Ready to pack your sunscreen and hit the beach this summer? Here are five beach-friendly non-fiction new paperbacks making a splash this season.
Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot
By Mark Vanhoenacker (Vintage, 3 May 2016)
Ideal for those who get a little twitchy when flying, Vanhoenacker — now a senior first officer with British Airways — invites the reader into the cockpit to marvel at flying: From the physical “How does it work?” to the meta “Why such a feeling of delight in the air?” or the inverse “Why the dread?” The author touches on engineering, politics, poetry and relationships, making the book suitable for any curious mind who’d like to get an insight into what flying is all about, literally and figuratively.
Find a Way
By Diana Nyad (Vintage, 28 June 2016)
In 2013, 64-year-old Nyad swam 111 miles from Cuba to Florida in 53 hours. Her memoir explores how she came to develop such a tenacious and fearless spirit through both successes and failures during her life as long-distance swimmer. Inspiring and moving, her story will stay with the reader long after the last page.
The Oregon Trail
By Rinker Buck (Simon & Schuster, 7 June 2016)
The author and his brother travel along the old Oregon Trail just as people did in the years before the Civil War: By wagon with a team of mules and (a modern addition) a Jack Russell terrier. Not simply a travel journal, Buck’s adventure delves deep into American history and personal relationships.
How to Ruin Everything
By George Watsky (Plume, 14 June 2016)
Musician and artist George Watsky makes his literary debut with this entertaining selection of essays that cover his life’s failures and successes, ranging from the absurd (becoming an international ivory smuggler) to the humorous (epic rap battles in middle school) and the surprising (suffering from epilepsy). Watsky is not just a rapper and spoken word artist, he’s a self-aware and skilled writer.
Barbarian Days
By William Finnegan (Penguin Press, 26 April 2016)
The perfect memoir for the beach, Barbarian Days is about — but not only — Finnegan’s obsession with surfing. Published to wide critical acclaim in July 2015, and winning the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography, it is now available in paperback.