Sorting Through 50 Fall Books

I have a few posts I hope to get through today, but let me start with one that I need to finish to straighten out my library account.  Just a few days ago CBC published a list of 50 books by Canadian authors coming out this fall.  I figure a few of them can be put on hold (though none seem listed on Overdrive/Libby yet), but the rest I'll have to circle back if I see them at the library and am in the right frame of mind or perhaps more likely when I find them remaindered at BMV and I bring them home.  I mean not that I need to add anything to my reading lists and piles, but some of these look pretty interesting.  I guess I'll group them into must-reads and might-reads.

Must Read:

Aliens on the Moon by Thomas King
Self Care by Russell Smith

Might Read:

You've Changed by Ian Williams
Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
The Trial of Katterfelto by Michael Redhill
Big of You by Elise Levine
Suddenly Light by Nina Dunic
A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News by Cary Fagan

I may end up promoting Pick a Colour and possibly You've Changed, but otherwise I will try to show some restraint and get through everything else I need to read before even considering the might reads.  

I did wrap up Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman but didn't like it much at all.  I sort of liked early Richler more, even though Duddy Kravitz is incredibly crass, but his later novels (this and Barney's Version) just turn me off.  I suspect it is a combination of the main characters making terrible choices and that I am less and less comfortable reading dialogue in what seems very stereotypical English/Yiddish patterns.  I have the same issue with Howard Jacobson, whose work I don't enjoy either.

I have only a few more pages left in Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries.  This was erudite throughout (a bit over the top once in a while) and quite funny in places, though some of the repeated gags do get a little stale.  One of the better books read in 2025 for sure...  As I mentioned before, this uses Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter as a launching pad but goes in a very different direction.  One of the more amusing bits is the public debate between a minister (the narrator's father) and the town atheist.  By the end, they have each convinced the other and "switched sides."  Interestingly enough (to me), I was in such a debate in undergrad (in a class called "Ways of Thinking") where the point was to have a debate but to argue for (and from) the side you didn't agree with.  I ended up in a debate about religion and leaned heavily on C.S. Lewis (as does the atheist character in the novel, who becomes the narrator's step father!).  I do believe I made a more genuine and compelling case than my opponent whose heart wasn't really into it.  Nonetheless, I was not convinced that Lewis was right at the end!

I do think the next 4 or 5 books will be from the piles in the back study and then maybe I will feel things are just a bit more under control as these piles shrink.  Here's hoping! 

Update (8/25): A different list said that Pynchon has a book coming out in the late fall!  It's called Shadow Ticket.  Given that I never got around to reading Bleeding Edge or even Inherent Vice, there is no point in pre-ordering it, and I can just wait until it shows up in used bookstores...

There are a handful of newly translated books listed in this piece, but the only one that grabs me is Hunter by Shuang Xuetao.  Surprisingly, it is already available as an e-book through the library.  Score!

I've started in on Lord Vishnu's Love Handles.  It is a quick read, and I should definitely wrap it up in a few days.  However, the narrator really grates on my nerves.  He is a supposed to be relentlessly shallow and apparently a bit of a misogynist and basically a frat boy who hasn't grown up.  I guess the tension is all about how this unappealing bro gets serious and uses his psychic powers for good, aided by an incarnation of Vishnu.  But I find the narrator so unappealing that I have a lot of trouble imagining I will hang onto the book, even though it is a signed edition.  I mean the plot isn't that different from Singh's Goddess for Hire, but she is merely shallow and her narrative voice doesn't grate (as much).

 
I'm also a few pages into Denis Johnson's Angels.  This novel is all about the underbelly of America, as two underdogs meet up on a Greyhound bus.  (It's probably time for me to type up my own story inspired by a Greyhound bus ride.)  The novel could easily be filmed by Quentin Tarantino.

I bought a copy with this cover.

It's not bad, though I would have slightly preferred the original Vintage cover, which is where I got the push to read the book in the first place.

Update (8/27): I often go months or even a year between checking out which authors are coming to give readings or sit-down conversations at the TPL.  Not that I haven't seen some very good ones, including Heather O'Neill (up in North York actually).  Anyway, it happened that I looked the readings up tonight, and, while I missed out on Mariam Toews (sold out), there are tickets for Michael Redhill in a few weeks, Souvankham Thammavongsa in Oct. and Gary Shteyngart, whose Vera, or Faith is somewhere in my never-ending list of books to check out, is coming in Dec.  All of these should be interesting, though I've read the most by Shteyngart, so I am looking forward to him the most.  I suspect if he is doing a book signing, I'll pick up Vera, or Faith.  (Apparently, I probably should read Nabokov's Ada before tackling Vera, which might be a bit too much of a big lift.)  Also, there is a 250th birthday party for Jane Austen in Dec. at the library.  I might go.  I could use this as an excuse to finally read Persuasion (but hold off on Emma for another couple of years...).