Sorry for the delay in writing, but we’ve been busy prepping for the holidays. From now until Dec. 24, we’ll be posting a daily review of a literature-themed Christmas gift. You can make it a last-minute gift for the literary subversive in your life, or just enjoy the reviews for review’s sake.
We begin with an audio interview with best-selling author Carrie Vaughn, whose new novel, Kitty Steals the Show, would make the perfect stocking stuffer for the lycanthrope lover on your list.
With the holiday shopping season imminent, publishers are bringing out the big guns in coming weeks. Recommended Reads offers a sampling of some of today’s new releases, great for personal pleasure or holiday gifts.
Ian McEwan can turn any setting into a simmering pot of dread, but his best works te
nd to be set in war-torn 20th century Europe (The Innocent, Atonement). His new novel, Sweet Tooth, concerns Cold War intrigue and romance. Featuring a female protagonist, McEwan puts his young student to work undercover for MI-5. She finds herself engaged in cultural and emotional warfare.
The Inexplicables, the fifth installment of Cherie Priest‘s Clockwork Century series, finds Rector “Wreck ’em” Sherman about to be discharged from the orphanage. Feeling guilt over his friend’s death, Sherman plunges into a dystopia of drugs and the undead.
Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium Trilogy gets the graphic novel treatment, with each book in
the series set to be re-imagined in two-part, hardcover illustration. Makes sense: Lisbeth Salander is a comic book wet dream, and the majestic vistas of Sweden should look amazing in ink. Today, Book One of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits shelves. Illustrator Denise Mina has previously inked Hellblazer, A Sickness in the Family and other works of noir fiction.
Cue the Singularity: the enigmatic inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil returns with How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. Here, the author explores reverse-engineering the human brain, which could be applied to creating more intelligent machines for the bio-mech future.
Stop a moment. Breathe. Deeper now. Sure, it’s still north of 90 in Colorado, but as the days die quicker, a liminal chill fills the soul. For my money, you can keep summer and winter. But autumn…
The overdone cliché in book reviewing is the summer reading list. I’m not sure who started it, or who all these people are reading at the beach, but I’m certainly as guilty as the rest. But truly, the best time to indulge in the written word is autumn, with its cooler climes, longer nights and olfactory-fueled melancholia.
And aren’t books always better when paired with a hot mug of tea?
Some of my favorite September/October memories are of spending Friday nights among the stacks at the Boulder Book Store. As a youth, my friend and I would drive a half hour from our book-deprived hometown in Pennsylvania to Twice-Loved Books in Youngstown, Ohio. And some of the best autumn reading I’ve acquired at Denver’s Tattered Cover, or the Poudre Library District in Fort Collins.
As an avid reader of horror, I often find my favorite books marginalized on the shelves—except during the fall. For two months, the storefront displays boast the books that make my year-round reading list.
You will find plenty of horror previewed here at Ensuing Chapters, but there’s a wealth of diverse autumn gold coming your way in the following weeks.
Last year, we lost one of the great journalists of our time, and one of my personal heroes, Christopher Hitchens. This champion of reason was known for his bold reporting on war and religion, and was equally brave in the face of cancer. Published on Sept. 4, Mortality will appeal to Hitch’s loyal readers, but is also of interest to anyone who’s lost someone to cancer (e.g. nearly everyone).
Few writers have captured the depth and beauty of the natural world like transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. His new book—yes, new book—October, or Autumnal Tints, is a lecture he gave near the end of his life. He envisioned it one day being released in print with accompanying illustrations.
That day was Sept. 3.
His tribute to the greatest of all months, penned in the autumn of his own life, reframes the changing colors and dying leaves as symbols of maturity rather than decay. Reading Thoreau is always a treat. Reading his musings on autumn in autumn seems like paradise.
In the song “Little Too Clean,” Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner croons, “Don’t you know dirt will find you/ and dirt reminds you/ that dirt will always be there.” It’s the song that keeps looping in my head while reading the jacket of Moises Velasquez-Manoff’s new book, An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases.
Exploring one of the big issues of our time, science writer Velasquez-Manoff uncovers a shocking rise in food allergies and autoimmune disorders, such as Celiac and ty
pe-1 diabetes, and equally shocking treatments that rely on parasites rather than pharmaceuticals. One of the unexpected contributors to our sickness, he finds, is that sanitation and antibiotics have altered our inner ecologies to the point that we lack the organisms that keep us in check.
We have become a little too clean—or maybe even a lot too clean.
What do we know about Lee Child’s compelling protagonist, Jack Reacher? He likes travel, he’s a sharpshooter with a wicked double-tap, and no matter where he roams, he always ends up in the same place: trouble.
Celebrating the 17th installment of the Jack Reacher series, plus related short stories (personal fave: “James Penney’s New Identity” from Thriller), Child has climbed from the crime writing underground to the top of the best-seller list. He is likely to summit once again with the release of A Wanted Man on Sept. 11.
I am an avid reader of Child’s books. I love the Jack Reacher franchise. But when the peripatetic maverick hits the big screen, I hate that it will be Tom Cruise (boo, hiss) portraying Reacher.
Who’s really writing this book blurb? I thought it was me, but one might want to reconsider after reading Michael S. Gazzaniga’s Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Gazzaniga surveys the science, psychology and ethics at work in our thoughts and behaviors.
Who’s in Charge? is a work of great importance as breakthroughs in neuroscience have revealed greater complexities than ever imagined at work in the brain. And launched the next great frontier of philosophical inquiry.
Published last year, the paperback reprint hits shelves Sept. 11.
Legendary journalist Bob Woodward goes from Deep Throat to Deep Gridlock in The Price of Politics, his 17th book. In this detailed account, Woodward chronicles Washington’s attempts to rescue the economy these past few years.
Talk about the ideal primer to the madness of election season. For the more devout political readers (and I know a few of you), Woodward’s new book is political porn to get you in the mood as we steamroll toward November.
We’ll preview other September releases in the coming weeks. Please follow Ensuing Chapters to receive our weekly previews, reviews and interviews.
It’s not too late to pack in some great summer reads. Here is Ensuing Chapters‘ recommended reads for the week of Aug. 13, highlighting upcoming and recent releases.
Journalist and somnambulist David K. Randall explores the schematics of slumber in this round-up of sleep study anecdotes and analysis, to be released Aug. 13. This promises to be a quirky and informative science read in the vein of Mary Roach and Sam Kean.
This seminal work of gonzo journalism, released digitally for the Nook earlier this month, is a hawg-stomp of danger, debauchery and wicked escapism. This ultra-violent ode to the outlaw biker, released in 1966, still stands as a cultural document of ’60s 
counter-culture, a fearless feat of immersion reporting and an epic fantasy for anyone who’s felt like ditching the mainstream, straddling a Harley and living free amid the underworld.
Of course, there is no fairy-tale ending for Thompson, who finds himself on the wrong end of the bikers’ boots. Edgy, controversial, hyperbolic, sensationalistice. Yep, it’s all those things. It’s also damn good. Finally, a reason to get a leather jacket for your Nook.
Darwin wasn’t the first scientist to observe natural selection at work. His discovery was, like his theory, the product of years of evolution and adaptations, both in thought and society. Here, Stott, an English teacher and author of earlier books on Darwin, gives credit to the thinkers and tinkers who laid the groundwork for On the Origin of Species.
Recently, Stott was interviewed by New York Times‘ book reviewer John Williams. You can read their Q&A here.
This manifesto of misery celebrates the purist of guilty pleasures: the sad song. Sure, we’ve all enjoyed a slow-drag at a high school dance, or hit repeat on Soul Asylum’s “Endless Farewell” whilst nursing a heartbreak. But why do we enjoy them even when we’re happy?
Ballads, like heartaches, come in all varieties, but for Houghtaling, they all share a skeletal structure, which he details in This Will End in Tears. Susan Stamberg, of National Public Radio, recently interviewed Houghtaling. He offered insights to the genre, a few musical suggestions and a sneak preview of the book here.
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