April Showers
Bring a plethora of fine new reads
April brings nothing but new things, and in the spirit of new growth, we offer a smattering of new titles that will appear this month. Hundreds of books are published each month in America; we’ve narrowed it down to a manageable eleven.
April 4:
Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays, by Mary Gaitskill. Pantheon, $25.95. Mary Gaitskill is a personal favorite. Here she writes about cultural touchstones like Talking Heads, Björk, and John Updike.
Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer, by Tom Callahan. Harper, $28. We all know someone who might pen a better Arnold Palmer book, but this one is also a major contribution to the “King’s” oeuvre.
Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, by Anne Lamott. Riverhead Books, $20. Lamott brings another exquisitely sized essay to her adoring fans. One thing we know is true: We need more mercy.
No Bull: The Real Story of the Durham Bulls and the Rebirth of a Team and a City, by Ron Morris. Baseball America, $22.95. Let’s give Durham, and baseball, its April due. Has a minor league baseball team been as important to any other city?
April 11:
Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry, by Marcus Thompson. Touchstone $26. Another North Carolina legend. Has any basketball player been as important to any other college as Curry has been to Davidson?
The Delight of Being Ordinary: A Road Trip with the Pope and the Dalai Lama, by Robert Merullo. Doubleday, $26.95. A novel that makes us laugh as well as think about the demands of ordinary life, spiritual life and the identities by which we all define ourselves. The author of Breakfast with Buddha.
April 18:
This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class, by Elizabeth Warren. Metropolitan Books, $28. The fight is already on. Scuppernong will have ten signed copies of this available on April 18.
The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, by David McCullough. Simon & Schuster, $25. A timely collection of speeches by David McCullough, the most honored historian in the United States — winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among many others — who reminds us of fundamental American principles.
A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry, by Grace Paley with an introduction by George Saunders. FSG, $27. Grace Paley is best known for her inimitable short stories, but she was also an enormously talented essayist and poet. A Grace Paley Reader collects the best of Paley’s writing, showcasing her breadth of work and her extraordinary insight and empathy.
April 25:
Two Paths: America Divided or United, by John Kasich. Thomas Dunne Books, $28. Remember this guy? Things might have been different.
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 3, by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ben Stelfreeze. Marvel Comics, $17. Even if the People fall, can the monarchy still stand? The pieces are all in position, now it’s time for Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze to knock over the board as their revitalization
of Black Panther continues!
This month’s Scuppernong Bookshelf was written by Brian Lampkin
