You probably wouldn't think of a travelogue on the most terrifyingly polluted places in the world as a good summer read, but I'm here to argue that VISIT SUNNY CHERNOBYL by Andrew Blackwell might just be the perfect thing for a beautiful sunny day. Oh, and my buddies Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist are here to back me up.

For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon—but Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth. Irreverent and reflective, the book is a love letter to our biosphere’s most tainted, most degraded ecosystems, and a measured consideration of what they mean for us.

Part travelogue, part expose, part environmental memoir, and part faux guidebook, Blackwell careens through a rogue’s gallery of environmental disaster areas in search of the worst the world has to offer—and approaches a deeper understanding of what’s really happening to our planet in the process.

"Journalist and filmmaker Blackwell doesn’t just present a list of environmental woes but undertakes provocative meditations on how to care about the planet while recognizing that plenty of people need to make a living, sometimes to the environment’s detriment." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"In each chapter, Blackwell finds he loves the polluted places for all the ways they aren’t ruined. With great verve, and without sounding preachy, he exposes the essence and interconnectedness of these environmental problems." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

It also received a starred review from Booklist!

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Talia's at the Boston Book Buzz and most of the Academic Marketing Department is out today, so I'm creeping around the 21st floor like a moody sphinx in a defunct labyrinth and/or a manticore demon looking for someone to chat with between circles seven and eight (violence and fraud, respectively) of the Inferno/breakroom.

Won't someone come talk to me about something? ...Anything?! I can make you coffee! I’m better at making up riddles than Bilbo! I have things to say about the weather! Time-sensitive things!!

Do I sound familiar? If you’re smiling and shaking your head right now thinking, "Been there, girl," well then have I got the compendium for you: THE WEIRD edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer!

This anthology of peculiar short stories is here to keep you (and, more urgently, me) occupied over those dreary co-worker-less lunches and solitary afternoon coffee breaks. In the strange company of Franz Kafka, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Daphne Du Maurier, Algernon Blackwood, George R.R. Martin, and so many more, you may not feel more human, but you will feel less isolated... or will you?!

Seriously, someone come say hi. I'm losing it up here.

Not convinced by my manticorian ramblings? Publishers Weekly gave THE WEIRD a starred review and said,

"Ambitious in the extreme, the Vandermeers’ latest genre-blurring endeavor, which compiles 110 weird stories from the past century, is one of the most far-reaching and inclusive speculative anthologies to ever see print."

They also called it "a deeply affectionate and respectful history of speculative fiction’s blurry edges, and its stunning diversity, excellent quality, and extremely reasonable price point [...] will entice a wide variety of readers—including those who think they don’t like 'weird.'"

And how did the editors pick these delightful tales of strange and dark deeds?

We read over 6 million words in order to select the stories for The Weird. #torchat

— Ann VanderMeer (@AnnVanderMeer) May 16, 2012

Whoa! And what was the—how should I put this?—main thread of interior weird?

@WmHenryMorris Yes, Kafka is the main thread of interior weird in our antho. Stories where you r already embedded. #TORCHAT

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) May 16, 2012

I have goose bumps already!

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