January is nearing its end, and what a January it has been, marked by natural and political disaster alike, a month in which America, to any paying attention, takes its most overt steps into a pay-to-play system of corruption and cruelty, a system on the edge of outright authoritarianism and well over the edge of outright idiocy and ignorance. With all this to take in, it feels difficult, perhaps, to get excited about books, particularly those of us, like myself, who are members of groups specifically targeted by this new administration’s executive orders.
But the truth is, we need to be able to put our attention elsewhere, at times, to make it through, to resist, if you choose to, without burning yourself out all at once. And there are far too many wonderful, exciting, quirky, queer, and provocative new titles out not to find something to be intrigued by. I’ve chosen no less than twenty-seven to consider below in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
Be safe, Dear Readers, and read on, no matter what the world becomes. Art outlasts regimes, outlasts the configurations and cartographies that seem in the moment like the only way the world could be—and there’s something special to ponder about why that is, and what new works of wonder we can carry with us into the unknown configurations of world to come.
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Betty Shamieh, Too Soon
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
“Too Soon braids the lives of three passionate Palestinian women as they move through a turbulent century. From a sparkling harborside home in Jaffa in the forties, to the slums of Detroit in the sixties and the stages of contemporary New York theater, each generation must contend with patriarchy within her community and prejudice from outside it. A deft, honest novel that refuses to shun complexity as it explores the costs of love and motherhood.”
–Geraldine Brooks
Lenya Krow, Sinkhole and Other Inexplicable Voids
(Penguin)
“[A] stunning collection that transforms the mundane into the magical. Each story brims with wonder and the surreal….Krow, a masterful storyteller, captures the bizarre and beautiful in equal measure, making this collection both riveting and unforgettable…a dazzling testament to Krow’s talent, offering readers not just a captivating journey into the unknown, but a brilliant return to our everyday lives forever marked by what we had witnessed.”
–Morgan Talty
Susan Barker, Old Soul
(Putnam)
“[A] sweeping work of literary horror….The slow-burning tension and lush, atmospheric prose build a creeping sense of dread that lingers long after the final page. Fans of both the deeply personal speculative horror of Carmen Maria Machado and the subtle, character-driven mystery of Haruki Murakami will be enthralled.”
–Publishers Weekly
Imani Perry, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
(Ecco Press)
“An impressionistic cultural history of the African diaspora through its connections to the color blue, from the Congo to Haiti, Jamaica, and the American South, in music, dance, folklore, art, and literature….Packed with cultural references to Nina Simone, Zora Neale Hurston, Miles Davis, and Picasso’s African-inspired Blue Period, this is a fascinating and creative work of popular anthropology….Original and affecting.”
–Booklist
Kay Sohini, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir
(Ten Speed Graphic)
“[A] radiant love letter to New York City that paints a portrait of how the restlessly ever-changing megalopolis can save us, change us, and captivate us. Kay Sohini deftly holds the greatest city in the world close and tenderly, while imbuing the most introspective, vulnerable memories with sweeping mythic quality. An intimate insight into an artistic awakening that invigorates hope for finding a home that lays ahead of our dreams, ambitions, and curiosities.”
–Matt Huynh
Lida Maxwell, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love
(Stanford University Press)
“In this stirring, often revelatory account of Rachel Carson’s queer relationship with Dorothy Freeman, Maxwell challenges us to ask for more—more pleasure, more beauty, more wonder, more mystery—for ourselves and the earth.”
–Sabrina Imbler
Pádraig Ó Tuama, Kitchen Hymns
(Copper Canyon Press)
“Host of On Being’s beloved Poetry Unbound podcast, Irish poet Ó Tuama continues his search for a faith not borne strictly of religious practice. The title references Irish religious songs heard at home, suggesting the conversational tone of this meditative work….Heartfelt, questing poems for anyone reconsidering how to believe.”
–Library Journal
Ange Mlinko, Foxglovewise: Poems
(FSG)
“Mlinko is rarely less than dazzling thanks to the pleasure and rigor of her phrasing…layered, allusive, and intelligent poems….There is a moving and unignorable sense of grief and loss beneath the surface, in an expertly managed balance with the luster of the vocabulary and music of these poems.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jonathan Fink, Don’t Do It, We Love You, My Heart
(Dzanc Books)
“Jonathan skillfully grapples with thematic material engaging larger social and political implications without sacrificing precision of language, clarity, and the quest for beauty that characterizes all of his work.”
–Natasha Trethewey
Paul Theroux, The Vanishing Point: Stories
(Mariner Books)
“Theroux is a master of the short story. The form is perfectly suited to Theroux’s skills; the journalist’s eye for detail and the novelist’s sense of drama are enhanced by his gifts as a pure storyteller….Theroux’s stories recall those of de Maupassant or O. Henry, complete with a twist ending. Each bears Theroux’s unmistakable adventurous curiosity and philosophical musings.”
–Booklist
Beena Kamlani, The English Problem
(Crown Publishing Group)
“In elegant, evocative prose, Beena Kamlani evokes both the British understanding of India and the Indian understanding of Britain—each culture admiring yet misapprehending the other—and the life of a man who was of both cultures and of neither. Her characters are beautifully evoked and profoundly true; her narrative of displacement and desire is persuasive and resonant; and her deep understanding of the broken politics between societies trying to make sense of each other feels particularly relevant in today’s world.”
–Andrew Solomon
Kristin Koval, Penitence
(Celadon Books)
“Fans of Little Fires Everywhere will appreciate this deeply moving novel about what it takes to let go of guilt and find redemption. Koval’s background in law lends realism to her image of America’s broken criminal justice system, and her prose poignantly exposes what it takes to find forgiveness.”
–Booklist
Edmund White, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir
(Bloomsbury)
“With his trademark irreverence, White celebrates more than six decades of sex in a candid memoir that doubles as an indispensable work of queer history….Delightfully raunchy and affecting, this steamy account is full of pleasures.”
–Publishers Weekly
Neko Case, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
(Grand Central Publishing)
“Reader, I really want to hand this book to you personally and tell you, in one excited rush, how much it moved me. The Harder I Fight the More I Love You is a hell of an origin story: heartbreaking and funny, brave and weird, hard to swallow and impossible to put down. Neko Case has been my favorite singer-songwriter for many years, hands down, and now she’s written one of my favorite memoirs.”
–Maggie Smith
Lola Kirke, Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1)
(Simon & Schuster)
“Hilarious….Kirke’s writing is irreverent, conversational, and self-aware. She brings to life the New York City of her youth, smoking cigarettes as a tween, visiting siblings in rehab, discovering her father’s secret love child. Entering Kirke’s world and imagination is a delicious peek behind the veil, like an Andy Warhol Diaries for rich New York City art kids of the new millennium.”
–Booklist
Maggie Su, Blob: A Love Story
(Harper)
“There is so much at play in this wondrous novel. Vi, struggling to place herself in any context that makes sense within the world, earnestly leads us into a wild experiment, to turn a blob into the man of her dreams, and I was transfixed by her voice. This is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways.”
–Kevin Wilson
Emily Austin, We Could Be Rats
(Atria Books)
“We Could Be Rats is for the townies, the freaks, the dykes, the dropouts….Emily Austin’s signature dark humor and sharp observations into the human condition grip and entertain while a series of suicide notes unravel the truths behind addiction, bitter family fights, and anonymous bomb threats against a certain conservative politician in small town Canada….It’s Alice Munro for depressed lesbians, and it made me weep before it gave me a hug.”
–Marissa Higgins
Maša Kolanović, Underground Barbie (trans. Ena Selimovic)
(Sandorf Passage)
“Here’s a Barbie I can get behind! Masa Kolanovic’s barbed tale of growing up during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s uses Barbie to play out the gendered cacophony of the nationalist purity wars. All symbolic objects are rebranded accordingly with a biting humor.”
–Alina Stefanescu
Tamara Lanier, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy
(Crown Publishing Group)
“Tamara Lanier’s quest to repatriate Papa Renty, an ancestor she discovered in a rare daguerreotype from 1850, unsettles many premises of common conversations around photography, museum collections and academic institutions….A must-read book to anyone who cares about justice in an unjust world.”
–Ariella Azoulay
Bernadette Atuahene, Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America
(Little Brown)
“At a time when access to home ownership seems out of reach for so many, Plundered makes clear that this sad state of affairs is the result of a series of systemic failures—much of it aided by government policies. In clear, trenchant prose, Atuahene tells us how we got here and the remedies that are needed if we are to move forward. Plundered is a clear-eyed account of the past and a roadmap for a more equitable future.”
–Melissa Murray
Dorian Lynskey, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World
(Pantheon Books)
“Dorian Lynskey propulsively explores our fascination with, and hastening of, the end of times through the lenses of literature, art, science, pop culture, and religion. The result is a mosaic transhistorical portrait of our obsession with our own demise that is, in turns, hilarious and harrowing. A cautionary tale and wild ride, both entertaining and scholarly…a brilliant examination of the interrelationship between our apocalyptic stories and our apocalyptic actions.”
–Matthew Garvin Frank
Elizabeth Ellen, American Thighs
(Clash Books)
“Gossip, delusion, sapphic mania, Britney Spears—American Thighs has everything I want from a novel in Elizabeth Ellen’s inimitable style. It’s fearless, it’s propulsive, it’s wildly entertaining. I devoured this novel.”
–Anna Dorn
Mark Rowlands, The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living a Good Life
(Liveright)
“In his bestseller The Philosopher and the Wolf, Mark Rowlands explored his experience of living with a wolf for more than a decade to question narrowly human understandings of the good life. In The Word of Dog, he suggests that the lives of dogs can be more fulfilling and meaningful than human lives. Writing with zest, humor, and passion, Rowlands blends delightful vignettes of his beloved dogs with fresh and radical answers to some of the oldest questions in ethics. This is a book everyone interested in animals and philosophy must read.”
–John Gray
Andrew Lawler, A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
“Historian Andrew Lawler offers an original take on the origins of the Revolutionary War with his thrilling tale of a wayward colonial governor who freed enslaved Africans to fight a rebel army. A Perfect Frenzy is a riveting and illuminating account of a pivotal episode in American history—a polished gem of a book.”
–David Zucchino
Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
(Norton)
“Carr considers what we know about human communication and psychology and argues that modern social media is ideally suited to increase intolerance, anxiety, and factionalism. Turns out, more communication isn’t automatically better….As always, Carr’s perspective is urgent and bracing, a necessary challenge to idealistic visions of a democratic internet.”
–John Keogh
Chris Hayes, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource
(Penguin Press)
“Hayes’] facility for lucid synthesis is put to gratifying use in this smart, constructive book….He carefully charts how the churning monetization of attention has fundamentally changed news, politics, and leisure time, turning our communications landscape into a kind of ‘failed state’ where common-sense norms have been routed by ‘attentional warlordism’….An intelligent, forward-looking analysis of our increasing inability to stay focused.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Robert D. Kaplan, Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis
(Random House)
“A provocative but penetrating diagnosis of the anomie that marks the evolving international order. The deconcentration of power, the fraying of authority, and the weakening of institutions….All this together foreshadows a world crisis that looks uncomfortably like Weimar redux, but with even deadlier consequences this time around….The reader will not find a better guide toward that end than Kaplan’s Waste Land.”
–Ashley J. Tellis
