The Best 19 Books to Read This August

Before he became an esteemed fiction writer, Rick Bass settled for just being near the authors he venerated, hoping something would rub off. Most thrillingly, in his 20s, he went to Jackson, Mississippi, to apply for a job cutting Eudora Welty's lawn. He didn't get the gig but stayed anyway. Soon after, his first story ran in the Paris Review. Over the next three decades, Bass published some 30 books and become "a literary titan," says The New York Times. Still, at 55, after a divorce that left him reeling, he lost his hunger for art—and stopped writing. To rekindle the spark, he reached back to his roots, setting out once more to become a student "who will benefit from seeing an elder." The Traveling Feast chronicles that odyssey. Driving from Montana's Yaak Valley to commune with the "great ones"—among them Lorrie Moore, David Sedaris, Tom McGuane, and Joyce Carol Oates—Bass visited those who "lit the way," drinking wine, breaking bread, talking craft. The cure took, and this soul-satisfying book is the proof. Back at his desk, he wrote, "Work, as it always has, awaits."