Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles — fiction and nonfiction — to consider for your January reading list.
Each of us approaches a new year with a combination of worry and hope. What lies ahead? Might this be when I actually start exercising or cooking or writing a screenplay?
If your own resolutions include reading more, we can help. This month’s titles range from a bittersweet comedy set in the Italian countryside to an expedition in bitterly cold temperatures, as well as from a sci-fi novel set inside a murder mystery to a memoir about the most motley collection of four-legged family members you’ll ever encounter. Happy reading!
Fiction
Homeseeking: A Novel
By Karissa Chen
Putnam: 512 pages, $30
(Jan. 7)
Fans of historical fiction will want to pick up this exceptional novel immediately, the story of Chinese history from the 1930s to the 21st century told through the lives of Suchi and Haiwen, two Shanghainese students who fall in love early on but whose paths diverge early on too. As national and global events affect them and their families, their “mingyun” connection — a concept of personal fate — keeps them psychically linked despite hardships.
The Heart of Winter: A Novel
By Jonathan Evison
Dutton: 368 pages, $28
(Jan. 7)
A loose tooth leads to the history of a long marriage, as Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke look at their 70-year union. They live quietly on Bainbridge Island and have three grown children; Ruth’s dental troubles reveal cancer, and the family is thrown into uproar. As Abe attempts to care for his wife, their past surfaces and shows how the negotiations involved in partnership provide a foundation for its growth, as well as for facing its final stages.
Death of the Author: A Novel
By Nnedi Okorafor
William Morrow & Co.: 448 pages, $30
(Jan. 14)
When adjunct professor Zelu, who is paraplegic, hits rock bottom personally and professionally, she unexpectedly writes a mega-bestselling work of Afro-futurism that also addresses the differently abled. Although her large Nigerian American family makes light of her achievement, Zelu falls in with an unusual scientist who fits her with wondrously advanced prosthetic legs — and then reveals his unusual purpose in providing them.
We Lived on the Horizon: A Novel
By Erika Swyler
Atria: 336 pages, $29
(Jan. 14)
Combining AI, robotics and much more, Swyler’s latest world-building novel concerns the Bulwark, a walled desert city whose history, values and economy are based on the sacrifices made by its founders. Known as “the Sainted,” those humans now have descendants who make up an elite supported by Parallax, an AI system; there are also AI children and a murder mystery that threatens the entire community. It’s unusually elegant dystopian fiction.
Tartufo: A Novel
By Kira Jane Buxton
Grand Central Publishing: 352 pages, $29
(Jan. 28)
Lazzarini Boscarino, a rural Italian town, might be dying, its population diminishing faster than its budget. But when the grief-stricken Giovanni Scarpazza and his hunting dogs Aria and Fagiolo chance upon an unusual truffle, Mayor Delizia Micucci allows herself to hope that big-ticket players in the food world will bite at the chance to own it. Will it be a boon or a disappointment? Buxton (“Hollow Creatures”) plays for laughs, but never with cruelty.
Nonfiction
Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
By Caroline Eden
Bloomsbury Publishing: 256 pages, $28
(Jan. 14)
Journalist Eden’s kitchen is cold because she spends most of her time traveling around Central Asia and Eastern Europe — but she rarely returns to her Edinburgh home without a souvenir to remind her of the foods of those places that she writes about here. Structured around a dozen recipes, including an Uzbekistani watermelon salad and Russian pirozhki, it’s a memoir, travelogue and cookbook in which those facets add up to a delicious whole.
Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth): A Memoir
By Markus Zusak
Harper: 240 pages, $28
(Jan. 21)
Zusak (“The Book Thief”) and his family have had three wild dogs, yes, but each of those dogs — Reuben, Archer and Frosty — has been so different that they come across as true family members rather than as the accessories that some domestic animals can seem to be. Dogs, the author notes, represent lifelong devotion, as well as our own deep human primal instincts. Anyone you know who has lived with a dog will relish this beautiful memoir.
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
By Neko Case
Grand Central Publishing: 288 pages, $30
(Jan. 28)
Alt-rock star Case describes a painful childhood and worse adolescence, then a tough trail to professional success that included suffering through harsh Chicago winters without enough money for heat or warm clothing. However, the Grammy-nominated musician leavens memories of hardship with great humor and terrific writing (the Chicago wind hits “like a bouquet of cold fists”) that should delight her fans and attract some new ones too.
Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History’s Greatest Arctic Rescue
By Buddy Levy
St. Martin’s Press: 384 pages, $32
(Jan. 28)
American Walter Wellman was the first to try to reach the North Pole by airship. After he failed, Roald Amundsen (the same man who was the first to reach the South Pole) tried, in 1926, and flew over the North Pole on May 21. Umberto Nobile, his Italian engineer, decided to win accolades for Mussolini in 1928 by attempting the feat but wound up facing disaster when his airship, Italia, crashed and prompted a high-profile international rescue mission.
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
By Imani Perry
Ecco: 256 pages, $29
(Jan. 28)
Blue skies equal hope, but blue dyes — as Perry (“South to America”) shows here — can be a reminder of the era when indigo cloth was traded for human life, during the 16th-century slave trade. From the description of skin as “blue black” to the blues as a musical genre, the color blue and its many shades intertwine with African American heredity, history and heritage. A cultural compendium and also a meditation, “Black in Blues” will inspire other great minds.
