Early Summer Faves: 31 Bookseller-Picked Listens

“It is a gift beyond measure when the guy who writes the best and biggest and most complicated novels of our age turns out a tiny book of nonfiction that can be read in a single sitting. Pops is a profound — and profoundly satisfying — examination of fatherhood. I loved it.”

“With his usual virtuosity, master storyteller Michael Ondaatje delivers a mysterious, shimmering new coming-of-age novel. Warlight is the unexpected story of two teenagers abandoned by their enigmatic parents in post-war London. Casually watched over by a dodgy cast of characters - petty criminals, opera singers, and panting greyhounds - Nathaniel and Rachel try to make sense of their new world while struggling to define their parents' shadowy wartime pasts. Years later, Nathaniel embarks on a quest to discover the disturbing truth, and his own unwitting part in it. Balancing poignance with surprising comic touches, Warlight is a stellar addition to the Ondaatje canon.”

“A stunning debut novel by an original voice. Twelve characters of Native American descent, interrelated by birth or chance, struggle with the competing forces of cultural history and modern urban existence. Their stories build separately before colliding powerfully in the book’s final pages at The Big Oakland Powwow. I was riveted.”

“This collection of short stories take place in Florida, but this is no Disney World! Dog snatching alligators, hurricanes and lurking panthers-just a few of the dangers in this well crafted book. I especially enjoyed "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"”

“My goodness, I love the quartet of flawed and wonderful characters Aja Gabel brings to life. I felt the heartbreak and triumph each time the ensemble performed. The Ensemble captures everything from the relentless rehearsals to the particular hand injuries musicians worry over to the conflict within the group. Henry, Daniel, Jana, and Britt are each characters unto themselves, but together they create a fifth character: the quartet itself. An inventive novel about the lives of musicians and the world they inhabit, full of tension, ambition, confusion, and loyalty. The Ensemble is a remarkable achievement.”

“Spend some time inside the mind of a modern everywoman named Leda, who narrates her sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking journey through adult milestones: friendship, dating, sex, marriage, motherhood, creativity, work — and the insecurities and choices that come with all those things. I read the whole book on a plane, and I couldn’t adore it more.”

“Hall says she wrote the first draft "in a mad spurt of anger at the continued injustices perpetrated against women in our so-called civilized society," and it shows. I loved this disturbing, dark, utterly infuriating story. It still makes me want to scream.”

“Wow! Here is a collection of stories that are at times funny, often moving, and really, really good, if not great. 'Welcome to Mars' is perhaps my favorite. It's Kirk's 19th birthday, and he joins his father to go surfing on what turns out to be a defining day in his life. And then there's 'Alan Bean Plus Four,' which is a hilarious telling of four friends' journey to the moon. Read it. You'll be pleasantly surprised by Tom Hanks' writing.”

“Set in near future Japan: A Filipina nurse learns that her job is in jeopardy when her 100-year-old patient, Sayoko, develops a strong relationship with a robotic companion. Romano-Lax creates a subgenre of science fiction concerning international labor relations and empathetic machines. This book is for those who enjoy science fiction, but would also like to explore the social consequences of present day policies and artificial intelligence.”

“This alternate history masterpiece imagines what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh won the presidential election in 1940 instead of Roosevelt. After the passing of Philip Roth, pay homage to this great writer by reading his work.”

“Calypso by David Sedaris is laugh out loud hysterical in true Sedaris fashion. Listening to him read and deliver his stories is like listening to a stand-up comedian. This collection is fairly personal and many stories involve his family and their adventures in his North Carolinian beach house, aptly name the “Sea Section”. Sedaris manages to tackle even difficult issues like suicide and aging with grace and just the right amount of self-deprecation mixed with brutal honesty. Highly recommend!”

“The Feather Thief is true crime at its best — a tale starting with the Amazonian explorations of Darwin-era naturalists, rooted in the eccentric sensibilities of Victorian collectors, fueled by the obscure cult of fly-fishing tying, and culminating with a shocking 2009 British Museum heist by a shy American flautist. All of these elements are deftly brought together at a thriller’s pace by author Kirk Johnson, a veteran of the Iraqi reconstruction effort suffering from PTSD, who stumbles across the story while fly-fishing in New Mexico in 2011. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.”

“Barracoon would be a significant document were it only about Cudjo (Kossola) Lewis, the last survivor of the last recorded slave ship to the US. His memories, recounted orally, preserve a trans-atlantic history that has long-been suppressed. But Barracoon is also a story about Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, and the reclamation of African-American folklore. Woven throughout Hurston and Lewis' conversations is a yearning for roots and a fight for identity.”

“With the fallout from Cambridge Analytica still fresh in our minds, and the sense that our collective slide into tech dystopia is moving apace, Move Fast and Break Things — which is out now in paperback — provides an excellent primer on how we got to where we are, and why it didn’t have to be this way. Come for the power-hungry data collectors lobbying for lax regulation, stay for the Silicon Valley bigwigs saying things like, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” This book connects a lot of important dots, and despite the urgency of its subject matter is a surprisingly enjoyable read.”

“In thirteen succinct chapters, Rovelli shows us that time as we know it—continuous, smooth, regular—is an illusion. Our perception of time is limited and can’t take into account its true nature as a fluctuating, particulate field--“a network of relations that no longer holds together as a coherent canvas.” Step by step, Rovelli’s deconstruction of received notions of time is clear and accessible—our present is “a bubble around us” and can’t refer to far places in the universe; increasing entropy means “the entire universe is like a mountain that collapses in slow motion”—and his writing is elegant in all senses of the word, as breathtaking for the startling ideas as for his compact articulation of them. A theoretical physicist, Rovelli is also a true humanist; he doesn’t abandon us in a quantum universe ruled by entropy where “the difference between the past and the future refers only to our own blurred vision of the world,” but ends with Proust, music, and emotion. Overall, his book includes more poetry than equations, and he opens each chapter with an excerpt from Horace’s Odes—perhaps a subtle comment on standing the test of time.”