2008 summer reading list
June 8, 2008
Editor’s Note: It’s a perennial question for the summer months, what to read? Here you’ll mind more than 50 titles in fiction andononfiction, organized according to the months when they’ll be published. Books are listed in alphabetical order by title. There’s only one thing left to say: Good luck!
JUNE
America America
A Novel
Ethan Canin
Random House
During the Nixon era, a working-class boy’s involvement with a powerful upstate New York family and a rising senator reveals the heights and depths of ambition in a novel of epic scope.
Claim of Privilege
A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets
Barry Siegel
Harper
How a case involving the widows of three civilian engineers, killed in a 1948 U.S. Air Force plane crash, led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing the “state secrets” privilege.
The Eaves of Heaven
A Life in Three Wars
Andrew X. Pham
Harmony Books
A son’s harrowing yet radiant account of his wealthy Vietnamese father’s struggle to survive the Japanese invasion of World War II, the French occupation of Indochina and a Viet Cong “reeducation camp.”
The Garden of Last Days
A Novel
Andre Dubus III
W.W. Norton
From the author of “House of Sand and Fog,” a pre-Sept. 11 novel -- set in Florida and involving a Saudi jihadist and an exotic dancer at the Puma Club for Men.
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
A Novel
Sasa Stanisic
Grove Press
This debut unfolds as a stream-of-consciousness recollection of a lost childhood by a Bosnian refugee.
The James Boys
A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers
Richard Liebmann-Smith
Random House
What if the younger brothers of psychologist William and novelist Henry were the outlaws Frank and Jesse?
This Land Is Their Land
Reports From a Divided Nation
Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books
A satiric look by the cultural critic at what she sees as the deepening, and officially sanctioned, divide between those who have and those who barely get by.
Mustang
The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
Deanne Stillman
Houghton Mifflin
This majestic tale traces the horse’s evolution and die out in the Americas, its return with the conquistadors and its spread throughout the West in herds of wild mustangs whose existence is threatened today.
The Secret Scripture
A Novel
Sebastian Barry
Viking
Beneath the floorboards of her room at an Irish mental hospital, 100-year-old Roseanne McNulty conceals a journal describing her youth in Sligo -- and also the story of why she was committed.
The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal, edited by Jay Parini
Doubleday
Two dozen of Vidal’s best, wittiest and most coruscating critiques, culled from half a century of mind-bending work.
Skyscrapers of the Midwest
Joshua W. Cotter
AdHouse Books
A boy struggles with identity, death, puberty, religion and human communication in this beautiful collection of coming-of-age stories in graphic novel format.
Slumberland
A Novel
Paul Beatty
Bloomsbury
A young, disaffected DJ from Los Angeles goes on a wild search in Berlin for a jazzman who may or may not be his double.
The Spies of Warsaw
A Novel
Alan Furst
Random House
A new spy novel by a master of the genre, describing the cat-and-mouse games on the European Continent preceding the outbreak of World War II.
Spiral Jetta
A Road Trip Through the Land Art of the American West
Erin Hogan
University of Chicago
A trip west out of Chicago leads an art historian to discover the vastness of solitude among the treasures of land art she encounters along the way.
A Time It Was
Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties
Bill Eppridge
Abrams
A photographic history of an American icon, by the former Life magazine photographer.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
David Sedaris
Little, Brown
The piercingly witty humorist takes us from the French countryside to a mobile home in North Carolina and on to Tokyo (where he tries to quit smoking), in his sixth collection of essays on the big and little absurdities of life.
Year Million
Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge
Edited by Damien Broderick
Atlas & Co.
What will the world be like in a million years? What will humans be like? Fourteen essays consider the possibilities.
JULY
*The Alchemy of Stone
A Novel of Automated Anarchy & Clockwork Lust
Ekaterina Sedia
Prime Books
An automaton finds herself caught among gargoyles, mechanics and alchemists in a struggle for control of a magical, clockwork realm.
All About Lulu
A Novel
Jonathan Evison
Soft Skull Press
In a family of bodybuilders from Venice Beach, Calif., a young man’s attraction to his troubled stepsister turns into a first step on his search for self-identity.
Ark of the Liberties
America and the World
Ted Widmer
Hill & Wang
A history of the United States that argues that its leaders, from the very beginning, had global ambitions to secure rights and liberties for all.
The Black Hole War
My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
Leonard Susskind
Little, Brown
If information falls into a black hole, is it lost forever? Find out here.
Books
A Memoir
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster
The author of “Lonesome Dove” recalls his attempts during his Texas childhood to acquire his own personal library and his eventual establishment of a bookstore.
Chasing Darkness
An Elvis Cole Novel
Robert Crais
Simon & Schuster
A corpse discovered in Laurel Canyon sets L.A. private investigator Elvis Cole on another quest.
A Few Seconds of Panic
A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
Stefan Fatsis
Penguin Press
A sportswriter’s personal tale of surviving the Denver Broncos’ training camp, in the best tradition of such accounts as George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion.”
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
A New Zealand Story
Christina Thompson
Bloomsbury
Part history of the Maori civilization and European explorations in the Pacific and part memoir, by the editor of the Harvard Review, who is married to a Maori.
How Fiction Works
James Wood
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
An analysis of forms and styles from Homer on up, by one of our finest literary critics.
The Last Embrace
A Novel
Denise Hamilton
Scribner
Dark doings (You don’t say!) in 1940s Hollywood.
The Lemur
A Novel
Benjamin Black
Picador
A new novel of murder and nasty family secrets, set in 1950s Dublin and contemporary New York City, from John Banville, writing again as Benjamin Black.
My Name Is Will
A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare
Jess Winfield
Twelve
A tale of two Williams: the Bard, on a secret mission to bring a sacred relic to England, and a broke graduate student who delivers a psychedelic mushroom to a client.
Palace Council
A Novel
Stephen L. Carter
Alfred A. Knopf
An up-and-coming Harlem literary star finds the garroted body of a prominent Wall Street lawyer, and soon his sister disappears. His 20-year search for her leads him to the corridors of Nixon-era Washington and a shadowy group that tries to pull the levers of U.S. power.
Real World
A Novel
Natuso Kirino
Alfred A. Knopf
Four teenage friends become entangled in a brutal murder and the search for the killer during a hot, smoggy summer in Tokyo.
Rome 1960
The Olympics That Changed the World
David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
How the Cold War was played out on the fields of the 17th Olympiad.
Secrets of the Sea
A Novel
Nicholas Shakespeare
Harper Perennial
Young newlyweds build a farm by the Tasman Sea, only to have their plans -- and their new life -- upset by a castaway they take into their home.
Shining City
A Novel
Seth Greenland
Bloomsbury
A satire set in West Hollywood, in which a dry-cleaning business fronts for an escort service.
Traffic
Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Tom Vanderbilt
Alfred A. Knopf
A cultural and psychological study of that most mundane of our daily activities.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
A Memoir
Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf
The celebrated Japanese novelist, who took up running in 1982, reminisces about his wide-ranging preparations for the 2005 New York City Marathon.
AugustBlackout
An Inspector Espinosa Mystery
Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Henry Holt
A Rio de Janeiro detective can’t get the murder of a homeless man out of his mind and soon discovers a connection to the slaying of a beautiful denizen of the city.Daphne
A Novel
Justine Picardie
Bloomsbury
The lives of Daphne du Maurier and the Brontës intertwine in a story of literary obsession and deception.
Dry Storeroom No. 1
The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Richard Fortey
Alfred A. Knopf
Behind the scenes at London’s storied Natural History Museum and a look at the collections and their collectors. Fortey sees the world’s great museums as the saviors of nature’s diversity.The Implacable Order of Things
A Novel
José Luís Peixoto
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
The tangles wrought by love and jealousy torment the inhabitants of a dirt-poor rural Portuguese village.The Little Book
A Novel
Selden Edwards
Dutton
The high-living scion of a banking family suddenly finds himself transported back in time to late 19th century Vienna, half a century before his birth.
Man in the Dark
A Novel
Paul Auster
Henry Holt
A retired book critic, recovering from a car accident, spends a troubled night re-imagining the country’s recent history and avoiding his own.
The 19th Wife
A Novel
David Ebershoff
Random House
A Mormon woman’s crusade against her husband, Brigham Young, and his church is woven with a present-day story of murder and polygamy in Utah.
One More Year
Stories
Sana Krasikov
Spiegel & Grau
A debut collection of stories about Russians, Georgians and émigrés from the former Soviet Union -- and some who have returned.
Reinventing Knowledge
From Alexandria to the Internet
Ian F. McNeely and Lisa Wolverton
W.W. Norton
Monks, libraries and more: a history of humanity’s long effort to protect and preserve knowledge for the future.
The Road Home
A Novel
Rose Tremain
Little, Brown
A widower, seeking to support his family, leaves Eastern Europe to live among fellow immigrant dreamers in London and finds the thought of returning problematic.
Southern Storm
Sherman’s March to the Sea
Noah Andre Trudeau
Harper
The author of “Gettysburg” details Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s effort to break the backbone of the South.
This Must Be the Place
A Novel
Anna Winger
Riverhead
Walter, who dubs Tom Cruise movies into German and dreams of making it in Hollywood, and his neighbor Hope, an American trying to adjust to life in Berlin, forge a friendship among the ghosts of history.
A Week in October
A Novel
Elizabeth Subercaseaux
Other Press
A husband discovers his mortally ill wife’s novel-in-progress and wonders whether her writings are really fiction, or the untold story of their lives.
What Happened to Anna K.
A Novel
Irina Reyn
Touchstone
A re-imagining of the Tolstoy novel, set in the Russian-Jewish immigrant community of Queens, N.Y.
White Heat
The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Brenda Wineapple
Alfred A. Knopf
An intense literary, epistolary friendship between the shy poet and her mentor, the radical abolitionist and reformer.
The White Mary
A Novel
Kira Salak
Henry Holt
An adventure tale set in the jungles of New Guinea, in the tradition of Conrad’s “Lord Jim.”
The Wrecking Crew
How Conservatives Rule
Thomas Frank
Metropolitan Books
What happens when the faction calling itself “conservative” takes over the controls of the state: how conservatism-in-power is very different from conservatism on the streets.
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