Like the books quoted on our Snazzy Quotes page? Check out the books themselves here:

How to Kidnap the Rich by Rahul Raina

We found this gripping satire on modern India hilarious.

The Guardian describes it as as “a cinematic caper – HBO already holds film rights – and though Raina is highlighting expired dreams and inequality, he is always perceptive and playful”.

“No one is beyond scrutiny, from the Americans to the Chinese. Social commentary meets standup comedy”

“Take this – “Ramesh’s fury – which “could have made India the world’s leader in renewable energy” – is fuelled by circumstance and the desire to circumvent a system designed to keep him in his place.”

“In this savage cinematic caper about an academic fraudster, social commentary meets standup comedy”

Check it out.

Check out Luster by Raven Leilani.

As the Guardian says about her: “I try to replicate a version of sex on the page where the reader feels like a voyeur”

Leilani’s buzzy debut novel Luster follows a young black artist drawn into an open marriage.

“For her, a “special ingredient in sex that really jumps off the screen or the page is an oscillation of power”….”where the excitement of a date is not so much the sex but a decent dinner.”

“She shows off a tattoo from Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle …” on her wrist, “the first piece of real writing that touched me”.”

Read it here…

This oddly named book by Deborah Levy is out. As the Guardian says:

“The narrator of Real Estate is drily funny, irreverent, curious, even wise; she makes the reader want her for a companion.“

“The book asks more questions than it answers, most of which circle back to the idea of a woman’s desires and how those would look if they could be separated from the expectations of a patriarchal culture: “You never know what a woman really wants because she’s always being told what she wants.””

Check it out.

Slough House has been released.

“Mick Herron’s acclaimed spy-cum-political-satire series now stands at seven novels; the latest, Slough House, is named after the dilapidated building to which failed spies are consigned. Condemned to boring and thankless tasks under the sardonic auspices of the repulsive and increasingly cartoonish Jackson Lamb, in this instalment the “slow horses” are alarmed to discover that not only have their details been wiped from the spooks database, several of their number have met their deaths in ways that may not be as accidental as they appear. “

Check it out.

Public Citizens by Paul Sabin
This book caught out interest for those interested in public policy – and making change happen.

As the NY Times describes “When you’re a household name for 56 years, you acquire more than one reputation. Ralph Nader has three.”

What’s interesting for us at OutinPaperback.com is how Nader leverages his power as an individual – “Nader was the most broadly influential of these figures because he was able, in effect, to franchise himself through his watchdog groups. These groups issued reports, lobbied Congress and took advantage of judicial-review provisions they helped write by suing agencies over delayed or inadequate regulations. This became an influential model for the formation of other liberal public interest groups, especially environmental ones, that operated outside Nader’s orbit.”

“Nader’s solution to weaknesses in the countervailing power model was to become a countervailing power himself, alongside labor and industry.”

Does it still have solutions for today? Check it out.

This new book by Calligarich covers a protagonist who “now gravely ill, he is most tormented by his own approaching demise. As with the changed city, he hardly recognizes his own face when he stares into the rusted mirrors of diners and dive bars. Who will remember him? What trace will he leave behind here? “It isn’t my body they’ll bury — what is a body? — but everything I once was,” he laments, “my memories, the people who live inside me and who I can visit by closing my eyes.”

And there’s another book outthere of interest – especially as it’s about disability!

As per this review in the Guardian: “In job interviews, I was saying that I wanted to see more books with disabled characters in them that were not traumatic, boring or educational, but fun and full of life. A lot of the reactions were, ‘Waterstones don’t like books like that’,” she says.

Worryingly – “The author was repeatedly told that no one wanted to read fun books with disabled heroes.” So check this out.

And speaking of counterfactuals…

Check out Civilisations by Laurent Binet!

As the Guardian says “Each of Civilisations’ four parts poses as a historical document, and the main story runs for most of a 16th century that never happened – from when a ragtag Inca expeditionary force, fleeing civil war in South America, makes landfall in Lisbon, to the years after the Battle of Lepanto (which is, spoiler alert, fought between different forces than the real one).”

“Various counterfactual shenanigans play out. Inca/European dynastic alliances are forged. Atahualpa wins hearts and minds by promulgating religious tolerance and a series of quasi-socialist land reforms that sound a great deal more appealing than what was actually on offer in Europe in the real 16th century. The Reformation happens, but not quite in the way you might expect – especially as regards the Church of England.”

Fancy checking it out?

A River Called Time by Courttia Newland

This book by Courttia Newland caught our interest as we read a review in the Guardian.

“A River Called Time is set in Dinium, a version of London where most live among squalor, disease and violence, although a wealthy few occupy “the Ark”, an elite enclosure in the centre of the city. Our protagonist, Markriss Denny, grows up poor in the suburbs but has special powers: he can astrally project himself. “

“Newland gives his dystopia an extra spin by making it an alternate history. In this world European interactions with Africa, stretching back to Ancient Egypt, were treated as opportunities to learn and mingle, not to exploit and enslave. As a result, magical African abilities (squashed in our timeline, the implication is, by the horrors of colonialism) have flourished, becoming a kind of world religion. Not that the global garden is rosy. A mega-corporation called E-Lul dominates, using Matrix-like pods to sedate the populace via “crystal energy” that fills people’s nights with “dreams of tranquil places”. As for Dinium, it was wrecked by a mysterious “War of Light” in 1814-18 and has never really recovered.”

“Alt-history is a venerable science-fictional mode, but usually the moment where the story’s timeline diverges from “real” history is relatively recent: the South wins the US civil war, Hitler prevails, that kind of thing. The problem with setting that hinge point thousands of years into pre-history is that the subsequent divergence must perforce be so huge as to lead to an utterly different, unrecognisable “now”.

But beware – some of the language is a bit juvenile: “Nesta’s tears obeying gravity’s rules, not those of teenage boys, falling to the concrete regardless of his wish” is an over-fancy way of saying “he wished she wasn’t crying”. “The woman’s legs stretched gantry high” isn’t as sexy as it thinks it is. Such moments are symptomatic of a writer straining for effect – aiming, perhaps, for a televisual vividness rather than resting content in more literary restraint.”

What do you think? Check it out

A new book called ‘BLIND MAN’S BLUFF‘ focuses on sight loss – and how that parallels your life.

“Hill lost nearly all his sight as a teenager to a condition called Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy. ”

“The book focuses on Hill’s years in high school, college and grad school — times when so many of us are desperate to fit in, and then determined to find our own way. Hill struggles on both ends….“we were lost even when we knew where we were.””

A NY Times review by Tommy Tomlinson astutely notes, “His whole life feels like that. He has bitter arguments there with multiple girlfriends over the years. He’s mad because they get tired of reading labels to him. They’re mad because they ask him what cookies he wants…”

Get the book here.