Hot Summer Reading



"Summertime, and the reading is easy...well, maybe not easy, exactly, but July and August are hardly the months to start working your way through the works of Germanic philosophers." Michael Dirda, Washington Post book critic


Just in time for summer reading lists, two new books landed on my desk.

If you're looking for book ideas from an engaging well-read St. Louis, MO librarian, buy Check These Out: One Librarian's Catalog of the 200 Coolest, Best and Most Important Books You'll Ever Read by Gina Sheridan. This is not a typical readers' advisory book, Sheridan said. There are no lists of "if you like that author, you'll like this author." Instead, her own favorite books are categorized, e.g. Ch. 8 - Reel Good Books (books made into movies) Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Children of Men by P.D. James, The Godfather by Mario Puzo and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Or, if you want to wade into the sad pool, look at the books suggested in Tales of Woe: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein; Bee Season by Myla Goldberg; and Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer.

My summer reading list, thanks to Sheridan, is filling up largely from Chapter 11 - Too Cool for School. I'll read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, a classic that has been on my to-read list for too long, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Her description of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night sparked both interest and a question: will summer be long enough for my growing list? 

The second book filled with ideas is My Life with BOB: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues" by Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review. If her house caught on fire, forget passports or family letters, Paul would save BOB. BOB is a record of "everything I've read or didn't quite finish since the summer of 1988," Paul said. She added that BOB is better than a journal because it "contains things I wanted to remember: what I was reading when all that happened. If there's any book that tells my own story it's this one." 

I felt right at home reading Paul's explanation that "my life is engulfed in books." She writes that in her house, books are on the floor, on shelves, on tables and in tote bags. Cheers to you and your book-filled totes, Pamela Paul! I have also kept a book list for years, withholding only the occasional title that I was embarrassed to admit I'd read. In my mind, I jump ahead to a hopefully far-off day a sister, niece or cousin discovers my notebook and after skimming the list exclaims, "She read THAT?!" Usually the titles are thrillers that weren't or cheesy ghost- written Hollywood memoirs, or much too light on the plot fiction.

Let's make our own BOBs and Pamela Paul proud. This summer, read Franz Kafka's The Trial, Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Susan Faludi's Stiffed, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. 

If we're lucky, summer reading will be celebrated with a cool breeze and a chair on a porch.

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