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Spring books: Publishing industry's annual thaw brings some balmy reads |
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Written by John Mark Eberhart, McClatchy-Tribune
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Friday, 30 March 2007 |
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As the late Beatle George Harrison once wrote, "It's been a long, cold, lonely winter."
But Wednesday brought the vernal equinox and with it the publishing industry's annual awakening to a new season of book buying.
More important perhaps, this spring's titles reveal an emotional thaw — a reawakening to matters of the heart, as opposed to matters of state. Big-picture issues such as war, genocide and political/corporate corruption aren't absent from the spring releases, just invaded for the moment by a rivulet of humanism.
Think Aryn Kyle's new book "The God of Animals" instead of John Updike's dark 2006 novel "Terrorist." Replace Jose Canseco's "Juiced," last year's downer about rampant steroid use in baseball, with Walter Isaacson's awe-inspiring biography of Einstein.
With this turn to the personal, here are some of my picks for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young reader books of spring 2007.
FICTION
"The God of Animals," by Aryn Kyle. This debut novel follows the coming-of-age of a 12-year-old Colorado girl. Her father is a rancher, or he is for now; money or more accurately the lack thereof may strip this family of its way of life. Kyle, who lives in Montana, won a National Magazine Award three years ago for "Foaling Season," a short story. That yarn is now the first chapter of "The God of Animals."
On sale: Now.
Forecast: You can read it in a couple sittings on the sun porch.
"Rant," by Chuck Palahniuk. What a cheery book: It's the fictitious oral history of Buster "Rant" Casey, everybody's favorite ... serial killer? What in blazes is this book doing on my list of "warm" books? Easy: Palahniuk is as funny as he is grim. "Fight Club" and "Survivor" and most of his other books can be read as black comedies; you just have to work at it.
On sale: May 1.
Forecast: With Palahniuk, partly cloudy is as good as it gets.
"Stormy Weather," by Paulette Jiles. The title and setup — it's the Great Depression, and one Texas family is facing some long odds — sound pretty severe, but don't be fooled. Jiles is a writer who discovers hope in the most challenging of lives. She proved that with "Enemy Women," which found beauty and expectation even in the bloody tragedy of the American Civil War.
On sale: May 8.
Forecast: Sunbeams filtering down through gaps between thunderclouds.
"The Edict," by Bob Cupp. I was leery of this one, with its subtitle "A Novel From the Beginnings of Golf." I haven't seen many golf novels, or sports novels for that matter, that really work, though baseball has seen Bernard Malamud's "The Natural" and football got its due in Peter Gent's "North Dallas Forty." But Cupp, a golf course designer, delved back centuries into the origins of the game, which inspired his sure, highly readable narrative.
On sale: May 15.
Forecast: A good read, breezy but not windy.
"Falling Man," by Don DeLillo. Here's another author who gets unfairly tagged as being overly bleak, when in fact he's every bit as adept as Palahniuk at subversive humor. "White Noise," his book about a toxic cloud, had me smiling as often as I winced, and "Underworld" dazzled with its epic beauty. In "Falling Man," DeLillo the novelist reconstructs the world after 9/11. When he writes here of the "hovering possible presence of God" but also the "loneliness and doubt in the soul," it's impossible to remain unmoved.
On sale: May 15.
Forecast: Cirrus clouds in an endless sky.
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NONFICTION
"Planet India," by Mira Kamdar. The author makes the case that India, not China, is the next great power. Already India's is the fourth-largest economy. If trends continue, India will have 1.6 billion people by 2034, making it the world's most populous country. Unfortunately, as Kamdar points out, such growth does not happen without negatives, including the possibility of continued impoverishment for many citizens.
On sale: Now.
Forecast: Ask Mira Kamdar.
"Einstein," by Walter Isaacson; "Edith Wharton," by Hermione Lee; and "FDR," by Jean Edward Smith. I'm cheating, tossing three big biographies into one listing, but it's OK because the three books have so much in common. Each takes a major personality — a scientist, a writer, a politician — and gives the subject the deluxe bio treatment. Each is lengthy; together, these three titles total nearly 2,500 pages.
On sale: April 10 for the first two, May 15 for "FDR."
Forecast: They'll have you hoping for a surfeit of rainy days.
"The Long and Short of It: The Madcap History of the Skirt," by Ali Basye. The author, a Seattle-based fashion/travel writer, dresses up the dress with this illustrated history. Basye begins with the loincloth (men, of course, have worn skirts) and ends up in the 21st century commenting on the "low-rise" phenomenon, which applies not only to skirts but jeans and seems to require a body no older than 19 or so. This book could have been trivial; the talents of Basye and designer Megan Noller Holt certainly raised the hemline.
On sale: Now.
Forecast: Gusty winds.
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POETRY
"Sunflower Brother," by Sam Witt. A visiting professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Sam Witt has won numerous honors for his haunting, metaphorical verse. This latest collection won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's Open Competition. Good call. "Sunflower Brother" is excellent throughout, though I still say poetry collections that run to 90 pages are too long. Witt's opening poem, "The Cold War," fuses the personal with the universal, and throughout this book he never loses sight of the need to do that.
On sale: Now.
Forecast: Beauty in darkness.
"Asylum in the Grasslands," by Diane Glancy. Another "despite myself" pick. This collection is even longer than Witt's, and Glancy dabbles in prose poetry, which I dislike. But when she writes, in "I Hear a Medicine Man," that "we are another wave migrating to the grasslands of the next world," I can't help but be carried along.
On sale: Now.
Forecast: Storms at sunset.
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YOUNG READERS
"The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats," by Dr. Seuss with annotations by Philip Nel. One of the world's great stories just got bigger. The book is set up with Suess' original narrative on the right and the annotations on the left. Thus it's easy for a canny adult to share the story with a youngun, then go back and enjoy the explication.
On sale: Now.
Forecast: Even if it's wet and the sun is not sunny, you'll have lots of good fun that is funny.
"Today I Will Fly and My Friend Is Sad," by Mo Willems. In a word, wow. The brilliant Willems, author of "Knuffle Bunny," returns with not one but two books that launch a new series for 4 — to 8-year-olds, "The Elephant & Piggie Books." In all these books Willems plans to use a cheerful pig and a not-so-sunny elephant. The juxtapositions of those two personalities are enough to make anyone smile.
On sale: April 1.
Forecast: Clear blue skies, no matter what that silly elephant thinks. | Only registered users can write comments.
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