August's Best Books

August books face body image, jump into traffic and sports, and revel in satisfying novels by Caroline Leavitt


About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror
Edited by Anne Burt and Christina Baker Kline
Seal Press $15.95
What woman hasn’t looked in the mirror and turned away? Seeing yourself as you really as can be a radical act, as these 23 brilliantly insightful essays from women of all ages, races and backgrounds prove. Alice Elliott Dark writes hilariously about all the celebrities she looks like, while in another great essay, Manijeh Nasrabadi struggles with her dark skin in a sea of white faces, finally embracing her Iranian heritage. From blow-drying our hair to hiding behind concealer, About Face reveals the way we learn to see ourselves and appreciate our differences, and that’s really beautiful.

The Cure for Grief
by Nellie Hermann
Scribner $24.00
What does it mean to face and survive tragedy? In the Bronstein family, nine-year-old Ruby’s father is a Holocaust survivor whose memory is in lockdown. But as Ruby begins to lose other family members to illness and to psychotic breakdown, these calamities keep her from really connecting to the people who are still around her.  Gorgeously written and haunting, Hermann’s novel delicately limns the ways we find inroads out of devastation and back into hope.

No One You Know
By Michelle Richmond|
Delacourt $23.00
Richmond’s The Year of Fog was a bestseller (and is soon to be a film) and her follow-up, a tale of love, loss and betrayal, is even more compulsively readable. Ellie’s never gotten over the death of her sister Lila, a Stanford math genius who was murdered 20 years ago. Making matters worse was the best seller Lila’s professor Andrew wrote soon after the crime, exploiting the tragedy and targeting Lila’s lover as the killer. But as Ellie continues to search for the truth, she begins to realize how Andrew shaped events to fit his literary needs, not caring that he destroyed lives in the process.  A mesmerizer that delves into how little we sometimes know about the ones we love.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us)
by Tom Vanderbilt
Knopf $24.95
How come the other lane always seems to be going faster? Why do our personalities change when we get behind the wheel? Traffic is a fascinating book about our love affair with cars, and the price we pay every time we turn on the ignition. Vanderbilt interviewed traffic reporters, engineers and psychologists who deal in human machine interactions, to reveal how drivers really don’t pay much attention to the road and often misjudge. Terrifically entertaining, and important even for pedestrians, Traffic could be a driving new force in how you get behind the wheel.

The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sports: An Essential Handbook for Women Who Don’t Know a Slam Dunk from a Grand Slam
by Liz Hartman Musiker
Plume $15
Don’t know the difference between a pop fly and a line drive? Want to be able to hold your own at a game or in conversation? Whether it’s football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, boxing, soccer or car racing, this nifty little guide tells you how each sport works, what names you need to know, and even gives you a glossary of terms you can volley about like the pros. The book is also jammed packed with fun facts, revealing who had the biggest Afro in professional basketball and who’s the hottest man on the team.  A slam dunk winner, all the way.


Caroline Leavitt’s new novel, Breathe, will be published by Algonquin Books. She can be reached at http://www.carolineleavitt.com

Share/Save/Bookmark

 

Bliss World, LLC