Hooray, It’s Time for New Books!
Hello, friends! I hope you are all doing well and reading something fabulous. What an amazing year it has been for books! The summer may be winding down, but the new releases never stop. I worked all weekend, going through catalogs, and most have added almost two hundred books to my TBR! (Related: Someone PLEASE figure out a way to stop time so I can read more.) Today, I have a reissued award-winning story collection, a memoir from a librarian fighting the good fight, and a middle grade campfire horror story.
As for this week’s other new releases, I am hoping to get my hands on The Snarling Girl And Other Essays by Elisa Albert, Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah, and Sunderworld, Vol. I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Patricia and I talked about some great recent books, including Dungeon Crawler Carl, I’ll Have What He’s Having, and Long Live Evil.
Homemade Love: A Short Story Collection by J. California Cooper
J. California Cooper was a prolific Black playwright and author who won multiple awards and honors, including Black Playwright of the Year, a James Baldwin Writing Award, and a Literary Lion Award. Her work is often compared to Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. This collection won the American Book Award in 1989, and now it’s being reissued. It contains thirteen folksy tales of down-home characters and the different love in their lives, told with warmth and grace.
Backlist bump: Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
It is not news to any of you that book banning is a horrifying, continuing problem in America, especially if you have been reading what Rioter Kelly Jensen has been sharing about the issue. Amanda Jones is a small-town librarian in Louisiana who decided she wasn’t going to let her community remove books by marginalized authors and diverse voices from the shelves. Her fight to stop book banning has received nationwide attention, including from Oprah, as well as death threats from small-minded, hateful people. This book is a memoir that also details the crisis across the country and how people can help stop the hate and get involved locally.
Backlist bump: Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, Hyung-Ju Ko
Tales from Cabin 23: Night of the Living Head by Hanna Alkaf
Calling all Goosebumps fans! This is a fun, scary campfire story for the end of summer! Twelve-year-old Alia has always felt unlucky. She lives in a tiny village and can’t ever seem to get things to go right. Her bad luck continues when her contentious older sister returns home. Then Alia hears about a frightening monster from Malaysian folklore haunting the night sky of her town, and wonders if maybe she can turn things around if she finds it and saves the day. This is the second book in the Cabin 23 series out this year — be sure to check out The Boo Hag Flex by Justina Ireland too!
Backlist bump: Finch House by Ciera Burch
This week, I am reading The Least of My Scars by Stephen Graham Jones and The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker. Outside of books, I am considering starting Homicide: Life on the Street. I have never seen it but I’ve always heard amazing things, and it has so many incredible actors. But I am not sure if my heart is ready to watch Andre Braugher since he died. I think his role as Captain Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one of my favorite performances from television. In earworms, the song stuck in my head this week is “See You When You’re 40” by Dido. And here is your weekly cat picture: Go, go, Gadget arms! Zevon is showing off his stripy pajamas. That’s what I call his arms. (They’re — wait for it — the cat’s pajamas.)
“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.” —salty Charles Dickens
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