[This feature is a brief summary of interesting books coming out each month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

Definitely

Canada, by Richard Ford (out 5/22)

Richard Ford writes impressively introspective novels. His Pulitzer prize-winning Frank Bascombe trilogy featured a sportswriter (who later becomes a realtor), ruminating on his life. Each novel in the trilogy takes place over the course of a holiday, and nothing much happens in the sense of plot beats—the narrative is almost entirely interior monologue. That seems simple and boring, but Ford makes even Bascombe’s most mundane thoughts riveting. So it’ll be interesting, then, to see what he does with this new storyline, which features murder, bank robbing, and a teenager trying to fix his criminal family.

Are You My Mother?, by Alison Bechdel (out now)

Alison Bechdel’s first graphic novel/memoir Fun Home—about her father, who committed suicide shortly after he came out of the closet—won several awards, became a bestseller, garnered a slew of critical raves, and even caused a bit of controversy. Bechdel’s new illustrated memoir looks to raise the bar even further. Are You My Mother? focuses on, predictably enough, Bechdel’s relationship with her acerbic mother, and it’s been getting nothing but rave reviews. Even the joyless controversy-dowser Katie Roiphe loved it. It comes out today, so I’m probably reading it right now.

Tamil Tigress: My Story as a Child Soldier in Sri Lanka’s Bloody Civil War, by Niromi de Soyza (out now)

Niromi de Soyza grew up in an educated, middle-class family in Sri Lanka, but she joined the Tamil Tigers’ first female contingent at the tender age of 17. This book is the story of why she joined the Tigers, how she survived, and how she transitioned from that life to a relatively normal one with a husband and children. If you’re one of those people who say that only people who’ve lived interesting lives should write memoirs… yeah, this is for you.

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[This feature is a brief summary of interesting books coming out each month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

Definitely

The Cove, by Ron Rash (out 4/10)

I still have high hopes for this new Ron Rash novel, despite the fact that I didn’t much like his recent short story collection, Burning Bright, and the fact that Ursula K. Le Guin didn’t much like The Cove. That’s how good Serena was. The Cove has earned a few comparisons to Serena, at least in setting and tone, and that already recommends it more highly than Burning Bright. Still, I can’t quite muster a whole-hearted anticipatory fever.

Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, by Rosecrans Baldwin (out 4/24)

I liked Baldwin’s recent novel, You Lost Me There, even though it wasn’t my usual kind of book—instead it was a wrenching, heart-breaking character study about a widower who realizes that he’d been a bad husband, but too late to do anything about it. Baldwin’s latest is a memoir, it seems, about moving to Paris and finding that the city doesn’t live up to his imagination. I’m not sure it’ll have the same power and pathos as the novel, but Baldwin brings enough talent that this should be worth checking out.

Maybe

The House of Velvet and Glass, by Katherine Howe (out 4/10)

Is it weird that I thought, from the title, that this book might be a parody of The House of Sand and Fog, involving Mel Torme and a bomb that fuses sadness into matter? Probably not weird. I’m probably fine. Anyway, in reality, this is a new historical mystery/romance by the author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Mediums, opium dens, 1915 Boston, etc.

Farther Away, by Jonathan Franzen (out 4/24)

Franzen’s new book is a collection of recent essays and speeches. Should be interesting, considering that every time this guy opens his mouth these days, he sounds like a bitter old man. So hopefully topics like the global and personal effects of modernizing China will have a little more heft to them.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

Definitely

Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway (out 3/20)

Here’s what I know about Nick Harkaway’s new book: there’s a gangster in it, and it runs about 200,000 words. And I’m not sure about the second point. I’ve been studiously avoiding any and all information about Angelmaker. I’m going solely on my experience with Harkaway’s last novel, The Gone-Away World, a rollicking, inventive, and wholly entertaining post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. It was so good that I’ve been looking forward to his followup for years.

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, by Mark Leyner (out 3/26)

Like Angelmaker, I haven’t been reading much about Leyner’s new novel, but that’s more because Leyner’s writing tends to be unsummarizable. You might call him surreal, or avant-garde—he’s very funny, to me at least, but the average Goodreads reader HATES him. So if you’re thinking about picking this one up, ignore all the flap copy and most of the reviews and just try out the first few pages. You’ll be able to tell pretty quickly whether you’re into it or it makes your skin crawl.

The Great Animal Orchestra, by Bernie Krause (out 3/19)

Bernie Krause, a naturalist and musician, examines how animals create and utilize sound, and interprets soundscapes as evolutionary mechanisms instead of just mindless cacophonies. He also explores and explains how the growing noise of human civilization threatens to drown out natural sounds altogether. Sounds like the book version of a David Attenborough documentary, which would be fine by me. Speaking of the effects of human noise, here’s an amazing Attenborough clip in which a lyre bird has learned to imitate the sounds of cameras and chainsaws.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

Zona, by Geoff Dyer (2/21)

The subtitle is “A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room.” It’s a rumination on Stalker, a weird old Russian sci-fi movie considered to be one of the best films of all time. So far this sounds utterly boring, but Dyer has a secret weapon: he’s unpredictable and his thought process is entirely unique. A really weird book is at least better than a bad book. The flap copy says, “the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live.” And James Wood, in the New Yorker, says Dyer “combines fiction, autobiography, travel writing, cultural criticism, literary theory, and a kind of comic English whining. The result ought to be a mutant mulch but is almost always a louche and canny delight.” Sounds like a dice-roll, but one with a good prize for a winner.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander (2/7)

Englander has a world of talent, and his books are reliably very good, if perhaps not always phenomenal. The eight stories in Englander’s second collection explore themes as big in scope as the nature of evil and justice, and as personal as sexual longing and intimacy. One of these stories even apppears in the Best American Short Stories of 2011.

Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan (2/28)

When the Booker prize shortlist was announced five months ago, several of the books weren’t yet available in America. Rather miraculously (if the incompetence of publishers can be considered a miracle), one of them still isn’t available, and it’s the one I wanted to read most (except for the one I’d already read). Half Blood Blues follows a black German trumpeteer who gets vanished by the Nazis during WWII. Fifty years later, his bandmates embark on a journey to find out exactly what happened to him, and who betrayed him.

The Technologists, by Matthew Pearl (2/21)

In post-Civil War Boston, the fifteen-member inaugural class of the newly formed Massachusetts Institute of Technology is nearing graduation, when a series of mysterious explosions in Boston Harbor pits them against the more well-renowned (but less scientifically masterful) Harvard. That appears to actually be the premise of Matthew Pearl’s new thriller. It sounds pretty far-fetched for historical fiction, but Pearl comes highly recommended. I’m on the fence. …
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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

A brand-new year kicks off with a metric ton of notable books. Here we go:

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith (out 1/5)

Tom Rob Smith’s first book, Child 44, is one of my favorite thrillers ever, and his second book, which I’m reading now, is damn good, too. Agent 6 completes the trilogy, about Leo Demidov, an ex-State Security agent in Stalinist Russia, whose conscience strains against the needs of survival in a fascist regime. If you haven’t read the first two, start there (here’s my review of Child 44)—I won’t say more so as not to give anything away. If you’ve already read the first two, you won’t need my convincing to pick this one up.

The Operators, by Michael Hastings (out 1/5)

Michael Hastings instantly became one of the most famous journalists in the country when his profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, got McChrystal fired. (Hastings also turned in a couple of posts for this very website, just before he took off, which obviously didn’t hurt.) The Operators is his book-length investigation of the war in Afghanistan. Weirdly, it was canceled by his first publisher, Little, Brown, before being snapped up by a Penguin imprint. I haven’t seen any reviews yet, but since the Rolling Stone piece was such a hit, The Operators is a pretty safe bet.

Distrust That Particular Flavor, by William Gibson (1/3)

The father of cyberpunk is back with a collection of journalism and essays culled from a thirty-year career. As his last novel showed, Gibson remains a foremost talent when it comes to cultural analysis, so an entire book full of that kind of thing should be awesome.

Blueprints of the Afterlife, by Ryan Boudinot (out 1/3)

This is one of those books whose official flap copy is a checklist of the weird ideas it features. It’s the post-apocalyptic future, called the “Afterlife.” The human nervous system, thanks to computerized health care, can be hacked. North America has been ravaged by a sentient glacier named Malaspina. An Olympic medal-winning dishwasher (as in, he’s the best dishwasher in the world) gets a note from his future brain. So on and so forth. It’s one of those conceits that could be wildly successful or entirely unbearable. I’ve just started it, but so far it’s been wildly successful. Look for my full review next week.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

It’s a scrappy month for Book Radar: several of the books I was watching for were pushed back to January. In any case, here’s hoping one of these tickles your fancy. If you’re anticipating a book I missed, let me know in the comments.

420 Characters, by Lou Beach (out 12/6)

These stories started as a Facebook project in which Beach wrote a story per day as a status update. Normally, that conceit would be enough for me to write off the entire thing. But since Machine Man, one of my favorite books this year, started as a blog experiment, I’m giving this one a shot. (It doesn’t hurt that everybody from Jonathan Lethem to George Saunders have given the thing raving blurbs.) The short-shorts come accompanied by Beach’s illustrations (and illustrating seems to be his first love), and you can find samples of them, and audio files of several being read by no less than Jeff Bridges and Ian McShane, at the book’s website.

The Artist of Disappearance, by Anita Desai (out 12/6)

Multiple Booker prize shortlistee Anita Desai turns in three novellas about the art world. The Guardian calls it her best work in years, and also calls her “India’s best living writer.” Worth taking notice.

Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya, by Gerard Helferich (out 12/6)

When modern archaeologists first excavated Maya cities, they discovered a trove of stunning jade artwork, but they couldn’t find the source of the stone. Helferich’s account of the 300-year search for Maya jade claims to be a rollicking jungle adventure tale. I like those.

Angel Makers, by Jessica Gregson (out 12/6)

This creepy debut novel, based on a true story, follows an ostracized medicine woman who lives outside a remote village in early 20th century Hungary. When the men of the village return after World War I, the women decide their lives are better without them, and start killing them off. Sounds like a decent option for the right kind of reader.

[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

Love and Shame and Love, by Peter Orner (out now)

Orner’s second novel follows three generations of the Jewish Popper family, centering around Alexander and Kat, and then branching back to follow the lives of both sets of their parents. I started it last week and it’s quite good. It jumps around among perspectives and time periods and illuminates the perilous lives of its subjects in quite excellent prose. Tune in next week for my full review—in the meantime, here’s more about Orner and how you’ve never heard of him.

You Are Not So Smart, by David McRaney (out now)

McRaney’s thesis is that our lives and our sense of ourselves are almost entirely fictional, confabulated by our unconscious minds. To demonstrate this, he cites and analyzes dozens of studies with alarming findings—e.g., that wine experts are so completely brainwashed by the presentation (price, name, color, etc) of wine that, without those external cues, they can’t tell whether a wine is good or bad, or even red or white. Good stuff.

At the End of the Road, by Grant Jerkins (out now)

I quite liked Grant Jerkins’s first crime novel, so this one deserves a look, even if its trailer and premise aren’t exactly… riveting. It’s about a young boy, a car crash, some secrets, and “genuine evil.” This isn’t the kind of simple premise that sells books these days, but Jerkins’s writing is nuanced and precise, and I’m willing to bet this book is more compelling than the flap copy implies.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (out 10/25)

When this book came out in Japan, more than two years ago, its plot was a closely guarded secret and it sold a million copies in a month. Here and now in the West, details have necessarily leaked out, and they bring a familiar Murakamian bizarreness: a young woman commits several murders in a parallel world, and a struggling writer agrees to rewrite a manuscript by a teenager, only to find out it doesn’t exist. I’m just finishing a 1000-page novel now, and I’m not too eager to start another one, but this looks pretty good (same goes for Parallel Stories).

Voyage of the Rose City, by John Moynihan (out now)

I spent a formative year of my early 20s working on tall ships in various capacities and locales, and I vividly remember what Dwight Garner, in this review of Rose City, calls a “kind of squirming wanderlust,” the force that sent John Moynihan, the comfortably wealthy son of a senator, on a 4-month trip in the merchant marines. Moynihan never meant this memoir to get published, which could free it from the contrived feeling you get reading about the adventures of journalists who just went looking for material, but that honesty might also rob it of the polish given a work created for public view. …
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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

Reamde, by Neal Stephenson (out 9/20)

The title of Stephenson’s new novel makes zero sense until you see the cover, and then it becomes slyly intriguing. Reamde centers around an online game called T’Rain, and a contagious virus that gets released through the game. As a longtime fan of Stephenson’s other information-disease epic, Snow Crash, I’m really looking forward to this one, even though I recused myself from the entirety of Stephenson’s massive Baroque Cycle. Comparisons to Ready Player One, a virtual-reality novel that was fun but entirely hollow, have me slightly worried, but at the very least Reamde, weighing in at over a thousand pages, will be significantly longer than Player.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (out 9/13)

In the black and white striped tents of Le Cirque de Rêves, or “the Circus of Dreams,” waits a menagerie of “breathtaking amazements,” along with a pair of magicians who’ve been dueling for years, and will continue to do so until one of them wins. How? They do not know. This is the kind of book that can’t be fairly summarized, it seems, and it’s probably one that will live or die on the quality of its writing, which is too subjective to fairly predict. But it could be entertaining, or even great, and I’m willing to give it a sizable chance.

The Revisionists, by Thomas Mullen (out 9/28)

“A fast-paced literary thriller” … I should know better than to trust words like these, but I can’t help myself. Mullen’s premise seems to fall neatly into a modern archetype: a time-traveling agent from a future society comes back to the present day in order to ensure that history turns out properly. It’s not an original idea, but the promise of a ripping good story from a writer whose prose won’t make me wince is enough to draw me in, even if I know it’s probably a ruse.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (out 9/7)

The Art of Fielding follows five people loosely involved with Westish College, especially the baseball team’s star shortstop. The pre-publication summaries I’ve read all mention “a routine throw that goes awry” but each fails to explain exactly how it happens, or what effect it has. So it seems this is a high-literary novel, whose pleasures don’t lie in plot encapsulations. That can be excellent, or it can be maddening. All the lock-step raving reviews make me nervous—usually the hive-mind is woefully wrong—but The Art of Fielding is definitely a title to keep an eye on.

Life Itself, by Roger Ebert (out 9/13)

Roger Ebert is a critic after my own heart. Just read the back cover of a collection of his most scathing reviews, Your Movie Sucks, and you’ll see his unique blend of fearless criticism and mannered civility. He also has a lot to write about, including a recent bout with cancer that left him without a jawbone. So: a memoir of an epic life, written with rare insight and intelligence? Yes, please. …
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[This new feature is a brief monthly summary of new books on my radar, roughly in order of my personal interest in them. Follow it here. Click the pictures to find these books at Powell's.]

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline (out 8/16)

This is one of those books that interests me mostly because I have no idea how the author’s going to pull off his premise (danger: the last book that fit this category was Dominance, which disappointed). Ready Player One‘s premise is this: in a dystopian 2044, a young boy finds the first clue toward solving an elaborate quest played in an all-consuming virtual reality called OASIS. The clues are all evidently based on 1980s geek-nostalgia trivia. Having a novel’s plot follow a virtual reality game is risky enough, but how in the hell will this tie back into Dungeons & Dragons and Monty Python without feeling completely contrived?

Low Town, by Daniel Polansky (out 8/16)

Perhaps it’s a sign of my disappointment with the literary novels I’ve read this year, but I’m excited for Low Town solely because of the genres it mixes: “dytopian fantasy” and “hard-boiled crime,” according to PW. One part Robert Jordan and one part Child 44? Maybe this could be the kind of epic genre-busting mystery The City & The City should’ve been.

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (out 8/9)

Buster and Annie Fang, known as Child A and Child B to their public (and their performance artist parents), get wrapped up in the bizarre world their mother and father have created, until Mom and Dad disappear in what might be their artistic coup de grace. Comparisons to the unbearable Tenenbaums will be inescapable, no doubt, but the art world offers enough material weirdness to make a pretty hilarious novel. …
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