Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish that asks bloggers to create Top Ten lists on a variety of bookish topics. This week’s topic is Beach Reads Week.
Last week, I posted my 2016 Summer Reading Guide, which is chock full of great books for summer, all of which I’ve already read. Now it’s time to focus on the new summer releases I’m looking forward to!
June
Grunt by Mary Roach (June 7, W.W. Norton)
Roach has a totally oddball, yet addictively fascinating style of digging deep into quirky topics (i.e. she explores the fates of human cadavers in Stiff). I’ve always been interested in the mental aspect of war, so her latest is firmly up my alley!
Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier’s most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (June 7, Knopf)
Shannon at River City Reading has already raved about this novel.
Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, […]. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle’s women’s dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.
Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel (June 14, Riverhead Books)
Doesn’t this sound like a 1960’s/70’s version of The Nest?! You know I can’t resist a novel about wealthy family dysfunction!
An imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and ’70s that suddenly loses its fortune—and its bearings.
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere by John Gregory Brown (June 28, Lee Boudreaux Books)
Doesn’t this sound like a 1960’s/70’s version of The Nest?! You know I can’t resist a novel about wealthy family dysfunction!
Fleeing New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Henry Garrett is haunted by the ruins of his marriage, a squandered inheritance, and the teaching job he inexplicably quit. He pulls into a small Virginia town after three days on the road, hoping to silence the ceaseless clamor in his head. But this quest for peace and quiet as the only guest at a roadside motel is destroyed when Henry finds himself at the center of a bizarre and violent tragedy.
July
Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard (July 5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Pittard’s irreverent writing in Reunion made it one of my favorite books of 2014, so I’m anxiously awaiting her latest. Plus, it’s only 208 pages!
A modern gothic about a marriage and road trip gone hauntingly awry.
The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock (July 12, Doubleday)
In her 2016 preview post, Rory at Fourth Street Review (my go-to source for dark, gritty fiction) said “absolutely nothing overshadows Donald Ray Pollock’s new novel”. I have never read this author, but Rory’s stamp of approval was enough to convince me to get my hands on this book!
In the gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre’s literary masters.
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott (July 26, Little Brown)
Megan Abbott is a master at writing demented young girls (i.e. The Fever) and I can’t think of a better setting for those types of characters than elite gymnastics. Plus, I’m kind of obsessed with the Olympics.
Katie and Eric Knox have dedicated their lives to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful. But when a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community just weeks before an all-important competition, everything the Knoxes have worked so hard for feels suddenly at risk.
Home Field by Hannah Gersen (July 26, William Morrow Paperbacks)
I have a feeling this debut novel could be either a huge winner or huge bomb for me. But, I obviously have to give it shot if since it’s being compared to Friday Night Lights (my favorite TV show of all time).
The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this utterly moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football.
August
Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney (August 2, Knopf)
I loved McInerney’s first two books about Russell and Corrine Calloway, Brightness Falls and The Good Life.
Russell and Corrine Calloway seem to be living the New York dream […]. Then Corrine’s world is turned upside down when the man with whom she’d had an ill-fated affair in the wake of 9/11 suddenly reappears. As the novel unfolds across a period of stupendous change–including Obama’s historic election and the global economic collapse he inherited — the Calloways will find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have anticipated.
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue (August 23, Random House)
The Book Riot girls have been talking about this debut for awhile. Plus, I have a fascination with the 2008 financial crisis, which this book centers around.
For fans of Americanah and The Lowland comes a debut novel about an immigrant couple striving to get ahead as the Great Recession hits home. With profound empathy, keen insight, and sly wit, Imbolo Mbue has written a compulsively readable story about marriage, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream.
*All book summaries (in block quotes) are from Goodreads.
I’m so excited for You Will Know Me I honestly can’t even describe!
Ha – that makes 2 of us!
I loved You Will Know Me!
Oh yeah – you’re the first person I’ve heard from who has read it!
Anything by Megan Abbott 😀 Great list!
My TTT
So excited for so many of these, but I am most anxious about the Pollock. There are also a few here I didn’t have on my radar, but they are now. Thanks, Sarah!
Rory and Shannon have been singing Pollock’s praises, so I’m looking forward to trying him!
Listen to Me sounds very good. I’m looking forward to your review when/if you finish it.
It’s short, so I’m sure I’ll finish it, no matter how it is!
Ooooh!! The Heavenly Table sounds very interesting, Sarah; I’m adding it to my list! I’m definitely planning to read Homegoing, Sons and Daughters, and Listen to Me; here’s hoping they are great!
Yay – reading buddy!
You Will Know Me and Behold The Dreamers are on my TBR list too! I’m especially looking forward to the former 🙂
As always, I can’t wait to hear more about all these books! Homegoing is one I will be reading myself sometime this summer (that’s the plan, anyway!).
Enjoy your summer reading!
I’m dying to read Homegoing… but it’s looking like I’ll have to wait with the rest of the general public before being able to.
You and me both 🙂
Grunt is really making its way around the marketing push, and I’m on hold (I think #5) at the library for Homegoing. It looked really good already, but when Shannon reviewed it, I had to mark it to read.
I need to get Homegoing on my library list! So many good books!
I enjoyed Fever so I’m eager to read more from Abbott!
Well this was “helpful” – I just added four more books to my list. So excited to get my hands on Homegoing – I expect it in the mail ANY DAY now. A 1960s/70s The Nest sounds really great to me, as does the one about gymnastics and the one with the FNL vibes – that show does not get enough credit.
So many great books coming out. Need more time!
I have added Sons and Daughters of Ease and Home Field to my list. I had not heard of either of those before. I already own (thanks BEA) Homegoing and Bright Precious Days, and have been looking with longing at Behold the Dreamers. Great list!
Thank goodness we have some overlap here or I’d never get through the summer! My random House friend gave me Homegoing so I’m definitely going to be reading that one and I also loved Ramona Ausubel’s previous book so I was in for that one without even knowing about the WFD (seriously, we need to trademark that and come up with a graphic ).
I’m thinking it’s going to be a good summer for reading!