October 3, 2022, 9:30am
Ah, paperbacks. So soft and comforting. So nice to curl up with. (No hard edges!) This month sees the publication of paperbacks from Jonathan Franzen, Rebecca Solnit, Patrick Radden Keefe, Louise Glück, and more. Get cozy.
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Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads
(Picador, October 4)
“Crossroads is Franzen’s greatest and most perfect novel to date, but more importantly, it is his most promising: an inexhaustible resource for future novels, and not only his own.”
–Bookforum
John Darnielle, Devil House
(Picador, October 4)
“The thing about Darnielle’s writing, in all its forms, is this: If you’re that dorky outcast kid drawing a pentagram on the back page of your three-ring binder in algebra class, not because you want to drink anyone’s blood but because you think it’s cool, he sees you.”
–The New York Times
Laurie Woolever, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
(Ecco, October 4)
“Woolever’s skill as an editor is in merging these disparate voices to appear as though the whole cast is engaged in one great conversation with each other.”
–The Chicago Review of Books
David Sedaris, A Carnival of Snackery
(Back Bay Books, October 4)
“What he does in his exquisitely crafted essays is reconstruct his life as a funny story, the kind you’d hear at a dinner party if you were very lucky in your friendships.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Keisha N. Blain, Until I Am Free
(Beacon Press)
“As white conservative backlash grows in the United States, Keisha N. Blain’s new biography of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer stands out for its relevance.”
–The Los Angeles Review of Books
Louise Glück, Winter Recipes from the Collective
(FSG, October 11)
“The poems often feel like fables or strange little fictions, positing characters with unclear relation to the poet … The book is full of echoes of her earlier work, its winds (the breath of the void) and silence.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Margaret Verble, When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky
(Mariner, October 11)
“Verble artfully brings in the supernatural as the plot flows into a mystery with the hobbled protagonist the principal investigator. She will have you believing and cheering, especially for the ghost.”
–The Jacksonville Florida Times–Union
Jay Caspian Kang, The Loneliest Americans
(Crown, October 11)
“If the past 18 pandemic months have offered an intravenous drip of hate crimes against Asians, Kang’s book titrates those events into a potent mix of memoir, cultural criticism, and deep reporting.”
–The Brooklyn Rail
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain
(Anchor, October 18)
“Even when detailing the most sordid episodes, Keefe’s narrative voice is calm and admirably restrained, allowing his prodigious reporting to speak for itself.”
–The New York Times
Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic
(Scribner, October 18)
“Hoffman brings the Owens family full circle in a tale of finely wrought female relationships, magic, and love.”
–Booklist
Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses
(Penguin, October 18)
“Solnit is having fun when she makes these connections—finding joy in the intellectual pursuit of writing and thinking. That she allows herself to do so in a book that is in many ways very serious too is in keeping with the very aesthetics it’s engaging with.”
–NPR
Bethany Ball, The Pessimists
(Grove Press, October 18)
“A stinging satire about the hollowness of the suburban dream. Each couple is glittering but damaged.”
–Booklist
Alan Cumming, Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life
(Dey Street, October 18)
“Mercurial is a word often used of Cumming; and the quicksilver quality of his personality and career is fully and sometimes brilliantly reflected in this memoir.”
–The Scotsman
Violaine Huisman, tr. Leslie Camhi, The Book of Mother
(Scribner, October 18)
“In her description of maternal horrors and ecstasies, Huisman strikes an airy tone, confiding yet remote and prone to comic understatement.”
–The New York Times Book Review
N. Scott Momaday, The Death of Sitting Bear
(Harper Perennial, October 25)
“An admirable capstone to a distinguished literary career, this splendid selection should be a treasure for Momaday’s readers and an excellent introduction for those new to Native American writing.”
–Library Journal