The current issue of Time magazine includes their Summer Entertainment Package, a list of 76 things to do this summer, through August, including a dozen books to read and 5 book-based movies to watch.

Several titles are no surprise;  Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner,  the much hyped The Passage by Justin Cronin and the final volume in Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games series,  Mockingjay.

Time calls David Mitchell, the author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, “The most consistently interesting novelist of his generation”…

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel David Mitchell Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-06-29) ISBN / EAN: 1400065453 / 9781400065455

..is sold by the publishers claim that The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman is “Sense and Sensibility for the digital age.”

The Cookbook Collector: Allegra Goodman Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: The Dial Press – (2010-07-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385340850 / 9780385340854

RH Audio; UNABR; 9780307736857; $22.50
Books On Tape: UNABR; 11 Cd’s; 9780307736864; $40.00
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

…and calls  The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, “nonfiction to make you sound smart over summertime gin and tonics: the human history behind the periodic table.”

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements Sam Kean Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-07-12) ISBN / EAN: 0316051640 / 9780316051644

But they do the best job of selling Gary Shtenygart, Super Sad True Love Story,  …”basically, this is a love story between an old-school, book-loving throwback and a steely, beautiful, postmodern woman — set in crumbling, toxic, illiterate, impoverished near-future America. It’s ridiculously witty and painfully prescient, but more than either of those, it’s romantic.”

Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel Gary Shteyngart Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-07-27) ISBN / EAN: 1400066409 / 9781400066407

Online, Time offers a video intro to the package, with only a few of the books, however (a short ad in the beginning):

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