In case you haven’t heard, today is pub day for Matterhorn, a 598-page first novel from Marine veteran Karl Malantes. Despite the title, it’s not about the Swiss Alps but about the Vietnam War. The advance hype is almost irresistible, with impressive blurbs from distinguished writers, an amazing backstory (30 years in the writing), a big discounting push from booksellers, advance praise from critics. It’s the season’s “big” book, maybe the year’s.
Back when I was a book editor/critic, I cared about such stuff. We had to be out in front of the news, first with reviews. It was an ongoing race. Even now since I started blogging, the reporter-in-me impulse wants to be in the know ASAP. This has to stop. I have mountains of unread books, some of them just released, some soon to be published and others that well, I can’t remember when they came out. They went from the top of the TBR stack to the middle as I piled on more new volumes.
Then there are all those books I want to re-read. When I first heard about Matterhorn several months back, I admit to initial disappointment that it wasn’t about the legendary peak in Switzerland. I still have my yellowed paperback of James Ramsey Ullman’s Banner in the Sky, which I loved as a kid and which led me to The White Tower, now out of print. I want to revisit them after all these years and experience again the thrill of the ascent — the rocks, the ice, the snow, the endless chasms if you put one foot wrong.
Matterhorn is supposed to be a terrific Vietnam combat novel — which reminds me of other great Vietnam books, especially Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. There’s a nice new 20th anniversary edition of this haunting collection of short stories. No, I don’t need to go out and buy it; the original hardover is on the top shelf of my blue bookcase.
I almost gave into temptation a couple of weeks ago and bought Angelology, a fat first novel from Danielle Trussoni. It has received a lot of hype, too — a more highbrow Dan Brown — and is now on the best-seller list. Great cover, but then I picked it up and read a few paragraphs and remembered why I’m not a big Dan Brown fan. I decided it could wait. After all, Matterhorn was coming.
But I’m going to wait awhile for it, too. The luxury of being an unpaid, erratic blogger. I no longer have to read every big new book just because it’s there.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 
Nancy, have you read A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book ?
Jim, I haven’t read it yet. But I have it. A good example of a book I bought in S.C. in the fall the week it first came out, and then something got put on top of it, and so on, and now it’s in one of the stacks in Orlando. But I am determined to read it before the paperback comes out!
I loved Possession. Have you read Children’s Book yet? And what else should I be pulling out or putting in my TBR?
Maybe since you are sadly getting out of book biz, we can trade some stuff back and forth. But work on those short stories…
LOVED “The Children’s Book.” Ephemeral … incandescent!
…and THANKS. This morning a short story plot device went CLICK; now I just have to download it from my head and write it down. Another one for the collection !
— Jim
You are tempting me! I am in a reading challenge this year revolving around Vietnam books (The Things They Carried is on my Kindle awaiting my attention), so this would be perfect. I have also read incredible things about Angelology. One particular review sticks in my mind from a blogger that reads something like 300 books a year. I trust her opinion, and she was over the moon. This is the slippery slope, is it not? Sometimes I think I will never get through the books I have on my shelves…
Sandy, I keep hearing “Climb Every Mountain” !!
Re: Vietnam. Anything by O’Brien. Michael Herr’s Dispatches. James Crumley’s One to Count Cadence. Halberstam.
Hi, Nancy. Just wanted to thank you for DEAD OF THE CLASS. You do have the touch. 🙂