EGGERS TAKES US TO NEW FRONTIERS
July is often considered a slow period for publishers, but there are always a few books released that have the potential to become unexpected hits. Here, Paul Taunton compiles a suggested list of good reads for the season — though there’s nothing wrong wi
ON TRAILS: AN EXPLORATION Robert Moor Simon & Schuster (July 12)
From the line of ants currently invading your cottage, to the highway you drive to get to it, to the information superhighway you surf (instead of actually surfing, hiking or canoeing) while you’re there: All of these are trails, some ingeniously conceived, others ingeniously evolved. Like Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic, Moor’s book is an appealing mix of the physical and philosophical.
POND Claire-Louise Bennett Penguin Random House (July 12)
Originally published in 2015 by a small Irish press, ClaireLouise Bennett’s unconventional collection quickly captured the attention of the literary world. Mysteriously but wryly told by (presumably) a solitary and unnamed narrator, there is a nod to Thoreau’s Walden and parts that might remind readers of Bernd Stiegler’s Traveling in Place and Xavier de Maistre’s A Journey Around My Room. But its greatest impression is that it’s unlike anything else: Its 20 stories portray the things we take for granted as being important, vital and worthy of us paying much closer attention.
HEROES OF THE FRONTIER Dave Eggers Knopf Canada (July 26)
After breaking out in 2000 with his bestselling memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, one might have cynically expected that Dave Eggers would stick to a single subject: himself. Instead, Eggers has quietly become one of our more prolific literary authors, with his novels covering a wide territory with little hint of roman à clef. It’s fitting, then, that Heroes of the Frontier follows a woman fleeing a failed life and marriage as far as she and her young children can go: Alaska.
HOW TO BE A PERSON IN THE WORLD: ASK POLLY’S GUIDE THROUGH THE PARADOXES OF MODERN LIFE Heather Havrilesky Doubleday (July 12)
The author of New York magazine’s advice column Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky is known just as well for her acerbically helpful advice as her own honest admissions. Since summer vacation is a time for reflection and change (along with back-to-school, the New Year, and pretty much all of spring), it’s as good a time as any to deal with the daily troubles that don’t actually respect the seasons. Or, at least, to laugh at them.
POLAROIDS FROM THE DEAD Douglas Coupland Harper Perennial
A hit show about O.J. Simpson, a documentary about Kurt Cobain, a series of farewell Grateful Dead concerts, a debut novel inspired by the Manson Girls: These are all subjects that have been in the public eye this past year. They’re also subjects Douglas Coupland wrote about in Polaroids from the Dead, published 20 years ago this summer (with imagery that looks positively Ins tag ram filtered now ). Prescient in its nostalgia, it feels simultaneously timely and completely out of time — about the way a lot of us feel in the world half the time.