New Books In Literature

If you’re a reader, then you know the joy of discovering books. You also know that some of those discoveries stand out. Yes, there’s the pleasure of finding a good book. And there’s even those rare occasions where you find the right book: the right book at the right time in your life, the one that somehow shapes or bolsters who you are. And then there are those other moments, where the book you find feels more like you’ve uncovered a hidden gem. You’re Keats, on first looking into Chapman’s Homer, feeling “like stout Cortez” discovering a new world. In my case, the feeling resembles something less epic and more out of Indian Jones, as though, descending into the shelves of the Strand Bookstore in New York or Powell’s Books in Portland, I emerge with a lost treasure, a forgotten totem or relic. It’s a great feeling, one I love sharing with other readers. And that was very much my experience with Mark Ehling‘s new collection, River Dead of Minnea