Most Anticipated Books of 2013 - Part One

[JenniferD]

The Millions posted the first installation of their Great 2013 Book Preview last week!

This is a feature I really look forward to each year and it's definitely worth sharing (At least, I think it is. Heh!)

So, what's grabbing your attention for 2013?

edit: beginning to link in titles from the list, for quicker access for your TBR lists.

january

* Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders
* Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
* Umbrella by Will Self
* Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
* Ways of Going Home: A Novel by Alejandro Zambra
* Scenes from an Early Life by Philip Hensher
* Exodus by Lars Iyer

february

* Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories by Karen Russell
* My Brother's Book by Maurice Sendak
* Benediction by Kent Haruf
* See Now Then: A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid
* The Bridge Over the Neroch: And Other Works by Leonid Tsypkin
* How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields
* The City of Devi by Manil Suri
* Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash
* The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne
* Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun
* Fight Song: A Novel by Joshua Mohr

march

* Middle C by William H. Gass
* The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
* The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte
* Red Doc> by Anne Carson
* A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee
* Speedboat by Renata Adler
* Mary Coin by Marisa Silver
* How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
* The Tragedy of Mister Morn by Vladimir Nabokov
* The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
* A Map of Tulsa: A Novel by Benjamin Lytal
* In Partial Disgrace by Charles Newman
* The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee

april

* Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
* All That Is by James Salter
* The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
* The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
* The Flamethrowers: A Novel by Rachel Kushner
* Harvard Square by André Aciman
* Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel
* The Dark Road: A Novel by Ma Jian
* The Pink Hotel and Anna Stothard
* Our Man in Iraq by Robert Perišić

may

* And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
* My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgård
* You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt
* The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien
* Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
* Red Moon: A Novel by Benjamin Percy
* A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel
* The Hanging Garden by Patrick White
* Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories by A. Igoni Barrett
* The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
* Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm

june

* TransAtlantic: A Novel by Colum McCann
* Taipei by Tao Lin
* In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell
* His Wife Leaves Him by Stephen Dixon
* Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai
* Carnival by Rawi Hage
* Cannonball by Joseph McElroy
* On the Floor by Aifric Campbell

july

* Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff
* Five Star Billionaire: A Novel by Tash Aw

august

* Night Film by Marisha Pessl
* The Infatuations by Javier Marías
* Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
* Necessary Errors by Caleb Crain

september

* Enon: A Novel by Paul Harding

october

* The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
* Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem

unknown release dates

* Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
* The Dying Grass by William T. Vollmann
* Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt

books with no information in the database yet:

* escape from the children's hospital - jonathan safran foer
* the hare - césare aira
* pacific - tom drury

[Derek]

Not a lot catches my attention so far - just as well, given the size of my TBR pile - but I can't wait to get my hands on the new Saunders book. I'm also eager for the new Pynchon - if indeed it comes out this year - and the second installment of Knausgaard's memoir/novel, though I still need to read the first one.

[JenniferD]

i have heard so many gushing words about the new saunders book, derek. i try to avoid reading full-on reviews before reading a book myself, generally, so i haven't really gotten into the meat of any of the comments, but just the snippets/headlines have made me even more drooly for a book i was already keen to get my hands on this year.

i am also eager to get a copy of: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, when it comes out in march.

[Grace]

The new Saunders is excellent, but it isn't better than CivilWarLand In Bad Decline. I feel like the gushing praise for the new book is partly due to an overdue reappraisal and recognition of his whole body of work. He's always been well respected in certain circles but he's never really gotten the adulation he perhaps deserves, so I'm happy to see him being called one of the greatest living American writers and so on. But don't go into Tenth of December expecting it to be his career high or anything.

[Grace]

Personally, I can't wait for the new Helen DeWitt; her The Last Samurai is probably my favourite novel. Also looking forward to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah - I read her previous short story collection and it was wonderful.

[Is there some shortcut to make Goodreads create links for the books you mention?]

[JenniferD]

Grace wrote: "[Is there some shortcut to make Goodreads create links for the books you mention?]"

heh. i wish; no, only manually adding them from the list. i contemplated linking them all into the original post...but that's fairly time consuming. i can chip away at it though. (there's 79 titles - i just wrote them all down to begin adding them to the first post.)

[JenniferD]

okay -- i updated post #1 to have the titles linked. some aren't in the database yet though. sorry.

[Cait]

Jennifer, thank you so much for doing this!

[JenniferD]

hey cait!!! :)

it took a while but it makes it easier to add things to our gr tbr lists!

[Ohenrypacey]

Wow thanks for the effort Jennifer!

[JenniferD]

Ohenrypacey wrote: "Wow thanks for the effort Jennifer!"

oh, hey dave!! i didn't know you hung out here too! :)

[Ohenrypacey]

I'm sneaky that way. I have to sulk somewhere while on exile from serious discussion of ToB books while I'm reading for the tourney.
Might as well get a jump on 2013. I am looking forward to Sam Lipsyte and Marisha Pessl; interested in the Nabokov and the Tolkien, and of course, anything new from Pynchon (who knows how many more he'll write).

[JenniferD]

Ohenrypacey wrote: "I'm sneaky that way. I have to sulk somewhere while on exile from serious discussion of ToB books while I'm reading for the tourney...

heh.

so, were you a fan of Special Topics in Calamity Physics?? i think my expectations were too high going in. while i found it a bit YA-ish (didn't expect that), i saw a ton of potential in the writing so i am curious about the new one.

[Ohenrypacey]

those are my thoughts too. special topics wasn't perfect, but it showed a lot of promise. sophomore efforts can be dicey, but as random books to look forward to it's on my radar for sure.

[Kai]

"Night Film" is my most anticipated

[Cait]

Kai, I am so excited for Night Film! I want my hands on that one the second it is released.