Five great astronaut memoirs

At the B&N Reads blog Molly Schoemann-McCann tagged five of the best astronaut memoirs, including:

Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly

For some, going to space is a once- or twice-in-a-career occurrence. For Scott Kelly, going to space is his career. This dude has spent about as much time in space as you’ve spent in an office. He’s been on four different space flights and no American has ever spent more time in space. He’s the perfect guinea pig—and now literary expert—on the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, brain, and spirit. He writes unflinchingly about being in space, and the difficulty of returning to civilian life. Especially interesting is Kelly’s report of a fascinating experiment in which he took part. To study exactly what space does to the body, NASA studied his earthbound twin brother and compared his aging process to that of Kelly…who spent an entire year in the outer limits.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery is among Jeff Somers's top twenty books by people who experienced something few others have.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books by Indigenous speculative fiction authors

Rebecca Roanhorse's new novel is Trail of Lightning.

One of five speculative fiction books written by Indigenous to the Americas authors that she recommended at Tor.com:

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

The Marrow Thieves has won a ton of awards in Canada and the United States, including the coveted Kirkus prize for 2017, and for good reason.

It’s a YA novel set in a dystopian future where the non-Indigenous population have lost the ability to dream. Indigenous people can still dream and they are hunted by government goon squads for the marrow in their bones, which is used to make a dreaming cure. Our protagonist is a boy named Frenchie who meets up with a ragtag crew of other Indigenous people on the run as they all head north to the places rumored to be safer than the cities. Each crew member has their own story of horror and survival and loss, but together they are strong.

It’s a beautifully written but exceedingly creepy tale that mirrors almost too closely the very real exploitation of natural resources on Indigenous land and the history of forcing children into boarding schools to force assimilation and destroy their culture. Not everyone makes it out alive, but the story still manages to resonate with hope and found family.

Dimaline also has another YA novel from 2013 called The Girl Who Grew A Galaxy about a girl whose emotions become planets that circle around her head. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s going on my TBR.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five hilarious Thurber Prize-winning books

At the B&N Reads blog Brian Boone tagged five hilarious Thurber Prize-winning reads, including:

2006: The Other Shulman, by Alan Zweibel

Shulman, a middle-aged guy with a lifelong weight problem always joked that he’s lost and re-gained the same 35 pounds since he was a teenager…which added up forms a complete separate person, a.k.a. Another Shulman. That’s his fictional alter ego, until he meets his real alter ego, a guy named Shulman who made all the good choices when our Shulman had made all the bad ones. In this inspirational, relatable tale of personal triumph and self-acceptance, scores are settled in the New York City marathon in this book written by a guy who knows comedy. Zweibel was on the initial writing staff of Saturday Night Live, and in the ‘80s, he co-created the innovative, fourth-wall busting sitcom It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about unrequited love

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer of novels, short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. Her latest novel is Caroline's Bikini.

One of Gunn's top ten books about unrequited love, as shared at the Guardian:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Whirring away like the great engines of intelligence and imagination that they are, are the novels riven through with love that is never quite fulfilled because of the way life and chance get in the way. First, Eliot’s great novel, with the wonderfully wilful and misguided Dorothea and the man who she is barely aware loves her, the ever hopeful but ultimately disappointing Will Ladislaw, who flits away at her back trying to woo while she chooses another suitor before him.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Middlemarch also made Jeff Somers's top five memorable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), Lauren Groff's list of six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mysteries with images that might stay with you forever

Sarah J. Harris's new novel is The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder. At CrimeReads she tagged eight mysteries with images that might stay with you forever, including:

The Dry, by Jane Harper

The Dry was Harper’s debut novel. It has become an international bestseller and been optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon’s production company. Which actor should play the lead role— federal police officer Aaron Falk, who returns to his hometown after 20 years for a funeral only to become embroiled in a murder investigation—remains open to debate. However, it is the parched Australian landscape that will prove the biggest star. The searing heat raises the stress levels of the characters—and readers—while blowflies swarm, cattle die, and the inhabitants of Kiewarra are seemingly driven to madness and murder. Aaron mourns the river where he and his friends used to gather, which is now “nothing more than a dusty scar in the land,” an image mirroring the scars found on drowned teenager Ellie Deacon’s arms years before. No one is spared the trauma of the relentless heat—children at school draw never-ending brown fields and stick figures of cows with “angel wings.” Readers will feel the heat on their necks and dust on their clothes as two mysteries begin to unspool in this tinderbox ready to ignite at any moment. The climate is just as merciless and brutal as the murderer’s weapons, yet we can’t tear our eyes away from the pages of this outstanding novel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Dry is among Fiona Barton's eight favorite cold-case mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about intricate games

A Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in math from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University, Yoon Ha Lee finds it a source of continual delight that math can be mined for story ideas.

His new novel is Revenant Gun.

One of five books about intricate games Lee tagged at Tor.com:

Sharps by K.J. Parker

Sharps is, on the surface, about a diplomatic mission carried out by a fencing team. (The sword kind of fencing, not the backyard kind of fencing.) But because this is K.J. Parker, this rapidly devolves into intrigue, mishaps, and unlikely romance. It’s also a meditation on the difference between what is real (like a “sharp”) vs. an image (like a fencing foil, which is blunt). I liked this a lot when I read it initially, although it probably benefits from being read just after the related novel The Folding Knife, and now that I am taking fencing, I’d love to reread it to see how much more I get out of the fencing descriptions!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books on how to achieve gender equality

Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a collection of more than 80,000 women's daily experiences of gender inequality. One of her five (plus) books on how to achieve gender equality, as shared at the Guardian:

They say “don’t get mad, get even”. But what if we need to get mad first? What if we can’t begin to imagine equality until we’ve first been allowed to find an outlet for our long-silenced, unacknowledged, righteous fury? Rage Becomes Her, a love letter to women’s anger by Soraya Chemaly, gives women everywhere the permission to get mad as hell … and then to get even.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six horror books that will make you think twice about riding the subway

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged "six tales of terror that travel the dark pathways beneath us, and burrow into our imaginations," including:

Awakened, by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth

The Z train is a new state-of-the-art subway line that promises to bridge the New York transit system with New Jersey’s, creating one unified line. It’s a marvel of engineering and city planning—up until the train’s maiden voyage ends with an empty train car full of blood. With methane gas reaching explosive levels in the Z train tunnels and whispers that the incident was a terrorist attack, it falls to the mayor of New York City, the president, and a team of technicians to figure out what really happened on the train, and keep it from happening again. But it turns out terrorism is too simple an answer: there’s something twisted and hungry lurking in the dark beneath the Z train, something that’s been waiting a very long time for its day in the sun. James Murray and Darren Wearmouth’s co-written novel takes off quickly, blending disaster novel tropes with gruesome horror at a pace as fast as the high-tech train line at its center.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven great crime books featuring investigative reporters

J. G. Hetherton's new novel is Last Girl Gone. At CrimeReads he tagged eleven great crime books featuring investigative reporters, including:

Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain

The twisted, borderline-romantic relationship between detective Archie Sheridan and his quarry, serial killer Gretchen Lowell, is the meat of this thriller. Kidnapped, tortured, and seduced by Lowell—but also spared by her—Sheridan is a broken man drawn back into the fray before he’s ready. His sudden return draws the attention of young and intrepid reporter Susan Ward, and she shadows him into the Portland’s darkest corners. Together they struggle to find their footing, solve the case, and to sever the heartstrings connecting Sheridan and Lowell once and for all. Chelsea Cain’s years as a contributor to The Oregonian certainly informed her choice for Sheridan’s unorthodox partner.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laurence Tribe's six book recommendations

Laurence Tribe is a Harvard law professor and leading constitutional scholar. His latest book, co-authored with Joshua Matz, is To End A Presidency, an examination of presidential impeachment. One of six books he recommended at The Week magazine:

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

We all know Lincoln's masterpiece, but until I read this gripping account of its making and of its way of linking our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, I had not fully grasped the genius of Lincoln's ringing reformulation of our nation's meaning.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five SFF books in which art matters

C.L. Polk's debut novel is Witchmark. At Tor.com she tagged five SFF "stories where art matters—to the story, to its society, and to its character," including:

Carnival by Elizabeth Bear

Bear’s super spy SF novel begins with two operatives reuniting after many years to deliver a shipment of stolen artwork to a matriarchal colony planet after years of diplomatic tension—but really they are there to get intelligence for old earth’s government. Don’t walk into this book expecting good vs. evil or any simple, reductive morality—everyone possesses virtues beside their flaws. Come for the art reclamation, stay for the culture building, which won’t be anything like you expect.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five genre-bending science-fictional crime novels

Amanda Bridgeman is an Aurealis Award finalist and author of seven science fiction novels, including the best-selling space opera Aurora series and apocalyptic drama The Time of the Stripes. One of five genre-bending science-fictional crime novels she tagged at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

Lock In, by John Scalzi

Set in the near future, the world has been shaped by what’s known as “Haden’s syndrome,” a disease that causes “Lock In”: Victims are fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. Rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann, and the two are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder. The suspect is an “integrator” – someone who can let the ‘locked in’ borrow their bodies for a time. But if the Integrator was carrying a Haden client at the time of the murder, then naming the suspect suddenly becomes much more complicated. Lock In was followed this year by a sequel, Head On, that presents Shane and Vann’s next case.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue