14 new books to revive your reading life.
Sometimes you’re in a book slump, and the only thing you can bring yourself to read is the first two pages of anything and/or the short synopsis of shows on Netflix. But every once in a while (okay, every Tuesday specifically), a new bunch of books bursts forth into the world, and maybe—just maybe—one of them will beckon to you like a siren’s song.
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Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation
(Penguin Press)
“Explore[s] in blistering detail the power imbalances that inevitably exist in academia—and their unsettling consequences … [A] searing satire.”
–TIME
María Gainza, tr. Thomas Bunstead, Portrait of an Unknown Lady
(Catapult)
“[A] novel with many beautiful, confounding moments. Maria Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiplies the possibilities for fiction.”
–The Guardian
Olivia Clare Friedman, Here Lies
(Grove Press)
“Friedman conjures surprising and deep human bonds among the four strong women as they unite under their shared mission … illuminating and startling.”
–Publishers Weekly
Alejandro Varela, The Town of Babylon
(Astra House)
“A gay Latinx man reckons with his past when he returns home for his 20th high school class reunion in Varela’s dazzling debut … an incandescent bildungsroman.”
–Publishers Weekly
Anne Tyler, French Braid
(Knopf)
“Funny, poignant, generous, not shying away from death and disappointment but never doomy or overwrought, it suggests there’s always new light to be shed, whatever the situation, with just another turn of the prism.”
–The Guardian
Maja Haderlap, tr. Tess Lewis, Distant Transit
(Archipelago Books)
“Though Haderlap wrote these poems in German, a language with a broader reach than Slovenian, Tess Lewis’s English version conveys the poet’s fraught relationship with her languages, and the ways in which Slovenian haunts the composition as well as the mythology and folklore of the collection.”
–Poetry Foundation
David Keenan, Xstabeth
(Europa Editions)
“Music and the sacred converge in unexpected ways. Keenan explores that dynamic through a story about a father, a daughter, and the music that haunts them … This isn’t a typical rock novel—but that’s what makes it so compelling.”
–Kirkus
Thomas Fisher, The Emergency
(One World)
“[A] powerful reckoning with racial injustice and a moving portrait of everyday heroism.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jeremy Denk, Every Good Boy Does Fine
(Random House)
“Already noted for his skillful writing on music, Denk proves equally adept at memoir. Anyone with an interest in music will find this an excellent read.”
–Library Journal
Stephen Galloway, Truly, Madly
(Grand Central)
“Truly, Madly comes alive as a book, and it is a gripping and terribly sad reading experience.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl
(Flatiron)
“She urges Latinx people to promote their own culture, history, and identities as fully American, and to support other communities of color in the fight for equality. This impassioned call for change rings true.”
–Publishers Weekly
John Elizabeth Stintzi, My Volcano
(Two Dollar Radio)
“A vibrant ecosystem of a novel that deals honestly with the beauty and horror of human and ecological connectedness.”
–Kirkus
Greg Bluestein, Flipped
(Viking)
“A savvy account of two of the most consequential U.S. Senate elections in recent history.”
–Kirkus
Justin E. H. Smith, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is
(Princeton University Press)
“A worthy critique of a technology in need of rethinking—and human control that seeks to free and not enchain.”
–Kirkus
