Hello dear friends and welcome to the 400th edition of the bookstore newsletter. Still 100% written by a real person (much to James Patterson's annoyance), and it will continue to be so written until the heat death of the universe or about three minutes after Skynet becomes self-aware. Both of those events are far, far in the future, and what we care about right now is the new books on the shelves this week. Let's dig in.
First up is R. F. Kuang's Yellowface, a scathing satire of the modern publishing industry. Kuang—who won the Nebula Award over the weekend for her linguistical fantasy novel, Babel—has written a book about cultural appropriation, white privilege, and social media meltdowns. Yellowface is the story of June Hayward, who witnesses the unexpected death of her literary peer, Athena Liu. Hayward, her career stuck in a rut, wanders off with Athena's unpublished novel and passes it off as her own. Shenanigans ensue, and Kuang savages every aspect of the publishing industry as Hayward's career turns into a flaming dumpster fire.
And speaking of fireworks, here is Christina Lauren's The True Love Experiment. It's the story of Felicity "Fizzy" Chen, a bestselling romance novelist who has a deep, dark secret: she's never been in love. How, you may ask, can a writer write about something they know nothing about? Well, it's like this, you see . . .
Anyway, Chen wants to feel what she says all the happy-ever-afterers feel, and she gets talked into being part of a reality TV show that will follow her on her quest. Naturally, there are complications and compromises, and given that this is a rom-com of a book about a rom-com of an artist, we suspect y'all know how it turns out.
And here is a new biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. King: A Life is written by Jonathan Eig, and is the first new biography written in nearly three decades. Eig draws on a wealth of new material that has recently surfaced (White House telephone transcripts, FBI documents, and other oral histories), and writes a compelling narrative that has the pulse of a thriller. Highly recommended.
Meanwhile, Christopher Paolini is back this week with Fractal Noise, a sorta follow-up to his recent SF novel, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Paolini says that Fractal Noise has been a story in his head for a long time now, and following the success of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, he finally realized how to get the story to the page.
Fractal Noise opens with the crew of the Adamura discovering a strange anomaly on an otherwise uninhabited planet. It's a hole, 50 kilometers wide, and it definitely didn't get there by accident. Naturally, a team gets sent out to investigate, and much like what happens whenever you send a team out to explore a weird structure in space, bad things happen.
Seriously, they should make Alien required viewing as part of everyone's mission training. Do not respond to the random distress signal being broadcast on unused frequencies. Do not investigate the doomed spaceship that's been abandoned for thousands of years. And definitely do not go into the dark holes, especially when your flashlight batteries are nearly dead. Come on, people! This isn't hard.
Anyway, Paolini might be what you need to fill that Horrors-in-Space sized hole in your hearts.
And here is Jack Carr's Only the Dead, a thriller about global conspiracies, fractured economies, and one man who can stand against those who want to cash out the world. That's right. It's James Reece, and once he gets his hands on his tomahawk and his sniper rifle, no one is out of range.
We wish we could claim to having written that last bit, but it's straight off the flap copy. A tip of the hat, there. Yes, indeed.
And speaking of larger than life characters, Jeff Shaara has delivered a biography, sorry, a novel of Theodore Roosevelt. We got caught up in the fervor about the research Shaara did for The Old Lion, and we overlooked the subtitle of the book. "A Novel of Theodore Roosevelt."
See? This is what you actually use the subtitle field for. Not some nonsense like "More complex and contradictory than the nation he embodied, this so-real-it's-almost-historically-accurate rending of the 26th president of the United States will bite you on the seat of your pants."
Now, no one is going to mistake Simon Sebag Montefiore's The World: A Family History of Humanity as anything other than what it is: a monumental tome of historical research. Spanning, oh, just a few million years, Montefiore's The World presents the full scale of human history as a collection of stories about dynasties, families, and cultural movements. It's an interesting idea (and we like how each section is denoted by the current world population at that time), and we found ourselves dawdling by the shelf a few times this week. It's still a tome that is going to weigh you down on the couch, but Montefiore knows you're not going to put up with a stodgy narrative about humanity. Instead there's a deftness to his touch that makes the pages go by real smoothly. Well done and highly recommended.
Oh, and guess what, Tolkien fans! There's a new J. R. R. tome out this week! Finally! It's a brand new book about . . . oh, wait. It's more annotations about The Hobbit.
That's right. There's are still more weeds you can wander through. The History of the Hobbit goes very deep into the publication details of every edition of The Hobbit, detailing word-specific changes that ole J. R. R. did to ensure The Hobbit's proper place within the larger Middle-Earth narrative. There's nearly a thousand pages of version-specific minutia here, and good gosh and glory! It's definitely a thing if you're into that sort of thing. Plan accordingly.
And speaking of interesting things, here is a new tarot deck. This one is Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck, but only in spirit and design. It's actually a re-imagining by Tania Ahsan and Paula Zorite, two modern practitioners who bring their own creative and spiritual practices to bear on these iconic cards. We're more than a little curious.
And speaking of cards, here is a cool quest card game by Tony Johns and Natalie Rigby. Legends of King Arthur is an easy-to-learn card game about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. As you collect deeds of honor, swords, castles, and tokens of love in order to fulfill quests, you'll deter your opponents with battle cards, deceptions, and hidden talents. All the while, you'll be learning about the various knights and their stories. It's educational and fun to play! Plus there are bonus modes where you can tetragram your way out of puzzles and stimulate your imagination with a memory challenge option. Educational, fun, AND brain-building. That's the sweet trifecta, dear readers.
And speaking of trifectas, we're having a food truck rally and block party this weekend. From noon until 6 PM, come on down and enjoy some live music, tailgate/backyard games, and sweet, sweet food truck chow. We'll have 11 of them! Try to sample them all! Stop by the bookstore and tell us all about the fun!
