Roxie Pell

It's officially August, the potential for languorous beach days is dwindling to its frigid end, and—oops—you forgot to do your summer reading. To your credit, you were pretty busy: someone had to attend all those barbecues, and Orange is the New Black wasn't gonna watch itself. But now suddenly everyone's debating the merits of YA literature and fangirling over some guy from Norway's 4,000-page diary, and you're feeling a little left out. Not to worry: there's still a month left to enjoy the spoils of a great season in publishing, even longer if you plan on shirking all your fall responsibilities like I do. If you're still looking for an excuse to forget about that pesky work project, do nothing in the way of back-to-school preparation, or generally avoid thinking about the future in any capacity, here are eight.

8.10 TW

1) My Struggle: Book Three By Karl Ove Knausgaard

While the third installment of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard's sweeping fictional memoir was technically released this spring, it would be a mistake not to include what might be the most talked-about book of the year (at least among the erudite and fancy). In six volumes totaling 3,600 pages, Knausgaard chronicles his life story down to its minutiae, from the death of his alcoholic father to a bowl of cornflakes. In a tech-saturated time when everything we read feels somehow abbreviated, Knausgaard's pedantry comes as a much-needed reprieve from modern media's attention deficit. But My Struggle is more than the sum of its excruciatingly detailed parts: blurring the line between fiction and reality, Knausgaard gives voice to the domestic man, a role often left unexplored for its lack of machismo.

2) The Book of Unknown Americans By Cristina Henríquez

Within the structure of a love story, Henríquez' second novel explores the Latino immigrant experience in an America that, for all its problems, still offers the promise of a better life. The Rivera family leaves Mexico for a cold city in Delaware in search of special education classes for their daughter Maribel, who has suffered a brain injury back home. Maribel falls for Mayor Toro, an American citizen whose parents emigrated from Panama, and as the star-crossed lovers' story unfolds it is paralleled by a romance between their families and the American dream. Narrated from multiple perspectives, The Book of Unknown Americans humanizes a struggle that is too often considered in the abstract and distilled for political debate.

3) Ecstatic Cahoots + Paper Lantern By Stuart Dybek

Up there in the ranks of the short story masters, or at least the short story writers whose work dominates the curricula of MFA workshops, Stuart Dybek is out with two collections of romantic, precise nuggets of fictional goodness. While Paper Lantern markets itself as a book of 'love stories,' don't expect The Fault in Our Stars—these are tales of twisted passion, envy, and rambling, essay-like digressions. Ecstatic Cahoots contains 50 shorts of every conceivable length (short, mostly).

4) I'll Be Right There By Kyung-sook Shin

Set in a Seoul of the 1980s, Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin's 17th novel (the second translated into English) is concerned with life in a time of conflict. When Jung Yoon learns that her former literature professor is on his deathbed, she is flooded with memories from her years as a student—memories of love, loss, and friendship, all experienced within the context of political turmoil. I'll Be Right There considers the relevance of art in times of suffering and explores the places we find meaning and healing in the face of loss.

5) Friendship By Emily Gould

It seems everyone has an opinion about Emily Gould. Hailed as the voice of our generation one day and condemned for her gossip blogging the next, Gould has managed to generate so much controversy throughout her career that people are inclined to review her rather than her new novel. Friendship looks at the lifestyles of two girlfriends grasping at meaning, self-assurance, and financial security in the hotbed of paradox that is Brooklyn today. With straightforward writing and sharp observation, Gould enters the strange and contradictory world of the young, educated, and literary. So if you want to hop on the bandwagon of people with something to say about Gould's book, it might be a good idea to, you know, read it.

6) Bad Feminist By Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay has been all over the place lately, and we're all better off for it. Known for her incisive social commentary and seemingly effortless writing style, the fiction writer and culture critic released a new collection of essays this Tuesday that will almost definitely both stun and charm the mental pants off of anyone in its general vicinity. Gay is a must-read for every feminist and person who thinks they’re not a feminist; if you're looking for some summer nonfiction that is both entertaining and insightful, this is it. For a fiction bonus, pick up An Untamed State, Gay's powerful novel released this May.

7) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage By Haruki Murakami

The new novel from bestselling Japanese writer and postmodern hero Haruki Murakami will be released in English translation on August 12, to the elation of probably the entire literary world. Following a series of sprawling, surreal tales, Murakami's most recent work is a straightforward story about a man who has been ostracized by his friends and remains shaken by the loss years later.

8) Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle By Lydia Davis

When she's not busy writing sharp, impeccable, bewilderingly short stories, Lydia Davis spends her free time doing other inconsequential things like translating Flaubert and being a MacArthur genius. Her latest quirky but probably amazing project is an updated version of Bob, Son of Battle, which was originally written in a Cumbrian dialect unlikely to fall softly on the ears of today's Internet-worn readers. Davis has translated the work for a modern audience, but you have to wait until August 19 to go buy it, which you will.

 

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