July Books

"If you're like me, you tend to regard plot summaries as a necessary boredom at best. They're the flyover country between a reviewer's landing strips of judgement, revealing almost nothing about the way a book actually works, almost nothing about why it succeeds or fails. If plot were the crucial measure, there'd be no difference between a story about the fish that got away and Moby Dick. Reading such summaries (or writing them) is usually as beguiling as listening to some addled fan of Lost explain what happened on that botched ruin of a show." (Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review, July 11, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and various issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power - David Pogue "is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column and an online video. His daily blog, Pogue's Posts, is the Times's most popular blog. David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News and a frequent guest on NPR's Morning Edition. His trademark comic tech videos appear each Thursday morning on CNBC. With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors."

American Music - Jane Mendelsohn; "A series of haunting impressions trace the story of a family, the history of 20th-century America and the evolution of its music."

Citrus County - John Brandon; "With a smart hero somehow mean and bighearted at once, Brandon grippingly hybridizes the crime novel with the novel of rural adolescent longing, even as he subverts the expectations of both."

City Dog, Country Frog - Mo Willems; "What are you doing?" "Waiting for a friend. But you'll do."

‎Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories - Michael Sims; "Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla to Guy de Maupassant's The Horla and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne. Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker's own Dracula's Guest — a chapter omitted from his landmark novel."

The Frozen Rabbi - Steve Stern; "Starts in a small Polish village, where Rabbi Eliezer is so blissed out during a pond-side meditation that he doesn't notice a storm lifting the waters around him. In one of the effortless liberties the master fabulist Stern takes with reality, the rabbi survives underwater until winter comes and he's encased in ice. This all happens before Page 7, testament to how rapidly this book chews through plot, characters, decades and continents."

Shark Vs. Train - Chris Barton; "Who will win the face-off between two favorite toys: the shark or the train? (A dinosaur must be waiting in the wings.) Lichtenheld's high-energy drawings are the main appeal in a series of contests that could have built to more drama. (The opponents bowl, trick or treat and... make lemonade?) At the end, two boys drop the game and break for lunch.

Still Missing - Chevy Stevens; "Blistering debut follows a kidnap victim from her abduction to her escape - and the even more horrifying nightmare that follows. One moment, realtor Annie O'Sullivan is taking one last client, a quiet, well-spoken man with a nice smile; the next moment she's being marched out to a van at gunpoint, unaware that it's the last time for months that she'll see the sky or breathe open air."

Nonfiction

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error - Kathryn Schulz; "Case histories of a Klansman who became an unlikely advocate for civil rights, of a doomsday prophet whose apocalypse wasn't now, of a sexual assault victim whose mistaken testimony jailed an innocent man."

The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements - Sam Kean; "The best science writers, like the best science teachers, bring an enthusiasm for the material that infects even those of us who wouldn't usually give a flying photon."

Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language - Katherine Russell Rich "responded to job setbacks and cancer by travelling to India - not to spend a few months at an ashram, like some people, but to study Hindi seriously. "This book both recounts her experience and presents the research of linguists about what happens in the brain when we learn a new language."

Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour - Rachel Shukert; "Scrap your preconceived notions of travel writing. We're not talking The Innocents Abroad here; this irreverent, profane journal of Shukert's college trip comes off like a cross between David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. Nothing escapes her eye - not the cute boys or creepy older guys, not the booze, not even European culture."

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India - William Dalrymple; "The stupefyingly diverse religious world of the subcontinent, explored through nine remarkable individuals."

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness - Oren Harman; "Covers the entire 150-year history of scientist' researching, debating and bickering about a theoretical problem that lies at the core of behavioral biology, sociology and evolutionary psychology: Why is it that organisms sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others?"

Suck It, Wonder Woman! - Olivia Munn; "The first lady of nerd, and newly minted Daily Show correspondent, has written a book that covers everything from sex to videogames to her undying love of pie."

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut - Rob Sheffield; "The author of 2007's Love Is a Mix Tape reaches back to the '80s in his second collection of music-themed memories."