Beyond the work we publish, the staff at Syracuse University Press is always reading. Here are a sampling of the titles staff are reading this summer.
The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine
Showing my true history nerd colors this summer: I’m reading Lincoln Paine’s The Sea and Civilization, a global history of ships and seafaring. There’s nothing like looking back across thousands of years of human innovation, migration, and violence to put the present in context. Next up: Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire, from Princeton University Press’s inimitable ancient history list. When I can’t stand any more reality, I join The Fox Wife (by Yangsze Choo) in seeking revenge.
Catherine Cocks, Director
Death Takes Me, by Cristina Rivera Garza, trans Robin Myers & Sarah Booker
I’m just getting into this book, but it’s been at the top of my list since the English edition came out. The novel follows a professor who finds a dead body and the investigator, who in the process becomes obsessed with poetry and art linked to the crime. The two women search for answers amid a growing number of male victims in this story that bends genres and gender expectations.
Heather Stauffer, Editor in Chief
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Otessa Moshfegh
I just finished reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and I’m still figuring out how I feel about it. In the novel, the unnamed narrator tries to sleep away an entire year with the help of Dr Tuttle, her looney psychiatrist who prescribes her any and all pharmaceuticals. The book is very funny and at times very frustrating but in the end I think that is Moshfegh’s intention. In forcing the reader to experience the narrator’s monotony, she’s building a case for what it means to truly wake up to our existence.
Lisa Kuerbis, Marketing Director
Found: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror Stories edited by Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias
I picked this one up as a fan of Iglesias’ past work and out of a real sense of curiosity about how to adapt a particularly cinematic horror mini-genre. What I’ve enjoyed most are the stories that take advantage of the mixed-media found footage movies evoke. One is a breakup-turned-ghosting-turned-stalking-turned-much-worse told across dating app messages, Facebook posts, texts, and incident reports, and another memorably combines a reporter’s pitch to an editor, transcripts of audio, and the Reddit posts of the sleuths determined to figure out what went wrong. It all leads to horror stories with a uniquely modern immediacy, that same nauseating tension of the ever-blinking camera keeping watch.
Jackson Adams, Promotion and Publicity Coordinator