Top 10 Most Anticipated Fall Books

Friends, we are going to have some work to do this fall. Luckily, it'll be a labor of love. 

The already-announced (and I'm sure there are more coming) autumn slate of books is, in a word, huge -- books with page counts matched in weight only by the stature of the authors who have written them. If you're like me, you're totally here for a season of doorstops! (Not every book on my list is long, but a good percentage of them are!) Here's my list of top 10 books I can't wait to read this fall. 

(Reminder: Preorders are massively important for authors and publishers, AND, when you preorder with the links below, I get a little kickback, which I can use to buy more books, which I can then tell you about. Everyone wins.)

The Disappearers, by Marlon James (Sept. 1, 640 pages) -- I couldn't find my way into James's latest fantasy series, and so I'm really excited for this, his first "non-fantasy" novel since the absolute masterpiece that was 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings. The Disappearers (be careful, it's NOT The Disappears, and typing The Disappearers just looks like a mistake. But it's not. I've quintuple checked.), about "the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences" sounds like it's in a similar vein as Seven Killings. And similar heft. Woohoo!

Under Story, by Chloe Benjamin (Sept. 1, 502 pages) -- This will be my first time reading Chloe Benjamin and I cannot wait! The early reviews for this novel, which sounds like a combination of Richard Powers's environmental fiction, Emily St. John Mandel's universe, and even maybe a little David Mitchell, are absolutely breathless and ecstatic. It's described as "a modern epic of science and soul." All in! 

Taipei Story, by R.F. Kuang (Sept. 8, 288 pages) -- It's a pretty big upset that of all the books on this list, a new R.F. Kuang novel is the SHORTEST one. 😂 The proficient Kuang returns with a novel about a woman searching for clues about her family history. This seems to lean more realism than fantasy, but with Kuang, there are sure to be surprises. 

Exit Party, by Emily St. John Mandel (Sept. 15, 320 pages) -- St. John Mandel for me is always a MUST read. Beginning in Los Angeles in 2031 after the US has collapsed (holy shit, that's only five years from now...but yeah, doesn't seem too far-fetched, does it?) and jumping through time and place (including a domed colony on the moon), this sounds like quintessential St. John Mandel. 

Hollywood Ending, by John Green (Sept. 22, 320 pages) -- Nobody has broken the internet (for good news, at least) for a long time, but John Green almost did when he announced this new novel. The man is beloved. And this new novel, about a pair of young actors maybe falling in love, sounds extremely lovable and charming, as well. 

American Hagwon, by Min Jin Lee (Sept. 29, 656 pages) -- Even the biggest bro reader you know read Pachinko. So a new novel from Lee, and even longer this time, is hugely exciting. A family saga set in near-modern times over three continents, the novel is about how small actions ripple into huge repercussions. 

Ply, by Hernan Diaz (Sept. 29, 464 pages) -- Diaz is a writer/magician. You read his work and go "Wow, how did he do that?" This is a speculative piece set in a distant future where humans are trying to reestablish how to connect with one another and coexist with nature. Promises to be wild. 

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, by Deesha Philyaw (Sept. 29, 432 pages) -- Oh man, this sounds so delightfully scandalous and fun. A woman marries a megachurch pastor 15 years her senior, and then on the eve of her greatest success, is rocked by a revelation of secrets from her past. This is Philyaw's debut novel after her award-winning and hugely loved collection of short stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. 

Life Out of Order, by Audrey Niffenegger (Oct. 6, 544 pages) -- Okay, wow, what an absolutely wonderful surprise. Indeed, a gift. This is a sequel to the beloved novel The Time Traveler's Wife, which I still think about frequently (and every time I visit the Newberry Library). The story centers on Henry and Clare's daughter, Alba, who has the same "Chrono-Displacement Disorder" as her father. This novel, also, is the runaway winner for this year's best title. So many layers! 

The Brightness, by Chad Harbach (Oct. 27, 672 pages) -- My MOST anticipated book of this fall is the return, after 15 years, of The Art of Fielding author Harbach. This was an audible gasp situation when the owner of our bookstore texted me a photo of an ARC of this book from Winter Institute. The Brightness sounds like a "friendship-through-the-years" story, which, you know me: I freakin' love. 

The Left and the Lucky, by Willy Vlautin: "Faithful friends are hard to find."

I'm a relative newcomer to Willy Vlautin's novels. My first time reading him was his sixth novel, 2021's The Night Always Comes. But that was one of my favorite books of that year. And his new novel, The Left and the Lucky will undoubtedly wind up on this year's favorites-of-the-year list. 

I LOVED this book. 

Vlautin, like his fellow Pacific Northwest writers Jonathan Evison and Jess Walter, writes stories about plucky everyday people just trying to get by. In The Left and the Lucky, our everyday person is a divorced Portland house-painter named Eddie.

Eddie's next-door neighbor is a family with problems. Their mother, who is a stripper, and not a bad person but seems totally overmatched, has two kids, one an out-of-control teenager named Curtis and a mild-mannered second grader named Russell. Curtis absolutely terrorizes Russell -- he's cruel to him to the point Russell doesn't feel safe and hides out in his grandmother's bedroom or just wanders around rainy, dreary Portland.

When Eddie finds Russell hiding out in a grocery store, he starts to understand the scope of the problem next door. Eddie and Russell become fast, if unlikely, friends. A highlight of this story is how not just Eddie, but also Eddie's sidekick Houston, an alcoholic who Eddie also tries to help by keeping him employed and managing his money for him, relate to Russell. They treat him -- and talk to him -- as their equal. And the conversations are so heartwarming, often really funny, but so real. 

Eddie is almost preternaturally patient with Russell, with Houston, and with another painter named Cordarelle who Vlautin captures with hilarious accuracy. If you've ever worked in the building trades (and I have!), you know a Cordarelle -- a guy always bragging and talking about his glory days. 

Ultimately, The Left and the Lucky is the story of the everyday struggle just to make ends meet, to make life meaningful, to get out of your own way, and to be a good person in a shitty world full of shitty people. It's the story of how friendship can quite literally save you.

This Is Not About Running, by Mary Cain: Just Don't Do It (Support Nike, That Is)

In 2019, runner Mary Cain penned a shocking and revelatory piece in the NYT detailing her physical and mental abuse in the Nike Oregon Project under coach Alberto Salazar. She has expanded that piece and turned it into this book.

This Is Not About Running (out April 28) is now the third book about Salazar and the abusive culture at Nike in the 2010s. Runner Kara Goucher's book The Longest Race also details Salazar's abuse, pseudo-scientific coaching practices, and his penchant for coming up with "creative" ways for athletes to dope without getting caught. Win At All Costs by journalist Matt Hart is based on the US Anti-Doping Agency's investigation and report on Salazar, as well as interviews with some of his former athletes. They're both enraging reads -- not just regarding how such a shitty human could have been in charge of coaching athletes for so long, but also how Nike constantly defended him.

Mary Cain's book, though, is especially damning, because Mary was a teenager during her time with Salazar. The fastest 1,500m runner in the US at age 17, Mary moved cross country from her home in New York to train with Salazar in Portland. She was Salazar's next prodigy -- a can't-miss phenom who would smash world records.

But it didn't happen. And this book explains why. The book, written in present tense so, as Cain explains, you feel like you are right there with her as Salazar is calling her fat, as she cuts herself, as he thinks about suicide, is, in a word, shocking. 

Salazar became obsessed with an arbitrary weight target, which even starving herself, she couldn't hit. In running, confidence is just important as peak fitness, and Salazar (and his shady "sports psychologist" whom Mary had to see) absolutely destroyed her confidence. She got to the point where she couldn't get through a workout without breaking down in a fit of sobs because she was terrified Salazar would scream at her. He often did. Her teammates were mean to her and she had few friends. Salazar even made her stop talking to her parents, not wanting them to "meddle" in her training. Just all absolutely horrific. 

Salazar has since been banned for life from coaching for both doping and abuse, which is justice, but also real justice would be him rotting in jail. Just as infuriating as Salazar's abuse, though, is Cain's details of how Nike treated her after she quit the Oregon Project. As she says, it would've cost very little for a multi-billion dollar company to do the right thing. Instead, when she sued them, they fought her tooth and nail at every turn, trying to make themselves the victim, or blaming Cain as the actual victim. 

Don't read this if you don't want to be angry. Don't read this if you're a Nike apologist. But definitely read if you're a runner or anyone else interested in the very, very bad culture at Nike. 

I Am So Sorry, I Don't Know How to Read Poetry (But I Want to Learn!)

Happy National Poetry Month! I have a confession to make: I don't know how to read poetry. 

I'm only exaggerating a little. I mean, I know how to read poetry. What I don't know is how to understand poetry on the same level I understand prose. Or on the level seemingly every other avid reader does. Or on the level the poet intends. 

I've been a reader my entire life. I've hundreds of novels, memoirs, short story collections, history books, shit, even Dan Brown. I've barely read any poetry. 

Somehow I managed to graduate college with an English/Creative Writing degree having taken exactly ZERO poetry classes. The only time I can recall poetry coming up at all in my college classes was studying a few Shakespeare sonnets. Maybe there was something about John Donne in a Very Old Literature By White Guys class (probably not the actual name of the class) for a minute. But I definitely didn't study anything written in the last 300 years. 

But then so why has poetry eluded me for so long? 

I don't have a good answer. One reason that occurs to me is that my brain works very literally and I like clarity and resolution. Growing up, I loved to read, but I was really good at math and science, too. I was even a chemistry major in college for a few ill-fated semesters. It was the war of my youth: My left brain vs. my right brain...and ultimately my right brain won. But I feel like when I try to engage with poetry, my left brain sneaks over and whispers to my right brain: "Hey man, you're not going to understand this. It's too flowery. Too subjective. There's only barely a story. There are no easy answers." And my right brain, dressed in a linen suit and drinking mint tea, hasn't had the heart to tell my left brain to STFU.

One after another in rapid succession, metaphor, image, symbol, and simile, and even the structure of the poem -- itself imbued with meaning -- means you can't just fly through a poem and go on with your day. A poem requires a close read, and then another. And then probably many more. In this economy? Who's got time for that? 

This is a cop-out, of course. Of course, there is frequent poetic language in the novels and prose I love, too. But they're not so concentrated. You can catch one or two at a time and stop and think and then continue. And if you miss something it's maybe not the end of the world.

But honestly, another reason I haven't read a lot of poetry is because I haven't really tried very hard to learn, either. It's a negative feedback loop and I've been felled by inertia. I'm like a person who tried running for a month in their early 20s, decided they hated running, and hasn't tried again since. (If that sounds like an oddly specific example, well, I lived it. But about a decade ago, I DID try running again, and realized I loved it. And haven't stopped since. Hmm...do we have another possible parallel incoming?)

And so now I'm determined to try reading poems again. No better time than National Poetry Month to learn how to read poetry. To enjoy poetry. To love poetry? 

Look, I know you can't just tell yourself to love something. And then do it. But by putting in some time and equipping yourself with the right tools, I can at least maybe identify why it hasn't worked yet. 

I've also just picked up a book titled Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems, by Harvard professor Stephanie Burt. The book is supposedly "an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, enjoying, and learning from poems." The words "seemingly daunting task" are doing some seriously heavily lifting in that blurb. 

It does feel daunting. But having been a reader my whole life, I feel like I'm in a good spot to finally figure this out. 

And I have a good collection to start. Every year at AWP (that's the big annual conference for writers), I seem to collect poetry collections. It's always good to support small presses, which are, generally speaking, the purveyors of poetry. So each of the last four years I've come home with a fistful of poetry...that has just sat on my nightstand. 

Collected poetry collections in the photo above:

The Tradition, by Jericho Brown

A Fortune for Your Disaster, by Hanif Abdurraqib

The New Testament, by Jericho Brown

REPLICA, by Lisa Low

Calling a Wolf a Wolf, by Kaveh Akbar

A Map of My Want, by Faylita Hicks

Pilgrim Bell, by Kaveh Akbar

Pisces Urges, by Czaerra Galicinao Ucol

Karaoke at the End of the World, by Genevieve DeGuzman

1919, by Eve L. Ewing

Electric Arches, by Eve L. Ewing

So off we go on the Good Ship Poetry. If anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears. 

If you're like me and want to learn more about poetry, my employer, StoryStudio Chicago, has several upcoming poetry events and workshops, both online and in person. Check 'em out here. 

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon: Sussing Out the Sublots Like Pynchon

Here in Chicago, an independent bookstore recently closed due in part to a sharp drop in sales when a new Barnes & Noble opened on the same block. People (me, included) were pissed. A big corporate conglomerate had pushed out another small business, accelerated the neighborhood's already out-of-control gentrification, and damaged the character of the neighborhood.

But other people were (and are) excited. The two-story store is located in a historic building and adds charm and economic oomph to the neighborhood, they say. Plus, the selection of books is much better. 

A similar battle rages in Michael Chabon's 2012 novel, Telegraph Avenue. Archy and Nat are long-time owners of Brokeland Records, a used vinyl shop in an iconic neighborhood in Oakland. But a rich retired football player wants to open a big-ass megastore complete with a similar record shop just down the street from theirs. If that happens, they're doomed. 

So this long novel is about Archy and Nat trying to figure out what's important to them. There are subplots galore -- their wives are partners in a midwifery business, Archy learns he has a 14-year-old son, Nat's son is in love with Archy's "new" son, Archy's 70s blaxploitation movie star father has reentered the picture and past deeds are coming to light. And more. 

The conflict between Team Brokeland Records and Team NFL Star is fertile ground for conflict, but Chabon doesn't spend much time there. Instead, he spends probably way too much time sussing out all the strands of subplot. It gets to be almost Pynchonian in the zany interconnections and off-the-wall characters and comedy. 

Also like Pynchon: Chabon is a maximalist normally, which I can hang with. I don't mind when a writer uses 100 words when two will do, if those 100 words are entertaining. But in this novel, more often than not, those 100 words drag a little. (The critic Ron Charles said something like it felt like Chabon was being paid by the word and had an impending mortgage balloon payment. 😅) It's a dense novel and it doesn't move quickly at all. 

Fun fact: I got an ARC of this novel at the 2012 Book Expo America show in NYC....and it's sat on my shelf ever since. Part of the reason it's sat for 14 years is because of some of the warnings from earlier reviews of its denseness. They weren't wrong. 

But I'm glad I finally read it. It occasionally reminded me how good Chabon is when he's on. And it's been a decade since his last novel (Moonglow) so even though I'm in agreement with most readers that this one doesn't stack up to some of his better novels -- most notably, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (a masterpiece) -- it was still fun (at times) to jump back on the Chabon bandwagon.