21 Books You Should Read This July / Part two

 

Dave Eggers

21 Books You Should Read This July 

PART TWO

We Asked Lit Hub Contributors About What They're Looking Forward To

JULY 1, 2016

Underground Airlines, Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)

No spoilers, no bullshit, no doubt it will blow your mind.

–Lisa Levy (Lit Hub contributing editor)

Hot Milk, Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury)

I’m not sure if I fully understand Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk yet, but I’m sure I’ll keep trying to—and I’m sure it will keep haunting me as I puzzle out narrator Sofia, her mother Rose, her sometime lovers, and her very young, breastfeeding stepmother. Sofia and Rose are in southern Spain seeking a cure for Rose’s mysterious illness with a doctor who is part genius, part charlatan, and part shaman. As Sofia batters her way towards mature identity, the reader batters her way towards meaning. It’s unforgettable and complex and oh, there are jellyfish, too.

–Bethanne Patrick (Lit Hub Contributing Editor)

Heroes of the Frontier, Dave Eggers (Knopf)

For quite a while I’d been wondering what Dave Eggers would do next—would it be a magazine, a small press, an app offering a new kind of digital reading experience with bells and whistles? I am excited that it’s a new novel and that, continuing with his eclectic array of themes, he’s setting Heroes of the Frontier in Alaska, where the female protagonist flees with her kids without telling her ex-husband. An Eggers family road trip in the bleak wilderness? Yes please.

–Marta Bausells (Lit Hub contributor)

The Big Book of Science Fiction, ed. Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage)

When it comes to massive and comprehensive anthologies focused on a specific strain of fiction, the editorial team of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer has set the bar remarkably high. Their new anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction covers a wide range of styles and authors, including a number of works in translation (among them, stories from Cixin Liu, Silvina Ocampo, and Leena Krohn).

–Tobias Carroll (Lit Hub contributor)

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, D.G. Compton (NYRB)

In this dystopian moment, why run from the horror? Let us rather sink into it, learn its capacities, its weaknesses. Let us prepare through literature. Enter The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D.G. Compton. It is the near future, one in which death has essentially been abolished. The few exceptions are filmed for Human Destiny, a television program-cum-death documentary commanding an enormous, ravenous audience. When Katherine learns she has weeks to live, she proves unwilling to embrace her macabre celebrity. But Roddie, a new kind of program host, a man with surgical implants whose eyes transmit his vision to the screen, knows the show must go on. An eerie, prophetic look at shrinking privacy, intrusive technology, and the ethics of ambition.

–Dustin Illingworth (Lit Hub contributor)

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North, Blair Braverman (Ecco)

Growing up, I loved to read stories (whether fiction or nonfiction) set in frozen landscapes. Jack London’s Call of the Wild and Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf are just two books that come to mind. That’s why I’m particularly excited to read Blair Braverman’s debut memoir. The author spent time in Norway, where she learned how to be a musher, and Alaska, where she gave tours on a glacier. Adrian Nicole Leblanc says it’s “a delicate meditation from the frontiers of feminism, forged by the stark landscapes that prompted it.”

–Michele Filgate (Lit Hub Contributing Editor)

 

Object Lessons: Bread, Hair, Password, Questionnaire (Bloomsbury)

I love micro-histories and the surprising insight that comes from in-depth meditations on the seemingly mundane.That is why it’s no shock that last year I fell in love with the Object Lessons series of books put out by Bloomsbury and The Atlantic Monthly. They’re small, usually less than 30,000 words, and beautifully designed. Next month there will be four new additions—Bread by Scott Shershow, Hair by Scott Lowe, Password by Martin Paul Eve, and Questionnaire by Evan Kindley. (Full disclosure: I liked these books so much that I pitched one, High Heel, which will be published in 2017).

–Summer Brennan (Lit Hub contributor,
author of The Oyster War)

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