Another start to the year means more opportunities for productivity and starting resolutions you've always wanted to make. If your goal is to read more, Our culture We've got you covered – each month we'll select upcoming books to add to your reading list.
FetishKatherine Maine (January 9)
Daniel has always lusted after Asian women, treating them like neglected dolls when he finds a new one to play with, but Kyoto, the daughter of Alma, the woman whose death he caused, won't let him get away so easily. After a failed murder attempt to get revenge, Daniel is kidnapped and must live with the man who destroyed her family. Katherine Maine confronts race and the ways we try to search for or see it with her glowing and provocative posthumous novel.
City of laughterTamim Farrukhtar (January 16)
A debut novel that explores queerness, Judaism, and global epics, City of laughter It is a detailed and poignant portrait of women trying to find themselves. Navigating life after a breakup and losing your father is hard enough, but Shiva, a student of Jewish folklore, takes her chance and visits Poland to try to understand her family's identity. In trying to define her past, she also understands her present.
BeautylandMarie-Hélène Bertino (January 16)
Adina is a girl living in Philadelphia who, for all intents and purposes, believes she is an alien sent from space. While asleep, she visits a classroom where she senses that her purpose on Earth is to report on human life and send it to her superiors via fax machine. In this warm and thoughtful novel, we see the best, worst, and complexities of human behavior through the eyes of a girl who believes she is apart of the herd. Adina's strange condition may be just a metaphor, but the feelings of joy, pain, and loneliness that surround her as she moves through life as a human are as real as they come.
The world of filtering: How algorithms have flattened cultureKyle Chayka (January 16)
from The New Yorker Staff writer and former author of minimalism comes a new work about a relatively innocuous staple of modern-day culture: the algorithm. When we scroll through Instagram and TikTok and look for a new movie, show, café, or product to consume, we assume it's with the best of intentions, but the data mining behind the content is just the tip of the iceberg. In a thoughtful exploration, Chaika details how the Internet defines us inside and out and how companies are so eager to use the information to make profit.
Bad foundationsBrian Allen Carr (January 17)
author Opioids, Indiana, returns with a (wonderfully) silly novel about Cook, a man who crawls under houses for a living. Divided between unfiltered thoughts, erratic 'crawls' where wealthy couples are shocked to hear the cost of renovation, long drives to upsell and dreamlike conversations between his daughters. Bad foundations It is a consistently unpredictable read.
martyr!Kaveh Akbar (Jan 23)
In Kaveh Akbar's debut novel, an Iranian poet travels to New York City to speak to Orchideh, a dying performance artist who is currently in the middle of her final exhibition. Inspired to write a book of martyrs, Cyrus is haunted by the death of his mother, who was killed in a civilian plane shot down by the United States, and hopes that his death has some meaning. Interspersed with personal perspectives from characters like his uncle and mother along with poignant and honest self-reflections on writing and legacy, Akbar's debut is well worth watching.
FussChristina Cook (January 23)
In this emotional and powerful debut novel, twenty-year-old Aqua returns to her native Jamaica after a family emergency to wander the island in search of what she has missed and the effect of distance on her character and upbringing. After falling into a relationship with a lesbian sex worker, Aqua must confront painful truths about her identity that she didn't know she was hiding.
Good materialDolly Alderton (January 30)
Dating columnist and advice expert Dolly Alderton is back with Good materiala novel that is as compulsively readable, funny, and relatable as her first novel, ghosts. Jane has just broken up with Andy, a struggling comedian who turns delusional after the breakup. He throws Jane's perfume down the canal, spends nights out with the boys, and gets a personal trainer to help him recover, but he still has trouble wrapping his head around the fact that he and Jane are over. Alderton writes stories with heart and depth, and her latest work is a continuation of her remarkable storytelling skills.
Your utopiaBora Chung (January 30)
The second collection of short stories by South Korean writer Bora Chung, Your utopiacontinues the same chilling sci-fi, horror, and magical realism as her first, unforgettable story The cursed rabbit. This time, it tackles artificial intelligence, class, capitalism, and crime with its signature unsettling touch. Like her first collection, these stories will follow you well after you put the book down, for better or worse.
