the library of everyone I love? Nate Lippens asks in Ripcord….A great deal of Ripcord reckons with the harsh reality of being exiled from your family and having to make a life for yourself amongst people who lead their lives with thoughtless privilege. But Lippens doesn’t wallow in self-pity or let the book be weighed down my pessimism. In fact, he sees the necessity of darkness….Lippens relays the chaos of dating apps…Ripcord…serves as a haven.”–Hobart

Céline Minard, Plasmas (trans. Annabel L. Kim)(Deep Vellum)
“Plasmas is six stories that, as an archipelago—vaguely disquieting, wonderfully styled—constitutes a unique literary planet, if not a constellation of heretofore unclassified matter, forming an unprecedented unknown.”–Le Monde

Mario Desiati, Spatriati (trans. Michael F. Moore)(Other Press)
“An ode to the young, irregular, irreverent generation…combines the poetry of love with the harshness of an internal struggle…between the desire to stay in the small Apulian town where Claudia and Francesco were born and the dream of escaping to a lively, cosmopolitan Europe.”–Elle (Italy)

Peter Singer, Consider the Turkey(Princeton University Press)
“The noted animal rights ethicist and activist delivers a plea to leave Meleagris gallopavo off the holiday table….The reader may be shocked enough by [Singer’s] descriptions to adopt the same view….A well-considered exhortation to give a thought to a badly treated bird.”–Kirkus Reviews

Patrick Cockburn, Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism(Verso)
“Claud Cockburn was one of the great journalists of the twentieth century, an irreverent anti-careerist, steeped in the politics of Central Europe, happiest courting risk….Patrick [Cockburn] has now written an excellent account of him, supplying much new or buried information.”–Andrew Gimson

Dan Hancox, Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World(Verso)
“Hancox provides, in lucid and passionate prose, a compelling account of the new psychology of crowds. He shows an impressive command of the technical literature, the historical record and contemporary events, resulting in a broadside against the reflex condemnation of crowds that we hear so often in the mouths of politicians and journalists….Read this book. And, when you have finished, you will never use the word ‘mob’ again.”–Stephen Reicher

Ed Nakamura, Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Culture(Drawn & Quarterly)
“Nakamura debuts with an exuberant tribute to the zine he and fellow UCLA student Martin Wong cofounded in 1994….Giant Robot…cover[ed] taste tests of Asian food, interviews with film stars and musicians, and commentaries on Asian American history and identity….the zine paradoxically found success thanks to its refusal to prove itself to a mainstream culture in which Asian Americans were often cast…as ‘decor in a white protagonist’s surroundings’…a rousing ode to a vibrant period in pop culture history and an intriguing look at shifting notions of Asian American identity.”–Publishers Weekly

Elliot Mintz, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me(Dutton)
“Radio personality Mintz debuts with a vivid account of the decade he spent as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s confidante, fixer, and friend….It’s a captivating and intimate window into the complicated lives of one of rock’s most legendary couples.”–Publishers Weekly

Best-selling author draws on Derbyshire roots, people she meets and overheard snippets of conversation for her psychological thriller books

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565Visit Shots! now”I always carry a notebook and love to do people-watching everywhere. I write down snippets of overheard conversations to use at some future point. People who know what I do for a living now probably avoid me because of this,” said Hayley Smith.Hayley, who lives in Whitwell, is a best-selling author whose books The Perfect Girlfriend and Such A Loving Couple have sold around 65,000 copies, both topping the Amazon charts for psychological fiction.Her latest release, The Childminder, is also a thriller. It’s the story of mums with secrets who receive anonymous notes at the same time asking how they could have trusted each other with their children.Hayley, 53, said: “I love writing dark characters. It’s very much about background: why do people behave like they do?, what has happened to them in the past?, what are their day to day lives like? It’s an exploration of the unsettling bits of the mind; it’s a puzzle to solve and I enjoy constructing all the twists and turns that make a page-turning thriller.Hayley Smith is currently working on an 80,000-word first draft for her fourth book to be published by Bookouture (digital imprint of Hachette UK).”I think The Perfect Girlfriend is my favourite because there are some dark and quirky characters in it which I loved writing. Also there is much of the local area and villages described in it and readers often get in touch when they think they have guessed locations of the different scenes.”Hayley, who has written stories for most of her life including articles for magazines, had her dream come true two years ago when she landed a four-book deal with a major digital publishing company.She said: “I’d previously had an agent and she had offered my debut to the big publishers. Although they liked my writing style, most of them turned it down because they didn’t like the ending or didn’t think the story was commercial enough. I decided to do a big rewrite and changed the ending, however by the time this was completed my agent had moved jobs so couldn’t represent me anymore. So I approached around three or four publishers who were willing to accept manuscripts from unagented writers and within a week an editor from Bookouture (digital imprint of Hachette UK, one of the top publishing companies) had got in touch to say that she loved my novel and wanted to meet and discuss a book deal. It was an incredible feeling when I opened the official email to say that they wanted to publish my book (and further books that I hadn’t even written!).”My debut actually took around ten years from starting it to publication, but I had to do a lot of rewriting including four different endings! The two that I have written since have both taken around eight months each, including all the edits, but I have worked on them full-time. In some ways it gets easier because I’m familiar with the editing process now and what is required of me. Although I do sometimes wake up at 3am in a panic, trying to figure out where to place the twists and turns. My mind is forever plotting!” Hayley, 53, is currently writing her fourth book and has a deadline of December 2 to file a first draft of 80,000 words. She said: “The book deal I have with my publisher means that I have to provide them with a book every nine months so I’m generally at my desk four to five days per week.”Hayley’s recently released third thriller follows best-sellers My Perfect Girlfriend and Such A Loving Couple which both topped Amazon’s psychological fiction charts.With personal and professional roots in the Chesterfield area, Hayley decided to set her stories in north Derbyshire. Her writing is influenced by the places she visits, general life and unusual news articles.She said: “I loved writing stories as a child and always wanted to be Enid Blyton; then around the age of about 14 I wanted to be Stephen King; then when I reached my twenties I discovered Barbara Vine and knew that I wanted to write psychological thrillers.”Later, when I was in my 30s, I did a degree through the Open University studying English Language and Creative Writing. My writing tutor was the award-winning author Ray Robinson (Electricity) and he was impressed with my stories, telling me that I should write a novel. It was some years later that I decided to take his advice, but I acknowledged him in my debut, The Perfect Girlfriend.”Prior to landing a book deal, Hayley was a youth worker for Derbyshire County Council for 20 years. She said: “Whilst I was a youth worker I organised many teenage rock nights at local youth clubs in Creswell, Clowne and Bolsover for young up and coming bands to gain experience performing to an audience (some of these even went on to gain BBC radio airplay).”I was part of a small team in Whitwell for around 13 years, and we organised the annual three-day music festival as well as lots of Live & Local events which brought national theatre groups and music performances to the village.”Hayley, who has three grown-up children, played in the ceilidh band Beggars Belief in her younger years. She is married to Michael, a musician in the comedy parody band The Bar Steward Songs of Val Doonican.She said: “Many people I have met along the way, particularly musicians (but no names mentioned) have inspired my writing, most notably in The Perfect Girlfriend.”For the launch of her debut book, Hayley managed to secure Luke Concannon of Nizlopi fame who topped the charts in 2005 with the JCB song. 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A vending machine filled with books unveiled at St. Gregory the Great elementary school

The Inchy Bookworms Vending Machine is a reward program that gets kids excited about reading.

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. — One school in Williamsville is offering a creative way for kids to pick out books.  The Inchy Bookworm Vending Machine was unveiled on Monday at St. Gregory the Great elementary school. 

Students are able to use tokens awarded from good behavior and select a book of their choice to keep from the vending machine. 

St. Gregory is believed to be the first private school in Western New York to use a book vending machine. 

“It’s a great tool to have for positive behavior supports to now we can give them something they’re clearly looking forward to,” St. Gregory the Great elementary school principal Molly White said. “When we unveiled it to our students they were very excited.”

The book vending machine comes along with the newly remodeled library at the school. It’s part of a $60,000 fundraiser to enhance student learning.