The fall reading list
Book recommendations for the cold months ahead.
Summer is the time for outdoor pursuits — hiking, camping, biking, gardening, tubing, traveling. The long days and warm sunshine don’t encourage much reading beyond your standard beachside thrillers. For months now, serious novels, nonfiction, even magazines have been piling up in teetering stacks around my house, and there’s a fearsome backlog on my Kindle.
Now that the nights are getting cooler and longer, I’m finally thinking about settling down to read. I have to slim down my piles before they collapse in a massive book-a-lanche and bury the dog.
A few of the new titles I’m excited about include Gold Fame Citrus by award-winning Nevada author Claire Vaye Watkins (featured in a Q&A in our 2012 books/essays issue): “Set in an increasingly plausible-seeming future in which drought has transformed Southern California into a howling wasteland … two refugees of the water wars (are) holed up in a starlet’s abandoned mansion in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. Seeking lusher landscapes, the pair head east, risking attack by patrolling authorities, roving desperadoes, and the unrelenting sun.” As a contrast to that all-too-imaginable apocalypse, I’m also eager to check out William Finnegan’s memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. It’s an adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, and a social history — “the kind of book that makes you squirm in your seat on the subway, gaze out the window at work, and Google Map the quickest route to the beach,” says the Paris Review Daily. And several HCN contributors have produced terrific new works, including Mary Emerick, Kurt Caswell, Samuel Western, Todd Wilkinson and Laura Pritchett.
Below is a list of some of the most interesting titles published between June and next winter, organized by author’s last name. If a book is already available, no publication month is noted.
FICTION
The Japanese Lover, Isabel Allende, Atria, November
Vintage, David Baker, Simon & Schuster
Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, by Marc Beaudin, Elk River Books
Studies in the Hereafter, Sean Bernard, Red Hen Press
How Winter Began, Joy Castro, University of Nebraska Press, October
And West is West, Ron Childress, Algonquin Press, October
Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg, Gallery/Scout Press
The Last September, Nina de Gramont, Algonquin
Undermajordomo Minor, Patrick DeWitt, Ecco
Last Bus to Wisdom, Ivan Doig, Riverhead
Geography of Water, Mary Emerick, University of Alaska Press, November
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, Kelli Estes, Sourcebooks Landmark
A Collapse of Horses: A Collection of Stories, Brian Evenson, Coffee House Press, February
The Girl from the Garden, Parnaz Foroutan, Harper Collins
Half an Inch of Water: Stories, Percival Everett, Graywolf Press
Dark Reservations: A Mystery, John Fortunato, St. Martin’s Press, October
Mountain Rampage, Scott Graham, Torrey House Press
Buffalo Trail: A Novel of the American West, Jeff Guinn, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, October
Not on Fire, but Burning, Greg Hrbek, Melville House
Dryland, Sara Jaffe, Tin House Press
Love in the Anthropocene, Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam, OR Books
The Last Pilot, Benjamin Johncock, Picador
The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli, Coffee House Press
Red Lightning, Laura Pritchett, Counterpoint
Still Life Las Vegas, James Sie, St. Martin’s Press
Western Weird (Manifest West Series), Mark Todd (ed.), Western Press Books
Dragonfish, Vu Tran, W.W. Norton
All the Stars in the Heavens, Adriana Trigiani, Harper Collins, October
Maud’s Line, Margaret Verble, Houghton Mifflin
The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War,
William T. Vollmann, Viking
Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Vaye Watkins, Riverhead
Canyons, Samuel Western, Fithian Press
The Longest Night, Andria Williams, Random House, January
Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, Sunil Yapa, Little, Brown/Boudreaux, January
NONFICTION, MEMOIR, BIOGRAPHY
Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz, NYRB Classics
Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism, Evan Berry, University of California Press
Howl: Of Woman and Wolf, Susan Imhoff Bird, Torrey House Press, October
Gold Fever: One Man’s Adventures on the Trail of the Gold Rush, Steve Boggan, OneWorld Publications
The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, Rinker Buck, Simon & Schuster
Getting to Grey Owl: Journeys on Four Continents, Kurt Caswell, Trinity University Press
Grizzly West: A Failed Attempt to Reintroduce Grizzly Bears in the Mountain West, Michael J. Dax, University of Nebraska Press
Loving Nature, Fearing the State: Environmentalism and Antigovernment Politics before Reagan, Brian Allen Drake, University of Washington Press
Of Wilderness and Wolves, Paul C. Errington, University of Iowa Press, November
The Haunting of the Mexican Border: A Woman’s Journey, Kathryn Ferguson, University of New Mexico Press
Ponderosa: People, Fire, and the West’s Most Iconic Tree, Carl E. Fiedler and Stephen F. Arno, Mountain Press
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, Penguin Press
Rediscovering National Parks in the Spirit of John Muir, Michael Frome, University of Utah Press
The Color of Night: Race, Railroaders, and Murder in the Wartime West, Max G. Geier, Oregon State University Press, November
The Great Divide, Stephen Grace, photographs by Jim Havey, Two Dot Books
Nature’s Housekeeper: An Eco-Comedy, Michael Gurnow, Blue River Press
Good Water, Kevin Holdsworth, University Press of Colorado, February
I Can Give You Anything But Love, Gary Indiana, Rizzoli Ex Libris
Sustainable Water: Challenges and Solutions from California, Allison Lassiter (ed.), University of California Press
Girl in the Woods: A Memoir, Aspen Matis, William Morrow
Living off the Pacific Ocean Floor: Stories of a Commercial Fisherman, George Moskovita, Oregon State University Press, October
How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family, Peter Nabokov, Viking, September
The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo, Edward Proctor Hunt,
Peter Nabokov (ed.), Viking, September
Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration, Tao Orion, Chelsea Green
The Rocky Mountain National Park Reader, James H. Pickering, University of Utah Press
Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest,
Lesley Poling-Kempes, University of Arizona Press
Dirt: A Love Story, Barbara Richardson (ed.), ForeEdge
Alaska’s Skyboys: Cowboy Pilots and the Myth of the Last Frontier, Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth, University of Washington Press, October
Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks and Nonsense, Krista Schlyer, Skyhorse Publishing, October
Crossing the Plains with Bruno, Annick Smith, Trinity University Press, November
Last Chance Byway: The History of Nine Mile Canyon, Jerry D. Spangler and Donna Kemp Spangler, University of Utah Press, October
Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, T.J. Stiles, Knopf, October
Ways to the West: How Getting Out of Our Cars Is Reclaiming America’s Frontier, Tim Sullivan, Utah State University Press
Letters to My Grandchildren, David Suzuki, Greystone
The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Story of 7,000 Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire, Kimball Taylor, Tin House Press, February
Mountains and Marshes: Exploring the Bay Area’s Natural History, David Rains Wallace, Counterpoint Press, December
Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399, The Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone, Todd Wilkinson, photos by Thomas D. Mangelsen, Mangelsen, October
