Prompted by similar posts I’ve seen at other blogs, this is the inaugural edition of what I hope to be a regular monthly series (or perhaps more frequent). It is basically a list and brief description of recently released and forthcoming books that have attracted my attention. So, here’s a summary of the books I’m lusting after as September begins:
Child 44, Tom Rob Smith — Although I’m generally not a big fan of thrillers, this combines two of my recent interests. It’s on the Man Booker longlist and set in Stalinist Russia.
Home, Marilynne Robinson — This one is kind of a no-brainer given how much I loved Gilead, to which it is billed as a companion story. It comes out tomorrow and although I’m number 1 on the “hold” list at the library, I may have to stop at the bookstore on the way home.
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, David Shields — Now how can I resist a personal view of aging written by a guy my age?
The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, Daniel Levitin — This is another situation where a prior book leads me to the author’s new book. I enjoyed Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music enough that I’m looking forward to his further explorations of our relationship with music.
To Siberia, Per Petterson — Having loved Out Stealing Horses and enjoyed In the Wake, I look forward to Petterson’s 1996 novel finally hitting the U.S. at the end of the month.
White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov — I recently heard an interview with translator Marian Schwarz, leading me to want to pick up this new translation of a novel about the effects of the Russian Revolution on a middle class family in the Ukraine. It also fits my fixations with foreign literature and Russia.
You lack lust, you’re so lackluster.
“Possession,” Elvis Costello, Girls Girls Girls
