So the non-descript month of August rolls around this week, a month perfectly designed for you to somehow muddle on through. Not only is it known for being just plain hotter than a month has a right to be, but it also has the distinction of being devoid of any kind of holiday. Oh sure, on a more personal note, it’ll be my birthday in a couple weeks, but that’s more like a day to ignore in hopes that it goes away. Which it inevitably does until — and I’ve detected a pattern here — it returns again next year, to the day it so happens, just like clockwork.

Even as we hit the doldrums of summertime book-dom releases, there’s not even too much to get excited about, especially in nonfiction, unless you want yet more celebrity blather, textbookish tomes for policy wonks, hagiographic re-revisionism, spoon-fed social re-engineering, or guru-to-the-stars psycho-prattle. At least there's a book about literary lapdogs that's unique, if not essential.

Perhaps the proper cue should be taken from Joyce Meyer’s book about ways to simplify your life: Simply stay at home, save your money, re-read a classic or two, and gear up for the Fall releases, when you can complicate your life once again with — word to the wise — more words for the wise.

NONFICTION:

Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf by Maureen B. Adams

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda

George Washington: His Spiritual Journey by Janice T. Connell

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Wayne W. Dyer

Public Budgeting Systems by Robert D. Lee, Ronald W. Johnson, Philip G. Joyce

100 Ways to Simplify Your Life by Joyce Meyer

Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? edited Thomas Pogge

FICTION:

Jinx by Meg Cabot

Anything For Jane by Cheryl Mendelson

Third Watch: Acorna's Children by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter

Last Breath: A Novel of Suspense by Mariah Stewart

Settling Accounts Book IV: In at the Death by Harry Turtledove