We have a list from an editor of the Book Review.
Readers, get ready: Summer books are here. These are the novels destined to grow plump with pool water. They’re the memoirs, biographies, histories and mysteries to lose yourself in while slathered with sunscreen or sitting strategically downwind of an air conditioning vent. They’ll whisk you away if you can’t escape and ground you when you’re far from home. They’re best served with Popsicles, peaches, soft-serve, ice water and lemonade. Cold beer, too.
For some of us at the Book Review, summer reading is our Super Bowl and Oscars Night. We search for new and clever ways to wax rhapsodic about the joy of turning pages in the sun — or during a July thunderstorm or in a hammock or by the light of a campfire. (To be honest, hammocks make me queasy, and I’ve only slept in a tent once.) Beach reads are my bailiwick, and I’ve written about them so many times I now have to cross-reference previous dispatches to find out if I’ve already opined about my favorite chair (Adirondack), sunglasses (cat eye) and soundtrack (seagulls).
But when Memorial Day weekend rolls around, I’m grateful all over again to toil in the realm of Slip ‘n Slides rather than stadiums or red carpets. There’s that stillness and lull, that sweaty, sandy, chlorinated, blueberry-scented sense of a break, even for those of us who are long out of school. Life’s requirements loosen, the box fan gets lugged down from the attic, books beckon.
The Book Review has lists of 31 new novels and 21 nonfiction books to carry you through the summer. Here are a few I’m excited about:
On the fiction front, I predict that Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Atmosphere” will catch a big wave this summer, with its clandestine love story set in a 1980s space mission.
Amy Bloom’s novel, “I’ll Be Right Here” is as comfortingly titled as her debut story collection, “Come to Me,” and follows a group of friends over decades and generations, beginning in postwar Paris. (Speaking of interesting jobs, one character works as a masseuse to the writer Colette.)
Finally, I have my eye on “Our Last Resort” by Clémence Michallon, whose last thriller, “The Quiet Tenant,” stoked my insomnia at a lakeside rental with a shed not unlike the one where her protagonist was chained to a radiator. This time Michallon follows two cult escapees to a luxury hotel in the Utah desert. What can go wrong in a place with high thread-count sheets? A lot, apparently.
