A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
And I'm A Martínez. It is now officially summer. And a lot of people are wondering, what am I going read? Well, before you start packing for your vacation, NPR has published a list of our favorite books of the year so far. Andrew Limbong is host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast. He's here to talk through nonfiction recommendations.
So, Andrew, I'm looking through the list. It's got a nice little mix of memoir, history, reporting - a lot of good stuff. But let's start with a book that you personally recommend to people, and it's one right up my alley because I'm a sports dude.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: (Laughter) Yeah. So the book I pitched for the list is Hanif Abdurraqib's "There's Always This Year." It's about basketball, specifically about Lebron James' career. Abdurraqib uses basketball as a jumping-off point to talk about aging and grief and the passing of time. And, OK, I know that doesn't sound like the hottest beach read (laughter).
MARTÍNEZ: I was about to say - yeah.
LIMBONG: Yeah, but listen, I did go on a beach vacation recently, and that's when I finished the back half of the book. And, you know, it works. Abdurraqib is a renowned poet and essayist. And he's got this knack for taking a thing that seems, like, pretty everyday, just like a basketball game, and, you know, just, like - look, I see something beautiful. You know, I see life and I see death, and I see all of these things. And I just want to share that with you. And even though he's talking about some heavy topics, you know, he does it in a way that is pretty uplifting.
MARTÍNEZ: So on that - because there's another book on this list that's also surprisingly uplifting, and it's about climate change.
LIMBONG: Yeah. I think you're talking about the Hannah Ritchie book, right?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
LIMBONG: That one is called "Not The End Of The World: How We Can Be The First Generation To Build A Sustainable Planet." So the author, Ritchie, she's a data scientist, a numbers person. And she uses those numbers to push back against - let's call it, like, doomerist (ph) takes - right? - about the end of the world.
For instance, there's a chapter about air pollution, and it starts by talking about how Beijing was known for having horrendous air pollution. And this was an issue that got a lot of attention around the time it hosted the '08 Olympic games. But then, you know, China, like, did something about it. And between 2013 and 2020, Beijing's pollution levels fell by, like, 55%, which according to Ritchie, yeah, was, like, huge enough to increase life expectancy there by, like, five years.
And there are a lot of stories like that, where it sort of traces all these, you know, let's call it, like, big wins we've made collectively as a species when it comes to sustainability. You know, she's a very hard numbers person. So it's not...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...All rainbows and sunshine and holding hands and we're going to make it, you know? The numbers are, like - say that, like, there's a path. You know, it's a difficult path, but there is a path, which we can forget sometimes.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Now, OK, speaking about the world and sustainability, there's a poetry collection among our staff picks that's about the natural world. So tell us about that one.
LIMBONG: Yeah. This one is titled "You Are Here," and it's a collection edited by Ada Limon. She's the 24th poet laureate of the United States.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, yeah.
LIMBONG: And it's a collection of 50 poems by a variety of poets. You know, we're talking some, like, heavy hitters in the poetry world. And each of them in some way talks about nature and the outdoors. So if you are headed out to, like, a lake cabin or something for the summer, I think it's, like, the perfect companion to just, like, waking up early before everyone else, you know, and reading a poem while you take in the quiet.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: There's one poem that's kind of appropriate for our conversation. It's by Matthew Zapruder and it's titled "It Was Summer. The Wind Blew." And, you know, it's about playing with his son in the summer. And they're swimming and napping and swinging from the trees and all this stuff. And it ends like this - it goes, each day was that same sweet holiday that never ended until the windows got soft. It was summer. Candles came on like televisions. That was the last time things were real.
MARTÍNEZ: Your read made it real for me.
LIMBONG: Oh, thank you.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Andrew Limbong with a few summer reading recommendations. For author interviews from across the network, you can listen to NPR's Book of the Day podcast. Andrew, thanks.
LIMBONG: Thanks, A.
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