Shaina Reads

After struggling to dig in to anything over the last couple of weeks, I finally caught my stride and devoured the last two-thirds of Nicole Dennis-Benn's Here Comes the Sun. I am so grateful that I sat in on her panel at BEA, because her debut novel is stellar. Here Comes the Sun tackles the struggles of working-class women in Jamaica through the turbulent story of one family, and it should be on everyone's wish list for when it comes out this July.

And now that I've got debut novels on the brain (and on the Kindle—I'm keeping in this vein with Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller), I have started wondering what, if any, relationship I have with first works. Glancing through my Goodreads ratings over the years, there are not any trends that pop out. (This is further complicated by the fact that I am sure I have read books that I didn't know are their authors' first works offhand.) Some have been great, some less so, with my ratings converging on the middle of the road.

I think this ambivalence reflects how I think about debuts as well. Slapping the word "debut" on the marketing copy for a new book can work against it for me. I am particularly wary about requesting review copies of debuts because I don't have any prior experience with the author and cannot investigate any of their earlier work. I will often wait to see reactions from trusted bookish folk and then head to the bookstore or library. On the other hand, knowing that a novel I'm already digging is an author's debut can heighten my enjoyment of it. It can often take a book or two for authors to hone their voices, so writers that shine in their first titles never fail to impress me.

My super-scientific Twitter survey about this topic reveals that you all seem to have mixed feelings about debuts, too! Some of you love them and find yourself hesitating more over second novels (what if it doesn't live up to the first one?), others of you are picky about the types of debuts you seek out, and others among you could not care less if something is an author's first work.

So what's the deal with debuts, then? I suppose all this is to say that there isn't a deal with debuts, at least not for me right now. I do want to devote more time to reading them, and I will be keeping an eye on my thoughts as I read Fuller's novel and work through my BEA stack (also, perhaps unsurprisingly, full of first novels).

It's the most wonderful time of year!* Books on the Nightstand Bingo begins over the long Memorial Day weekend. If you haven't already, go build yourself a card! (But be careful: every time you refresh that link, it'll generate a new card for you. Be sure to save your original!)

I gotta tell you, I couldn't be more excited for this summer's card. It's a great mix of genres I know I'll enjoy and a few challenges that will get me off the beaten path.

In an effort to get back to my #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks aspirations, I'm thinking about restricting some or all of my reading to physical/digital/audio books I already have. That'll be nearly impossible for some squares (pretty sure my shelves aren't teeming with plague- and holiday-themed books), but I'm already fantasizing about my options for others.

By a small press — The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf), Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm (Graywolf)

Written by an author you've met — The Girls by Emma Cline, The Nix by Nathan Hill, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (loads of options here—thanks, BEA!)

Gifted to you — After Long Silence by Sheri S. Tepper (my boyfriend's mom), Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (Julianne), Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science by Alice Dreger (Shannon), Bohemian Gospel by Dana Chamblee Carpenter (Kerry)

With a child on the cover (gonna casually count cartoon children here) — Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

I also love how a few squares—"last book of an author before he/she died or retired," "steampunk," and "written for adult, but with illustrations"—are going to require some extra sleuthing.

*Well, besides Readathon time, of course.

Happy Monday, everyone!

I spent the last week of my life with a severe case of the gobbledybooks. I spent my work hours daydreaming about being in my apartment with my book piles, and then I got home and probably played Candy Crush instead. I also had trouble sinking into anything over the weekend. If anyone can give me tips on how to stop sabotaging myself like this, my TBR pile and I will thank you.

When I have been picking up my books, I've been hopping around with a vengeance. I finished A Wild Swan: And Other Tales by Michael Cunningham (a library grab based purely on tiny size and promised dark whimsy), The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (sob) and Things That Can and Cannot Be Said by John Cusack and Arundhati Roy (an unexpected BEA find that greased up the ol' brain cogs about war, democracy, and—most interesting to me—how funding and radical politics don't play nicely).

In case that wasn't a long enough book list, here are a few more I'm currently in the middle of: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn (which I raved about over the weekend), Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (a post-nuclear-Holocaust Africa featuring a fierce female shapeshifter on a journey—waiting for this to pick up, but I'm still enjoying the ride) and The Midnight Assassin by Skip Hollandsworth (because Lauren loved it and I didn't fully scratch my true crime itch earlier this month).

Gobble. Dy. Books. Talk to your kids about it, because this business is real.

A photo posted by Julianne :: Outlandish Lit (@_ulianne) on May 14, 2016 at 8:27am PDT

All told, I walked away with 28 books and several single-issue comics. I'm glad I resisted grabbing more, because I only just managed to get them all home without shipping a thing. Yesterday, I tweeted about five that I'm particularly excited about.

Yeah, that's it.

(Just kidding [though I thought about stopping there, I really did].)

If you're just tuning in, I've been mired in what I've taken to calling The Great Raven Cycle Listen* since the end of April. A modest boatload of my bookish Twitter buddies were buzzing over the impending release of the fourth and final of Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle books, The Raven King, and I thought to myself, what better time to binge?

Fast forward 21 days, and I've listened to more than 45 hours of Will Patton telling me (oh so tenderly) the stories of Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam and Noah, a group of Virginian teenagers on the hunt for a long-dead Welsh king. Having typed it, I'm realizing that's about the worst summary I could have given you. Let's try again: this is a story about magic. This is a story about friendship. This is a story about growing up. This is a story about more feelings than any human can possibly fit into his or her body. Good thing there are five (plus) teenaged bodies to hold them all!**

I touched on this back when I reviewed Megan Abbott's The Fever, but I always forget how much I love reading about the intensity of adolescence. Everything that happens is big and important and takes up the entire frame; where adults compartmentalize, teenagers stew in the muck of hormones and changes and growth. I adore getting swept up in the thick of it, which maybe means I need to make room for more young adult literature in my life.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Raven Cycle. Stiefvater writes such vibrant characters, and watching them fumble around and knock into each other like billiard balls is the majority of the fun. Now that the shock of the series ending is wearing off (please refer to the above YouTube video), I can say that the close of the quartet wasn't quite what I hoped it would be. I don't think I can say much more without running the risk of unintentional spoilers, so reach out if you want to chat about it.

In summary, I'm going to say what all those kind folks said to me earlier this year: if you're at all curious, give it a try! I challenge you not to get swallowed whole by the very first prologue.

Shout-outs to Janani, Jenny, Memory, Katie, Heather and Ana for fielding many a frenzied Snapchat and tweet over the last few weeks!

*I've called it this exactly one other time.

**OK, these other descriptions aren't much better, but I went into this story nearly blind. I think you can do it, too.

Helen Phillips blew up the book blogosphere last year with her surreal debut novel, The Beautiful Bureaucrat. While I wasn't blown away by the end of the story, that doesn't change the fact that I slurped down every last sentence of it in under 24 hours. When I heard Phillips had a short story collection coming in May, I jumped at the chance to read more of her utterly captivating writing in a different format.

In many ways, Some Possible Solutions delivers. The collection is sandwiched between two stories that took my breath away. The first, "The Knowers," explores what it would mean to be able to find out the exact date that you will die. Would you do it? If you did it, would you tell your loved ones? Would it change the way you lived your life?

"Isn't it macabre to know that we've lived the date of our death many times, passing by it each year as the calendar turns? And doesn't it perhaps deflate the horror just a bit to take the mystery out of it, to actually know, to not have every date bear the heavy possibility of someday being the date of one's death? I do not know the answer to this question." - pg. 7, Some Possible Solutions

Just as tender for me was the final story, "Contamination Generation." Danny struggles to bring joy into his daughter Lulu's life despite a tense marriage, a crumbling world and overwhelming envy of his wealthy neighbors. He is completely enamored of his daughter, who he believes has the oldest soul of the three of them.

"When Lulu was newborn we called her Muskrat, though neither of us really knows what a muskrat is. It was just that she seemed like a small, mysterious mammal. I remember the way she would arch her tiny eyebrows when I picked her up after she'd finished drinking as much as she could get from Sarah's nipple. ... I have no photograph of this face Lulu used to make, it was far too fleeting to ever catch, but that face of hers, those eyebrows peaked, imperious, disoriented, that is the face of my life." - pg. 217, ibid.

There were many good stories in between the bookends—the autobiographical "Life Care Center" broke my heart, and "Children" delighted me in its bizarre portrayal of the moment you realize that your kids aren't, and never really were, yours—but some others struck me as a bit one-note. There's a lot of melancholy in this collection; I'm not against melancholy, but I started to feel desensitized to and impatient with the same manifestations of sadness appeared again and again. I tried to stretch this collection out over time to avoid this kind of burnout, but I may very well have overloaded myself anyway.

Still, when does every story in a collection land home? Despite some misses, there are even more odd, poignant and (always) readable winners here, and anyone who enjoyed The Beautiful Bureaucrat will find at least a few gems to marvel over.

Many thanks to Henry Holt for sending me a copy of Some Possible Solutions for review consideration! The book will be available on May 31.

Sal's rules for the feature are as follows:

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, by Steve Silberman (Audio)

When I saw how much Shannon raved about NeuroTribes, I added it to my list. When I saw it for sale on Audible, I couldn't resist diving in immediately.

I went into this book knowing next to nothing about autism—not its history, nor the various ways it can manifest, nor (most importantly) the experiences of those on the spectrum and of their loved ones. Silberman covers it all, from the development of the diagnosis (and how Hans Asperger—and the syndrome named for him—was nearly lost to history) to the stories of individuals and families all fighting to be heard, to be supported, and to be understood as different rather than deficient.

While it is by no means a breezy read (it runs to nearly 19 hours/544 pages and is stuffed to the gills with good research), it is well worth your while if you've ever wanted to learn more about the history of autism and the reality of living with it. I highly recommend William Hughes's crisp narration.

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (Audio)

This one was on my largely abandoned Classics Club list, and I managed to burn through about half of it during Readathon.

For those of y'all who have been living under a rock with me, In Cold Blood tells the story of the quadruple murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. The story profiles the Clutters before their untimely demise; their murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith; and various members of the tiny Holcomb community leading up to and after the murderers' arrests and subsequent executions.

I've mentioned before that I was absolutely floored by the extent of the research* that Capote and Harper Lee conducted to make this book possible. Everyone in the story is (sometimes overwhelmingly) fleshed-out and human, even the men responsible for the Clutters' merciless slaughter. Another person might find the attention paid to Hickock and Smith's psychologies gratuitous and unnecessary, but I appreciated Capote's dedication to laying it all bare for us to judge ourselves.

I gotta say, it was sure was nice to hear Scott Brick's voice again after spending almost 40 hours with him for Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. He's an excellent narrator, and I think I enjoyed his reading of In Cold Blood far more than I would have enjoyed a print copy.

*'Bout this asterisk: there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Capote took immense liberties with his storytelling, including downright fabricating certain scenes and dialogue. While this definitely deflates the book's magnificence for me, particularly in how it affects the portrayals of the killers, I still say that any true crime fan worth his or her salt ought to check this one out.

Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho

Hyped from seemingly all sides, I had such high hopes for Zen Cho's fantasy debut.

Zacharias Wythe is the Sorcerer Royal, the highest magical office one can hold in Regency England, but he has two problems: 1) his dark skin and the mysterious circumstances of his mentor's death have combined to turn most of society against him, and 2) Great Britain's atmospheric magic is dwindling away seemingly without cause. Now it's up to Zacharias to prove himself, and he might just get some help from the spunky, determined Prunella Gentleman to do so.

A magical adventure with an eye toward racial injustice should be right up my alley, but it simply wasn't meant to be. I tried the book at two different times, and, on both occasions, I abandoned it less than halfway through. Though I can't quite pinpoint the cause—slow pacing? too much focus on magical politics?—all I know is that I kept wishing I was reading something else. Let's boil it down to a case of "good for [someone else], not for me."

Thanks to Ace Books for providing me with a copy of Sorcerer to the Crown via NetGalley for review consideration!

You know how I mentioned I was trying out The Raven Boys, despite not often reaching for YA? Well, I just might have flown through it and already checked out the rest of the audiobooks in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle, including last week's release, The Raven King. The audio came out at the same time as the print book (pretty darned thoughtful, if you ask me). I've been doing a long-distance buddy-listen with Janani of The Shrinkette, and I've loved being able to shout incoherently at her and others about certain plot points. (P. S. Thank you for listening to me shout incoherently. You know who you are.) Right now, I'm a third of the way through The Dream Thieves and hope to start Blue Lily, Lily Blue before the week is out.

Stiefvater commanded most of my attention last week, but I did manage to find time to finish listening to In Cold Blood by Truman Capote over the weekend. I am flabbergasted by the amount of reporting that would have been required to fully flesh out each of the people involved in and surrounding the Clutter family murder and its investigation. I have more to say about that, but I'll save it for the mini-reviews that I will (hopefully!) be putting up this week.

Once I work through what's already on my plate, I'm hoping to jump in on Andi and Melissa's #SmashYourStack event later this month. Unfortunately, my hopes aren't the highest:

@estellasrevenge Of course I start on a binge-listen of library books today! Just keeping the failure tradition alive. ;) @balletbookworm

— Shaina (@shainareads) May 1, 2016

And that's all she wrote. What are you reading today?