2023 Debut Books I’m Excited About

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries: 

Book One of the Emily Wilde Series

by Heather Fawcett

On Earth as It is on Television

by Emily Jane

Jellyfish Age Backwards: 

Nature's Secrets to Longevity 

by Nicklas Brendborg

River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer

Spice Road 

Spice Road #1 

by Maiya Ibrahim

Shubeik Lubeik

by Deena Mohamed

What's Gotten Into You: 

The Story of Your Body's Atoms, 

from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner

by Dan Levitt

Really Good, Actually: A Novel

by Monica Heisey

Very Good Hats 

by Emma Straub

 (debut as a picture book author)

This is Not My Home

by Vivienne Chang

Do you have any of these on your list?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.    

Real Mail. What's Feeding Me. And Trying to Write.

 

This year I set a goal of finishing (in some form or fashion) the memoir about the summer I spent working in Yellowstone Park in 1975. I've got a rough draft that I cobbled together during NaNoWriMo one year that I'm working from, and I'm taking a writing class to keep me motivated. 

I'm rereading some books on writing---Bird by Bird and Writing Down the Bones and Old Friend from Far Away---and I'm reading some memoirs---Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Pilgrim on Tinker Creek, A Sand County Almanac---with my goal in mind.

I'm not taking this seriously. If I finish it, and it's awful...who cares? I think it will be fun just to write a whole book!

Adam Bede by George Eliot (Chapter-a-Day)

Writing Down the Bones: Finding the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg (Writing)

Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White (1001 Children's Books)

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (Recent Fiction)

Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg (Writing)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (Nature)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (Nature)

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp (Fiction)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Classic)

Last week I posted here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Born a Crime

It's a New Year, So Shall We Try for Happy This Time?

Authors Yiyun Li and Matthew Salesses at Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp: Friday Book Friends

I now have read at least one book for every challenge.

Friendly February Calendar from Action for Happiness

In the hopes that I can share what is inspiring me with others, I've added this section to my weekly Sunday Salon...

Joyce Boatright's post about revisiting and revising our New Year's Goals seems timely: Taking a Mulligan.

The Artist Who Couldn't Draw by Danny Gregory. For all of those who think they can't draw.

Good Thing #1

Mail. Real mail.

Care from Care's Books and Pie

and I have been exchanging letters and postcards.

Care recommended This Time Tomorrow,

a fun fiction book about time travel.

Good Thing #2

Pine Warbler.

Project FeederWatch.

Good Thing #3

Sometimes I think I'll never be able to find 

any more of the 1001 Children's Books,

and then I stop by a wonderful bookstore in Galveston

and I find The Gathering.

For $1.98.

I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

Other places where you may like to link up over the weekend are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Friday Book Friends: Book Beginnings on Fridays, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop... I've been intending to join these fun book memes for many years, and I finally got around to trying these out on Fridays in December.  I plan to continue participating in 2023.

Today's Featured Book 

 Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries 

by Heather Fawcett

Genre: Fantasy

Published: January 10, 2023

Page Count: 320 pages

Summary: 

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, muddle Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

"Shadow is not at all happy with me. He lies by the fire while the chill wind rattles the door, tail inert, staring out from beneath that shaggy forelock of his with the sort of accusatory resignation peculiar to dogs, as if to say: Of all the stupid adventures you've dragged me on, this will surely be the death of us. I fear I have to agree, though this makes me no less eager to begin my research."

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Freda's Voice and visit others in the linky. 

"For the first time, he looked at me as if I had surprised him. I guess he'd never had much reason to bargain with mortals when he could simply sing them senseless and then drain their hearts dry."

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

February 3rd - 9th - What was your favorite genre to read as a child? Do you still read that genre, or do you read something else now? (submitted by Mark @ Carstairs Considers)

Magical stories! 

Edward Eager's books, 

like Half Magic and The Time Garden and Magic by the Lake.

A Wrinkle in Time.

Fairy tales.

I loved magical stories when I was a kid.

I still love them,

but I have a hard time finding them now that I'm a grownup.

Authors Yiyun Li and Matthew Salesses at Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series

Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series

Monday, January 23, 2023

Congregation Emanu El

Yiyun Li and Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses: "On the other side of wonder is grief."

Yuyin Li: "My student says, 'I want to write about trauma.'

'Oh no,' I say. 'Keep it murky.'"

Matthew Salesses: "You'll never exhaust the mystery of being alive."

Yiyun Li: "The Three Little Pigs---that story is about free will.

One pig chooses to have the straw house.

All my characters are stubborn.

They may choose the straw house."

Yiyun Li: "I'm a strong believer that people are not knowable.

I will never know my characters."

Matthew Salesses: "I don't know you and

you don't even know yourself."

From the Inprint Website:

YIYUN LI, a MacArthur Fellow, has been described by Salman Rushdie as “one of our major novelists.” She is the author of nine books, including the novels Must I Go, Where Reasons End, and The Vagrants, the short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. About her profound meditations on grief and loss, The Washington Post writes, “Li has stared in the face of much that is beautiful and ugly and treacherous and illuminating – and from her experience she has produced a nourishing exploration of the will to live willfully.”

She joins us to share her new novel The Book of Goose, a story of fate, art, influence, and intimacy between childhood best friends. When Agnès receives news of Fabienne’s death after years of estrangement, she is forced to reconsider Fabienne’s fraught role in helping her escape their war-ravaged town and launch a successful writing career. According to Sigrid Nunez, “Any new book by Yiyun Li is cause for celebration, but now more than ever do we need the clarity and humaneness of her vision.” Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages, and her honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Windham Campbell Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Li is a contributing editor for A Public Space and throughout the pandemic led a virtual book club on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. She was born in Beijing and serves as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

MATTHEW SALESSES is “definitely a writer to watch” (Robert Boswell). A former Houstonian, Salesses received an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship and the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing while earning his PhD from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He is the author of four novels, including I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, The Hundred Year Flood, and the PEN/Faulkner Award finalist Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear. He has also written a nonfiction book called Craft in the Real World, which explores alternative models of the writing workshop for marginalized writers and was greatly informed by his time teaching Inprint Writers Workshops. About the book, Laila Lalami in The New York Times writes, Craft in the Real World “is a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told, and for whom they are intended.” Salesses was named one of Buzzfeed’s 32 Essential Asian American Writers, and his essays on adoption, race, and parenting have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR Code Switch, and Salon.

He joins us to read from and talk about his new novel The Sense of Wonder, “equal parts a love letter to the intricate art form of basketball; a blade-sharp page-turner that delves deep into the rotten heart of America; and an ode to K-drama and the liberating power of love” (Laura van den Berg). According to Catherine Chung, “Matthew Salesses’s new novel is so freaking good I can’t stand it. Blistering, confident, full of swagger and heart, it is also an exhilaratingly smart treatise on race and our collective imagination that lays bare our limitations before blasting joyfully past them.” Salesses was adopted from Korea at age two and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

For more about this event, take a look at this post from Rae of Powerful Women Readers.

For more photos, link up at Wordless Wednesday, Comedy Plus, Messymimi's Meanderings, Keith's Ramblings, Create With Joy, Wild Bird Wednesday, and My Corner of the World.