Sunday Books: coverage for August 22, 2010

Charles Yu’s ‘How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe’ offers a vision of time travel that’s engaging and unexpectedly spiritual.

In this debut novel, small-town lives become a Cornell shadow box of secrets and healing.

Reviewed: ‘Becoming Animal’ by David Abram; ‘Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English’ by Natasha Solomons; ‘Fixing Freddie’ by Paula Munier

The volume of previously uncollected writings is a prism offering many looks into the life and mind of the public intellectual.

The author explores the ‘underbelly of archaeology’ and asks the right questions.

It may be late August, but do you still wish there was time to visit Italy this summer?

Boy meets girl in a sharp-edged novel set during the Vietnam War but stripped of the conventional war-story veneer.