The best new books to read in July

This might sound dramatic, but I believe the decision to join a book club, to or to remain in one, is a serious matter.

The upside of a dedicated book club, of course, is the community and camaraderie that comes with sitting in a circle (or on a Zoom grid) with like-minded friends and neighbors. Your spirit is enriched by their presence and a shared appreciation for storytelling. But joining such a group is also an act of surrender, setting aside one’s own predilections — not to mention time and brainpower — in favor of someone else’s. I’m no expert, but I have come up with a few ground rules over a lifetime (so far) of reading, and I think they could help improve your book club experience.

1. You gotta read the book. The whole thing, cover to cover. That’s the only way you’ll be qualified to discuss or interpret it. You’re not much good in a discussion if you skipped the boring, nasty, or uncomfortable bits.

2. Context is important. No book exists in a vacuum, so take its origins into account. When was it written? Who wrote it and why? Was it written or edited by committee, or by a group with an agenda, or is it the pure expression of a single author? Does it exist within an established genre? Regardless of whether it’s sci-fi or self-help, a superhero yarn, or apocalyptic fantasy or all of the above, it may incorporate tropes and clichés of a genre, and that is worth talking about.

3. Check your footing. Before making bold declarations about a book, be sure your arguments make logical sense, and are not built on ignorance of science, reason, and human behavior.

4. Accept that no one book is perfect for everybody. Even if a book speaks directly to your soul about the way the world is (or can be, or should be), you’re just one person whose opinion deserves no more weight or time than anyone else’s.

5. Read lots of (other) books. To paraphrase the Hold Steady, you’ll have a better idea of whether something’s well-written if you’re well-read.

6. You can’t force people to love your favorite book or find it as meaningful as you did. In my opinion, this is the biggest failing among some of the prominent and popular book clubs, especially the ones that meet religiously.

To you it might be the most important thing in the world, but to other people it’s probably just a book club.

And now, some new book club-worthy books.

Note: This book is not subtitled What Animal Perception Tells Us About Humans. Ed Yong — Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist at the Atlantic — makes it clear in the introduction that humans are animals, and all animals will be granted equal footing in An Immense World. (“This is a book not about superiority but about diversity.”) The opening pages also introduce us to the concept of the Umwelt, the particular array of senses every living thing is empowered and limited by. Sharks sense electrical fields, sea turtles notice magnetic fields, mice hear ultrasonics, whales hear infrasonics, rattlesnakes see infrared radiation, bees see ultraviolet light, etc. With joy and wit, Yong explores an Earth that looks very different depending on what kind of Earthling you are. (Random House, $30, out now)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org | Borrow it from the Free Library

OK, so Lidia Yuknavitch’s new novel is kind of a handful with its sapient sea turtle, time-skipping “water girl,” the Statue Of Liberty slowly sinking into the ocean, among other things. But it could be the best thing you read this year. Oh, it’ll challenge you. Though the storytelling is cinematic and inviting, Thrust is also often deeply, insistently strange, and may well drag you into discomforting revelations about America, the human condition, you name it. Right, but what’s it about? Reviewer Ron Charles of the Washington Post put it this way: “I won’t say too much about the plot because I’m afraid I’ll accidentally reveal how little I followed it.” Suffice it to say: It’s weird. Embrace the weird. (Riverhead, $28, out now)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org | Borrow it from the Free Library

Rooted in intrigue, humor and potential romance, though never far from heartache, Our Gen may be as close as revered and award-winning Philadelphia author Diane McKinney-Whetstone ever comes to the Beach Read section. Its main foursome — all nonwhite residents of a schmancy 55+ “active living” community somewhere outside Philly — like to drink, crack jokes and smoke weed, but there are secrets bubbling just under the surface that may threaten the group dynamic. As always, it’s about characters for McKinney-Whetstone, and these four leap off the page with charm, vitality, and vulnerability. (DMW will discuss Our Gen on July 19 at the Parkway Central Library.)(Amistad, $26.99, July 5)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org | Borrow it from the Free Library

Though it’s not your typical romance, Gabrielle Zevin’s potent new novel does feature a memorable and oddly stirring meet-cute, with Sam getting the attention of his long-ago childhood friend Sadie by shouting across a crowded train platform that she “has died of dysentery.” If you picked up on that Oregon Trail reference, you may appreciate this funny, unpredictable story of love and video games set in the late ‘90s, a time when a couple of indie programmers like Sam and Sadie could take the world by storm with nothing but a good idea and a stack of floppy disks. Want to level up? Seek out EmilyBlaster, the book’s free companion web game that lets players shoot missiles at the words of Emily Dickinson. (Knopf, $8, July 5)

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More than a mere nostalgia trip, Brad Zellar’s contemplative, quietly powerful new novel considers the tiny utopias that come from nowhere and dissipate unceremoniously in our pasts. What was so wonderful? How did it slip through our dumb little fingers? For Matthew, the gentle narrator of Till the Wheels Fall Off, his halcyon days were spent at the roller rink where his stepdad spun Charlie Parker and Big Star records under dimmed houselights and disco balls. Now, after years of drifting, Matthew returns to his small Minnesota hometown, moves into the elevated press box of an abandoned high school stadium, and begins searching for his stepdad and everything else he lost. (Coffee House Press, $17.95, July 12)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org

A citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, Talty uses humor and heartache to tell the interconnected stories of a menagerie of Indigenous characters in this highly anticipated debut collection. (Tin House, $16.95, July 5)

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The author of Dark Matter and the Wayward Pines series returns with a stand-alone sci-fi thriller about a guy who survives an explosion at a creepy genetics lab and develops new abilities that just may be useful to the human race. Is this a Blake Crouch superhero story? That would be a reductive way to look at it. But maybe. (Ballantine, $28, July 12)

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The Philly author’s debut novel is a touching coming of age story that explores body issues and stigmas through the eyes of an obese young Black girl in 1980s Harlem whose relationship with food is tangled up in bigger issues. (Liveright, $27, July 12)

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Marine biologist Leah has been acting weird ever since she got back from that deep-sea submarine expedition, and her wife is starting to wonder if it’s really Leah (or only Leah). Early reviews point to this queer gothic horror novel extending its tentacles into deeper, more ambitious waters. (Flatiron Books, $26.99, July 12)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org | Borrow it from the Free Library

The author of Mexican Gothic delivers a wild and romantic reinvention of H.G. Wells’ mad-science classic, this time set in 19th-century Mexico. Recommended for fans of smart, sensual horror and sci-fi, or anyone thinking of populating their jungle paradise with animal-human hybrids. (Del Rey, $28, July 19)

➡️ Buy it now on bookshop.org | Borrow it from the Free Library

More books to come

Look for Patrick Rapa’s monthly roundup of great reads on Inquirer.com and in The Inquirer on the first Sunday of the month.