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Notable books: January 2011

5th January 2011 / / 0 Comments

Towards the end of last year, I decided to look through some publishers’ catalogues, and make a note of any 2011 books that sounded interesting. I found more than I could have any hope of reading, so I’ve decided to introduce a regular feature where I highlight some books from the coming month that have caught my eye. Here, then, are my notable books for January:

Paul Bailey, Chapman’s Odyssey

A novel viewed from a hospital bed, where the protagonist lies as the voices of characters from literature and his life speak to him.

Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall

A collection of six stories on the theme of memory. Sounds nicely wide-ranging.

Faïza Guène, Bar Balto

I’ve not read Guène before, but I understand that her work has been both acclaimed and successful internationally. This, her third novel, is a murder mystery told in multiple voices.

Ida Hattemer-Higgins, The History of History

This looks to have an intriguing combination of elements: an amnesiac woman trying to regain her memories, the history of Berlin, and a vein of fantastication.

Simon Lelic, The Facility

Last year’s Rupture was a fine debut, and this sounds an interesting follow-up, as Lelic writes of a near future in which laws have been tightened in the name of security.

Cornelius Medvei, Caroline: A Mystery

Of all the 2011 books I’ve learnt about so far, this may be the one that sounds the most fun — a story of a man who falls for a donkey.

Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

Technically a 2010 book, but, as its UK publication date was so close to the end of the year (30th December), and I didn’t actually realise, I’m going to include it here. It’s the story of a young Ethiopian-American retracing his parents’ journey, with (so I gather) a mixing of stories that sounds particularly interesting.

Sunjeev Sahota, Ours Are the Streets

I’ve heard good things about this debut, which examines what drives a young man from Sheffield to become a suicide bomber.

Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy

Apparently it draws on Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, which I’ve not read; but the idea of this tale about a woman travelling to New York to investigate the life of her friend’s missing cousin still intrigues me.

David Vann, Caribou Island

One of the most anticipated books of the whole year, as far as I’m concerned, never mind January. Legend of a Suicide was one of the best books I read in 2009, enough to make anything else that Vann writes essential reading. Simple as that.

Costa Book Awards

4th January 2011 / / 2 Comments

It’s a strange feeling when a book that’s unfamiliar wins an award over one that’s beloved, because, on the one hand, for all I know, the winner was the most deserving book on the shortlist; but, on the other, it’s always nice when a book I like wins.

On that note, here are the category winners of the Costa Book Awards 2010, as announced earlier this evening:

Novel: Maggie O’Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

I read O’Farrell’s previous novel, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, a couple of years ago, and liked it very much. I have no reason to believe that her latest work isn’t brilliant, and I’d certainly like to read it at some point; but it was up against Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies, one of my absolute favourite reads of 2010. The Hand That First Held Mine would have to be exceptional to beat Murray’s book in my eyes; perhaps this win is an indication that I should investigate.

First Novel: Kishwar Desai, Witness the Night

Another of my favourite books from last year, Nikesh Shukla’s Coconut Unlimited, was on this shortlist; again, the category winner would have to go some way to beat it. Desai’s novel does sound interesting, though: a book that uses the form of a classic subgenre (the country-house detection) to examine contemporary issues.

Biography: Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes

I haven’t read this, but I’ve certainly heard about it, as it seemed one of the most talked-about books of last year. De Waal traces the story of his great-uncle’s collection of ivory carvings, but (so I hear) ranges rather more widely than that might sound.

Poetry: Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability

I’m not well-versed (pardon the pun) in poetry, so I can’t really comment on this.

Children’s Book: Jason Wallace, Out of Shadows

Again, I don’t have much to say as this isn’t my usual area of interest. But it certainly seems that there’s a strong set of candidates here to compete for the overall Costa Book of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on the 25th of this month.

Changes are being rung…

4th January 2011 / / 0 Comments

There are some changes underway at a couple of the blogs I visit regularly, which I’m going to mention here.

Niall Harrison recently stepped down as editor of the BSFA’s journal, Vector, and became editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons — so now he’s changing blogs. Niall is handing the reins of Torque Control over to his successor, Shana Worthen (and Vector‘s reviews editor, Martin Lewis), and beginning to post at the Strange Horizons blog. Good luck to all, and I look forward to seeing how both blogs develop.

Elsewhere on the internet, Scott Pack has started a project to read and blog about a different short story on every day of 2011. That should yield some good recommendations. Check out Me and My Short Stories to see what Scott has read so far.

Strange Horizons: 2010 in review

3rd January 2011 / / 0 Comments

Strange Horizons is kicking off the year with a look back at the previous one, as the site’s reviewers each contribute a few paragraphs on their favourite fantastic reads of 2010. That includes a contribution from me, which features some  books from my general list of year’s favourites, and some others that were bubbling under.

Read the full article on Strange Horizons here.

Plans for 2011

1st January 2011 / / 3 Comments

Happy New Year! Time to begin a new year of reading and blogging; I have it in mind to make a few changes, though I’m not going to turn them into full-blown resolutions as I prefer to keep my approach to reading flexible. So: my main intention is to have a greater variety of posts on the blog, which will mean fewer reviews and more… well, I don’t quite know yet. I expect to supplement the main reviews with shorter round-ups of other stuff I’ve read; I’d like to do some more story-by-story reviews of anthologies; and I do have some tentative ideas for different kinds of posts — but we’ll see how it goes.

I don’t really like to make reading resolutions, but I’d hope to read more non-fiction next year, and more older books. There are some specific titles I’d like to get around to: it’s about time I read something by M. John Harrison, so perhaps I’ll look at the Viriconium omnibus; likewise Haruki Murakami, so I could be taking The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle off the shelf. I’ve been meaning to read Theodore Roszak’s Flicker and John M.Ford’s The Dragon Waiting for some time; I’ve got an omnibus of Mary Gentle’s White Crow books that I want to read; and I was lucky enough to win a set of F. Scott Fitzgerald books in a competition recently, so I’d like to give some of those a try… But, again, we shall see.

Here’s wishing you a great year of reading in 2011!

Links: 15 December

15th December 2010 / / 0 Comments

The Orange Prize has a new website, and has announced its judges for 2011.

More commentary on Edward Docx’s “literary vs genre” article: a response by Cora Buhlert; and Laura Miller of Salon.com looks at why people love bad writing.

Jackie from Farm Lane Books posts the first part of her list of books she’s looking forward to next year.

Guy Fraser-Sampson has a Christmas Book Quiz on his blog.

Jane Smith asks: what do you look for in a publisher’s website?

Valerie O’Riordan reviews the BBC National Short Story Award 2010 anthology (which will be featured on this blog next week!) for Bookmunch.

Keith Brooke is reviving Infinity Plus as a publisher of ebooks.

Sam Jordison invites people to nominate the worst books of the year (luckily for me, I’ve managed to avoid any real stinkers this year).

John Harris reads eleven celebrity memoirs in four days (not a task which I envy him!).

Mark Wernham writes about developing an app based on his novel-in-progress. (I’m struck that there are parallels between what Wernham says here about ‘a generation for whom the novel will be just a part of their expectation from…[an] author’ and the remarks in Harris’s article on celebrity memoirs being part of a a celebrity’s wider ‘brand’. I’ll think on this a bit more. Incidentally, I do like the sound of Wernham’s novel-in-progress.)

Ten beautiful converted bookstores from around the globe.

Some books that sound interesting:

  • Stuart Evers enthuses about the work of Chris Paling over at Fiction Uncovered.
  • Max Cairnduff on Berg by Ann Quin.
  • The Bookseller interviews Mary Horlock on her debut novel The Book of Lies.

Surveys and wolves: Vector, Autumn 2010

4th December 2010 / / 0 Comments

The latest issue of the BSFA‘s critical journal, Vector, has been mailed out to members — and it’s the first  issue which has contributions from me. There’s a transcript of the Eastercon panel in which I took part earlier this  year, on the BSFA’s author surveys; and a review of M.D. Lachlan‘s impressive Viking fantasy Wolfsangel (well worth a look even if epic fantasy is not your usual bag). Of course, there’s plenty more to read in there besides these; if you’re at all interested in fantastic fiction as a literary form, you should check the BSFA out.

Books of 2011

23rd November 2010 / / 5 Comments

Anyone who has been to university may remember the feeling of looking at all the societies during Freshers’ Week and going, that looks fun, and so does that, and so does that… until you end up joining more than you reasonably have time for.

Well, I thought I’d have a look through some publishers’ catalogues for next year, and make a list of books that sounded interesting. You can guess where this is going.

So, let us be clear that the following is not a list of books I intend to read in 2011, though I certainly will read some of them. Think of it more as a kind of ‘advance recommended reading’ list, with the caveat that I don’t know what any of them are like. But that one looks interesting, and so does that one, and so does that…

***

Alice Albinia, Leela’s Book
Paul Bailey, Chapman’s Odyssey
Elia Barceló, The Goldsmith’s Secret
Kevin Barry, City of Bohane
Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Company Man
David Bezmozgis, The Free World
Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care
Frances Bingham, The Principle of Camouflage
Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie
Sharon Blackie, The Bee Dancer
Stefan Merrill Block, The Storm at the Door
Chaz Brenchley, House of Doors
Chaz Brenchley, Rotten Row
Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination
Keith Brooke (ed.), The Sub-genres of Science Fiction
Ellen Bryson, The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno
John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning
John Butler, The Tenderloin
Lucy Caldwell, The Meeting Point
Warwick Cairns, In Praise of Savagery
George Makana Clark, The Raw Man
Ben Constable, Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa
Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall
Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf
Enruque de Hériz, The Manual of Darkness
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
Will Elliott, Pilgrims
Stuart Evers, Ten Stories About Smoking
Tom Fletcher, The Thing on the Shore
Essie Fox, The Somnambulist
Claudie Gallay, The Breakers
Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory
Rachel Genn, The Cure
Andrew Sean Greer, The Path of Minor Planets
Jon Courtenay Grimwood, The Fallen Blade
Faïza Guène, Bar Balto
Benjamin Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
Sophie Hardach, The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages
Dermot Healy, Long Time, No See
Ida Hattemer-Higgins, The History of History
Alois Hotschnig, Maybe This Time
Lars Iyer, Spurious
Richard T. Kelly, The Possessions of Doctor Forrest
M.D. Lachlan, Fenrir
Simon Lelic, The Faciility
James Lovegrove, Diversifications
Michael Marshall, The Breakers
Cornelius Medvei, Caroline
Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air
China Miéville, Embassytown
Angela Morgan Cutler, The Letter
Bradford Morrow, The Diviner’s Tale
Adam Nevill, The Beast
Cees Nooteboom, Foxes in the Night and Other Stories
Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Helen Oyeyemi, Mr Fox
Matthias Politycki, Next World Novella
Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides
Christopher Priest, The Islanders
Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb
Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
Adam Roberts, By Light Alone
Geoff Ryman, Paradise Tales
Sunjeev Sahota, Ours are the Streets
Nat Segnit, Pub Walks in Underhill Country
Jacques Strauss, The Dubious Salvation of Jack V.
Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy
Jan van Mersbergen, Tomorrow Pamplona
David Vann, Caribou Island
Katie Ward, Girl Reading
David Whitehouse, Bed
Conrad Williams, Loss of Separation
Luke Williams, The Echo Chamber
Naomi Wood, The Godless Boys
Alexi Zentner, Touch

What are you looking forward to next year? What have I missed?

Fiction Uncovered

3rd November 2010 / / 5 Comments

Most of us, I’m sure, have our list of authors whom we wish were better known. I won’t hesitate to recommend Chris Beckett, Robert Jackson Bennett, Jedediah Berry, Keith Brooke, Trevor Byrne, Ramsey Campbell, Eleanor Catton, Rana Dasgupta, Tom Fletcher, Mary Gentle, Lesley Glaister, Nick Harkaway, Ryan David Jahn, Shane Jones, Graham Joyce, Simon Lelic,  Emily Mackie, Paul Murray, Helen Oyeyemi, Christopher Priest, Anna Richards, Dan Rhodes, Adam Roberts, Ray Robinson, Amy Sackville, Nikesh Shukla, A.C. Tillyer, Jeff VanderMeer, David Vann, Conrad Williams, and Evie Wyld as writers all deserving of your attention.

The Fiction Uncovered website has been publishing various people’s recommendations of overlooked and/or underappreciated fiction, and they recently asked me if I would contribute something. With that lengthy list of writers I gave above, what did I choose? Something else entirely. I’ve gone back to one of the best books I read last year – Ken Grimwood’s magnificent 1986 novel Replay

My piece on Fiction Uncovered is here, and  you can also read my original review of Replay here. And  do share in the comments any writers you think should be read more widely.

Opening The Portal

31st October 2010 / / 0 Comments

This weekend saw the launch of The Portal, a new website reviewing sf, fantasy and horror short fiction –both Anglophone and non. Besides its intrinsic interest, the site is relevant to my blog because I’m one of the contributors.

My first review for The Portal is of the September issue of the webzine Ideomancer, covering stories by Catherine Krahe, Lenora Rose, and Sandra Odell. The review is here, and the issue of Ideomancer under discussion is here.

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