CRP's Blog

We asked authors of our September titles what books they’re squeezing in while promoting their new releases.  Check out what they had to say below!

Tom Acitelli (American Wine)

I’m reading Jeff Alworth’s The Beer Bible. Both Jeff and I write for All About Beer magazine, and I appreciate the effort he went through to uncover fresh details about the rapidly and deliciously expanding world (and I mean world in both a literal and a figurative sense) of beer. Plus, it’s just a fun accompaniment to discovering new brands and styles.

Cory Franklin (Cook County ICU)

I’m reading Dancing In The Dark by Morris Dickstein, an incisive account of the politics and culture of America in the 1930s. The book includes a comprehensive account of the familiar personages of the era (Steinbeck, Gershwin, Richard Wright) but also those less well known today but no less influential (Paul Muni, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Roth). Anyone wondering how American culture progressed from the Depression to the outbreak of World War II should find this book indispensable.

Michele Weldon (Escape Points)

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between The World and Me is a stunning and exquisite work, both tender and unshakable at the same time, written as a letter to his son. I can relate to the vulnerability as a parent of sons, but am slapped awake by the stark expectation of brutality that Coates must assume as a black man, knowing the price paid for being black in America.  The writing is simultaneously dense and poetic and it is like witnessing a ballet performed about mass killings.

Amy Pascale (Joss Whedon)

Last August, I stumbled into the world of Lucifer the thief when Boom! Studios relaunched Michael Alan Nelson’s Hexed comic. Within a few pages, I was completely in love with this snarky, bold girl who is cursed with a supernatural destiny. Sound familiar? Think of a far more reckless Buffy with an awesome lady mentor, Val, and an unwitting blonde “Intern” sidekick. My excitement of picking up each issue is truly rivaled only by my happiness while reading and my anticipation for the next one when I’m done.

Hexed’s final issue came out last month and I’m putting off my inevitable heartbreak by diving into Nelson’s first prose novel starring the supernatural thief: Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown. While I miss the comic’s stunning artwork, Nelson’s dialogue makes Luci and the other characters incredibly vivid and his storytelling is still so engaging.

T. Frank Muir (Life for a Life)

I just finished reading The Girl on the Train, a debut thriller by Paula Hawkins, and loved it. Psychological suspense is a particular favourite of mine, and I especially love the intrigue of people’s secret lives, when nothing is as it seems and you never know who to trust.

Mick Wall (Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre)

I always seem to have at least three or four books on the go at the same time. They fill my bedside table, tower atop my bedside table, line the shelves of my bathroom, fall from junk shop bags in my car, and as I sit here at my desk writing this, seem to grow like man-eating plants all around me. I can’t stop buying books—Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or, my favourite, secondhand stores, thrift shops, junk emporiums, street markets. . . . Anywhere and everywhere that sells books is where you will find me. It’s such a heavy habit I now own a great many books I still haven’t read and fear I will never find the time to read. Right now, though, I am co-reading the Roger Lewis biography of Anthony Burgess, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook by Charles Bukowski, Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James, and Kitty Kelley’s Sinatra biography His Way. I’m also of course writing a couple of books at the same time too. But then I’m a sick man. It’s obvious to everyone that meets me. I need help!

Jerome Tuccille (The Roughest Riders)

Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat is a sterling example of a forgotten slice of American history told in a driving, narrative style that captures the reader’s imagination from the first page to the last. It is informative and entertaining with good storytelling skills and character development.

Joseph A. Williams (Seventeen Fathoms Deep)

I’m really enjoying Kirstin Downey’s Isabella: The Warrior Queen. Who could have thought the Spanish Inquisition and auto-da-fé could be so interesting? In modern context Isabella cuts a controversial figure, but Downey does a wonderful job of objectively presenting the human side of of this iconic figure.  In this way, Downey takes what could have been an unoriginal, even hackneyed subject and transforms it into a compelling narrative of a powerful female leader in an age when they were rare.

All of the books featured in our Author Reads roundups can be found on CRP’s Author Reads bookshelf on Goodreads.

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