{"id":24467,"date":"2018-08-10T15:15:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T19:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=24467"},"modified":"2018-08-13T17:15:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T21:15:03","slug":"august-2018-books-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2018\/08\/10\/august-2018-books-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"August 2018 Books to Read"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

August 2018 Books to Read!<\/h1><\/div>

I'm posting this a bit later than I should because the last few weeks have been busy with work and summer fun. But now we are moving to the latter half of the season, and this is a great time to be a reader because publishers tend to publish some of their best books of the year over the next few months! Here are a few coming out this month that caught my attention. Please let me know if there are any I'm missing that you're excited for.<\/p>\n

The links to Amazon.com are affiliate links, so if you purchase the book (or any item) by going there from this page, we'll make a bit of money for the site. Do not feel obligated, of course \u2014 we'll keep going regardless! Release dates are based on the U.S. release date.<\/p>\n

August 7<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939\u20131940<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Iris Origo
\nNYRB Classics<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from NYRB Classics:<\/p>\n

In 1939 it was not a foregone conclusion that Mussolini would enter World War II on the side of Hitler. In this previously unpublished and only recently discovered diary, Iris Origo, author of the classic\u00a0War in Val d'Orcia<\/em>, provides a vivid account of how Mussolini decided on a course of action that would devastate his country and ultimately destroy his regime.<\/p>\n

Though the British-born Origo lived with her Italian husband on an estate in a remote part of Tuscany, she was supremely well-connected and regularly in touch with intellectual and diplomatic circles in Rome, where her godfather, William Phillips, was the American ambassador. Her diary describes the Fascist government's growing infatuation with Nazi Germany as Hitler's armies marched triumphantly across Europe and the campaign of propaganda and intimidation that was mounted in support of its new aims. The book ends with the birth of Origo's daughter and Origo's decision to go to Rome to work with prisoners of war at the Italian Red Cross.<\/p>\n

Together with\u00a0War in Val d'Orcia<\/em>,\u00a0A Chill in the Air<\/em>\u00a0o?ers an indispensable record of Italy at war as well as a thrilling story of a formidable woman's transformation from observer to actor at a great historical turning point.<\/p>\n

\"\"War in Val d'Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943\u20131944<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Iris Origo
\nNYRB Classics<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from NYRB Classics:<\/p>\n

In the Second World War, Italy was torn apart by German armies, civil war, and\u00a0the Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman\u2014born in England, married\u00a0to an Italian\u2014kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's powerful\u00a0diary,\u00a0War in Val d'Orcia<\/i>, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when\u00a0a peaceful farming valley became a battleground.<\/p>\n

At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and\u00a0refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge\u00a0that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes\u00a0with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and\u00a0compassion, and the devastation that war can bring.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Reservoir Tapes<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Jon McGregor
\nCatapult<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Catapult:<\/p>\n

Returning us to the extraordinary territory of Jon McGregor's Man Booker Prize long-listed novel\u00a0Reservoir 13<\/i>,\u00a0The Reservoir Tapes<\/i>\u00a0take us deep into the heart of an English village that is trying to come to terms with what has happened on its watch.<\/p>\n

A teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community's unstable stories about life in the weeks and months before Becky Shaw vanished.<\/p>\n

Each villager has a memory to share or a secret to conceal, a connection to Becky that they are trying to make or break. A young wife pushes against the boundaries of her marriage, and another seeks a means of surviving within hers. A group of teenagers dare one another to jump into a flooded quarry, the weakest swimmer still awaiting his turn. A laborer lies trapped under rocks and dry limestone dust as his fellow workers attempt a risky rescue. And meanwhile a fractured portrait of Becky emerges at the edges of our vision?a girl swimming, climbing, and smearing dirt onto a scared boy's face, images to be cherished and challenged as the search for her goes on.<\/p>\n

\n

August 14<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"Flights
\n<\/strong><\/em>by Olga Tokarczuk
\ntranslated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft
\nRiverhead Books<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Riverhead Books:<\/p>\n

A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations,\u00a0Flights<\/i>\u00a0explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original,\u00a0Flights<\/i>\u00a0is a master storyteller's answer.<\/p>\n

Paul reviewed the book for The Mookse and the Gripes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Narrator<\/i><\/strong>
\nby Bragi \u00d3lafsson
\ntranslated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith
\nOpen Letter Books<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Open Letter Books:<\/p>\n

On a rainy day in the middle of June, on the day England and Costa Rica meet in the World Cup, G., a thirty-five-year-old\u00a0aspiring writer is waiting in line at the post office to mail off a\u00a0manuscript\u2014a story about a day in the life of a thirty-five-year-old man.<\/p>\n

That's when he notices a man he knows. Or rather knew. Sort of knew. A man who used to go out with a girl G. loved from afar. The only girl he's ever loved. All his hatred of this man comes rushing back\u2014including his foolish wish that the man would die\u2014and he takes off, following him throughout the streets of Reykjavik. This strange game of cat and mouse takes some dark turns though, evolving into a complex, introspective journey of a man struggling to complete the unfinished narrative of his own life.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Greens of May Down to the Sea: Antogony, Book II<\/i><\/strong>
\nby Luis Goytisolo
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Brendan Riley
\nDalkey Archive<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Dalkey Archive:<\/p>\n

The second volume of Goytisolo's acclaimed\u00a0Antagonia<\/i>\u00a0tetralogy,\u00a0The Greens of May Down to the Sea<\/i>\u00a0follows Ra\u00fal Ferrer Gaminde and his wife as they move from Barcelona to Rosas to begin a new life. Where the first volume of\u00a0Antagonia<\/i>occupied itself with the themes of war and political revolution, the second volume closely follows Ra\u00fal's development as a writer, his anxieties about the purposes of writing, and his willingness to sacrifice the other aspects of adult life to his creative impulses. Told in short, often dizzyingly complex fragments of thought and memory, the reader is invited into Raul's inner world, into his many fantasies, worries, and resentments, revealing over time his transformation from political radical to inner-directed artist.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ball Lightning<\/i><\/strong>
\nby Cixin Liu
\ntranslated from the Chinese by Joel Martinsen
\nTor Books<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Tor Books:<\/p>\n

When Chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station.<\/p>\n

The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen's quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.<\/p>\n

\n

August 21<\/h3>\n

\"\"Summer<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Karl Ove Knausgaard
\ntranslated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey
\nPenguin Press<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Penguin Press:<\/p>\n

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm Kiefer.<\/p>\n

2 June\u2013It is completely dark out now. It is twenty-three minutes to midnight and you have already slept for four hours. What you will dream of tonight, no one will ever know. Even if you were to remember it when you wake up, you wouldn't have a language in which to communicate it to us, nor do I think that you quite understand what dreams are, I think that is still undefined for you, that your thoughts haven't grasped it yet, and that it therefore lies within that strange zone where it neither exists nor doesn't exist.<\/i><\/p>\n

The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years,\u00a0Summer<\/i>\u00a0once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally-raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard's newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father. Documenting his family's life in rural Sweden and reflecting on a characteristically eclectic array of subjects\u2013mosquitoes, barbeques, cynicism, and skin, to name just a few\u2013he braids the various threads of the previous volumes into a moving conclusion.<\/p>\n

At his most voluminous since\u00a0My Struggle,<\/i>\u00a0his epic sensational series, Knausgaard writes for his daughter, striving to make ready and give meaning to a world at once indifferent and achingly beautiful. In his hands, the overwhelming joys and insoluble pains of family and parenthood come alive with uncommon feeling.<\/p>\n

\"\"Notes from the Fog: Stories<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Ben Marcus
\nKnopf<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Knopf:<\/p>\n

With these thirteen transfixing, ingenious stories, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world\u2013cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.<\/p>\n

In \"The Grow-Light Blues,\" a hapless, corporate drone finds love after being disfigured testing his employer's newest nutrition supplement\u2013the enhanced glow from his computer monitor. A father finds himself outcast from his family when he starts to suspect that his son's precocity has turned sinister in the chilling \"Cold Little Bird.\" In \"Blueprints for St. Louis,\" two architects in a flailing marriage consider the ethics of artificially inciting emotion in mourners at their latest assignment\u2013a memorial to a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n

In the bizarre but instantly recognizable universe of Ben Marcus's fiction, characters encounter both surreal new illnesses and equally surreal new cures. Marcus writes beautifully, hilariously, and obsessively, about sex and death, lust and shame, the indignities of the body, and the full parade of human folly. A heartbreaking collection of stories that showcases the author's compassion, tenderness, and mordant humor. Blistering, beautiful work from a modern master.<\/p>\n

A heartbreaking collection of stories that showcases the author's compassion, tenderness, and mordant humor\u2013blistering, beautiful work from a modern master.<\/p>\n

\n

August 28<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"Between Eternities: And Other Writings<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Javier Mar\u00edas
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
\nVintage International<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Vintage International:<\/p>\n

Javier Mar\u00edas is a tireless examiner of the world around us: essayist, novelist, translator, voracious reader, enthusiastic debunker of pretension, and vigorous polymath. He is able to discover what many of us fail to notice or have never put into words, and he keeps looking long after most of us have turned away. This new collection of essays\u2013by turns literary, philosophical, and autobiographical\u2013journeys from the crumbling canals of Venice to the wide horizons of the Wild West, and Mar\u00edas captures each new vista with razor-sharp acuity and wit. He explores, with characteristic relish, subjects ranging from soccer to classic cinema, from comic books and toy soldiers to mortality and memory, from \"The Most Conceited of Cities\" to \"Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted,\" making each brilliantly and inimitably his own. Trenchant and wry, subversive and penetrating,\u00a0Between Eternities<\/i>\u00a0is a collection of dazzling intellectual curiosity, offering a window into the expansive mind of the man so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.<\/p>\n

\"\"We That Are Young<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Preti Taneja
\nKnopf<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Knopf:<\/p>\n

Jivan Singh, the bastard scion of the Devraj family returns to his New Delhi childhood home at the age of twenty-three after fifteen years in the United States. His arrival coincides with the unexpected resignation of the founder and aging patriarch of the Company\u2013its simple name belying its vast holdings across industry and entertainment, and the family's national renown. On the same day, Sita, Devraj's youngest daughter, disappears\u2013refusing to marry the man her father wants for her. Now, Radha and Gargi, Sita's older sisters, are given the Company\u2013and a brutal struggle for power begins. Set against the backdrop of the anti-corruption protests that spread across India in 2011 and 2012,\u00a0We That Are Young<\/i>\u00a0is brilliant in its fierce, incandescent storytelling and the energy of its prose. It tells a deeply insightful tale of India today, the pace of life in one of the world's fastest growing economies, the clash of youth and age, and the ever-present specter of death. But more than that, it is a novel about the human heart\u2013and its inevitable breaking point.<\/p>\n

Paul reviewed the book for The Mookse and the Gripes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"French Exit<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Patrick deWitt
\nEcco<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the blurb from Ecco:<\/p>\n

Frances Price \u2014 tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature \u2014 is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Price's aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.<\/p>\n

Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin \u2013 to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.<\/p>\n

Brimming with pathos,\u00a0French Exit\u00a0<\/em>is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother\/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we move to late summer, the publishers lists put out some of the best books of the year! Here are some books coming out in August that have my interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"none","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"[]","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-24467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/August-2018-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-6mD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24482,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467\/revisions\/24482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24467"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}