jennIRL

note: these books are not out yet, release dates noted. please don’t yell at me for teasing you with books you can’t read yet k thx bye!

GONE TO THE FOREST, Katie Kitamura, August 7 2012: if you’ve read LONGSHOT (why haven’t you yet??) you might think you’d have an idea what to expect from Kitamura’s second book, but you’d be wrong. the prose is just as clean, the pacing just as steady, but there’s a whole new level complexity at work here — inevitable, considering the subject. GONE TO THE FOREST is the story of a father and son, managing an estate in a colonized country, who are falling apart at the same time as the political situation around them spirals out of control. tense and vivid and satisfying in that AAAAHHHH WHY IS EVERYONE CRAZY way.

THE DARK UNWINDING, Sharon Cameron, September 1 2012: When Katharine Tulman is sent by her (seriously awful) aunt to declare her estranged uncle (related by marriage) incompetent, so that their side of the family can regain control of the inheritance and the estate, it’s an opportunity to both get some breathing space and, hopefully, prove her use and assure her place in the family. BOY IS SHE WRONG. things are not what they appear, at pretty much any point in this utterly captivating book. clockwork and ghosts and espionage and YOU GUYS IT HAS ALL THE THINGS. it’s almost like ANGELMAKER for kids, actually. fantastic.

RAILSEA, China Mieville, May 15 2012: i have already said everything i can say about this book over on tumblr, more to come in an official review on Shelf Awareness

note: sorry i’ve been such a slacker! also i lost my phone that had notes on all the books i’d been reading, which makes blogging about them difficult. but, new spreadsheet has been started and look, you get an extra long post, that helps right?

SHADOW OPS: CONTROL POINT, Myke Cole: the first book in a new series that a cover blurb describes as “X-Men meets Black Hawk Down”, which i think is pretty apt. the concept is that people who have magical powers are required to join up, otherwise they’re on the run/enemies of the state. a career soldier, who previously was pretty happy with things, discovers some latent abilities of his own, plunging him into the weird world of magic in the military. entertaining as all get-out, although if you are like me you also periodically will want to yell at/throw things in the direction of the main character, who makes some catastrophically terrible decisions.

BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE, Ryan Boudinot: that one i wrote up for Tor.com and you can believe that i will link the hell out of it when it goes live, but until then i will just say that if you enjoy absurdity and weird technology, you will enjoy this book.

SWAMPLANDIA!, Karen Russell: i had a very conflicted relationship with this book, as evidenced by our discussion on Bookrageous, but the short version is that if Russell hadn’t done such a good job creating characters that you care about i wouldn’t have had such strong feelings, and also wow can she write a sentence.

THE VOICE OF THE RIVER, Melanie Rae Thon: a quiet gem of a book. a boy walking his dog in winter falls into a frozen river; the town turns out to search for him; and all the rescuers bring all their own baggage to the search. gorgeous writing.

I HUNT KILLERS, Barry Lyga, out April 10: my review of this one will be in Shelf Awareness’s reader edition soon, and i know you guys, it’s technically not out yet, but so soon! gory and angsty and not to be read at night and full of OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED.

THE LONGSHOT, Katie Kitamura: i read this book when it first came out in 2009 and loved it, so much so that it got me into watching MMA (which is not something people ever expect to hear about me). having recently met the author for the first time (NYC FTW), i reread it, and it was every bit as good as i remembered. Kitamura’s writing is one of the best responses i can think of to female-authors-vs-male-authors stereotyping — she writes like a Really Good Writer, and will not be put into a tidy little box. it’s a little harder to get ahold of these days, but never fear, she’s got a new book coming out in the fall.

THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, Norton Juster: i blame all the people who never gave this book to my child-self for the fact i didn’t read it until last week when i was cat-sitting for a certain someone who owns FOUR COPIES. it was awesome enough that i now understand the necessity.

QUICKSILVER, Neal Stephenson: i’ve been talking to customers about Stephenson in preparation for finally picking up REAMDE (which, btw, i like to prounounce “read me” because otherwise it just makes me insane, but that’s neither here nor there), and one in particular insisted i start with the Baroque Cycle, of which this is the first book. and it turns out it is ONE HELL OF A STORY that had me so sucked in i wasn’t reading anything else at the same time — unheard of, practically. at least, until my OverDrive loan expired and then there were three other people waiting to read it so i couldn’t immediately re-rent it, so i am only halfway through and am now reading other things until it’s free again (or until i buy it, that could happen too). epic historical fiction with a tinge of the fantastical to it. brilliant.

WHY WE BROKE UP, Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman: i really dug this one — it felt like a bit like being in a time machine back to high school. which was a mildly uncomfortable and awkward experience (much like high school itself), but vivid and entertaining nonetheless.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, John le Carre: well sheeeeit. the movie is coming out so i figured i would finally get around to this one. have read other le Carre and very much enjoyed, of course, but this one has me on absolute tenterhooks. am trying REALLY HARD not to look at the cast list on imdb (i haven’t seen any trailers) lest i prejudice my inner movie of the book. at the moment George Smiley is a moustache-less Jim Broadbent, Ricki Tarr is a young Crispin Glover at his smarmiest, and Prideaux is a sort of grizzled cross between Gerard Butler and Daniel Pirrie (actor who plays the asshole soldier who gets Ethel pregnant on Downton Abbey). just in case you were wondering.

CAPITAL, John Lanchester, June 2012: Lanchester is the dude who wrote DEBT TO PLEASURE, which is an all-time favorite unreliable narrator book for me, so i was psyched to see what was next. CAPITAL is very different, and very very good. it all takes place on one posh street in London right as the international economic crisis is starting. and you get POV for a variety of residents — an elderly lady who’s lived in her (now very very valuable) house forever, a (pretty sympathetic) banker and his (surprisingly sympathetic) spoiled wife and children, an immigrant builder who works on the street, the Indian family that owns the corner store, etc etc. timely very well-drawn look at what is happening to us that manages not to feel preachy, really, and has some great characters. also i just LOVE that offhand British style that creates passages like this:

“….. and then the general hard-to-believe expensiveness of everything in London, restaurants and shoes and parking fines and cinemas tickets and gardeners and the feeling that every time you went anywhere or did anything money just started melting off you. Roger didn’t mind that, he was completely up for it, but it did mean that if he didn’t get his million-pound bonus this year he was at genuine risk of going broke.”