Literate Matters: There's always some of the old with the new when good reading is served
With the year winding down, and plenty of other reviewers opining about the best books of the past year, I’d prefer instead to think about the books I’m looking ahead to in the new year.
Granted not all of the titles on my list are forthcoming; some came late this year and are still working their way to the top of the pile and at least one is more seasoned yet.
Making the top of the pile just this past week and the most established is “Braiding Sweetgrass, finally in the rotation thanks to a most-appreciated Secret Santa. Written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, it’s long seemed like every serious reader I encountered touted this collection of “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.”
Published by Milkweed Editions in 2015, “Braiding Sweetgrass” provides insight into the knowable and the unknowable through ruminations on “Learning The Grammar of Animacy” and “Putting Down Roots.” I’ve long considered this a hole in my reading experience, though it’s now one I can fill.
A more recent publication that is close to the top is “Stella Maris” by Cormac McCarthy. A companion to “The Passenger,” this story comes from the point of view of Alicia Western, who shows up as well in the other book, though in more unseen ways. Together the books make up McCarthy’s first fiction since “The Road” in 2006.
I’m also looking forward to starting on “Indigenous Continent” by Pekka Hämäläinen, author of “Lakota America” and “Comanche Empire.” As he’s done before, the Norwegian scholar places Indigenous people not on the periphery of history or in the bull’s eye of American expansion, but rather he demonstrates how integral different groups are and were to the evolution of our shared history.
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At least one title that’s not yet out, but is much anticipated is “Sun House” by David James Duncan. Sixteen years can seem a long time between books, but longtime fans are finally about to be reconnected to the author of “The Brothers K” and “The River Why.”
Due in August and weighing in at 800 pages, Duncan’s newest is, like his other fiction, certain to suggest both cosmic connections, as well as the power and the purpose of the natural world for those willing to pay attention. Sometimes circuitous and sometimes comic, Duncan’s prose is by turns dense then delicate, though his sensibilities course from mountain solitude to family chaos and back again in ways that feel familiar.
Also coming in the new year is the paperback edition of Jim Harrison’s “Early Poems” from Copper Canyon Press.
I have plenty of copies of these poems, including the three volume hardcover editions of Harrison’s “Complete Poems,” but another copy of these early poems will still make a nice addition to my table. And if I have to read “Sketch for a Job Application” again, or “Lullaby for a Daughter,” well I think I can manage.
I also hope to take up a favorite bookseller on the recommendation of “The Light Pirate” by Lily Brooks-Dalton. There’s no doubting the troubles made by climate change, and Florida is experiencing some of the worst of this, so while Brooks-Dalton’s novel about a family facing chaos here is fictional, some of the upheaval is not far from the facts.
Like with a “best of the year” list, there are plenty of books that I’m not including here as there simply isn’t room. Regardless, like any serious reader, I always have a list of those I’m looking forward to, those I know but haven’t made it to yet, and those I hope to see at some point. Whatever is on your list for 2023, I hope you find plenty of good reading.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Literate Matters: There's always some of the old with the new when reading
