Top Shelf Recs #2
As part of this new Substack experience, I’ve decided to introduce a regular feature I’m calling Top Shelf Recs. These will mostly be for books I’m reading, but I might occasionally fold in other things as an excuse to talk about them. And the pairings can be anything! (I mean, it can all be anything, since this is my newsletter.) I’ll also be offering links to the publisher’s page, Bookshop, and a different indie bookstore each time. To see the first week’s picks, go here.
I’m cheating a little bit this week, because of yesterday’s bonus post and the fact I haven’t gotten nearly enough writing done this week and I have a call in 20 minutes with a dear friend to help her plot the next book in a series. Whee!
This week’s Top Shelf Recs are:
The finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Bradbury Award! I had the great honor to serve on the jury for this award with Megan Giddings (our chair) and Veronica Roth. It was a fantastic panel, and we read so many fantastic books and had so many fantastic conversations about them. It wasn’t easy to narrow things down to just five. But the finalists were announced last week, and the winner of this and the other Book Prizes will be announced in late April at the awards ceremony at the L.A. Times Festival of Books (see you there?).
Don’t know about this prize? It’s only the third year! From the site:
The Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, sponsored by the Ray Bradbury Foundation, honors and extends Bradbury’s literary legacy by celebrating and elevating the writers working in his field today. Bradbury always made his own rules, writing across specific genre boundaries throughout his career.
Here are the finalists we selected. I’m going to steal the beginning of the flap copy descriptions, because I’m not sure what the protocol is about writing more fully about the books until after the winner is announced! (Like I said, I’m cheating. A little.) I highly recommend checking out all of these.
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
The relevant linky: Via the publisher. Bookshop. Mysterious Galaxy.
Spirits Abroad: Stories by Zen Cho
Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead.
The relevant linky: Via the publisher. Bookshop. Mysterious Galaxy.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enriquez, Translated by Megan McDowell
“The lauded Argentine author of What We Lost in the Fire returns with enthralling stories conjured from literary sorcery” (O: The Oprah Magazine), in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.
The relevant linky: Via the publisher. Bookshop. Mysterious Galaxy.
The World Gives Way: A Novel by Marissa Levien
In a near-future world on the brink of collapse, a young woman born into servitude must seize her own freedom in this glittering debut with a brilliant twist.
The relevant linky: Via the publisher. Bookshop. Mysterious Galaxy.
Sorrowland: A Novel by Rivers Solomon
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.
The relevant linky: Via the publisher. Bookshop. Mysterious Galaxy.
Pair with: Brew and drink some dandelion wine, which a friend actually made us at the pandemic’s beginning and was delicious—before or after a trip to your public library, because Bradbury loved them (and who doesn’t?), and then pop on the movie adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes, because dark carnival and it has a fascinating backstory, and then finish your day with tomato soup or any kind of flaming dessert. Note: Given the way the news has been lately, let’s be clear: Flaming dessert, but no flaming books.
Greetings, new people! Welcome! Feel free to drop questions or topics you’d like me to write about in the comments. And I’ll be back next week with more bookish talk—in the meantime, have a great weekend. (Yes, I’m still watching. It’s over $19 million. Holy cow.)