Tudormania Lives -- Part Deux

Picking up -- briefly -- on an earlier post about the latest influx of Tudor-focused historical novels: it's not over yet!

The latest news is that historian and novelist Alison Weir has signed a contract to produce a series of six novels featuring, yes, you guessed it, each of the six wives of Henry VIII, for British publisher Headline, the first of which will see the light of day in 2016.

The news sparked quite a kerfuffle over on the Historical Novel Society's Facebook page, of which I'm a member. Reading between the lines, there are a handful of aspiring novelists out there interested in writing about other eras who seem to feel that the combination of the proven market clout of the Tudors and Alison Weir's ability to bridge the gap between popular history and popular fiction better than most writers, may do what lesser-known luminary of the historical crime writing world Lynn Shepherd alleged that JK Rowling was doing with her shift to adult fiction: using her celebrity to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere and making it tougher for other writers to breathe.

Not that Weir is JK Rowling; she's just one of dozens of writers, ranging from those with household names (the ubiquitous Philippa Gregory) who have long made the Tudors her bread and butter, and to whom readers have gravitated as a result. (She's also earned a reputation for being far more generous than many of her peers with many of those aspiring writers, so kudos to her.)

That said: is there anything left to say about these six women?? To be blunt, they wore the crown matrimonial and weren't reigning queens. Arguably, Catherine of Aragon was significant for her heritage and the longevity of the marriage, but how many times is it entertaining to read a novel about the breakdown of the same marriage? Similarly, how many times is it fascinating to read about Anne Boleyn, when you know just how very, very badly the story ends for her? With biographies aplenty out there, and novels based on the latest scholarly research, what remains to be said? Catherine Howard met her end on the block as a teenager after a rather furtive little affair; it's tragic, but again, not the stuff of which countless novels of tremendous interest are made. Do we read the same story over and over again, or go in search of new fare?

I think the challenge for Weir will be to prove that she can approach these stories with a truly new angle. The challenge for publishers? That's a tougher one altogether. I want someone to prove to me that they are willing to take a risk and publish some novels set in less-usual eras and places, and by authors who aren't (yet) household names. For me, that means no Tudors, no Wars of the Roses, and very little from ancient Rome, World War I or World War II. In the coming weeks, I'll try to draw attention to a couple of these books -- and challenge readers to give them a chance, too.

Book Porn; or, Are Book Publishers Really Dealers in Addictive Substances?

Are book publishers just drug pushers in disguise? I sometimes wonder. Certainly, every time I take a step back to look at a list of upcoming books, I begin to think that for all the agonizing that has been going on about the crisis in which publishers find themselves, they really have one big ace tucked firmly up their sleeves. They have the books that we all want to read.

Sorry, but I'm just not queuing up to read a vast number of the books that are made available by Amazon's own publishing divisions, however intriguing I find their business model and however delighted I am that it has created new career options for many authors whom the short-sighted business policies of the New York behemoth publishers have left to flounder. I've tried several and thus far my reactions boil down to "meh". I'll keep trying, and I'll let you know if that changes.

I'll always, always, always be scrutinizing new offerings from a handful of smaller publishers that have firmly established themselves as my favorites, based on my tremendous success with their offerings. A while back, I summarized some of these and listed their attractions. Today, I'd add the likes of Graywolf Press to the list, thanks to books like The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, which I'll try to get around to discussing one day soon on these cyber pages.

But around this time of year, I sit down to pull together a list of books that I am desperately eager to read, and I realize just why book publishers might do very, very well as peddlers of various illegal and intoxicating substances of the kind of things our parents told us we're supposed to "just say NO" to. Their wares are seductive and appealing. And I know that just like a really great drug might do, they'll take me away from ugly realities -- or at least, catapult me into someone else's ugly reality, reminding me that my own really isn't all that bad, after all. They'll make me believe in some greater wisdom. They'll inspire me. They'll show me wonderful imaginations at work; tremendous writing. And yes, there will be some disappointments, too, but that's part of the game.

And unlike the drug pushers, they get to promote their wares publicly. So to share some of the pain of anticipation, I'm going to tell you about some of the books that I'm most eager to read in the coming few months. Call it drugs; call it book porn; call it whatever you want. All I know is that, one way or another, by hook or by crook, these are the books that will be finding their way onto my shelves or my Kindle. A book habit can indeed become a very, very scary thing.

December 2014
Moriarty by Anthony Horwitz (my most coveted and most elusive mystery books of the winter!)
The Lonely War: One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran by Nazila Fathi (timely...)
The Convert's Song by Sebastian Rotella (people keep telling me this is an author to read)
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning (if they packed 'em, I want to know why)

January 2015
Honeydew by Edith Pearlman (yum, more short stories by this truly amazing author)
The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe by Anthony Williams (new author, but from Soho Press)
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (lotsa buzz about this suspense novel)
Once Upon a Revolution by Thanassis Cambanis (likely to be a good book about the Arab Spring)
The Orphan Sky by Ella Leya (yes, set in Azerbaijan, but why not?)

February 2015
Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally (WWII POWs in Australia)
The Siege Winter by Ariana Franklin (finished posthumously by her daughter)
Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid (non-fiction anthology by a fave novelist)
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (falconry; grief; it just won the Samuel Johnson Prize)
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket writes for grownups!)
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (Estonian resistance to the Soviets; lotsa buzz)
The Last Good Paradise by Tatjana Soli (I loved her debut novel)

March 2015
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (how to resist??)
Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon (a 50/50 chance of being a winning suspense yarn)
Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell (the sequel to Doc; it's time for the OK Corral...)
The Porcelain Thief by Hsu Huan (scouring China for buried... china?)
Mademoiselle Chanel by C.W. Gortner (a move to the 20th century for this author)
Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams (the quest for the lost city...)
Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran (historical fiction about the Indian mutiny)
Last Wake by Erik Larson (The Lusitania's sinking; marking the centenary)

Some Publishers I Keep a Close Eye On...

I was making my way through the stack of catalogs that made up part of my haul at BEA (BookExpo) back in late May -- also known as "book porn" -- when I realized that there are a handful of publishers whose catalogs were responsible for inflating my "must read" list to an extent that was completely out of whack. I've mentioned one of these here in these pages -- the folks at Europa Books -- but thought it might be amusing to try to round up a list of them. So, in no particular order, here's who they are and why they're so dangerous to my budget and my groaning bookshelves.

Europa Books (to start with the obvious one) publishes high-quality literature that I might otherwise never hear about at all or never be able to find if I did. So far, I'm batting 1000 with their books, and I've decided to participate in their Europa Challenge (more of which in a later post.) Authors include such well-known figures as Muriel Barbery and Jane Gardam, but if you're looking for something completely different in the fiction world, their backlist is a great first stop.

Soho Books: I confess! I am a mystery addict. And Soho publishes some of my favorite authors, including some of the ones who don't automatically warrant a place in the tables at the front of the bookstore, but whose books are often better than some of the ones that you do find occupying prime real estate. I woke up to the pattern slowly -- d'uh -- but any imprint that has introduced me to authors like Qiu Xialong (his post-Soho books haven't been as good, alas), Colin Cotterill, David Downing and Jassy Mackenzie needs to have an eye kept on it. Coming up, I'll be reading some more offerings, like books by Michael Genelin.

Basic Books and PublicAffairs: These two imprints fall under the broader label of the Perseus Books Group, and publish some of the best and most accessible narrative non-fiction about serious subjects. I've just finished reading Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl, a must-read book about sex selection at birth and the impact of these policies on our world, a BasicBooks offering. (Stay tuned for a review in the next 24 hours.) The list of interesting books is endless -- Cambodia today, Lisbon during World War II, the last day of the life of the Soviet Union...

Bloomsbury: I suppose it's technically Bloomsbury Walker, but I don't really care. Besides, I drooled over the logo on the catalog so much that  it's no longer visible. I could actually whimper when reading through their list of upcoming offerings. A new MI5 thriller from Stella Rimington. Stephen O'Shea's newest book, The Friar of Carcassonne. Dava Sobel writing about Copernicus; a new novel from Lloyd Jones (author of Mr. Pip), something from Amin Maalouf and countless other goodies. I'd add to the list, but then I'd cry in frustration and the catalog would end up covered in tear stains as well as drool. Horrifying.

New York Review of Books: Not content with churning out a must-read newsmagazine about books, these folks are actually printing (or rather, reprinting) must-read fiction and non-fiction. Tove Jansson's books for adults are on the list, but also books like the one I snaffled on my most recent bookstore foray, When the World Spoke French, about how the possession of a lingua franca spread Enlightenment thought.

Melville House: Shamefully, for a moment I thought these guys might be jumping aboard the "Christian fiction" bandwagon. No idea why that thought crossed my mind, other than the fact that I'd never really heard of them. But anyone planning to introduce the entertaining subversion of Andrei Kurkov's novels featuring Viktor the writer and his penguin Misha is someone whose adventures in publishing I want to follow. They are off digging up intriguing novellas by well-known classic writers -- you'll know the author's names but the books won't be familiar to you -- introducing writers like Imre Kertesz and non-fiction like Is Journalism Worth Dying For? (the final writings of Anna Politkovskaya) and Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany. (No, the author takes Hitler seriously, but is pointing out that the ability to laugh at an oppressive regime can sometimes lead people to resist it.) The newest addition to my MUST WATCH! list.

Little, Brown & Co., is part of Hachette and thus one of the "big boys" in the publishing world. But their fall list includes a new novel by the author of Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell, and an intriguing new thriller (under the Mulholland imprint) The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi. I don't turn my backs on them... Another great Hachette imprint is Twelve, which publishes a single book a month; the winter releases include something from Christopher Hitchens and a book by Eric Weiner about humans and God. (His last book was about the happiest places in the world; I suspect Iceland is a wee bit less happy than when he was there, pre-crash.)

Farrar,  Strauss & Giroux/Faber and Faber has an astonishing list that includes Dante in Love by A.N. Wilson, new novels from Jeffery Eugenides and Andre Aciman, and, from Faber, an intriguing looking book by Siddhartha Deb, The Beautiful and the Damned, about the new India. They publish interesting authors like Elif Batuman and Marilynne Robinson; Faber & Faber has an amazing backlist of poetry and drama. (Stoppard, anyone?)

Just because a publisher isn't on this list doesn't say anything about the caliber of what's in their catalogs, just that these publishers appear much more likely to focus on the kind of stuff I like to read. When I'm looking for a "plain vanilla" novel, I'm pretty much label agnostic. But if I'm not keeping up with these guys, I know that I'm going to risk missing out on something that will be a wonderful discovery, including a book that will be on my list of best reads for the year or a new favorite author.