#what to read next

The Raven Cycle 

(The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King & Opal)

By Maggie Stiefvater

I was reluctant to read a book about a group of boys, but the dream elements in The Raven Cycle echoed some of the themes in my own book so I decided it would be valuable research. I tend to eschew male protagonists because I surfeited on a diet of them growing up when I longed to read about intelligent, daring, creative women.

ButThe Raven Cycle not only boasts a menagerie of multidimensional nuanced male characters, but also fierce, dynamic, wild females as well. I am so glad that Maggie Stiefvater lured me in with her brilliant premise, lyrical prose and unexpected landscape so that I could appreciate this gorgeous gritty tapestry of teen male kinship (and dare I say the sensuality of cars?) through not just a trilogy, but a quartet of books - plus a bonus short story. Oh, and for all of us that curse the end of a good series, guess what? There is a spin-off called The Dreamer Trilogy which I am enjoying now narrated by the brilliantly pliant Will Patten.

Blue Sergeant chronicles the names of the dead as the pass on the ley line each year. A seemingly ungifted seer in a house of talented female clairvoyants, Blue never seems to “see” anything until she sees the ghost of Gansey. This encounter catapults Blue into an adventure with a group of misfit prep school boys in search of a legend king.

With the kind of grand reveals that make a reader do a double take, Stiefvater builds a wholly unique world full of fantastical nightmares and earnest possibility that exists just a stumble away from our own.

Written with the intelligence of an adult but the poetry and wisdom that we lose as we age, this southern gothic tarot phantasm has the imagination of Erin Morgenstern and the dark possible magic of Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.

So, let’s hear it for the boys, and for an author who has rendered such vivid multidimensional heroes - and heroines - to add to the canon of YA literature.

Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson has done it again. You may remember Kevin Wilson from his darkly comedic Royal Tennenbaums-eque take on the hapless performance art family in The Family Fang. Or perhaps from his alternatively optimistic commune of utopian ideals in A Perfect Little World. 

While similar in tenor, imbued with Wilson’s quixotic hopefulness and unexpected chaos, Nothing to See Here is wholly unique in premise and scope.   

Lillian, a smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks, fights her way into a privileged prep school where she and her rich roommate, Madison, bond during their first year. Then an infuriating circumstance (which I won’t spoil here) leads to a split. Fast-forward ten years later when Madison, now married to a senator, summons Lillian for an urgent, yet mysterious, job opportunity.  Lillian, still stuck in a dead-end life, jumps at the chance and quickly finds herself dousing the flames of the senator’s twin offspring. 

Literally. 

Because they self-immolate when they get agitated. 

Wilson writes in such a way that I simultaneously want to ask him to be my friend and tell him to get out of my head. His commentary sometimes made me laugh out loud in doctors’ office waiting rooms. He describes a spoiled little boy removing toys from a chest: “like clowns from a VW bug, out came so many stuffed animals that I felt like I’d dropped acid.”  And on feeling out of place: “I felt like some mermaid who had suddenly grown legs and was now living among the humans.” He expertly describes “bread that cracked open like a geode” that makes me crave a loaf immediately.  And then he subversively sneaks in plenty of touching real-life wisdom about things like life, parenthood and meditation: “And I had never thought about it this way, had always assumed that whatever was inside me that made me toxic could not be diluted, but each subsequent breath made me a little more calm.”

Wilson’s is the type of voice we need more of in the world: unfailingly witty, unexpectedly original and always, and perhaps most importantly, relentlessly hopeful, even when it seems like the world is burning down around us. 

*Netgalley provided B3 with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: November 5, 2019

Social Creature

by Tara Isabella Burton

I did not want to love this book.  Maybe it’s the cover. Maybe it’s the Talented Mr. Ripley tripe. Maybe I want to be the type of reader who exclusively loves Pulitzer-Prize projects that contain a minimum of a dozen words I have to look up and archaic references I’m not old enough to understand. But I guess I’m not that reader. A page-turner is a page-turner, no matter the genre. And I simply could not put this down.  It is guilty pleasure reading at its best: quick, gritty and dangerous, an up-all-night feast that actually leaves you full rather than hung over.

A 36-hour read, Social Creature was the most satisfyingly salacious book I’ve picked up in a while. Meet Louise and Lavinia, young writers on opposite ends of the financial spectrum. In New York. And if we’ve learned anything from Shakespeare and Downtown Abbey, it never ends well for someone named Lavinia.

It’s a book for hot summer nights and cold boxed wine, over-priced mixed drinks followed by late-night leftovers.  Yes, it is tagged as a “Talented Mr. Ripley” for a new age, but what is more fascinating is that it is a “Talented Mr. Ripley” for the new-age-New-York-minute-digitally-depraved-diaspora. You might not have to look up any archaic references, but you may reconsider your friend list on Facebook. #chooseyourfriendswisely #MorePoetry!!!

*Thank you @doubledaybooks for providing B3 with an ARC.

The Word Exchange: A Novel

Alena Graedon

I recently remembered a book that I read two years ago. I got it in my head that it was called The Language Exchange. A google search for The Language Exchange does not lead to any books, however, and my failed search struck me as so odd, I started to panic. Had I imagined this book? This book about language and technology? This book in which technology spreads a virus and erases language as we know it? It was part Stephen Vincent Benét’s “Nightmare Number 3” and part my worst fears manifest in a real experience. What if the book didn’t actually exist? Or worse, what if it did exist at one time, but was absorbed into the digital juggernaut and coopted as a takeover plan by the machines themselves?

Turns out, the book I was thinking of is actually called The Word Exchange. So we may be safe.

For now.

I didn’t write about The Word Exchange two years ago because I was abroad at the time, and speaking to kye in Orkney was the only version of blogging we had at our disposal. But the fact that I still remember it now convinces me that it is an excellent fable for our times.

The story, like all good stories, is a love affair with language. Ana, one of the few remaining wordsmiths, is compiling an archive of language while the world has turned their attentions to handheld Memes for communication, for entertainment, for, well, everything your iPhone is doing right now. Suddenly Ana’s father goes missing, leaving only a literary clue behind while the people of the world fall sick with a “word virus.” This concept is so creative and terrifying, I want to simultaneously share this book with the world and lock it securely away from readers’ vulnerable eyes.

If the word-lover premise doesn’t get you, consider it an ineluctable opportunity to learn new vocabulary. I actually liked vocab quizzes in high school and it was teaching me plenty of chestnuts I’d never even heard of before. Keep a dictionary handy.

It’s a little Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, a little All the Birds in the Sky, and a lot of Armageddon via the Tower of Babel.

Because what if, like a file on your computer, your language, your ability to communicate, your very relationship with the world, could be corrupted? What if it is already happening right now? lLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Should you eat chocolate cake? Maybe not. Is it extremely satisfying when you do? Of course. The Couple Next Door provides your sugar fix. Is it going to provide you nutrition? Probably not. But it is so satisfying you may just want another helping.  

I got this book as part of my Book of the Month trial last night. I finished it this afternoon. Need I say more? 

Quintessential suspense at its best, with all the twists and turns of a classic who-dun-it, The Couple Next Door profiles Anne and Marco, newbie parents who leave their infant sleeping at home while they attend a dinner party next door. Can you guess where this is going? I tried at several turns, but there was always another curve in the road. 

I did the classic “I’ll just finish this chapter” move, but then my eyes would start scanning the next page.  300 pages later…Lapena kept this taut novel pinging until the final sentence. Will there be a sequel? If so, I’ll definitely be reading it.   If not, she wrote a killer ending. 

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders

I bought All the Bird in the Sky for a friend. Her bookclub vetoed this as a book suggestion, but she was excited about it, so in an act of solidarity with her deeply-rooted belief that books should be worthy of discussion, I deposited it on her bed one day and blamed book fairies for the drop. 

Then I promptly started reading it myself and stole it across the country with me before she could open it. (I had the best intentions. Also, spending money on a book purchased for a friend does not count as buying a book for yourself.)

A unique combination of the post-apocalyptic world of Vanessa Vaselka’s ZAZEN and the gritty magical reality of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Anders’ novel is possibly the only book that would be accurately categorized as Sci-Fi/ Fantasy. 

(There is this odd phenomenon - a bizarre combination of sci-fi and fantasy genres - that proliferates search engines and bookstores alike. It’d be like grouping cats and dogs together in a shelter section called Dats and considering the choice between the two arbitrary - which any cat or dog parent will indubitably dispute. But, this book is truly both Sci-Fi and Fantasy.) 

In the rich world Anders has invented, thick with angst and dense with meaning, a 2-second time travel device and talking animals coexist. It’s nostalgic and dread-filled, a children’s book for adults, an embedded warning for our collective future.  

Turning each page sounds the death nell for the end of the world - or a solemn harbinger for science that contains real magic - or is it magic that contains real science?  - that will save us all.