I admit it. I spend more time reading up on changing grammar trends for work than reading for pleasure. I read my clients' manuscripts day and night, and my own pleasure-reading time is a precious few minutes each day, usually when I'm half drunk and in the bathtub unwinding from stressful work-reading. Can someone kindly recommend the best new fiction they've read? I'm looking for something from 2015 or 2016. Most of the reading I have been doing is older stuff or classics. I just want good recommendations on new fiction. Especially literary fiction. The more twisted the better. I'm out of the loop, and I'm looking to buy a book and have some quality tub time with my Kindle or hard copy. Please and thank you!
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread by Chuck Palahniuk
Clown Girl by Monica Drake
The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch
Brothel by Stephanie Wytovich (horror poetry)
These may pass the time well.
Thank you, Jose. It was my fault I didn't specify, but I'm looking for a novel at the moment. Perhaps a couple of those fit that bill. I'm also looking for something new published this year or last year. The only reason is because I hardly ever read current fiction. By the time I get to something, it's 7 to 100 years old. I'd like to treat myself to a novel from now. And a good one.
All of those fit the bill concerning timeline. At least I got that right. lol
I think The Small Backs of Children looks like something I'd love to read. Just looked it up. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I also like that it's a female writer. I tend to read a lot of male authors.
No worries. I'm inclusive.
Still trying to get money to buy new fiction myself, and no access to a library. So I can't help much. If I were homeless in seattle it be different, from I'm living in a motel in Daffodil.
It was published in 2014, so doesn't quite make the cutoff, but You by Caroline Kepnes is worth checking out. The second book in the series Hidden Bodies is excellent, too.
A number of people that I know have said that A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay is the best horror novel they've read in a few years. It's on my to-read list, but with the number of accolades that its received, I don't think you can go wrong.
Nice. Thanks for the responses. I was also looking at I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, but some of the reviews scared me off from buying it. I don't like taking reviews so seriously, but this book had something like half five-star and half one-star, and some of the things said turned me off.
I will second A Head Full of Ghosts.
Also just missing your deadline by being published Nov 2014 is Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter which I would also recommend :)
Will definitely keep these in mind. I actually went to the library today. There's a good amount of new fiction selections, and the price is right. It was nice not having to navigate through all the muck that floods Amazon. Found two that stood out to me and got them both. Submission and The Opposite of Everyone. They both look good, but Submission piques my interest the most, and it's first in line:
Submission by Michel Houellebecq:
Paris, 2022. François is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the Sorbonne and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famous nineteenth-century "decadent" author. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, reads the classics, queues up YouPorn.
Meanwhile, it's election season. And although Francois feels "about as politicized as a hand towel," things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the socialists, France's new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and Francois is offered an irresistible academic advancement--on condition that he convert to Islam.
Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of this novel that "Houellebecq is not merely a satirist but--more unusually--a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind." Michel Houellebecq's Submission may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious; a comic masterpiece by one of France's great novelists.
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson:
A fiercely independent divorce lawyer learns the power of family and connection when she receives a cryptic message from her estranged mother in this bittersweet, witty novel from the nationally bestselling author of Someone Else’s Love Story and gods in Alabama—an emotionally resonant tale about the endurance of love and the power of stories to shape and transform our lives.
Born in Alabama, Paula Vauss spent the first decade of her life on the road with her free-spirited young mother, Kai, an itinerant storyteller who blended Hindu mythology with southern oral tradition to re-invent their history as they roved. But everything, including Paula’s birth name Kali Jai, changed when she told a story of her own—one that landed Kai in prison and Paula in foster care. Separated, each holding secrets of her own, the intense bond they once shared was fractured.
These days, Paula has reincarnated herself as a tough-as-nails divorce attorney with a successful practice in Atlanta. While she hasn’t seen Kai in fifteen years, she’s still making payments on that Karmic debt—until the day her last check is returned in the mail, along with a mysterious note: “I am going on a journey, Kali. I am going back to my beginning; death is not the end. You will be the end. We will meet again, and there will be new stories. You know how Karma works.”
Then Kai’s most treasured secret literally lands on Paula’s doorstep, throwing her life into chaos and transforming her from only child to older sister. Desperate to find her mother before it’s too late, Paula sets off on a journey of discovery that will take her back to the past and into the deepest recesses of her heart. With the help of her ex-lover Birdwine, an intrepid and emotionally volatile private eye who still carries a torch for her, this brilliant woman, an expert at wrecking families, now has to figure out how to put one back together—her own.
The Opposite of Everyone is a story about story itself, how the tales we tell connect us, break us, and define us, and how the endings and beginnings we choose can destroy us . . . and make us whole. Laced with sharp humor and poignant insight, it is beloved New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson at her very best.
If you are really looking for something twisted, try The Train Derailed in Boston. Strictly entertaining and not literary at all. You can read my review, I was maybe a little harsh, but that's just the nature of the game, it's a fun fucking book:
http://culturedvultures.com/book-review-the-train-derails-in-boston-by-jessica-mchugh/
I also really liked Stephen Graham Jones's newest novel: Mongrel. It is a werewolf coming of age road novel. My review: http://culturedvultures.com/book-review-mongrels-stephen-graham-jones/
Since everyone is recommending Paul Tremblay, I'd like to note he has a new novel out: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27064358-disappearance-at-devil-s-rock
Holly, I noticed you are an editor who keeps up on changing grammar trends. So, I decided to seek your advice.
I'm suspecting, like most editors I've worked with, that you are like a drug dealer and the first hit is free. If so, give me this one free on charge: When referencing a person in prose, should a writer use commas, em-dashes, or just leave it blank? Here are three examples and I ask kindly that you tell me which is correct:
1. His little sister Lucy splashed around in the shallow end.
2. His little sister, Lucy, splashed around in the shallow end.
3.His little sister—Lucy—splashed around in the shallow end.
My manuscript awaits your answer.
Thanks so much.
I have a recommendation for a book that's so new, it's not even out yet. The novel Jerusalem by Alan Moore. It will be released in September. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alan-moore/jerusalem-moore/
If you like The Opposite of Everyone, then try Someone Else's Love Story, also by Joshilyn Jackson. I've read several of her books,and I think it is her best one yet. :)
