Fall Preview

Thanks to Joy’s blog, yesterday I checked out the Washington Post’s fall books preview. Things that strike me as interesting that I will probably never read:

• Food Matters, by Mark Bittman (S&S, Dec.). A plan for responsible consumption, by the host of “How to Cook Everything.”
• Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown, Nov.). What makes some people such high achievers? And what makes others fail?
• Thames, by Peter Ackroyd (Doubleday, Nov.) A biography of the river.
• American Lion, by Jon Meacham (Random House, Nov.). From the author of American Gospel, a chronicle of Andrew Jackson, the president who brought us to the cusp of global power.

(For some reason I have developed a bit of a thing for Andrew Jackson, even though I always hated him, and still hate him in many ways.)

Things I have and will be reviewing:

• The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead, Oct.) Quirky observations on America’s Puritan roots.
• Descartes’ Bones, by Russell Shorto (Doubleday, Oct. The debate between religion and science as seen through the 350-year journey of René Descartes’s skull and bones.

I also read the new Stewart O’Nan book, Songs for the Missing, and should write something up about that.

Things I might actually read, depending on a million unforeseeable factors:

• 2666, by Roberto Bolaño (FSG, Nov.). The great Chilean author’s last novel is set on the U.S.-Mexico border, where a series of mysterious murders has taken place.
• Home, by Marilynne Robinson (FSG, Sept.). By the author of Gilead, a novel that takes place in the house of Rev. Robert Boughton, the best friend of Gilead’s hero.
• Indignation, by Philip Roth (Houghton, Sept.)As the Korean War flares up, the fragility of life becomes all too clear to a draft-age young man and his terrified father.
• The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike (Knopf, Oct.). The witches of Eastwick — widows now — revisit their wicked deeds in a small Rhode Island town.

I didn’t care at all for Gilead but knowing me I will read this connected novel anyway. I’m sure I will read the Roth, it’s just a matter of when. And, I’m sad to say, I still have not read any Roberto Bolano.