Upcoming books you are psyched for?

One Hundred Years of Vicissitude by Andrez Bergen

Very cool. I found,

Andrez Bergen - One Hundred Years of Vicissitude (novel teaser)

Yeah I failed at linking it If you haven't read Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat by him I recommend it. OHYOV is supposed to be a sort of prequel to it.

Wild Thing by Josh Bazell

There are a ton more, but that one comes out next month.

Listening to the audiobook sample from his first novel. It sounds good. Also I need a new audiobook for my long walks with my dog. I used to have a rabbit (seen in picture) but he died. Now I have a Beligan Malinios.

His first book Beat the Reaper is highly recommended. Go get it! You'll love it.

also, thanks for the heads up on the new bazell.

amazon doesn't have a date for it. But I could have sworn goodreads or amazon sent me an email saying it was coming out next month...

Also - new Dan Chaon! Await Your Reply was beautiful.

I got the email too. February 8th for the hardcover and Kindle editions.

Edge of Dark Water by Joe Lansdale

I'm pretty stoked about this one. It sounds so good and it's been a while since I've read any of Lansdale's stuff. It comes out in March.

Praise of Motherhood by Phil Jourdan
http://www.zero-books.net/books/praise-of-motherhood

I've been looking forward to this book for a while now.

Oh, good one! I can't believe I forgot about that. It's only been in the works for how long now? It must have been terribly difficult to write too.

I know. I have so much respect for Phil and I can't imagine how difficult this book was to write. I'm sure and I've heard it's quite a beautiful piece of work. I'm anxious to read it and can't wait to be able to have a physical copy in my hands.

Bought the audio version today. Haven't gotten a chance to start it (except for the audio sample which I liked a lot--I like how the writing is immediately interesting, as opposed to with other writers where you have to give it some time). But just wanted to let you know you made a sale at least!

haha - let me know what you think!

Two years and two months.

It is also very beautiful and touching.

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

i want to read await your reply again as if it were the first time.
very excited for his new book.

Dashiell Hammett's The Crime Wave: Collected Nonfiction
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-crime-wave-dashiell-hammett/10079424...

Hope it comes out this year, it's been in the fridge 2 years already.

Oh yeah, that collection looks awesome!

I love Hammett's writing.

Who doesn't love Dash? Fools and usurpers, that's who!

Why "usurpers"? Because I called it that way. That's why.

For all those who like Dashiell Hammett, I strongly recommend, apart from his novels and usual collections of short stories :
Lost Stories
http://www.emerybooks.com/lost/ls-hardcover.htm

Around Hammett :
Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade
http://www.emerybooks.com/discovering/discovering.htm

Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to the Maltese Falcon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786419628/thethrdetwebs-20

I've never read Hammett. I've read Jim Thompson, but then I got tired of him and have avoided the entire genre since. Which is probably pretty superficial and stupid of me, I ought to be shot by Gabriel Byrne.

Caitlin R. Kiernan's story for the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 is called
The Maltese Unicorn.

For all those who missed it above, this is the teaser trailer for her upcoming book (but this time I'm inserting the video cuz I learned how and I'm proud).

In today's Times there's an article/PR promotion about an upcoming memoir by a woman who interned at the White House in the JFK era.

It's probably trash but I don't care.

Once Upon A Secret: My Affair With President John F Kennedy And Its Aftermath

A retired church administrator and grandmother from Massachusetts has just written a book recalling her teenage years as a debutante and graduate of a prestigious girls’ boarding school. Marion Alford’s memoir contains drugs, parties and intimate details of an affair with President John F Kennedy.

It is also the story of an inexperienced young woman who felt unable to refuse the most powerful man in the world and became entangled in an affair that continued, she claims, after she went to college and became engaged to be married. Throughout, until their last meeting at The Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan seven days before he was assassinated, she called him “Mr President’, she says. He called her “Mimi’.

Mrs Alford, who is now 69, says she was invited to a party after four days as an intern at the White House in the summer of 1962. David Powers, closest aide to President John F Kennedy, refilled her glass with daiquiri until the commander in chief arrived and asked if she would like “a tour”.

The tour led straight to a bedroom, Mrs Alford claims. “The fact that I was being desired by the most famous and powerful man in America only amplified my feelings to the point where resistance was out of the question.”

Mrs Alford said she later acquiesced to a request from the President to perform a sexual act on his aide, David Powers. “I’m ashamed to say I did,” she writes, though she refused when he asked her to “take care of” his brother, Ted Kennedy, saying: “Absolutely not, Mr President”.

Suggestions that Mrs Alford had been President Kennedy’s teenage mistress were first aired, in an off-hand fashion, in 2003 by the historian Robert Dallek, who had interviewed a press aide from the Kennedy administration.

“Apparently her only skill was to provide sexual release for JFK on those trips and maybe in the White House,” Mr Dallek said.

Mrs Alford, who was then Mrs Fahnestock and a widow, (she would remarry in 2005) acknowledged the truth of the story to a reporter from the New York Daily News, saying she felt relieved to be able tell her two daughters “a secret that I’ve been holding for 41 years”.

She has now said a great deal more. Once Upon A Secret: My Affair With President John F Kennedy And Its Aftermath, recounts pillow talk of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the President’s determined attempts to extract details of all the things “all you girls do locked up in that boarding school”.

Later, when she went to college, he would call her under the name “Michael Carter’, ask her about her teachers and what she might have eaten for dinner and invite her back to the White House when his wife was away.

Mrs Alford claims she and the President spent an “inordinate amount of time” in the bath, where they named his collection of rubber ducks after members of his family. She recalls a party at Bing Crosby’s ranch in California, where President Kennedy made her try a drug she now believes to have been amyl nitrate.

“I said no, but he just went ahead and popped the capsule and held it under my nose,” she writes. “I panicked and ran crying from the room.” This too, would be something to tell the grandchildren — once they were old enough.

and cue Giggan?

Just finished it, loved it. It's a fast-paced fun read. Or in my case, a fun listen. The audiobook was excellent, and they even used sound effects (which worked well) at certain points. Thank you for the rec.

I had to go to Amazon's preview page to see what the footnotes said. Yeah, he wove them into the narrative, I wouldn't have guessed they were footnotes, they blended into the main narrative just fine.

surely the audiobook lacked death riding a tractor

Oh yeah the illustrations. Man, some books just need to be held and read.

beat the reaper has the honor of having the only chapter-break-images ever to make me burst into laughter.

Wow - just stumbled across this now; thanks for the support and encouragement, Bug & audreythirteen.

Hey audreythirteen & Bug,

I actually just finished the bugger - this morning @ 7.10 am. I feel like I've lost 100 years of my life working on this one!

Nice, can't wait to read it. I just gifted TSMG to another friend this weekend, I really hope she enjoys it as much as I did.

EDIT_ Maybe I shouldn't know that.

Oh, wow - thank YOU, as always, for he support/encouragement! Ta!

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry

London Times Asia editor and Tokyo bureau chief Parry (In the Time of Madness) spent nearly a decade in pursuit of the truth behind the disappearance and murder of a young British woman in Tokyo. He offers an exceptional—and terrifying—account of sexual sadism, the Japanese legal system, and a family ripped apart by tragedy. Twenty-one-year-old Lucie Blackman traveled to Tokyo with her best friend in 2000 to pay off her debts by “hostessing,” which, unlike prostitution, simply involved chatting up male visitors for as long as possible. But one night, Lucie disappeared. For seven months, her father, Tim, and younger sister Sophie traveled to Tokyo repeatedly, begging for help from the public and the inept police, who seemed to be investigating at a glacial pace. Eventually, Lucie’s dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave near the home of the only suspect. Reporting the story, Parry discovered a side of Japan he hadn’t known; his Tokyo thrums with energy, and the long-dead Lucie haunts the page as her killer fills the reader’s consciousness with an undeniable sense of dread. Agent: Jen Carlson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)

I read this last month. It's superb.

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
by D. T. Max ~August 30, 2012

Telegraph Avenue: A Novel
by Michael Chabon ~September 11, 2012

The Fifty Year Sword
by Mark Z. Danielewski ~ October 16, 2012

Both Flesh and Not: Essays
by David Foster Wallace ~ Was November 27, 2012, but now Amazon no longer has it listed...

The Fifty Year Sword for sure! I've been excited for that since I read the announcement.