Lifestyle / On the Shelf: Our Must-Read Books for January

On the Shelf: Our Must-Read Books for January

Lifestyle Jan 12, 2016

by Matthew Currie

This month's lit picks include a heartrending memoir, a quirky fantasy romp and the latest from the great Joyce Carol Oates.

When Breath Becomes Air (Now Available, Random House)
By Paul Kalanithi

^{Photo Credit: Random House/amazon.com}

Paul Kalanithi was a burgeoning Stanford University neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his mid-30s, an ailment that ended his hard-won career and gradually stole him from his wife and young daughter. But just because he could no longer work in his chosen field wouldn’t stop him from making an indelible impression in another — as he proceeded to craft this stirring memoir of his own experiences with imminent death, struggling to find meaning and hope amidst the darkness and to make peace with leaving his child without a father. He passed away last month, the book unfinished — but no less powerful, poignant and uncommonly insightful.

The Upstairs Wife (Now Available, Beacon Press)
By Rafia Zakaria

^{Photo Credit: Beacon Press/amazon.ca}

If you missed this widely acclaimed memoir when it hit shelves early in 2015, you can now pick it up in paperback form. Elegantly weaving the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto together with her own personal experiences growing up in Pakistan, author Zakaria delves deep into a heartrending family shame, recounting how her uncle defied cultural tradition by taking a second wife after the family emigrated from India to Pakistan in the 1960s, when the country’s dictators began a campaign of Islamization. Forced to watch as her aunt consumed with “shame and fury” while the world outside became increasingly radical and violent, here Zakaria meditates on the “hopes and betrayals” that Pakistan has held for both her family and all others.

The Man Without a Shadow (January 19, Ecco)
By Joyce Carol Oates

^{Photo Credit: Ecco/amazon.com}

One of the most celebrated authors working today, Oates returns with this novel about Margot, a 1960s neuroscientist who begins studying Elihu, the titular shadowless man, who is afflicted with a rare form of amnesia that leaves him unable to store any new memories and unable to access any old ones. He’s a fascinating subject, to be sure, but soon enough Margot finds herself falling for this inherently unavailable fellow and the two begin an affair that, while blurring ethical lines, also probes the nature of love. Can Margot forge any kind of real connection with a man who forgets her all over again every day? Can he experience love at all?

All the Birds in the Sky
By Charlie Jane Anders (January 26, Tor Books)

^{Photo Credit: Tor Books}

One of the hottest up-and-comers in the fantasy genre unleashes this quirky, funny, fantastical tale of two long-estranged childhood friends — Laurence, a brilliant engineer, and Patricia, a talented magician. Driven apart as youngsters after one disastrously invented a two-second time machine, they now spend their days separately fighting the world’s ills — one using technology to intervene in global catastrophes, the other using mysticism to do more or less the same. But now they’re being drawn back together to face a much larger threat . . . provided they can work through all the heartache, anger and, yes, lingering romance that’s grown between them over the years.

Where It Hurts (January 26, G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
By Reed Farrel Coleman

^{Photo Credit: G.P. Putnam's Sons/amazon.com}

Get in on the ground floor of one of the next great neo-noir hardboiled detective series with this tale of Gus Murphy, a retired Long Island cop struggling to move on from a shattered family. He spends his days driving a shuttle for the hotel where he lives, until an old perp approaches him, asking for help in solving his son’s brutal murder. Gus reluctantly agrees and is, in short order, dragged into a twisted conspiracy that hinges on a big secret that seemingly everyone in the boy’s life is desperate to keep hidden.

_{Main Image Photo Credit: Tor Books}

Matthew Currie

Author

A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...

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On the Shelf: Our Must-Read Books for January

by Matthew Currie

This month's lit picks include a heartrending memoir, a quirky fantasy romp and the latest from the great Joyce Carol Oates.

Matthew Currie

COMMENTS

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