Tuesday's Top Five
This week's best new releases, and some superb Substack posts
Bethanne’s Top 5 New Releases for December 10, 2024:
The Rest Is Memory by Lily Tuck
Czeslawa Kwoka, a Polish teenager, was sent to Auschwitz, and there became the subject of a portrait by fellow prisoner and camp photographer Wilhelm Brasse. Tuck imagines Kwoka’s story, one that cannot be told too many times or in too many ways.
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda
Poet Shimoda’s essay collection about the World War II-era internment of Japanese-American citizens in camps. The author blends his own insights with material from many interviews with those once imprisoned. It’s a remarkable testament.
The Odd Women by George Gissing
Reissued from the Smith & Taylor Classics imprint at Unnamed Press, Gissing’s 19th-century novel about a pair of unmarried sisters who struggle to find their way in Victorian London includes a conversation with critics Adam Dalva and Merve Emre.
Clay Walls by Kim Ronyoung (AKA Gloria Hahn)
Penguin Press’s Paperback Original of this 1986 novel will, with luck, allow a new audience to read Gloria Hahn’s story about the Korean-American immigrant experience in Los Angeles during the 1920s — it’s based on her family’s stories.
Life/Insurance by Tara Deal
Deal’s brief novella won Regal House’s Fugere Prize this year. The protagonist is a New York City-based collage artist piecing together life with a composer spouse who is unable to talk. What happened? What will happen? Unusual and worth checking out.
5 Recommended Substack Posts:
On Nikki Giovanni’s Life and Our Not-So-Brave New World from Literary Bruja by Juliet Diaz — Wish I’d written it, but also want to be sure as many people as possible watch Giovanni take James Baldwin to task.
The Ultimate Literary Gift Guide from The Hyphen by Emma Gannon — My own fingerless gloves are from the divine Ó’Máille in Galway, Ireland. Unless you live in a retirement facility or play fast and loose with your thermostat, fingerless gloves can make your writing life much easier in the colder months.
How to Keep A Writer’s Notebook from The Clearing by Katherine May — For me, 2025 will be all about starting a commonplace book.
A review of Heartbreak Is the National Anthem by Rob Sheffield from The Manuscript: Taylor Swift and Literature by Clio Doyle — I remain immune to Tay-Tay’s charms, but that doesn’t mean I’m right. Doyle’s Substack might change my life.
Verbs Against the Machine in Anecdotal Value by Hollis Robbins — I know the fierce, stupendously intellectual and yet completely unpretentious Robbins IRL. She IS the theory of anecdotal value — conceived of it, named it, knows her semiotics cold. Read what she writes about AI. Don’t look away from it.