Online - August 29, 2005

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Summer Book Roundup

Damn. The end of August and you have yet to read anything longer than a caption next to a photo of Maddox’s mohawk. Take off with one of the excellent books you haven’t been reading this summer and by Labor Day, your brain will thank you.

International Departures

In Tokyo Cancelled, by Rana Dasgupta, thirteen strangers pass a night in the airport, swapping tall tales that transport them to Istanbul, Paris, Buenos Aires, and beyond.

Family vacation? In Nancy Clark’s clever, caustic A Way from Home, an eccentric New England clan heads for points much farther than East Prague, Venice, and Libya.

If you’re feeling French, join Stephen Clarke for A Year in the Merde, a hilarious account of his time working in Paris.

India more your speed? Visit Mumbai with Vikas Swarup, whose Q&A tells of a poor orphan arrested after he wins a popular trivia game show and the amazing adventures that provided him all the winning answers.

Nightly news got you wanting to act globally? Travel with A Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World, by the indomitable Isabel Losada, who makes the long trek from good intentions to grassroots activism in Tibet, China, and India.

Stateside, drop in on The Loss of Leon Meed, Josh Emmons’s ingenious debut about a mysterious voyager whose unexpected appearances in unusual locations around a small coastal California town suggest that he’s traveling through time.

Short-Leg Flights (Short Reads for Short Attention Spans)

Take a quick trip to Japan, sans jet lag, with Hardboiled & Hard Luck, two dreamy, quirky, melancholy little novellas by bestseller Banana Yoshimoto.

Head for Hawaii and learn all about the trouble with paradise in House of Thieves, the buzzed-about debut collection from Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Swing south through Sri Lanka via Bodies in Motion, Mary Anne Mohanraj’s linked stories about two generations.

Let Owen King (son of Stephen) transport you back in time and forward into absurdist fantasy with his loopy, macabre debut story collection, We’re All in This Together.

Traveling Light

Make room in your beach bag for Adored, by Tilly Bagshawe, the antichick-lit tale of a fabulous Hollywood beauty and her fabulously glamorous life.

Summering with the WASPs? Get laugh-out-loud insights into their strange culture and customs from Elizabeth Warner, who escaped Philadelphia’s Main Line and lived to tell about it in her essay collection, Ditched by Doctor Right.

Head for Man Camp, by Adrienne Brodeur: Wacky antics ensue when two savvy city girls decide they want their men less metrosexual and devise a scheme to get guys schooled in the art of manliness.

Too much sun? Chill out with Yellow, by Janni Visman, a cool psychothriller about the spiral of secrets and sexual obsession tightening around a mysterious young English woman and her lover.

There. You feel smarter already.