45 replies to this topic

[Andrew]

I'm at the top of my library's reserve list for Jon Krakauer's latest, Under the Banner of Heaven. Apparently, he's branching out from his usual reportage on extreme sportsmen (Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, etc.), and writing about extreme Mormon fundamentalists instead. It sounded like an interesting topic to me, but Krakauer's such an evocative writer, I'd read just about anything by him.

[teresakayep]

I'm thrilled that Stephen King is finally getting back to his Dark Tower series. The fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, is coming out this November. I'm third in line at the library for when it arrives.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the series, it's a terrific fantasy series that King has been slowly writing--and I mean slowly. The most recent book came out in 1997. This series is more fantasy than horror, though there are horrific elements in it. It, more than anything else, is what's made me a King fan. In fact, I'm embassassed to admit that when he was hit by a car a few years ago, one of my first thoughts was that he can't die--he has to finish the Dark Tower series. (Yes, I'm a terrible person :oops: ) Supposedly, he's going to write the last books more quickly than he's written the others, with the last three books coming out in the next few years.

--Teresa

[Croaker]

I'm thrilled that Stephen King is finally getting back to his Dark Tower series. The fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, is coming out this November. I'm third in line at the library for when it arrives.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the series, it's a terrific fantasy series that King has been slowly writing--and I mean slowly. The most recent book came out in 1997. This series is more fantasy than horror, though there are horrific elements in it. It, more than anything else, is what's made me a King fan. In fact, I'm embassassed to admit that when he was hit by a car a few years ago, one of my first thoughts was that he can't die--he has to finish the Dark Tower series. (Yes, I'm a terrible person  ) Supposedly, he's going to write the last books more quickly than he's written the others, with the last three books coming out in the next few years.

--Teresa

So Teresa, it's a year and a half later, and the series is finished. I noticed in one of you jounal entries that you were reading Wolves of the Calla. Did you finish it? Have you finished reading the the series? What do you think? I am almost finished with book seven "The Dark Tower". I really liked Wolves and Song of Sussanah, and Dark Tower is good too though I think he could have trimmed some stuff out of it. These last three books are alot better than the third and the fourth in the series, but my favorite was Drawing of the Three by far.

[J.A.A. Purves]

2011 - So, you can use a list like this garbage, or you can try and make your own like I do. These are the year's books that I know of so far & am interested in reading. Because there's so much I haven't read, I wouldn't be surprised if I've only actually read 6-7 of these by the year's end. But keeping a list each year is still useful because you can keep working on it with time.

January 4 - Destiny and Desire - by Carlos Fuentes
January 10 - The Challenge of Jesus - by N.T. Wright
January 11 - How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance - by Parag Khanna
January 15 - The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order - by Daniel J. Mahoney
January 18 - Caribou Island - by David Vann
February 1 - Solo - by Rana Dasqupta (hearing good things about this from sources I trust)
February 1 - Tough Without a Gun - by Stefan Kanfer
February 1 - Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness - by Frank Brady
February 1 - If God, Why Evil? - by Norman Geisler
February 8 - Known and Unknown: A Memoir - by Donald Rumsfeld
February 8 - Open City: A Novel - by Teju Cole
February 15 - How the West Was Lost - by Dambisa Moyo
February 22 - The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan - by Bing West
February 22 - King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus - by Timothy J. Keller
March 8 - The Tiger's Wife - by Tea Obreht
March 8 - The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim - by Jonathan Coe
March 15 - The Ale Boy's Feast - by Jeffrey Overstreet (looking forward to it)
March 15 - Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology - by Alister McGrath
March 15 - The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt - by Toby Wilkinson
March 29 - The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon And Its Impact on Western Civilization - by Jim Lacey
April 12 - The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution - by Francis Fukuyama
April 12 - The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion - by Tim Challies
April 15 - The Pale King - by David Foster Wallace (his last & unfinished novel)
April 22 - Someday This Will Be Funny - by Lynne Tillman
April 26 - The Great Night: A Novel - by Chris Adrian (shouldn't we be philosophically opposed to this? It still sounds fascinating though.)
April 30 - A Meal With Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission Around the Table - by Tim Chester (I was very impressed by Total Church)
May 2 - The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness - by Lila Azam Zanganeh
May 5 - Write On: Occasional Essays - by David Lodge
May 10 - Does the Noise Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir - by Steven Tyler
May 17 - On China - by Henry Kissinger
May 23 - The Land at the End of the World - by Antonio Lobo Lunes (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)
May 30 - Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 - by Roberto Bolano
July 25 - The Night Train: A Novel - by Clyde Edgerton (one of the few books on this list that I'll probably go buy and finish reading on the day it hits the bookstore)
August 9 - Machine Man - by Max Barry (author of Syrup and Jennifer Government)
August 18 - Impressions of Africa - by Raymond Russell
September 13 - Grand Pursuit: The History of Economic Genius - by Sylvia Nasar
September 13 - Cosmos: A Novel - by Witold Gombrowicz
September 30 - The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956 - by Samuel Beckett
October 18 - Damned - by Chuck Palahniuk (I hated his last 4, but the description of this one looks interesting)
November 8 - The Prague Cemetery - by Umberto Eco

Others?

[Ryan H.]

I'm pumped for THE PALE KING and THE PRAGUE CEMETERY.

[NBooth]

Out of curiosity, how does one find all this info on upcoming books? I subscribe to a couple of lit blogs, but they only tend to post "what's new this month" type stuff. Compared to the ease with which one finds info on upcoming movies and albums, this is a bit of a bummer, and results in me discovering "new" authors a couple of years too late. (Related: Tom Franklin just came out with a new book, and of course I found out about it by accident. It's called Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Since my reaction to Smonk was a mixture of admiration and revulsion, I'm curious to check this one out. Of course, perhaps I should read Hell at the Breach first).

[LibrarianDeb]

NBooth, on 15 March 2011 - 01:11 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, how does one find all this info on upcoming books? I subscribe to a couple of lit blogs, but they only tend to post "what's new this month" type stuff.

Goodness there's lots of places.

Here's a few aimed at the general reader that I refer to in my work.

Library Journal Pre-Pub Alerts

The Millions occasionally does big lists of more "literary" books.

Media Bistro's Galley Cat

Early Word: The Publisher/Librarian Connection

[NBooth]

Thanks! I'm adding these to my feed. Hopefully I can manage to be more on-the-ball this year.

[Ryan H.]

As a die-hard Stanley Kubrick fan, this 10-lb beast will definitely be one my "splurge" purchases next month.

[M. Leary]

Neal Stephenson's new novel.

[Jason Panella]

M. Leary, on 21 March 2011 - 12:33 PM, said:

Neal Stephenson's new novel.

And it's about gold farming in China. This is amazing.

[M. Leary]

Doctorow's recent "juvenile fiction" work (For The Win) on the subject is interesting. It suffers from Doctorow's frequent inability to end a story very neatly, but it is well worth a read if you have any interest in the subject. In addition, being as awesome as Doctorow is, that link takes you directly to the book in its entirety.

[J.A.A. Purves]

April 27 - Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? - by Walter E. Williams
June 21 - Ladies' Man - by Richard Price (reprint edition since it's been out of print for a while)
June 29 - A Firing Offense - by George Pelecanos (reprint edition)
September 15 - The Collapse of American Criminal Justice - by William J. Stuntz

[Christian]

Persiflage, on 02 April 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

June 29 - [url="http://www.amazon.com/Firing-Offense-George-Pelecanos/dp/0316079634/ref=sr_1_1?

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

[J.A.A. Purves]

Updated Additions:

June 14 - A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion - by Ron Hansen
August 29 - The Cut - by George Pelecanos
September 13 - The Night Circus - by Erin Morgenstern
September 26 - The Swerve: How the World Became Modern - by Stephen Greenblatt
September 27 - James Madison - by Richard Brookhiser
September 30 - Tres (Bilingual Edition) - by Roberto Bolano
October 1 - Systematic Theology: In One Volume - by Norman L. Geisler
October 11 - The Marriage Plot - by Jeffrey Eugenides
October 11 - The End of Sparta: A Novel - by Victor Davis Hanson
October 18 - Zone One: A Novel - by Colson Whitehead
October 25 - Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman
November 8 - The Prague Cemetery - by Umberto Eco
November 8 - Catherine the Great - by Robert K. Massie
November 15 - Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain - by Michael S. Gazzaniga
November 29 - Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World - by Richard Rhodes
December 13 - A Radical Idea - by David Platt

January 1, 2012 - Mere Apologetics - by Alister McGrath
January 1, 2012 - Defending Inerrancy: Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New Generation - by Norman L. Geisler
March 27, 2012 - When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays - by Marilynne Robinson
April 3, 2012 - Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art - by Christopher Moore
May 8, 2012 - They Eat Puppies, Don't They? - by Christopher Buckley
May 31, 2012 - Sacred and Profane: God, Man and World - by Roger Scruton

Edited by Persiflage, 01 November 2011 - 11:58 PM.

[NBooth]

Persiflage, on 01 November 2011 - 11:56 PM, said:

Updated Additions:

The Marriage Plot- by Jeffrey Eugenides

[snip]

The Prague Cemetery - by Umberto Eco

Those are two I'm interested in; I've not read nearly enough Eco (Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and half of Baudolino) but he interests me enough that I own several of his books. Eugenides is a stranger to me, but he gave an interview on NPR the other day that certainly made my ears perk up.

[Ryan H.]

NBooth, on 02 November 2011 - 09:00 AM, said:

Those are two I'm interested in; I've not read nearly enough Eco (Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and half of Baudolino) but he interests me enough that I own several of his books.

I dig Eco, but I couldn't make it all the way through MYSTERIOUS FLAME (I've got BAUDOLINO sitting in the reading pile). Try THE NAME OF THE ROSE or FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM.

[Jason Panella]

NBooth, on 02 November 2011 - 09:00 AM, said:

Those are two I'm interested in; I've not read nearly enough Eco (Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and half of Baudolino) but he interests me enough that I own several of his books. Eugenides is a stranger to me, but he gave an interview on NPR the other day that certainly made my ears perk up.

I really liked Eugenides's Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides when I read them (around 2005 or 2006?). His Fresh Air interview was quite good, so I'm looking forward to the new novel.

As for Eco, I'm honestly shocked that he wrote something new. He had said that Mysterious Flame would be his final novel. Guess not.

[NBooth]

Ryan H., on 02 November 2011 - 09:24 AM, said:

I dig Eco, but I couldn't make it all the way through MYSTERIOUS FLAME (I've got BAUDOLINO sitting in the reading pile). Try THE NAME OF THE ROSE or FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM.

I have copies of both those floating around somewhere. I'll have to pull 'em out.

FWIW, I really liked Queen Loana; Baudolino was interesting, but it just went on far too long for my taste and felt pretty baggy and shapeless.

Jason Panella, on 02 November 2011 - 09:42 AM, said:

I really liked Eugenides's Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides when I read them (around 2005 or 2006?). His Fresh Air interview was quite good, so I'm looking forward to the new novel.

I had a copy of Middlesex at some point, but I think I eventually sold it back. Bad idea, but I get them sometimes. I did the same thing with Franzen's The Corrections.

[Ryan H.]

NBooth, on 02 November 2011 - 10:17 AM, said:

FWIW, I really liked Queen Loana; Baudolino was interesting, but it just went on far too long for my taste and felt pretty baggy and shapeless.

"Far too long" sums up my feelings about QUEEN LOANA. I loved it at first, but then it just began to drag. I suppose I should finish it one of these days. I don't know anything about BAUDOLINO, really, and just picked it up at a used book sale because Eco's name was on the cover.

NBooth, on 02 November 2011 - 10:17 AM, said:

I had a copy of Middlesex at some point, but I think I eventually sold it back. Bad idea, but I get them sometimes.

I dunno. I didn't think MIDDLESEX was all that great.