Hello friends, and welcome to 2024. This is, of course, a somewhat arbitrary marker to designate "new" versus "whatever the heck we were doing last week," but for the sake of convention, let's pretend everything is shiny. And what sort of goodies do we find on the shelf this week?
Well, here is Kimberly Lemming's That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, which is a fantasy rom-com in the vein of Legends and Lattes and any number of impossibly titled manga series like I Used to Live At Home and Cry When I Ate Pizza But Then I Went Online and Discovered I Could Save Kittens With My UnTapped Potential as A Giant Robot. Lemming serves up the cozy vibe, along with quirky anachronisms and flirty banter. Plus the male lead keeps losing his shirt.
Frankly, if this "Take your judgy face and go sit in the car while I enjoy all the things that make me happy" vibe is the vibe of 2024, then it'll be a good year for fiction.
Incidentally, we have Judgy Fish sticker books back in stock, in case you need some levity in your day. The stickers will stick on anything, and the fish offer all sorts of snark. These make us laugh.
Anyway, Orbit, Lemming's publisher, is leaning into the current romfantasy vibe, and they've got more Lemming books coming. That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf is scheduled for February and That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human drops in March. Bring it on!
Meanwhile, Golden Books, having sold a zillion copies of their Taylor Swift Little Golden Book, are leaning into this new market space they've discovered. Not one, not two, but three new Little Golden Book biographies drop this week. There's one about Lady Gaga and one about Elton John, which are safe bets if you are trying to suss out the post-Taylor Swift audience. And then there is this one:
That's right. Dr. Jane Goodall has her own Little Golden Book biography. While not quite the same sort of media darling as Swift, John, and Gaga, we're still delighted to see the iconic primatologist getting some recognition.
Oh, and there's also a Little Golden Book about the Golden Girls. An iconic media property that plays to the older generation who are probably discovering the joy of Little Golden Books for Big Kids. Well played, Golden Books. Well played.
And speaking of throwing together oddball characters and seeing what happens, here is Adam Plantinga's debut novel, The Ascent, which is the story of an ex-Detroit cop who has been unjustly imprisoned in a maximum security prison, the governor's daughter (who was there for a visit), and the half-dozen floors of the most dangerous convicts in all of Missouri. It's like Dante's Inferno meets Gareth Evans's The Raid. Here's your first breathless read of 2024.
And speaking of complicated relationships between disparate groups with divergent agendas, here is Erika Howsare's The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors. Deer occupy an interesting place in the world. They've been part of our cultural and mythological narrative for millennia, and they've also been an important part of our, uh, menu as well. Howsare picks a delicate path through the woods on this one, exploring our connection with these fleet-footed ruminants without descending into "OMG! We killed Bambi's mom!" Recommended.
Also out this week is Islam Issa's Alexandria: The City That Changed the World. Sure, we all know they had a good library there once upon a time, but have you ever stopped to wonder why? Well, Issa has, and their biography of the city traces the exceptionally rich history of the city that truly was at the center of it all for many civilizations. This is one you can lose yourself in.
And here is Matthew Blake's Anna O, the first psychological thriller of 2024. Once upon a time, Anna shanked two people for no apparent reason, and then went to sleep. She's been sleeping for a couple of years now, and only Dr. Benedict Prince—a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of "sleep-related homicides"—can figure out if she was awake when she did the stabbing or if she was sleep-walking. Of course, there's no end of twists and double-twists as Prince explores the heretofore unexplored spaces of the conscious unconsciousness. Plan accordingly.
And here is Allison Saft's A Fragile Enchantment, a delightful romantic fantasy of manners. Niamh Ó Conchobhair has a gift for weaving magic into fabric, but this same magic will eventually kill her. Determined to live her life fully while she can, she takes a commission to design the royal wardrobe for an upcoming wedding. Who's getting married? Well, the abrasive, prickly, jerk of a prince, Kit Carmine, for one. His wedding is arranged, a political decision rooted in some deep insecurities and machinations within the family. Naturally, he's not keen on being a pawn, and once he catches Niamh's eye, well, these two might hatch a plot. Or they might hide behind the curtains and smooch a bit. Or maybe both. You'll have to find out.
And finally, a couple of solid sellers from last year hit paperback this week. Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House, for one. Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, for another. Deepti Kapoor's Age of Vice, for a third. Our recommendations stand. Keep on buying 'em.
This is how we roll into 2024. Take a deep breath. Lower that bar a notch. Give yourself some grace as you lean toward those goals for the year. You don't have to achieve them all this week. Leave some time for reading and reflecting. Tell us of your plans when you drop by. We'll tell you about ours.
We have copies of the reading journal we put together every year. This time we've added a reading challenge section. In case you wanted a little nudge here and there.
[Correction: Last week, we cheekily mentioned 'Häyhä' as the Finnish word for 'redoubtable courage in the face of adversity'. It was a play on Simo Häyhä's name. Häyhä was a Finnish sniper who bedeviled Russian troops during the Winter War of 1939/40. It turns out the word we should have used is 'sisu.' We regret the error.]
[And yes, there's a book for it. It is, of course, the same adorable format as Niki Brantmark’s Njuta and Meik Wiking’s The Little Book of Hygge. Honest. We're not making this up.]
