This week, our First Impressions readers review The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates, a warm and interestingly structured novel that covers twelve days of a man's life alongside significant historical events.
In Editor's Choice, Yasmin Zaher's The Coin also grounds a person's daily existence in a larger political reality, following a Palestinian woman in New York as she focuses on cleaning, clothes, and adapting (in some ways) to American culture.
Artificial intelligence is one of the most topical subjects in today's fiction. For our latest e-zine, we bring you a reading list of literature about AI in a "beyond the book" article relating to Anton Hur's recent sci-fi novel Toward Eternity.
Plus, check out how BookBrowse's coverage compares to the New York Times' Best 100 Books of the 21st Century, previews of August releases, and our giveaway of Alisa Alering's Smothermoss, the haunting, a story of a community threatened by mysterious forces. | | With best wishes,
The BookBrowse Team
| | Only Six More Days to Save | | If you'd like to renew an inactive membership with the discount, click here | | Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on one recently released title. | |  |  | The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates
"Isaac Dahl has indeed had a long life with enough strange—or at least unusual—episodes to justify the book's title, and at ninety-six, the former journalist decides to write a memoir. He tells his story in a series of single days set years apart, days when he experiences both natural disasters—an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake—and man-made disasters—the Dust Bowl, WWII at sea, nuclear tests in the Pacific, Civil Rights violence in Mississippi, AIDS...more personal moments...and the often painful drama of a gay man making his way through the twentieth century. Through it all, the author manages to weave together the personal and the historical so well that what emerges entertains, gives historical perspective to the century and also gives the reader a very human, warm and relatable story." —Judith G. (Greenbrae, CA)
"An excellent choice for a book discussion group since the many central themes—family, friendship, love, loss, survival—would provide a plethora of topics to explore. I look forward to reading some of Bart Yates' other works." —Laurie L. (Warwick, RI)
"The author won me over with great characters, captivating descriptions, and an interesting structure to the book...It was never boring." —Susan W. (Berkley, MI) | | | |  | The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
A popular choice for book jackets in recent years, perhaps especially in the historical fiction genre, is an image of a presumed female figure pictured from the neck down or from behind, omitting the specificity of facial features, suggesting a general representation of a woman from a particular setting and time. The cover of Yasmin Zaher's contemporary novel The Coin is both in this trend and outside of it, as it displays a person in a trenchcoat and glitzy heels whose face is blocked from view not by the artist's framing but by the chaotic positioning of her body.
Is she falling, about to topple over? Is she flinging her limbs around deliberately, in ecstasy or triumph? Is she dangerous, or is she in trouble?
These questions easily apply to Zaher's first-person narrator, a young, unnamed Palestinian woman freshly adrift in New York City. She lives near her occasional lover, a Russian man named Sasha who landed her a job she isn't qualified for, teaching English at a school for underprivileged middle-grade boys, which supplements the relatively modest allowance she receives from the fortune she inherited (technically hers, but controlled by her brother) when her parents were killed in a car crash in her youth. She is continually preoccupied with the idea that she has had a coin lodged in her back since childhood, having accidentally swallowed it on the day her parents died. ... continued | | Artificial Intelligence in Literature
As artificial intelligence has become an ever-present part of our world, more and more authors have considered its ramifications on our society. In recent years alone, a slew of novels and short stories have been published that explore themes like human nature, scientific progress, love, and human connection through the eyes of characters who are not fully human. Anton Hur's debut novel, Toward Eternity, is just one of these. Here are some others. ... continued | | The 21st Century: NYT vs. BookBrowse | | In case you missed it, last week The New York Times released its list of the Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. So, we thought we'd compare how BookBrowse did at featuring these books over the past 25 years, and have included a helpful table for you to see the full breakdown.
The answer: pretty good! We reviewed and recommended in full 40 of the 100, and briefed an additional 44, for a total coverage of 84/100 — we also covered 19 of the top 20. This overlap is all the more impressive when we consider how selective we are about the books we cover — roughly 1,400 covered in brief each year, with only around 220 reviewed and recommended in full each year. ... continued | | We know it can be tough to keep up with all the new books coming out every month, so we do the hard work for you. We've carefully selected 100+ of the most noteworthy books publishing in August and are continually updating our selections — check them out and get yourself on the library wait-list ahead of the crowd!
Non-subscribers can view books up to the current month and a limited selection of future months. If you don't already, you may also wish to subscribe to our Publishing This Week newsletter. | | Smothermoss by Alisa Alering
From the Jacket
A haunting, imaginative, and twisting tale of two sisters and the menacing, unexplained forces that threaten them and their rural mountain community.
Praise
"One part fairy tale, one part thriller, and one part ethnography of an area that endures in our mythopoetic memories even as it vanishes from the face of the land. A compelling debut that glimmers with the lights of the forest as it unwinds its tale." —Kirkus Reviews
"Alering pulls off an evocative portrait of the creepy rural setting." —Publishers Weekly
About This Sweepstakes
We have five hardcover copies of Smothermoss by Alisa Alering to give away.
This offer is open to residents of the USA, but BookBrowse members are welcome to enter wherever they live. If a member not resident in the US wins, they receive an extension to their membership.
Giveaway ends August 13, 2024 | | With so many new books published every month, it's difficult to find the standouts, the ones that are really worth your time. This is why hundreds of thousands of readers rely on BookBrowse to do the hard work of sifting through the multitude of titles to find the most promising new books, with a focus on books that entertain, engage, and enlighten. | | BookBrowse Highlights is just one of our free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly. We send out Genre Specific Emails occasionally. | |
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