Culture
January 2023's Book Releases To Add To Your Reading List
SAM by Allegra Goodman - Penguin Random House, January 3
“There is a girl, and her name is Sam,” begins this tender coming-of-age novel that touches on the pillars of growing up — you know, like class, addiction, lust, and following one’s own dreams. It follows seven-year-old Sam through her life as a teenager where all she wants to do is go climbing and wear the right kind of jeans, begging universal questions like what happens to a girl’s sense of joy and belief in herself as she becomes a woman?
Ghost Music by An Yu - Grove Atlantic, January 10
In this dreamy novel, a piano teacher in Beijing is plagued by a recurring dream of being trapped in a doorless room with only an orange mushroom. Then a package of mushrooms starts getting delivered to her mother-in-law once a week — seemingly by mistake — and when a letter arrives in the mail from the person sending the mushrooms, her world goes into surreal free fall.
Grove Atlantic
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley - Soft Skull Press, January 10
A young Black lawyer moves into a Brooklyn brownstone with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend and a gaggle of doomsday prepping roommates in a fiercely funny, engrossing novel from lawyer turned comedy writer Kashana Cauley, whose written for shows like The Great North and The Daily Show.
Soft Skull Press
Please Report Your Bug Here by Josh Riedel - Macmillan, January 17
A Big Tech dispatch from Instagram’s first employee Josh Riedel, Please Report Your Bug Here follows a six figure-earning college grad who gets a job at a dating app and discovers a glitch that transports him to other worlds, in a coming-of-age novel for the metaverse age.
Macmillan
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis - Knopf, January 17
Set in 1981 Los Angeles, Bret Easton Ellis’ first novel in over a decade follows a group of friends during their senior year at an exclusive prep school. All Xanax and Porsches, innocence is lost and paranoia grows while a serial killer preys on the San Fernando Valley, targeting teenagers — and seems to be growing closer to the group of friends.
Knopf
Judas Goat: Poems by Gabrielle Bates - Tin House, January 24
The Deep South, domesticated animals, mothering as a spectral force, and the “forbidden felt language” of sex, Judas Goat is a sensual, feeling collection of poems about relationships from Northwest by way of Alabama poet Gabrielle Bates.
Tin House
Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren - Astra, January 31
A hit in Sweden last year, Lydia Sandgren’s debut novel about art and power is being translated into English. The book follows Martin, a washed up writer upended by the sudden disappearance of his wife, Cecilia; Gustav, a painter equally obsessed with the disappearance; and Martin’s daughter Rakel, who unlocks a series of clues that lead to information about her haunting departure.
Asta
Reckoning by V - Bloomsbury, January 31
V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, who famously wrote The Vagina Monologues, has written a memoir chronicling 40 years an an artist, incorporating prose, poetry, dreams, letters, and essays from V’s journals, in a holistic portrait of a writer dealing with everything from homelessness to activism to family.
Bloomsbury
Central Places by Delia Cai - Ballantine Books, January 31
Vanity Fair writer and excellent Twitter follow Delia Cai has written a sharp debut novel following a young woman who brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in small-town Illinois — which ends up bringing up a lot more than she expencted as she navigates the draw of past lovers and selves, and tries to figure out who she really is.