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As the Page Turns
Books from beyond the grave
By JENNIFER CACICIO
del.ico.us
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Autumn brings crunchy leaves, cold weather and lots of contemporary lit releases, but those budding newbies get all the press. This fall, curl up before your fireplace (read: clanking radiator) with some wise words from six feet under. After all, these eight authors are still publishing posthumously for a reason.
September
Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990
By Charles Bukowski
9.1.08, City Lights Publishers
Hate on Bukowski if you like, but I'd bet most readers would be lying if they said there wasn't a time when his gritty simplicity felt pretty right. The man may have been a womanizing drunk, but he was damn prolific as well. Here, fans will find works not published since their first printings in obscure publications, including his first published story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip," perhaps required reading for all you struggling authors out there.
Doctor Faustus and Other Plays
By Christopher Marlowe
9.15.08, Oxford University Press
Commonly hailed as Shakespeare's most important contemporary, it seems that Marlowe is still living in the shadow of old Bill, even in the afterlife. A new version of The Merry Wives of Windsor is out this month, but give Mr. Marlowe first dibs on your fall reading. Doctor Faustus includes his five greatest plays, revised to reflect modernized spelling and punctuation to make your morning T reading a little easier.
The Dharma Bums
By Jack Kerouac
9.18.08, Viking Adult
True story: I once spent a few days sleeping in the Floridian room where Kerouac supposedly composed this novel on one long sheaf of paper. Perhaps this is why I'm somewhat partial to what I think is this local author's most superior work. For the 50th anniversary of its release, Dharma Bums is back with a spiffy new cover. Read it and revel in all that was great about the Beats.
October
The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
By Joan Aiken
10.1.08, Small Beer Press
For those lamenting J.K. Rowling's nonexistent Book Eight and Warner Brothers' decision to push back the latest Potter blockbuster from November to summer '09, fret no more. This collection by beloved British author Joan Aiken marks the first time that all the surprising tales of the Armitage family will be told together. It's sure to satisfy all longings for magic, young wizards and broomsticks.
The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav Hauge
By Olav H. Hauge
10.1.08, Copper Canyon Press
How much do you know about Norwegian poetry? [*crickets chirping*] This collection gathers some of Hauge's best, as well as his last works before death. This poet made his living as a farmer, gardener and orchardist. His compact, restrained and just plain lovely lines reflect his natural environs.
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The New Annotated Dracula
By Bram Stoker
10.13.08, W.W. Norton
Just in time for Halloween, this whopping hardcover (600-plus pages) is filled with over 400 illustrations and dripping with more info than any vampire-sympathizer could ever salivate over. Editor Leslie S. Klinger has taken a fine-tooth comb to this classic, exploring Stoker's claim that the story was based on fact, and decrypting the many dark themes that trample these pages. There's also a keen intro from modern master Neil Gaiman. Garlic not included.
November
2666: A Novel
By Roberto Bolaño
11.11.08, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Last year, this Chilean-Mexican writer caused quite a commotion among the living literati with The Savage Detectives: A Novel. Now his newest posthumous release promises to surpass it in "scope, ambition and sheer page count," says Publishers Weekly. This behemoth is 912 pages and therefore not for the faint of heart, nor for those fond of carrying a book around in their back pocket to better pick up girls. Still, the setting is Santa Teresa, a Mexican border town, where the novel's radical characters solve a mystery. Something about an elusive German novelist. Intrigued? I thought so.
The Canterbury Tales
By Geoffrey Chaucer
11.18.08, Modern Library
Seriously, when's the last time you read The Canterbury Tales? Maybe bored silly in ninth-grade English or stoned in some survey course in college. Or maybe—gasp—you've never read them at all. Worth pondering: It's likely whatever you're reading now would never have been written if it weren't for this 14th century Brit. So forget your classics anxiety (and your fear of Old English) and pick up this new translation from poet and scholar Burton Raffel, now all the more accessible and hilarious. I can imagine you now, looking all scholarly on the #39 bus, giggling your way through the Wife of Bath's prologue. Sexy.