Source of Lit - The Postman!

It's been a while since one of these posts and that's certainly not because the postman hasn't been kind in recent months (ie, bad blogger!).

Some recent titles that have hit the mailbox or porch that I'm really excited about:

Correspondences by Ben Greenman (Hotel St. George Press) - the fourth effort from Hotel St. George Press, this one, as you'll see from the image HSG so kindly provides at their site, is not your conventional book.  Inside the package one can find treatises with titles such as "You Know Jack" and "The Govindan Anathanarayanan Academy for Moral and Ethical Practice and the Treatment of Sadness Resulting From the Misapplication of the Above."

Beaufort, a novel by Ron Leshem forthcoming from Delta Books.  From the description on the back cover:

Beaufort.  To the handful of Israeli soldiers occupying the ancient crusader fortress, it is a little slice of hell -- a forbidding, fear-soaked enclave perched atop two acres of land in southern Lebanon, surrounded by an enemy they cannot see.  And to the thirteen young men in his command, twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Liraz "Erez" Liberti is a taskmaster, confessor, and the only hope in the face of attacks that come out of nowhere and of missions seemingly designed to get them all killed.

Notes from No Man's Land - American Essays by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press).  This, the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, will be read if only for that reason - the two other winners of this award in past years that I've read, by Ander Monson and Terese Svoboda, are two of my favorite nonficton books of recent years.

Gods and Soldiers, edited by Rob Spillman (Penguin Original forthcoming in May).   Per the copy, theis book "captures the energy, vitality, and immediacy of the continent today.  From northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, the pieces in this collection can be viewed as thirty different ways of seeing what it means to be African."  With both previously published and unpublished works by authors such as Achebe, Adichie, Lalami, Abani, Mabanckou, Wainaina, and Thiong'o, it's one I can't wait to dig into, piece by piece.

The Longshot, a novel by Katie Kitamura (Free Press, coming in June).  This one came out of the blue and just looks interesting.  It helps when I flip to the acknowledgements and see a thank you to an agent with whom I know I have similar taste in fiction. 

Ivory's Ghosts:  The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants by John Frederick Walker (Atlantic Monthly Press).  The author of A Certain Curve of Horn, which I loved, this is John Frederick Walker's next effort and if he does half the job he did last time around, I'll be caught up for a week or so in the story of elephants and ivory.

You, or the Invention of Memory by Jonathan Baumbach (Rager Media, from 2007).  2007 you ask?  And you just got it in the mail recently?  Yes, because the wonderful publicist, Lauren Cerand, is working with the author, and truth be told, if Lauren is pushing a book, I want a copy.  While I don't think you can ever say that somebody is working a job and not in it for the money - we all hope to live somewhere specific and eat semi-regularly at least - but Lauren does not take on books so she can pay the rent.  She finds enough books that she's gone bonkers over to subsist and she goes all out for those titles.  And like the aforementioned agent, I just have a really good feeling that if Lauren likes it, I'll like it.  So that, and some other recent exposure to Baumbach's writing, has me about 1/3 of the way through this one and being pretty amazed by it.

Comments

[Gabe Welsch]

Thanks for bringing the Spillman anthology to our attention. Read a lot of contemporary African lit in grad school, and so will get this. Thanks, Dan. Gabe Welsch

[Lauren Cerand]

Thank you for the kind words, Dan! I've always felt like you were a kindred spirit in that regard, from when EWN was still mostly email right up until Dzanc. I've loved watching your enthusiasm for great writing catch fire and spread and you helped create a space early on online for championing writers overlooked by a system that sometimes rewards and promotes things other than talent. Sometimes. At any rate, I love this post, not just for YOU, but also because Ben Greenman is one of my authors, too (his novel PLEASE STEP BACK is out from Melville House in May), as is Terese Svoboda, who I'll be working with on two books this fall (TRAILER GIRL in paperback and WEAPONS GRADE, new poetry). As always, I look forward to continuing the conversation. Warmly, LC.

[Matt]

I've read the first couple essays in the Eula Biss book, and liked them a lot. The first one's a knockout. All the rest of these look great. I'll definitely check out the Greenman book. Hotel St. George is a cool, cool press.

[Dan Wickett]

Finally, I write a post worthy of a Matt Bell comment!!!

[Laura van den Berg]

I've hear Correspondences is really great--looking forward to getting that one for sure.

[Cliff Garstang]

I've read YOU and was engrossed . . .