Stacking the Shelves #1

I haven’t participated in any weekly blogging posts in what feels like eons, but Stacking the Shelves has always been one of my favourites because I get so many awesome book recommendations out of it! Hosted by Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality, Stacking the Shelves is easy as could be. Throw together a post of what books have made their way to you this week and then go see what other bloggers have been stacking up!

This week my books have come from Netgalley, so below is just a short overview of each:

The First Girl Child by Amy Harmon, to be published by 47North in August

m the New York Times bestselling author comes a breathtaking fantasy of a cursed kingdom, warring clans, and unexpected salvation. 

Bayr of Saylok, bastard son of a powerful and jealous chieftain, is haunted by the curse once leveled by his dying mother. Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok. 

Raised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk. 

Now the fate of Saylok lies with Alba and Bayr, whose bond grows deeper with every whisper of coming chaos. Charged with battling the enemies of their people, both within and without, Bayr is fueled further by the love of a girl who has defied the scourge of Saylok. 

What Bayr and Alba don’t know is that they each threaten the king, a greedy man who built his throne on lies, murder, and betrayal. There is only one way to defend their land from the corruption that has overtaken it. By breaking the curse, they could defeat the king…but they could also destroy themselves.

The Man in the Next Bed by David K. Shipler, to be published by Knopf Doubleday’s impress Vintage in May.

In this heartbreaking and extraordinary first foray into fiction by Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Arab and the Jew and The Working Poor, David K. Shipler has delivered a miniature masterpiece.

Gibson has learned to keep his spirits up as he receives care from his many doctors, nurses, and attendants. He likes to watch the bustling goings on in the ward from his hospital bed, crack witticisms, and make his caretakers smile—even the news isn’t good. 

Gibson is an engineer, and he likes to understand how people work. When a young man gets placed in the bed beside his, hidden behind a paisley curtain, Gibson becomes privy to the intimate, private pains of his young neighbor’s life and forms with him the kind of fleeting human connection that will reverberate to the depths his memory and soul. 

And finally there’s, Klotsvog by Margaret Khemlin, translated by Lisa C. Hayden. To be published by Columbia University Press in August.

Klotsvog is a novel about being Jewish in the Soviet Union and the historical trauma of World War II—and it’s a novel about the petty dramas and demons of one wonderfully vain woman. Maya Abramovna Klotsvog has had quite a life, and she wants you to know all about it. Selfish, garrulous, and thoroughly entertaining, she tells us where she came from, who she didn’t get along with, and what became of all her husbands and lovers.

In Klotsvog, Margarita Khemlin creates a first-person narrator who is both deeply self-absorbed and deeply compelling. From Maya’s perspective, Khemlin unfurls a retelling of the Soviet Jewish experience that integrates the historical and the personal into her protagonist’s vividly drawn inner and outer lives. Maya’s life story flows as a long monologue, told in unfussy language dense with Khemlin’s magnificently manipulated Soviet clichés and matter-of-fact descriptions of Soviet life. Born in a center of Jewish life in Ukraine, she spent the war in evacuation in Kazakhstan. She has few friends but several husbands, and her relationships with her relatives are strained at best. The war looms over Klotsvog, and the trauma runs deep, as do the ambiguities and ambivalences of Jewish identity. Lisa Hayden’s masterful translation brings this compelling character study full of dark, sly humor and new perspectives on Jewish heritage and survival to an English-speaking audience.

I also ordered Sally Rooney's Ordinary People, but it hasn't come through yet so I'll feature it as soon as it's made its way to me in China! 

So not a whole lot of books for me this week, but definitely some variety there! I'm quite intrigued b The First Girl Child, mainly because I feel like diving into some fantasy soon! What do you think of these books? Any of them draw your eye?