Can't-Wait Wednesday: Daphne by Josh Malerman, A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang, & Tomorrow in Shanghai: Stories by May-lee Chai

   

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

 

This week's upcoming book spotlights are: 

Daphne by Josh Malerman
Publication: August 23rd, 2022
Del Rey Books
Hardcover. 352 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. 

But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. 

After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears—before the summer of her life becomes the last summer of her life. 

Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it."

Josh Malerman's books can be so hit or miss for me, haha, but when I like his books, I really like them, so I'm hoping this one will be a win. It sounds very classic horror in a sense, but also like it will bring something fresh. I'm looking forward to checking it out!

and...

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang
Publication: August 9th, 2022
Penguin Books
Hardcover. 400 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"An epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post-Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one's dreams and the lives we leave behind 

Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family's rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home. 

When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China's impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother's evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to help: Tian Hanwen, the only other person who shared Yitian's desire to pursue a life of knowledge. As a teenager, Hanwen was "sent down" from Shanghai to Yitian's village as part of the country's rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university in the city together. But when their plans resulted in a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind, resigned to life as a midlevel bureaucrat's wealthy housewife. 

Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian's father, all the while grappling with the past--who Yitian's father really was, and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home."

This has a very epic family story feel to it, and I really do enjoy those sorts of stories so I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to check this one out sometime!

and...

Tomorrow in Shanghai: Stories by May-lee Chai
Publication: August 30th, 2022
Blair
Paperback. 166 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"A short story collection exploring cultural complexities in China, the Chinese diaspora in America, and the world at large.

In a vibrant and illuminating follow-up to her award-winning story collection, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, May-lee Chai's latest collection Tomorrow in Shanghai explores multicultural complexities through lenses of class, wealth, age, gender, and sexuality--always tracking the nuanced, knotty, and intricate exchanges of interpersonal and institutional power. These stories transport the reader, variously: to rural China, where a city doctor harvests organs to fund a wedding and a future for his family; on a vacation to France, where a white mother and her biracial daughter cannot escape their fraught relationship; inside the unexpected romance of two Chinese-American women living abroad in China; and finally, to a future Chinese colony on Mars, where an aging working-class woman lands a job as a nanny. Chai's stories are essential reading for an increasingly globalized world."

As I've mentioned a couple times, short story collections have been starting to work for me lately, and I think this collection sounds like it will have some really great stories and commentary to explore. 

What do you think about these upcoming releases? What are your anticipated upcoming releases?

The Friday Face-Off: A Horror Cover

Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme here at Books by Proxy. Join us every Friday as we pit cover against cover, and publisher against publisher, to find the best artwork in our literary universe.

I felt that it was time to join in another Friday Face-Off, so here we go!

This week's topic is:

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” – A horror cover

I read Bird Box last year and loved it, so I figured that it would be a great choice for this week's topic. I was pleasantly surprised at how many different covers there are for this book, and even more pleasantly surprised at how many I like. And it reminds me that I need another great horror book to read...

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

  

US Ecco 2014 HC || US Ecco 2015 PB || German

  

Harper Voyager 2015|| Bulgarian|| Persian

  

Russian || Thai || 2018 HC Special Edition

My choice:

This was a really hard choice because I really like a lot of these! I like the original US one because it's simple, but still has some detail. The US paperback is nice, but I don't totally get the phone. The special edition has awesome imagery, and the Russian one is most accurate and pretty haunting (but does it give too much?) Suffice to say, these are all some great covers!

(10/20 edit: Apologies if you notice a comment you made has been deleted--Blogger went a little nuts and a couple got deleted, so I'm sincerely sorry about that!)

Which covers do you like best?

Buy it! Amazon | Book Depository

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Mini-Reviews: Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman & Self-Portrait With Boy Rachel Lyon

Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman

Del Rey, 2018

367 pages. Hardcover.

Likes:
What drew me to this book was the main premise of a woman with a medical condition that basically puts her into a death-like coma at unpredictable intervals, and this idea did end up being one that was explored thoroughly, both by Carol and her late friend John Bowie. I don't read an abundance of Western books, but I was looking forward to that being the setting for this book, and I think Malerman made that aspect fit really well with the story. Malerman's writing style also really shines in this book, as he does a wonderful job of capturing the mix of emotions that speed through his characters' heads as they move through the story. Unbury Carol is a slow-moving, very character-focused sort of book that builds up to a a clever ending.

Dislikes:
I was honestly just disappointed with this book in general. There wasn't anything overly bad about it, but it was just.. lacking. There wasn't really much of a plot there and I feel like the 'plot' that was there could have all been wrapped up in about a hundred pages or so. There were characters that didn't feel like they needed to be there and I felt that the concept I was so excited for was lost somewhere in the mix. I think a big problem I also had was that there never really seemed to be a strong enough motivation for Dwight to want to kill his wife. There was also a weird sense of urgency that seemed to pop out of nowhere and just didn't quite fit.

Overall, I'm mixed on this one. I enjoyed aspects of this book, but I also consistently wondered why I was reading this and what the point was. I've decided to go with three stars for this one.

Buy the book: Amazon | Book Depository


Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon
Scribner, 2018
376 pages. Hardcover.

Likes:
Self-Portrait with Boy is an unassuming novel that packs a huge punch in ways that were much different than I expected. Briefly, this story tells of Lu Rile, a young aspiring photographer who accidentally captures an image of her upstairs neighbor's young son falling to his death through her window while taking her own photograph. Although this premise is what drew me to this book and does provide an overarching storyline, this is not, surprisingly, the main focus of this book at many times. Lu is such a relatable character in some ways, and although I couldn't connect with her on major lifestyle aspects, there were so many sections that I found myself marking because I just felt like she was reading my own personal thoughts about things. This is an extremely quick read, both because it is written very simply, but also because it is hard to put down. This is one of those literary novels that doesn't use quotation marks, and this seemed to only make the story go quicker and I really liked how it added to the somewhat depressing and fatigued nature of the story.

Dislikes:
The only major dislike I had was that this book was not what I was expecting. The issue of Lu capturing a photograph of her upstairs neighbor's son was indeed a huge part of this book, but there was so much more in this story than just that. This book covers a small chunk of life about living as a rather destitute artist in early '90s Brooklyn, something that I didn't expect--though I did very much enjoy it. There was also a small, recurring storyline about a ghost that just didn't make much sense to me, though it did end up being important at the end of the story.

Overall, I liked this book a lot. As a warning: it's incredibly bleak. I definitely found myself feeling a bit ore depressed than usual while reading this book, so just keep that in mind if you're sensitive to books that seem to bleed into your own life. Otherwise, I would absolutely recommend this book for the variety of topics it delves into. Four stars!

Buy the book: Amazon | Book Depository

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Tuesday Double Feature: Tell Me Something Tuesday & First Chapter Tuesday

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly discussion post hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings where a wide range of topics from books to blogging are discussed. Weigh in and join the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comments. If you want to do your own post, grab the question and answer it on your blog.

This week's topic: Are you more inclined/ less inclined to read books that are compared to other popular books or authors?

 To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if this sort of description affects me too much one way or the other. Unless a book's description is just extremely annoying or rubs me the wrong way, then I'm pretty likely to just ignore the comparisons and read the book anyway. Comparisons might occasionally make me interested in a title, but they don't generally turn me off from a book (usually because a majority of the time the comparison is off).

I definitely get annoyed by certain book/author comparisons, namely Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc. comparisons. Not everything is 'like Harry Potter for adults' or 'Game of Thrones meets [insert random book/movie here]'. How about we just don't do that? If an author was specifically inspired by a certain book or author that has a big franchise, then I'm totally fine with something akin to 'inspired by [whatever book] here,' but I don't think they should actively compare the book for no real reason. I know it's all about marketing and the average buyer is more likely to pick up a book that markets itself as similar to Harry Potter, but I wish we could stop doing that because if all the books that claimed to be like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones actually were, we'd have very little variety.

The most recent example of a time when book/movie comparisons ended up both intriguing me and thenn disappointing me was with Jay Kristoff's latest release, LIFEL1K3. One of LIFEL1K3's main advertising sell is: "It's Romeo & Juliet meets Mad Max meets X-men with a little bit of Bladerunner cheering from the sidelines." Now, I don't hate this. I think it's fun and it did make me pretty intrigued by this book, but it also sort of gave me too  many expectations. It almost spoiled the book in a sense by giving away so much about what it's like and what it's perhaps trying to be. It also really frustrated me because of how disappointed I was in the book because it felt so unoriginal (I'll expand on this in my review for LIFEL1K3, which should be up Thursday). This particular instance of comparing has both pros and cons and although I think it successfully piqued the interest of a lot of readers, it personally left me wanting and slightly annoyed. I will say that I prefer it to the generic Harry Potter type ones, but I still felt a bit disappointed by it.

Minor digression aside, my answer is that these comparisons do not influence me to read or not to read a book, but they will possible affect how I view the book and my enjoyment of it. If I'm expecting one thing going into a book and then I never find that specific thing, then I'm going to be confused and frustrated. What are your thoughts on this subject?

First Chapter Tuesday is hosted every Tuesday by Vicki @ I'd Rather Be at the Beach. This is meme in which bloggers share the first chapter of a book that they are currently reading or thinking about reading soon. Join the fun by making your own post and linking up over at Vicki's blog, or simply check it out to find more new books to read!

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick

"Chapter 1: Tarboy

1 Vaqrin (first day of summer (941)
Midnight
It began, as every disaster in his life began, with a calm. The harbor and the village slept. The wind that had roared all night lay quelled by the headland; the bosun grew too sleepy to shout. But fort feet up the ratines, Pazel Pathkendle had never been more awake."

I read Robert V.S. Redick's neweest release Master Assassins earlier this year and completely loved it, so now I'm hoping to get started on some of his other works that I've yet to read. 

Pre-order: Amazon | Book Depository

Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman

"Chapter One: At the Funeral of John Bowie

Harrows, situated at the northernmost point of the Trail, savored its distance from the meat of the rabid road. It was easily the most affluent town in both counties; the homes of Harrows were larger, often constructed of stately stone, some with as many as ten bedrooms. The garden yards were as wide as the fabled Trail itself, some roofs as high as the willows. Even better: Harrows enjoyed more sunlight than the other towns, as the shadows cast by the arching of those willows concluded where the wheat fields began, just south of the border. Sunny and secluded, remote and rich, Harrows was a very desirable place to live. 

But that didn’t preclude its citizens from dying. 

John Bowie found this out the bad way."

I loved Malerman's Bird Box and I thought the premise of this book was really intriguing, so I was excited to jump into this one. 

Pre-Order: Amazon | Book Depository

What do you think? Would you keep reading these books? (And feel free to join in and make your own post!) 

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*Excerpts are taken from the novel itself; I do not claim to own any part of the excerpt.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

First Chapter Tuesday is hosted every Tuesday by Diane over at Bibiophile by the Sea. This is meme in which bloggers share the first chapter of a book that they are currently reading or thinking about reading soon. Join the fun by making your own post and linking up over at Diane's blog, or simple check it out to find more new books to read!

I've been wanting to read Bird Box for a long time now, a desire which I recently shared that desire in my winter reading plans post. Well, I'm hoping to pick it up extremely soon from my library, so here is a sneak at the first paragraph(s)!

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

This excerpt can be found at Tor.com.

"Malorie stands in the kitchen, thinking. 

Her hands are damp. She is trembling. She taps her toe nervously on the cracked tile floor. It is early; the sun is probably only peeking above the horizon. She watches its meager light turn the heavy window drapes a softer shade of black and thinks, 

That was a fog. The children sleep under chicken wire draped in black cloth down the hall. Maybe they heard her moments ago on her knees in the yard. Whatever noise she made must have traveled through the microphones, then the amplifiers that sat beside their beds. 

She looks to her hands and detects the subtlest sheen in the candlelight. Yes, they are damp. The morning’s dew is still fresh upon them."

Buy the book!

What do you think? Would you keep reading this book? (And feel free to join in and make your own post!) 

Get more reviews and bookish fun in your inbox and subscribe to Forever Lost in Literature!

Planning to purchase a book or two? Consider purchasing on Book Depository through my affiliate link! Book Depository has worldwide free shipping and millions of titles to choose from.

*Excerpt taken from the novel itself; I do not claim to own any part of the excerpt.