Hot News This Week
November 7, 2024
| |
| “The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.” Rebecca Solnit has gone viral this week in the wake of the election, and Vanity Fair interviewed her last week about the MAGA backlash fueling conservative voters.
For more Solnit: read her introduction to Mike Davis’s newly reissued Dead Cities (Haymarket Books) via Literary Hub (“Mike knew apocalypses had been coming at us all along”).
| |
| An Illustrated Notebook
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review on November 2: “The book is a revealing document of a relationship so intimate as to be sacred: that of the writer and the page. It’s a reminder that note-taking is an act of noticing, of being present and showing up to the blank paper, again and again, and discovering what may arise there.” Inspired by Allen’s book, the review also features a brief illustrated history of famous notebook users like Leonardo da Vinci, Mark Twain, and Agatha Christie.
| |
| Sundown in San Ojuela Is an Indie Next Pick
The ABA announced on Wednesday that M.M. Olivas’s Sundown in San Ojuela is an Indie Next pick for December. “Wow! It’s been so long since I read a book that got this deep into me and did not let go,” says Katelyn Phillips of Books Are Magic (Brooklyn, NY), one of the nominating booksellers. “I loved all the complicated, messy, dark characters that populated this scary and grotesque debut. Snatch this book up and let it devour you!”
| |
| Tucci on Fosse
According to his New York Times Book Review “By the Book” interview, the last great book actor Stanley Tucci read was Jon Fosse’s Aliss at the Fire, translated by Damion Searls. “The structure of it is unlike any other book I’ve read,” says Tucci. “The brilliant repetition that never becomes redundant, creating a rhythm all its own; the melding of characters, time and place are poetic.” Next up for the Conclave star? Fosse’s Septology.
Aliss at the Fire
by Jon Fosse, trans. Damion Searls
Deep Vellum / Dalkey Archive • September 2010 • 9781564785732
Septology
by Jon Fosse, trans. Damion Searls
Transit Books • October 2023 • 9781945492754
| |
| |
“The best poetry reissue of 2024. My first Bill Knott and now I’m seeing his name everywhere. Acerbic with black humor.” — Douglas Riggs, Bank Square Books (Mystic, CT)
| | |
| | Kitchen Hymns
by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Copper Canyon Press • January 2025 • 9781556597107
“A work of incredible vulnerability and contemplation, Kitchen Hymns is a book that asks its readers to consider what it means to live in faith and how one grapples with their beliefs in times of light and darkness.” — Trevor Ruth, Changing Hands Bookstore (Tempe, AZ)
| | |
| | Near Distance
by Hanna Stoltenberg, trans. Wendy Harrison Gabrielsen
Biblioasis • January 2025 • 9781771966436
★ “Stoltenberg debuts with a stunning portrait of a strained mother-daughter relationship. . . . Contradictory emotional realities—at times harsh, at times gentle—are observed precisely and beautifully.” — Publishers Weekly
| | |
| |
★ “With beautiful images and accessible writing, this is recommended for readers interested in modern ballet of the early 20th century.” — Library Journal
| | |
| |
★ “Dean immerses readers in sun-drenched, claustrophobic beauty in this compassionate saga about a young woman’s awakening in the 1970s. . . . This dazzles.” — Publishers Weekly
| | |
| |
★ “The thrilling first installment in a cinematically vivid adaptation of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s 1922 memoir of a fraught Antarctic expedition. . . . The second volume can’t arrive soon enough.” — Shelf Awareness
| | |
| | Immemorial
by Lauren Markham
Transit Books • February 2025 • 9798893389036
★ “Urgent, heartfelt, and lyrical reflections. . . . Markham offers an intimate meditation on the climate crisis.” — Kirkus Reviews
| | |
| | New Digital Review Copies
| |
|
Trigger by C.G. Moore (Little Island Books) and The Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani, translated by Sawad Hussain (Neem Tree Press), are nominated for writing.
| |
Poet Matthew Rohrer recently spoke with BOMB about his new book, Army of Giants (Wave Books).
| |
ABA and SIBA Bestseller
Loving Corrections
by adrienne maree brown
AK Press • August 2024 • 9781849355544
| |
“A fantastic and thoughtful music history book.” — Boing Boing
| |
|
