Hello friends and welcome to the first week of spring. It started on Tuesday, which was a day early because this is a leap year, and Nature does not care that we shove an extra day in Februrary as a way to wrangle chronographical accounting. The frogs knew, of course, and every single one of them was out gerruping and braaka-braaking all night long.
We were up late that night, possibly because we were reading a book. Maybe it’s one for book club. Maybe it was something for research reasons. Maybe it was merely because we can, and that is always the best reason to read, isn’t it? Anyway, spring has sproinged, the frogs are braaka-braaking, and new books have sprouted on the shelves. Like mushrooms.
The first little sprouter we have this week is Jonathan Fenske’s A Unicorn, a Dinosaur, and a Shark Were Riding a Bicycle, which is a children’s picture book about said uni, dino, and sharko and their efforts to hang out and relax. Unfortunately, the narrator of their story keeps insisting they all ride a bike together, and these three characters are being very unruly in their lack of cooperation. Who’s in charge of this story, anyway?
This feels like it might be a metaphor about life, but it’s likely just a funny story about stacking critters on a two-wheeler. Recommended for all ages!
And speaking of storytelling, we’ve got a new volume in The Moth Presents series. This one is called A Point of Beauty: True Stories of Holding on and Letting Go. It joins All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown and Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible. All three are marvelous collections of personal essays about the marvelousness that is life, community, and personal experience. Highly recommended.
And here’s a new Percival Everett book. James is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as told from the point of view of Jim, the escaped slave who accompanies Huck on the raft down the Mississippi River. Everett, who has been racking up awards and recognition these last few years (including his novel Erasure being made into an Academy Award-winning film named American Fiction), and there’s a clear reason for all this admiration, as James displays a writer at the height of his career. Ingenious, transformative, and audacious.
And speaking of Jameses, Mr. Patterson is back this week with the dully titled The #1 Lawyer. Ah, but what separates this book from all the other books on the shelf is its subtitle. Move Over Grisham, Patterson’s Greatest Legal Thriller Ever.
That’s right. The actual subtitle of this book is a schoolyard attempt to knock an author off the top row of the bleachers. We look forward to John Grisham’s next novel, which will likely be subtitled “Suck it, Patterson. I Was Writing Legal Briefs While You Were Selling Car Wax to Trans Am Enthusiasts.”
Which will, of course, be followed by a forgettable book with a forgettable title, but with the inflammatory subtitle of “Written by My Dog, Who Totally Saw the Plot Coming in Grisham’s Last Attempt to Write His Way Out of a Bathroom Stall.”
Please, gentlemen, think of all the readers who are going to be traumatized by this metadata rivalry.
Anyway, The #1 Lawyer is about a hot shot lawyer whose client gets murdered, and now he’s the #1 Suspect. We feel like this is the plot setup for a season climax in just about every lawyer show ever produced, but, of course, we trust James (and his able co-writer, Nancy Allen) to elevate the material. Plan accordingly.
And speaking of propulsive thrillers, Chris Bohjalian is back with The Princess of Las Vegas, a page-turner for folks obsessed with cryptocurrency, estranged sisters, disassociated protagonists, and the British Royalty. While you may scoff at that Venn Diagram overlap, we would like to direct your attention to the media’s current fascination with both Bitcoin’s record trading rate and the “Where’s Kate?” conspiracy that is burning through social media. Bohjalian may just have his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist.
Meanwhile, Téa Obreht returns with The Morningside, which is a SF cli-fi magical realist novel about coming of age in a broken world, family secrets, and the stories we tell as we navigate through all of these. At first, we were going to suggest thinking of J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise meeting Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, but that dismisses Obreht’s own luminous place in modern literary speculative fiction.
And speaking of speculative fiction, here is Sierra Greer’s debut novel, Annie Bot, which is the story of a young man and his perfectly-crafted AI “Cuddle Bunny.” Annie Bot is everything Doug wants in a girlfriend, and she has all the latest features, including the ability to adapt and learn from her experiences. Neat, huh? Well, as Annie calibrates herself to Doug’s trenchant moods, she starts to have self-aware thoughts, like: “Does this guy even know what he wants?” and “Do I know what I want?” and “Hey, this relationship is kinda abusive.”
So, show up for the robotic sex doll. Stick around for the thought-provoking discourse on identity, dysfunctional relationships, and power dynamics. This one might linger in your brain pan for awhile.
And here is Sulari Gentill’s new novel, The Mystery Writer, about a young writer who moves to America to finish their novel, but is waylaid by a suspicious death, an investigation focused on someone in her family, and a literary labyrinth which is the sort of complicated nonsense writers come up with to obscure an otherwise obvious trail. We don’t know if this writer ever finishes their book, but hey, distractions happen. Typically, we’d say “plan accordingly,” but in this instance, our recommendation is: “Bring a spool of thread.”
And speaking of twisty narratives, here is Kill for Me, Kill for You by Steve Cavanagh. It has a cover blurb from Alex Michaelides, that master of deception, which says “unguessable and unputdownable,” which—uh—are words, in the sense that you can put prefixes and suffixes on things and call them “words.” But we know that you, dear readers, want something a little more concrete than two words that start with “un” and end with “able,” and so we offer you this:
Okay, so Amanda and Wendy are two people who live in New York City. They randomly meet in a bar and discover both want serious revenge against dudes who have destroyed their families. “Hey,” says one, “What if I kill your dude, and you kill my dude?” The other says: “That sounds like the plot for a perfect novel!” “I know!” says the first. They clink glasses and ask for another round.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, a third woman named Ruth is hanging out in her completely affordable brownstone with her adoring husband, Scott, when the house is invaded by some dude with piercing blue eyes. OMG! Will she ever feel safe again as long as random stranger with sexy eyes is out there?
We know. The question you’re also asking is: What the f*** does this have to do with Amanda and Wendy. We don’t know. We suspect this is the “unguessable” part of the book. Hopefully, the other “able” part of the book will take care of these questions for you. How any of us are going to sleep tonight is . . . unimagineable.
You’re welcome.
And finally, as you start thinking about dusting off the family wagon and heading out of town on adventures, may we interest you in two of the latest offerings from the always delightful Brass Monkey.
The first is a people-watching Bingo book.
The second is a card deck of travel-related challenges.
Plan your Spring Breaks accordingly.
And that is the list this week, dear readers. Remember to take some moments for yourself. Listen to the frogs. Try not to die from pollen overload. And open some windows here and there so all that fetid winter air can escape from your house. It is sunny as we write this. It will likely be overcast when you read this. And then it will change three times over before we are back again next week. Hold fast. We’re going to make it.
