This past week at the Harpy Beach House, there was a lot of reading. Reading on the porch. Reading on the beach. Reading in bed at night. Reading on newfangled devices; Michelle has an Ipad and I have a Sony Touch e-Reader. We managed to knock off a lot of books. My beach reads: Andrea Levy’s The Long Song and David Nicholls’s One Day. Both are well worth your money. I could go on at length about why, but just click the links, and then run off to your nearest library or bookstore.
Whenever I pile up books for summer vacation, I’m always reminded of the summer before my senior year in high school, when we were assigned the summer reading trifecta of Beloved, Crime and Punishment and Heart of Darkness. Oh yeah! Good times! I balanced out all that suffering and death with a slew of bodice-ripping historical romances, purchased at local yard sales.
What are you reading in the dog days of summer? Light and fluffy? Serious brain food? Recommendations are always appreciated!
I just finished Silent Spring and I am about halfway through The Woman’s Room. Before that I read Mormon Polygamy: A History and sometime soon I would like to finish up reading Cadillac Desert.
I’m in the last 2 months of (finally) finishing my undergraduate degree, so my reading for pleasure is somewhat limited currently (limited by guilt that I should be studying).
I tried ‘Fall on your knees’ by Ann-Marie McDonald, which was a big disappointment. It’s fine if you want a potboiler, but that wasn’t what I was after.
I have recently enjoyed Muriel Spark’s ‘A far cry from Kensington’. I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life to be old enough to enjoy Muriel Spark and have just about got there.
To ease my poor, addled brain, I’ve also read Simon Doonan’s autobiography ‘Beautiful People’ (very funny) and revisited some YA.
I have a pile of books including Maggie Gee, Paul Monette, Penelope Lively and Doris Betts to get stuck into when I’ve scrawled out my last exam. I CANNOT WAIT!
While on a family vacation of National Lampoon proportions (plus, a generous pinch of Motherly Bodysnarking for flavor) I escaped into The Princess Bride. Which was good, but I think I might actually like the movie better.
Earlier this summer, I read “And the Heart Says Whatever” which, eh, Emily Gould and I wouldn’t get along I don’t think, “Songs Without Words,” by Ann Packer, and I highly recommend it, and “Ten Things I Love About You,” by Julia Quinn, which I recommend to anyone who likes romance with a side of highly comic wit.
I like a bit of crime and intrigue in my lighter reading, but it can be difficult to find stuff that isn’t just women-slaying and sub Law and Order plots but…
I highly recommend anything by Kate Atkinson (especially the Jackson Brodie novels). Perfect if you like a bit of Britishness and some witty charm with your murder.
I also can’t rate the Evan Delaney novels by Meg Gardiner enough. She’s a kick ass feminist sci-fi writer by day who in trying to defend her boyfriend and her dad gets mixed up in all kinds of mayhem involving every US government agency you can think of. Despite some serious danger, you’ll probably want to be Evan by the end of the first one…
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley are both great.
Also, if anyone’s never read Jasper Fforde (particularly if you enjoy puns and literary allusions), I highly recommend the Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series.
Just finished The Help (like everyone else), Hunger Games, and Night Watch (Terry Pratchett).
Brain food. The Essence of Christianity by Feuerbach and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras translated by T. Desikachar.
For pure SF fun I like Nancy Kress lately, and I will always love Kage Baker, who died in Jan. RIP.
I’ve been trying to read ‘The Reliable Wife’ by Robert Goolrick for the last 3 weeks. The summary looks really interesting.
Hoping to get around to it before fall.
@Roschelle: I read RELIABLE WIFE this spring and loved it. Very dark and sexy with lots of twists!
@Plum-Pie: A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON is one of my favorites. I really should read more Muriel Spark, now that I think about it. Were there any others of hers you especially liked?
I love nonfiction, so I’ve been reading through the history and nonfiction Pulitzer Prize lists. So far they’ve been consistently good (surprise!), but my favorite was probably The Race Beat by Roberts and Klibanoff — all about journalism during the civil rights movement, it’s provocative and upsetting and inspiring. For more pure depressing but important, Imperial Reckoning by Elkins is about Britian running concentration/work/torture camps in Kenya in the 1950s. I do recommend the Pulitzer list in general for brain food.
Other than that, I’m reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe murder mysteries. Love!
Becky, ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ is a must. The 1969 film with Maggie Smith in the title role is also amazing.
I read The Hunger Games, and it was freaking awesomely engaging. The kind of suck-you-in that had me read two books in two nights despite working 12 hour days as a cleaning lady that week–the exhaustion and delirium were worth it because once I started the books I HAD to know what happened.
I also re-listened to Fire by Kristin Cashore on the long drive to my new home. Now I’ll probably listen to Graceling while unpacking. And we listened to The Graveyard Books a few weeks ago–all are highly recommended summer YA reading. Though the person who did the reading of Graceling sucks, and seemed to me to not understand how the characters were supposed to work (based on my reading of it).
Other than that, I’m finishing up my thesis and reading lots of sociology about girl culture and the internet. And Shakespeare.
Beat me to it, Cimorene – I was just coming on here to recommend the Cashore books. Graceling and Fire were both awesome. I also just read Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, another great fantasy YA with a sequel coming soon.
As far as books written for adults, the best I’ve read recently are Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and Black Water Rising by Attica Locke (all Orange Prize shortlistees).
And if you like trashy / paranormal romance, I recently devoured the J.R. Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood series.
Thanks for the two book recommendations. I’ve already placed them on hold at the library. My summer reading is a mixture of local book sale finds (romance), vampires, and self improvement. I’m currently reading an interesting book by Chris St. Hilaire called “27 Powers of Persuasion”. I’m learning that persuasion is an art. It’s about ego (yours and theirs), body language, touch and silence. I’m completely enthralled with this book and learning a lot. It’s by far the best self improvement book I’ve read this summer.
I’ve been ill lately and not had enough brainpower for anything that requires it, so I’ve been going through the Agatha Christies, Dorothy L Sayers (beautifully written detective stories that are proper novels as well – I know them so well now they’re comfort reading for me) and the Modesty Blaise books.
I’ve been ALL OVER the place this summer. I’m starting a master’s in October and will soon have most of my reading time taken up by that, so I’ve been squeezing in all kinds of things. In order:
-The Millennium trilogy (on the strength of Becky’s recommendation, and because I was given them as a present)
-City of Angels or the Overcoat of Doctor Freud, Christa Wolf’s latest book (only available in German at the moment). I’m a bit of a Christa Wolf fangirl. This wasn’t one of her best – it kind of dragged in places and lacked some oomph – but it was still interesting. It’s about the whole scandal around her being a Stasi informant and a long stay in Los Angeles which coincided with that information coming out.
-Jessica Mitford’s account of life in the Communist party, which was not quite as good as Hons and Rebels but still highly amusing.
-Effi Briest, because I’ve been feeling guilty about never having read it. It lived up to its reputation.
-Now I’m on The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford. ‘A delightful confection of a novel’ would probably be the standard reviewerspeak way of describing it.
I am finally done with summer school and I have two weeks off to read and sew before the fall semester.
I am currently finishing Touba and the Meaning of Night. Written by Shahrnush Parsipur. The same author also wrote Women without Men. Excellent!
I have Tolkien as my go to easy reread and The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television written by Jerry Mander (his real name, no joke) is possibly next on the list. Although, with all the other great recommendations going on I might have to forgo the later book (I already know the evils of T.V.) and try something else. Have fun!
FashionablyEvil, what did you think of The Help? I’ve heard a lot about it lately and was thinking of adding it to my list…
the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. I’ve read the 1st one before, but never the 2nd two.
fab.
I recently devoured the Millennium Trilogy – seriously, the last two books were finished within a week. I usually nurse a novel for weeks or months and I usually force myself to alternate between fiction, non-fiction, and comics/graphic novels. Anyway – I loved them and thank Becky Sharper for the recommendation.
Currently, I’m reading “Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut,” which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a decade. I’m enjoying it – it’s your typical women’s studies thesis watered down to pop culture novel.
I recommend anything by Mary Roach, if you’re in the mood for hilarious scientific non-fiction. Bonk, a look at the history of sex research, is the book I wish I’d written.
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for folks to read Y the Last Man, a series of comics by Brian K. Vaughn about a world where everything with a Y chromosome has died…except for an amateur magician and his pet capucin (sp?) monkey. I once had a vicious internet argument with some dudes who saw a cover of one of the books, heard the premise, and declared it horribly sexist. Ever since then I’ve wanted to talk to actual feminists about what they thought of it (because I think it’s a feminist masterpiece). Also, it’s just darn enjoyable.
Other comic/graphic suggestions: anything by Liz Prince – she does 1-5 frame internet comics about daily life and relationships (sounds like what there is too much of in this world but she’s the small press master of it). Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed? is the better of her anthologies. I often give it as a wedding or housewarming gift.
Marjane Satrapi – incredible stories of being a woman in the middle east. Persepolis I & II are the more famous, but Embroideries is about a bunch of repressed women talking about sex and gender issues and was sooo enjoyable.
I could go on…but I’ll stop now.
@Plum-Pie, it’s funny, because while i loved Fall on Your Knees, i am now reading her other novel, The Way The Crow Flies, and it is kind of stressing me out. it’s not bad, per se, it’s just very long and drawn out and it’s giving me anxiety
Plum Pie, I worship Muriel Spark, she is a goddess.
As to summer reading, Becky very kindly gave me Blood Oath by Christopher Farmsworth which is thoroughly OTT and great fun being essentially a novel in which the President has his own secret service vampire. I actually couldn’t put it down. Seriously, perfect summer read, light and fast-moving.
I’ve also recently read Tana French’s Faithful Place which was a very good crime novel, Beautiful Malice, an Australian crime novel which I enjoyed but which I felt was marred by an inexplicable US setting which didn’t feel right at all and David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which i enjoyed a lot despite feeling that it was slightly lacking in heart.
I’ve also just finished Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain which was a suprisingly addictive read. Oh and Nicola Barker’s The Burley Cross Postbox Theft which was very very funny. Plus Irish writer Claire Kilroy who is brilliant and I can not recommend enough.
Endora – I have a real soft spot for Nancy Mitford, I reread her quite regularly as a comfort read. I’m actually particularly keen on her earliest novels which are slightly more Evelyn Waugh in tone.
Oh and Scarlet Thomas’s Our Tragic Universe. Thomas is one of my favourite writers and she’s really quite unlike anyone else out there. Try The End of Mr Y and Pop Co for a taste.
@Endora – My bookclub read The Help and we all disliked it. The best way I can explain it is, think of the average middle American who reads 2-3 books a year and has no background at all in race theory or critical thinking. Now picture the book about race and civil rights that they would find comfortable and reassuring. Now make it cheesier. That’s The Help. Blech.
Yvanentnioj – Wolf Hall was the best book I read last year, all 1000 odd pages of it. I adore Hillary Mantel. I loved Black Water Rising too, a very good crime novel, I look forward to her next one.
I am just wending my way through the backlog of Dorothy Sayers mysteries I haven’t read yet. Harriet Vane – a feminist hero for the ages*!
* With the caveat that she is a product of her times.
emilyanne if you like Tana French, try Sophie Hannah for some top class actually make you think thrillers.
Her second novel Hurting Distance is extraordinary.
@FashionablyEvil, I was JUST going to recommend both Jasper Fforde series – the Thursday Next novels and the Nursery Crime series. I adore them. The first Thursday Next novel, The Eyre Affair, I found a bit cheesy, but Lost in a Good Book, and The Well of Lost Plots will I think stand as two of my favorite fun books ever. The fourth in the series felt like a contractual obligation. Then he picked up steam again in the nursery crime books.
And of course, anything by Terry Pratchett.
I’ve also been re-reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection – what an amazing writer! It’s a wonderful example of good, readable science writing.
I also just read Sizzling Sixteen. I enjoy Janet Evanovich.
And Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series (though not any of her other series).
Though it’s not beach reading, Speed Math for Kids is amazing. Terrific methods for ANYONE, not just kids, to get better at and enjoy math.
Becky, thanks for your recommendations! I always enjoy your picks. Now I know what to read next, as I’m finishing up my last Fforde novel.
I’ve been in a non-reading rut, but did get through Little Bee (read it for a book club that never happened). My overall impression was: yet another book about a whiny, dissatisfied, upper-middle class white woman who finds meaning in life through the “magical negro” character…all written by a white dude. I have The Help sitting on my beside table because my mom gave it to me, but I’ve been hesitant to start it for fear that it will be like yvanehtnioj described.
I third the Thursday Next recommendation. Fforde’s books are light and fluffy but make you feel really smart when you get all the literary references.
I’m currently re-reading The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking… highly recommended!
Thanks, yvahnehtnioj, I won’t bother with it, then. That’s a bit of a disappointment, since I had heard a lot of praise for it – but not altogether surprising.
@Ehsan: feel better soon!
@ratinski: I agree on Princess Bride. The movie is so much better!
@Tall: I really liked Little Bee but I take your point and I did feel that the ending was less than the character deserved. You should read his other book, called Incendiary. Race isn’t such a big topic in that one but class very much is, as is often the case in British literature, and it’s also narrated by a woman character.
@emilyanne: I’m looking forward to the Mitchell. I loved his Black Swan Green and found Cloud Atlaspuzzling but beautifully written and thought-provoking.
I’m reading the short stories of Langston Hughes, which are quite enjoyable. I recently read an extraordinary book called Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian. I’ve never read anything like it. It’s narrated by a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre and alternates a minute-by-minute retelling of the buildup to the troop assault on the students with the narrator’s current reflections experiences as he lays in a coma brought on by his injuries. It really brings home the chaos and confusion that are part of a massive historical moment. extremely powerful and deeply haunting.
I also read Fanny Burney’s Cecelia, which was quite fun and very pointed about the greed and shallowness of the moneyed classes. For Austen trivia fans, a line in this book gave our dear Jane the title of Pride and Prejudice.
And, finally, summer is when I reread the Harry Potter series. I’m looking forward to part 1 of movie 7 even though I know I’ll want to strangle Steve Kloves afterward. One of these days the BBC or one of the cable networks will do it right.
I’ve been going for brain food this summer. Unfortunately I have limited time available for reading – I usually read when I go to bed, and after long days in the field I’ve been so tired that I pass out after only reading a page or two. But so far I’ve made it partially through 2 books and am starting on a third:
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss. I’m going to Brazil for the first time in a couple weeks (squeee!), and I have a strong interest in cultural anthropology and just understanding how people think in general, so I’ve been reading this book in preparation. It started off slow – he can be pretty pretentious, and also some of his ideas are most definitely a product of the times and would be considered offensive today – but it’s a good and interesting read, combining travel-writing and cultural analysis.
Apocalypse by D.H. Lawrence. A friend recommended this book to me a couple months ago, and I can’t believe I hadn’t discovered it earlier! I’ve been a huge fan of utopias and dystopias for a long time, and this is right in there with Huxley’s and Orwell’s works. His description early in the book of the eternal tension between democracy and autocracy or oligarchy – where essentially the “haves” seek out democracy while the masses desire a powerful daddy figure – perfectly sums up the tensions today between the progressives and the daddy-figure-seeking right wing-nuts.
Climbing the mango trees: A memoir of a childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey. A friend just loaned me this book, and I hope I can finish it before I leave. Her writing is almost as delicious as her recipes.
I read and enjoyed The Help , and shared it with friends.
I know that some readers took issue with the setting and with the fact that a white author was writing in the voices of black characters (the plot is told by three first-person narrators, two of whom are black and one of whom is white). Obviously, there’s a risk of epic co-opting and privilege-spewing in the set-up, and certainly other writers have gone there in similar novels.
But on reading it, I did not feel that the author condescended to her audience or her characters, and I found her writing to be very compelling, with flashes of humor and thankfully none of the usual “magic negro” trope (the black characters do not “save” or “enlighten” the white characters—nor vice versa).
After I read it, I was keen to talk about it with my black friends, who had different reactions (it’s been read in a fair number of African-American women’s book clubs and church groups, which is how they had come upon it). Some really enjoyed it, some were uncomfortable with the fact that the author was white. None of them hated it, though, and they all thought it the portrayal of black domestic workers was pretty realistic.
Personally, I recommend it.
Another Muriel Spark suggestion: Girls of Slender Means. Not quite as aweson as A Far Cry from Kensington, but pretty darn good.
Totally concur about Harriet Vane and Dorothy Sayers in general.
Just read The Cookbook Collector which I thought was great.
Mmmm, book thread!
@Plum-Pie, @BeckySharper – The Ballad of Peckham Rye is a Muriel Spark MUST. So beautifully, comically written, and slightly different from the others of hers I’ve read. Particularly good if you’re a Londoner or are familiar with Peckham. Ooh I wish I had time to read it again.
At the moment, according to the Books app on Facebook, I’m in the middle of 14 books. Before the end of summer I’m going to try and finish La Batarde by Violette Leduc, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Ethical Slut and Franz Fanon’s <White Skin Black Masks, read Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward for an online book club with a friend, and have a browse through the dozens of Feminist and Cultural Studies journals (1979 to now) I luckily just inherited from an academic at work.
Oh dear, this all sounds a bit ambitious…
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick sucked me in. I bought it about two months ago, and have read it three times already.
I’ve started reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and that’s pretty good as well. I’ve just finished a bunch of sci-fi/fantasy books, mostly by Wen Spencer. If anyone here has read her book, A Brother’s Price, can we chat?
I’m on a book buying craze right now, so all of your recommendations are sure to end up in the pile by my bed, waiting to be read!
gherkinfiend – this may be too late for response. Sophie Hannah is interesting – I love her pre-crime novels which are very clever and very very funny but I actually didn’t enjoy the two crime novels of hers I read (I tried two because I loved all her other books so much). I’m not sure why I wasn’t sucked in but actually I found Hurting Distance an interesting read but not an especially involving one. It was a great premise but…
What about Margaret Atwood? I haven’t read anything by her recently but I usually love her books.
Summer tends to be my easy reading time too, and so I head for the YA stacks: I tend towards fantasy so I love reading anything by Tamora Pierce, Nancy Farmer, Madeline L’Engle, Robin McKinley, Shannon Hale and Diana Wynne Jones. Nancy Farmer always surprises me with her stories, but they do tend to be dark. And Tamora Pierce almost never misses a mark with me.
And mindless airplane reading, Jennifer Crusie has some great contemporary romances, with females that should be the convention, as opposed to the unconventional lead in a genre romance.
Fingersmith is a fantastic story about running the long con in a Victorian England. And Chitra Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices.
I’m so glad for this list! I’m living overseas and usually just read whatever I can get my hands on, but now I have a list for what to get when I go home to visit!