New Releases on the Horizon

Here are some books to be published later this year (or possibly into 2017) that I'm interested in. And they fit in well with this week's top ten Tuesday theme as well. Check out the "Speculative Fiction in Translation" post at Tor.com if you're interested in more translated science/speculative fiction titles.




 Everfair by Nisi Shaw is a steampunk alternate history of the Congo. Thanks to Jordan at Forever Lost in Literature for highlighting this on her blog this week.





Invisible Planets is a collection of science fiction stories by Chinese authors translated by Ken Liu. Due out in November 2016.






 Iraq + 100 is a collection of speculative fiction stories by Iraqi authors, imaging what Iraq will be like in 2103, edited by Hassan Blasim.






Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, tranlsated by Susan Bernofsky, is about a family of writers and performers in East Germany.






Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi & winner of the 2014 prize for Arabic fiction. Jonathan Wright is translating it into English. (Arabic cover shown.) Hadi al-Attag roams the city of Baghdad, collecting the parts of people who have been dismembered in explosions & sewing them into one body. When a displaced soul enters the body, it comes to life and sets about taking revenge on those who killed its parts.





Spanish Women of Wonder is a collection of stories written in Spanish and translated into English by Sue Burke. This was a kickstarter project, and I'm sure these authors will be new to me. (No cover available.)

2018

And finally, though this isn't a translation, it's one I'm really excited about: Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels are being published in an omnibus edition with illustrations by Charles Vess!

Wondrous Words Wednesday

 

I love learning new words when I'm reading. Check out bermudaonion's blog if you'd like to learn some in addition to the ones I've picked up this month.

Two from James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips.

Rodomontade is a noun referring to boastful or inflated talk or behavior. According to Wikipedia, the term is a reference to Rodomonte, a character in the Italian Renaissance epic poems Orlando innamorato and its sequel Orlando furioso.

Negentropy is negative entropy, or reverse entropy. It means things becoming more in order: more organized, structured, functional. (simple Wikipedia)

Panegyric is a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something.

" . . . he filled my tooth, while intoning a panegyric to all my teeth . . ." from My Friend Muriel by Jane Duncan.

Polysemy: poly- "many" + sema "sign" is the capacity of a sign/symbol to have multiple meanings.

"The Polysemy of Veiling"  (a section title) in What is veiling? by Sahara Amer

Top Ten Tuesday: Books set outside the USA

OK, so I went a little overboard on this one. I'm looking forward to what others post for this meme, since I'm always looking for international reads. If you want to see what other bloggers posted, check out this link.

The first three on my list came to mind easily, I had to look up the rest on my Library Thing account to jog my memory. Except for as noted, the author is from the country the book is set in.

Fiction

Golden Scales by Parker Bilal

Genre: mystery (first in a series)

Setting: Egypt; author is of British & Sudanese descent

A golden age & The good Muslim by Tamima Anam 

Genre: historical fiction

Setting: East Pakistan/Bangladesh during & after war for independence

The hired man by Aminatta Forna 

Genre: historical fiction

Setting: Eastern Europe; author is Scottish & Sierra Leone ish?

Dust by Yvonne A. Owuor

Genre: historical fiction

Setting: Kenya

The garden of evening mists by Tan Twan  Eng

Genre: historical fiction

Setting: Malaysia

Anything by Amitav Ghosh, an  Indian writer,
especially Hungry Tide, Sea of Poppies & River of Smoke

Genre: historical fiction 

Setting: India, China

A Persian Requiem by Simin Daneshvar, translated by Roxane Zand

Genre: historical fiction

Setting: Iran

God's of tango (Argentina) &
The invisible mountain (Uruguay)
by Carolina de Robertis

Genre: historical fiction 

Author is of Uruguayan descent.

The three body problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (first in a trilogy)

Genre: science fiction
(set during the cultural revolution, this novel won the Hugo for best novel in 2015.)

Setting: China

Non fiction

Behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo

Genre: narrative nonfiction

Setting: India; follows several families in a slum near the Mumbai airport.

The author is an investigative reporter who writes on poverty in the US. 

Born & raised in the US, Boo is a Pulitzer winner & this book reads easily.

Story of the Qu'ran: it's place in Muslim life by Ingrid Mattson

Genre: non fiction

I found this a fascinating description of the history of the Qu'ran & it's interpretation from an academic believer's perspective. I include it since the Qu'ran originated in what we now know as Saudi Arabia, and the academic study of this scripture was pioneered and continues to be taught more outside the US than in.

If the oceans were ink: an unlikely friendship and a journey to the heart of the Koran by Caria Power

Genre: memoir

Setting: England & India

The author is a US citizen; her parents were Quaker & Jewish. She met Sheikhh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, an Indian imam living in England while they were both at Oxford University. This book chronicles her study of the Koran over one year with Nadwi, as well as her description of his training & activities as an imam.

The butterfly mosque by Willow Wilson

Genre: memoir

Setting: Egypt

The author is a US citizen. The book describes meeting her husband and converting to Islam while living in Egypt.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite 2016 Releases

I looked at this meme, hosted by the Broke and the Bookish, and thought, I haven't read many new releases this year! And then I looked at my list of reads and discovered I read more new books than I thought.

My favorite new releases so far:


I enjoy the Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh, (though I'm not thrilled with the covers) and I particularly liked this one because I've been waiting a long time for the shoe that drops towards the end of this book. Some people have been disappointed in Visitor because there isn't as much action as there is in many of the novels, but I enjoyed getting to know the kyo in Visitor, and getting better acquainted with the tensions between humans - ship personnel, station/rescued personnel, & Mospherians - in Tracker, also released this year. I like character development, and if the writing is good and the characters are interesting, a book doesn't have to have an action-packed plot to keep my interest.


Speaking of  books with more character than plot, this was one that grew on me. The Life of Elves by Muriel Barberry was a slow build, and I particularly enjoyed the French characters and descriptions of the village. This was one I had to read a bit at a time, and I didn't care so much about the characters in the Italian city. I haven't read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, so I don't know how it compares.



The fourth and final book of the Raven Boys cycle, The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater, was very good. I loved the characters in these books - Blue, Adam, Gansey, Noah. The plot was a bit thin by this time, but Stiefvater writes complex, believable characters.

Others I've read:

• Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (science fiction)
• Tracker by C. J. Cherryh (science fiction)
• Every heart a doorway, by Seanan McGuire (fantasy)
• Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip (fantasy)
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (science fiction)
• Early Warning by Jane Smiley (historical fiction)

And what's on my horizon?

Homegoing by  Yaa Gyasi (historical fiction, out this month)

Underground Railroad by Colin Whitehead (alternate history, due September 2016)

Among Others

Finished Among Others this weekend, and loved it. Not sure why it took me so long to get to this. I think I had some fear that it would be "book dropping" and no plot, or would be "just" another coming of age story. But I am happy to say that I fell into this one with a sense of wonder, and that wonder was still intact at the end of the book.

It is a love letter to science fiction and fantasy for us book nuts, and I'm not sure the book dropping furthers the plot, and it is a coming of age story. But in my opinion the writing is better than average.

Curiousity about  what happened to Morganna kept teasing me further in, and I liked the understated use of magic, which can be read as real or something Morwena creates. Finally, she sticks the ending - both resolving the relationship between Morganna and Morwena, and allowing Morwena to stand up to her mother.

Thanks to my friend Regina for coordinating a trip to Woodland Gardens for a free Yoga class last Thursday! It also motivated me to visit a class at the local rec center on Saturday morning after I began mowing my jungle in the front yard and met my new next door neighbors.

Here are two books I've read in the past four months that I did spend time reflecting on.


Land of love and drowning is Tiphanie Yanique's first novel, and it's a fascinating one. The action follows the lives of two sisters, Eona and Annette, from their childhood (and the transfer of the Dutch Virgin Islands to the USA) through much of the twentieth century.

The sisters are over a decade apart in age, and consequently, their experiences and expectations are quite different. I quite enjoyed the differences in dialogue, the puzzle of what was “real” or “magically real” and particularly the development of Eona’s character over time.

The story touches on many themes and blends history and folklore into what I eventually found an enchanting and haunting tale. The book was a slow starter for me, and I am grateful to the Literary fiction by people of color group on Goodreads for helping me finally finish the story.

Thanks to the early reviewers program on Library Thing for providing a copy of this novel for review consideration.

  Friedhelm Lubisch founded a respected construction company and donated a fortune to the Association of Displaced Persons in Germany. But his son Robert never lived up to his expectations.

While going through his deceased father's papers, Robert is reminded of the story his father told him of stealing a dead SS guard's papers and running away from the war front. He also finds a photograph of an unidentified woman from the same time period, and decides to try and identify her.

This novel deftly weaves past and present together to consider the question of identity. What makes us who we are? Our family? Our actions? Our secrets? What is the cost of keeping secrets? Or of breaking silence? The past is the relationships and actions of five young men and women, close friends on the eve of World War II, who are separated by actions and ideaology. The present is Robert's search for the identity of the woman in his father's photo. The intersection of the two results in a murder and the uncovering of at least two secrets.

First published in Germany as Wer das Schweigen bricht (the one who breaks the silence), this novel won the 2012 Deustcher Krimi prize for best crime novel. Translated into English by Aubrey Botsford.

I received an electronic copy of Silence by Mechtild Borrmann from NetGalley for review consideration.

Why do I feel so busy lately? Maybe because I am? This week I'll be home two nights out of 5. Work one night, but the other two are fun things: first class on playing fiddle/singing with a group, and a rehearsal with Voices of Love, my threshold choir.

Three books finished, but I'm not really commenting on these, other than to say, yes, I enjoyed them.

• Men we reaped by Jesmyn Ward, memoir of the years when she lost five young men from her generation and hometown to death.
• The burglar who counted the spoons, a Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery by Lawrence Block.
• An officer and a spy by Robert Harris, a novel about Georges Picquart and the "Dreyfus affair."