#new nonfiction

[rrcraft-and-lore]

You all have no idea how much I'm waiting for this book, and there's a REASON I named the giant road through Tales of Tremaine, The Golden Road, and get into India's influence along the Silk Road - and, you'll be surprised to learn there were many mini branches off/of the Silk Road. The Jade Way/Porcelain Road, you had a full maritime Silk Road (seriously), a Salt Road. So many that specialized on certain things and you could quite literally make an entire life being a specialized bandit along those ways. But, anyways, yeah, I'm so looking forward to this. Idk what I have to do for the publisher to get me an arc cuz...I want this now.

[offdutyenglishteacher]

I was really excited about this book & kept going even though I was dubious about the scholarship…few and dubious references, and the author isn’t a historian. The style seems accessible, but the ultimate message of each entry is that women are OPPRESSED. No matter what cool things the women did, never forget they are OPPRESSED and always have been.

Who needs that?

Also, the pictures are all in black & white so you can’t get a good look at them.

I have been disappointed by so many new books lately that I have started going back to all the classics I never read, so stay posted. This may be the summer I finally read Moby Dick!

[book0ftheday]

Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction edited by Ida Yoshinaga, Sean Guynes and Gerry Canavan, cover design by Alex Camlin, published 2022.

[thecatsreaderslibrary]

Exciting News and Update By Award-Winning Author Elizabeth Upton!

My New Book is Almost Ready for Release. Sharing Some Updates and a Special Sneak Peek of an Excerpt.

[somuchthatisnothere]

•currently reading•

•Essential Labor by Angela Garbes•

[kjscottwrites]

And, importantly, share some recs!

[atavist]

Copper Kettle sold the best fudge on the Jersey Shore—and after its owner's body was found stuffed in a car, his murder went unsolved for decades. Things change, though. Atavist issue no. 143, WHO KILLED THE FUDGE KING?, is now available.

But a cohort of Ocean City residents insisted that the answers were right there for anyone who bothered to look. They believed that a toxic brew of prejudice, rage, and power had doomed the Fudge King.

I agreed, and thought that the story might make a great screenplay—a kind of South Jersey noir or David Lynch fantasia, where the flowers are pretty above the surface but gnarly worms lurk just below. Yet, soon I was hooked more deeply by the story of a fellow gay man living a relatively out life in the town where my family had spent our summer vacations. Someone whose reward for trying to yank Ocean City into the future was to become a target of hate and hypocrisy.

[floral-ashes]

🎉 You asked, and we listened! Gender/Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body is now available as an eBook on Amazon!

✨ Spread the word, and feel free to tag me with your thoughts once you’ve read it!

[hawnks]

Everyone thinks they can write a romance novel. Scratch that. They think they can write a romance novel better than all the other romance novels. Because of course they can. Romance is trite. It’s trashy. It’s simple.

Everyone thinks they can write a romance novel until they actually sit down to write one.

Because the people who disparage the genre are too embarrassed to engage deeply with the ideas that build the work, to make any meaningful commentary on anything, to add to any on-going conversations. They’re hovering above it all, too precious to land. Instead of writing a romance novel, they’re writing a novel that insists they’re beyond all of this, that says romance is beneath them, it’s not worthy of them.

So they end up with a parody of what they think romance is. I.e. they have written a bad romance novel.

I think it’s true that anyone can write romance. Anyone can do any of the cringey, heart-on-your-sleeve art. In fact, the hardest part is beginning.

Step one: You have to love the thing you’re making.

[deanmarywinchester]

previous years: 2022, 2021 / list of worst sf/f/horror

the bangers were BANGING this year, I kept mentally readjusting my top 5 list every time I read something good so the honorable mentions are extremely honorable this year. I hope you read anything that sounds good from this list and tell me about it!

top 5:

chain gang all stars by nana kwame adjei-brenyah: when I say that this book is like the hunger games for adults, I’m not making a glib comparison between two books about fighting to the death, I’m saying that I haven’t felt so intensely about a book since I stayed up late to tear through the hunger games and sob about it when I was thirteen. this book is satire as real and devastating as I’ve ever read, with action scenes that feel like they’re being dripped directly into my hindbrain and a unique and believable love story. put it on hold at your library literally RIGHT now.

the actual star by monica byrne: about a post-climate catastrophe utopian society built around a religion started by a teenage girl in 2012 based on mayan traditions, and also about the teenage girl, and also about the maya. this book made me crazy because the future society felt real enough to touch, with its radical openness and collectivity solving problems that exist today but causing new ones that are totally novel and meaty and interesting to dig into. read it if you’re interested in different ways of being.

the spear cuts through water by simon jiménez: really, REALLY good, fresh, original epic fantasy. jimenez picks a few perspectives to stick to but hops fluidly into bystanders’ brains to give you their perspectives, so even background characters feel fleshed-out and no one’s pain is dismissed as a side effect of heroic battles or whatever. highly recommended if you like framing narratives and stories about stories, and like epic fantasy but wish it wasn’t mostly about finding acceptable enemies to slaughter with cool swords

the dispossessed by ursula k. le guin: I love how much this book is about hope as clear-eyed commitment to the boring and difficult work of a brighter and necessary future. sometimes the work of the glorious anarcho-communist revolution is leaving your university post and romantic partner for months at a time to dig irrigation ditches so nobody starves when there’s a drought. read this book for diplomatic conniving, a clash of values between a capitalist planet and its dissident moon, and hope.

imperial radch trilogy and its spinoffs by ann leckie: what if you were built to be a weapon of the empire, a serene sentient battleship with thousands of human bodies all containing your consciousness, and you lost all bodies but one and had to figure out how to be a person, singular and alone? what if you were a 19th century british military officer and you slept for a thousand years into the decline of the empire? what if you were grown in a vat to be a facsimile of human and then told off for eating all your siblings even though eating them was SO interesting? what then. leckie’s prose is incisive and funny, her unreliable narrators are wonderful, and her stories are intimate even though the backdrops are insanely huge. 👍.

honorable mentions:

house of leaves by mark z. danielewski: guys? anyone hearda this one? anyway. Something Is Wrong With This House horror with themes of storytelling and grief. recommending that you slam this book as fast as possible like I did so you can hold all its layers in your head at once.

the lathe of heaven by ursula k le guin: i thought I didn’t like ursula k le guin, and then I read this book, went OH and immediately devoured the hainish cycle. im so sorry miss ursula. this book about a hapless pacific northwesterner whose therapist is making him dream different realities into being is so sharp and sly and funny. themes of choices, ends and means.

he who drowned the world by shelley parker-chan: I liked the prequel to this addition to the radiant emperor duology. I LOVED this book. parker-chan has invented new and exciting modes of fucked-up codependency and im obsessed. historical light-fantasy with themes of ideals vs what it takes to reach them, gender, and regret.

babel by r. f. kuang: found the didacticism of this book annoying, but i really loved the concept of this novel and the way it slowly ratchets up the stakes. this novel is for people who want to smash the fun of the magic school genre against the reality of universities’ complicity in the imperial machine.

piranesi by susannah clarke: im late to this book but it’s such a weird little gem. peaceful yet unsettling. a man takes care of an endless house with an ocean inside it until he realizes the house is stealing his memories. themes of memory and devotion.

hell follows with us by andrew joseph white: I can only read YA these days if it’s a reread or if it’s genuinely good and really really strange. this is that. weird gory fantasy about a trans teen who escapes his militarized post-apocalyptic christian cult and finds himself turning into something Different. my only gripe is that he uses 2023-perfect language to describe transness and I think he should be inventing genders weve never even thought of. such is YA.

some desperate glory by emily tesch: a rolickin’ good space opera time with terrible women <3. a thriller about how the golden child of her isolated human-supremacist space station cult deprograms and the consequences of it. this feels like a grown-up SPOP until the theoretical physics gets involved. big fan

the library of mount char by scott hawkins: this book is harrow the ninth in suburbia until it becomes a more macabre version of the absurdity of the gomens apocalypse. God raises his children, sometimes brutally, to hone their powers in a neighborhood that mysteriously keeps out outsiders. came for the dysfunctional mess of the god-children and now I can never look at a grill the same way

runners up:

bunny by mona awad: books that make you WISH you were in mona awad’s MFA program where she must have been having a terrible time. the weird one out in an MFA program accepts overtures into the unbearable rich-girls’ clique to find out what they’re Up To. themes of aimlessness and the intersection of class with the art world

camp damascus by chuck tingle: have you ever wished that you were simply too autistic to be successfully demonically brainwashed into not having gay thoughts? horror-flavored thriller that was just fun

light from uncommon stars by ryka aoki: this author put a bunch of genres in a blender and came up with something fun and surprisingly cozy. an immortal woman must sell violinists’ souls to the devil in exchange for their fame, or he’ll drag her to damnation instead. there might be aliens and coffeeshop romance involved. definitely a blender.

the fragile threads of power by v. e. schwab: if you haven’t read a darker shade of magic and you like tightly paced high fantasy and historical fantasy elements, political intrigue, and pirates, read that first. if you have, there’s more now! lila bard are you free on thursday when I am free

the library of the dead & our lady of mysterious ailments by t. l. huchu: a teenage girl provides for her family in soft-apocalypse magic edinburgh with a job carrying messages from ghosts to their living relatives. an ongoing mystery series about the intrigues she uncovers among the dead.

severance by ling ma: this books is on the list of media that is the terror to me: it's about an apocalyptic disease that makes people reenact their routines mindlessly until they collapse. intimate apocalypse novel with themes of late capitalist malaise.

ocean’s echo by everina maxwell: i didn't really like winter's orbit because i'm just not a romance guy, but this second novel stands alone and the romance is more insane and less of the entire point of the novel. (also it's between essentially Discworld's Carrot and Moist Von Lipwig, which is. really something.) in the Space Military, a buttoned-up mind controller must pretend to bend a socialite with illegal mind-reading powers to his will. what if fake relationship but the relationship they have to fake is "brain linked master/servant pair."

the murderbot diaries by martha wells: novellas about a misanthropic security android who jailbroke itself in order to watch tv. the name "murderbot" is a joke but it very much did kill people <3 themes of paranoia and outsiderhood, corporate wrongdoing, repentance, and trust

black water sister by zen cho: zen cho is good at any kind of fantasy she writes, including this, her first modern fantasy novel. a closeted lesbian has to move in with her family in malaysia after college in the US, only to discover that her dead grandmother has some unfinished business involving a local goddess and a conniving real estate developer. themes of family, gender, and place.

the way inn by will wiles: a man who’s paid to pretend he’s other people to attend conferences in their place gets trapped in an endless Marriott. has the sharp humor of a colson whitehead corporate satire until it becomes more straightforwardly horror-flavored.

[offdutyenglishteacher]

Sweet and interesting…this isn’t “Devil Wears Prada” of nannying. The sad part is that the author never does catch on to the lie she’s bought into about her college loans…which sends her into the field in the first place…and how many levels the wealthy have used her. Indentured servants got their freedom after 7 years, but she’s still paying. I hope she finally finds real success someday.

[book0ftheday]

South to America (advance reader copy) by Imani Perry, planned to be published 2022. Cover art is Cotton Hair (2009) by Sonya Clark.

[monstrousdesirestudy]

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this but it’s so good. New book title from @htmelle: “The Monster Fucker Manifesto”; what do we think gang? I think it’s hilarious especially as a communist x monster fucker 🤣

[yilisbookclub]

101 Essays that will change the way you think, a personal development book by Brianna Wiest is a compilation of short essays that discuss why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine & become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life.

[tetw]

The 250 Best Articles from the New Yorker

We've updated our collection of the best articles and essays from the one and only New Yorker. Click though for essential nonfiction from one of the world's greatest magazines.

[elektramouthed]

Much of the talk about “family values” in our society highlights the nuclear family, one that is made up of mother, father, and preferably only one or two children. In the United States this unit is presented as the primary and preferable organization for the parenting of children, one that will ensure everyone’s optimal well-being. Of course, this is a fantasy image of family. Hardly anyone in our society lives in an environment like this. Even individuals who are raised in nuclear families usually experience it as merely a small unit within a larger unit of extended kin. Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin. Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible. It gave absolute rule to the father, and secondary rule over children to the mother. By encouraging the segregation of nuclear families from the extended family, women were forced to become more dependent on an individual man, and children more dependent on an individual woman. It is this dependency that became, and is, the breeding ground for abuses of power. The failure of the patriarchal nuclear family has been utterly documented. Exposed as dysfunctional more often than not, as a place of emotional chaos, neglect, and abuse, only those in denial continue to insist that this is the best environment for raising children.

bell hooks, from All About Love: New Visions