Literary Traffic Jam
The NYT claims that this fall, we will witness, “one of the most crowded literary traffic jams in recent memory … crammed with writers who are both household names and have not released a book in several years.”
In addition, most of the books are being published early in the season, to avoid the attention deficit brought on by the November election.
Because of the glut and the length of some of these novels, Ron Charles, reviewer for the Washington Post, tells the NYT that he will just not be able to get to some other books, such as Justin Cronin’s The Twelve, the second book in the trilogy which began with The Passage in 2010. None of the paper’s own reviewers are quoted in the story.
It may not need the attention; most libraries are showing more holds on it than on the other major literary titles he may review instead.
The titles are listed below by publication date (we’ve added Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, which we think is qualified to be on the list):
September Titles
Out Now (Sept 4)
NW, Zadie Smith (Penguin Press; Penguin Audiobooks)
Sept 11
Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon, (Harper; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio) – Digital ARC on Edelweiss
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz, (Penguin/Riverhead; Penguin Audio)
Sept 18
Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Salman Rushdie, (Random House; RH Audio; BOT)
Sept 27
The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print)
October/November
Oct 23
Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print)
Nov 6
Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver, (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuse) – Digital ARC on Edelweiss — not on the NYT list, but we feel it should be. Kingsolver’s last book, The Lacuna, came out in 2009.
Nov 13
Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan, (RH/Doubleday/Talese) — digital ARC on Edelweiss