While my A/C unit remains on high and the humidity continues to perm my hair daily, I’m paradoxically thinking about winter, ordering Christmas wrapping paper and Chanukah cards and putting the 2023 calendars on the shelves in the shop. I sent the last of my fall book orders out last week, including for the recently announced book by Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry, about staying hopeful in uncertain times. Retail is a guessing game, and book retail even more so, but a new book by the former first lady is, at least, a no-brainer. On publication day (November 15), we’ll have it on the floor in stacks.
Fall always brings the year’s biggest books to shelves and this year is no different. If anything, as publishers continue to catch up after delaying a number of publications during the COVID years, when printing, foot traffic, and publicity were all hard to come by, there seem to be more this year than usual. In addition to Obama’s new book, here are some of the nonfiction titles we at the Book Shop are looking forward to for the upcoming season:
Even if you missed the first iteration of What If? by Randall Munroe, published in 2014, you can jump right into What If 2 (September 13), a collection of answers to questions you probably never thought to ask (If a T. rex were released in New York City, how many humans per day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake?, for example).
Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, makes physics fun, answering each question with real science, but using his trademark humor and stick-figure comics to entertain readers of all ages.
Also releasing September 13, Dinners with Ruth by longtime NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg details her nearly 50-year-long relationship with late goddess/Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Their friendship started four years before Totenberg would be hired by NPR and 22 years before Ginsburg would be appointed to the Supreme Court, but saw them through two legendary, barrier-breaking careers.
Celebrated novelist Annie Proulx returns with a collection of essays specifically on wetlands, their impact on the world, and on her, in Fen, Bog & Swamp (September 27). Packed with information, Proulx looks at the role of the destruction of peatland in the climate crisis. The perfect follow-up read for lovers of Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard or Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
One of the most buzzed-about books of the fall is Stay True by Hua Hsu (September 27), a memoir about a childhood friendship, about identity and grief and memory and youth. Hsu, a staff writer at the New Yorker, brings exquisite beauty to a haunting story, one that promises to stick with the reader long after the book ends.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, is a favorite at the Book Shop, offering short, daily observations of things that delight the author. Now Gay, a poet, is back with another essay collection, Inciting Joy (October 25), specifically the joy we incite when we care for each other, particularly in times of grief. After two years of isolation, this book comes at the perfect time, as we all realize how much we need each other, and Gay makes this interconnectedness beautiful.
There are so many more I’d like to tell you about, like how Paul Newman’s memoir, 30 years in the making, will be out on October 18, and how Stacy Schiff, one of the best biographers around (Cleopatra, The Witches, Vera), has a new book about Samuel Adams coming out October 25 called The Revolutionary, and oh! How Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song (November 1) contains the singer-songwriter-Nobel-Laureate’s musings on music, analyzing popular songs, as well as the human condition.
We’ve barely scratched the surface, but you’ll just have to stay tuned for next time, when we’ll discuss some of the fiction highlights to look forward to. Or stop by the Book Shop, where we’ll be happy to discuss in person any of these books and more.
Hannah Harlow is owner of The Book Shop, an independent bookstore in Beverly Farms. Harlow writes biweekly recommendations for us. See more of what she recommends reading at thecricket.com.
