summer book preview
Welcome, bitches, to:
What follows are some books I would like to read over the summer (“a book summer preview,” for the layman). Instead of googling each title and then clicking a link and then copying and pasting the summary and then clicking back to this tab (I’m tired thinking about it!) what I’m going to do is tell you what I think these books are about. Most of them I have already (pre-)ordered, and I’m excited and not embarrassed for you to see what I know about books before I spend money on them. This approach nothing to do with me being under the influence of anything or simply “not wanting” to find the summaries for each book. Instead it is purely about user experience.
Eagle-eyed readers might note that many of these books are already out. To which I would say, shut up, you can’t expect me to keep on top of all literature as soon as it comes out, if you wanted to read a list of books that are coming out in summer 2019 you could google it, and (most importantly) yeah but not in paperback.
This Woman’s Work by Julie Delporte, trans. by Helge Dascher and Aleshia Jensen
Julie Delporte has a book of diary comics called Journal that I want to read but it’s out of print. This one is also a work of graphic nonfiction. That’s all I know about this one. Sold!
The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts by Tessa Fontaine
I handsold this one at the bookstore around the holidays by explaining it’s a memoir about a woman who learned to eat fire and ran away to join the circus after her mom died. I’m excited to find out whether or not I misled one of our beloved customers.
There’s a line from the book’s marketing material that I remember really liking: The trick is there is no trick. You eat fire by eating fire.
I don’t usually seek them out, per se, but some of my favorite books are dead parent books—The Glass Eye by Jeannie Vanasco, Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes. (It feels important here to mention I have a dead dad.)
Loudermilk; or: The Real Poet; or, The Origin of the World by Lucy Ives
I have an e-galley of this one, and I started to read it and really liked it, but then my e-reader died and I… got mad at it.... and decided I would just buy a hard copy of this book when it came out.... I don’t know how to explain this any better than that. (Anyway, in the end my friend Spencer gave me his copy. Thanks, Spencer!)
It’s 2003, and this guy Loudermilk (cool!) has been accepted to a writing program (that I don’t believe is called the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the book but, you know) for his poetry. Except it’s a grift, baby! Loudermilk doesn’t know how to write poetry. His (uncool!) friend whose name I can’t remember is writing the poems for him. I bet shenanigans ensue! I’ve heard it’s fucking cutting.
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Curtis Brown
I don’t technically “know who Princess Margaret is,” but several people who generally have good book opinions have recommended I read this one regardless. OK, gaffer! I will!
Oval by Elvia Wilk (out 6/4)
This one is technically science fiction, I think! Which generally I don’t read. Which might help to explain why I know nothing about this one except that it takes place in Berlin and has something to do with capitalism being bad. Which I’m big into lately.
Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegül Savas
A Turkish woman meets a writer who writes about Turkey outside a bookstore in Paris and they walk around and become friends, but not in a buddy-comedy kind of way. Absolutely 0 people have compared it to The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, but I keep thinking of it when I think about Walking on the Ceiling. Something, probably, to do with the phrase “meditation on grief.”
Aug 9 - Fog by Kathryn Scanlan (out 6/4)
Kathryn Scanlan bought a diary at a garage sale or an estate sale and rearranged the entries to make this book. I heard about it because the writer Gabe Habash tweeted about it, and as soon as I read his description I felt pretty sure I would fall in love with it. I have a real soft spot for literary hybrids and esoterica and books that make you go, Wait, that can be a book? (See Interior by Thomas Clerc, trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman for another great example.)
No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol
In a piece about best-of lists a few months ago, Maris Kreizman wrote about her reading blind spots: “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to feel some affirmation from society about remaining childless, and I can think of at least seven or eight highly lauded books about parenthood I’ve avoided for this simple reason.” I feel similarly (although for now I am still young enough that I don’t get bombarded with the question all the time), and so I’m really interested in reading a memoir that is explicitly about not having kids. (That’s what this one is about! Context clues!)
I haven’t read many other books about childlessness, unless Cioran’s The Trouble with Being Born counts. Actually there was Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed a few years ago, which I remember pretty much hating except for Geoff Dyer’s essay. All of the essays were like, “I love babies, I just don’t want them for me! OK! Cool! Except for Lionel Shriver’s which was just about how her not having babies is contributing somehow to the downfall of the white race. Who could’ve guessed she was a fucking asshole? But Dyer’s essay had this bit which I think about, to be honest with you, every single day: “It’s not just that I’ve never wanted to have children. I’ve always wanted not to have them. Actually, even that doesn’t go far enough. In a park, looking at smiling mothers and fathers strolling along with their adorable toddlers, I react like the pope confronted with a couple of gay men walking hand in hand: Where does it come from, this unnatural desire?”
Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues-Fowler (out 7/16)
This one is about three generations of Brazilian women told by a the youngest, who is British Brazilian. ( I don’t know of a ton of other books about Latin American immigrants living in the UK, or even living in Europe. And it falls into my sweet spots: autofiction, prose poetry… I have an e-galley of this one, actually, but some books I want to read as books!
Between this one and Aug 9, maybe you can surmise that most hybrid genre work makes me feel a little weak at the knees. (Try A Bestiary by Lily Hoang while you wait for these two to come out.)
Valerie by Sara Stridsberg, trans. Deborah Bragan-Turner (out 8/6)
This one is a fictionalized account of the life of Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto and would-be murderer of Andy Warhol. It was originally published in Sweden in 2006 as Drömfakulteten, which translates to The Dream Factory, and in the UK it was published last month as The Faculty of Dreams. (Is giving you all of this background information a way to wriggle out of telling you more about the plot? You decide!) I am honestly not sure how far into this book I’ll make it, as a lot of reviews I’ve seen have called it things like “unrelenting” and “brutal” which believe it or not aren’t my favorite book descriptors. But, on the other hand, it’s hybrid genre! Added to cart!
Socialist Realism by Trisha Low (out 8/13)
It has a great title and it’s being published by Coffee House.
And strap on your binoculars, folks, because there are a few books coming out even later in the year that I’m really excited for. Jeannie Vanasco has a memoir due out in November called Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. George Wylesol, whose Ghosts, Etc. I really liked, has a graphic novel called Internet Crusader that’s coming out in September. Comedy’s Nicest Boy, Josh Gondelman, has a book of essays coming out in September called Nice Try, and it seems like there’s a real chance that they will be both funny AND well-written, which is not as common in books that are billed as humor as one would hope. And the poet Aaron Smith, whose poem “Boston” is one of my favorites, has a book called The Book of Daniel out in October.
Which books should I be yelled at for missing?
Your friend,
Smalls