A Summery Summary

Recos for Reading Season

I have so many books on my TBR¹ list, it seems like the smart move is to start a cocaine habit simply to provide myself more waking time for reading. John of John by Douglas Stuart, Land by Maggie O”Farrell, Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathon Swan. I also want to check out new fiction by Amy Bloom, Andrew Sean Greer, and Daniel Kraus. Whistler, Ann Patchett’s new one, was on the list, but I managed to score a digital version from the library.

I had also pulled and old paperback² of Cider House Rules off an upstairs shelf for a reread — 50 pages in, still great — but Wilbur Larch will have to suck ether on his own.

We aren’t kids, we don’t get summers off anymore, yet we readers still think of this summer as the golden opportunity to log some serious book time.

Reading season doesn’t require new fiction, of course. Here are a few recommendations that are not fresh and new. In with the old, I say! Older titles also mean you get to benefit from that age-old money-saving device, the public library. Read to the end for my favorite library thing about my library.

Pretentious and challenging

Middlemarch by George Eliot
If you have people at your pool club you want to impress, Middlemarch is your ideal poolside accessory. I used to make sure the cover was facing out when I walked around the Maplewood Pool to ensure everyone knew this SAHM wasn’t reading Fifty Shades of Grey. (As if anyone cared.) Like some compression slimming bathing suits, it’s very hard to get into but worth it once you do. I’m glad I stuck with this novel because by the time I finished it I was among the converted. Possibly the greatest novel ever written.

True Story

A Woman of No Importance
I love nonfiction that feels like a novel, and this one by Sonia Purnell is special. The not-told-enough story of Virginia Hall, an American socialite whose lifelong dream was to be a spy but in a policy Pete Hegseth has revived, the Americans had a no girls rule. The English hired her at the start of WWII, mostly because they figured her job—to help start a resistance in France—was a lost cause. She was smarter and tougher than anyone realized, and her impact is legendary. Her bravery alone was astonishing, including repeatedly helping Allied soldiers avoid the Nazis and get to Spain by shepherding the across the Pyrenées even though she had a wooden leg. Yes, a wooden leg. Read the book.

True-ish Story

Dancer by Colum McCann

I love a book so good you want to be transported to its setting even when you’re in your happiest place. Every summer when our kids were young, we’d do a week in Wellfleet with friends. Swimming in ponds, ocean bonfires, Ina Garten’s lobster mac-n-cheese. But when I read Dancer, Colum McCann’s fictionalized version of the life of legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, I would pass up even the roasted oysters to read a few more of its beautifully written pages. Nureyev defected to America in 1961 and died of AIDS in 1993. That alone should give you an idea of all the juiciness this book entails–Soviet-era Russia, 1970s New York, pre-AIDS gay nightlife, ballet. This same genius writer went on to write Let the Great World Spin, so you know you’re in good hands.

Seasonally Appropriate
This should be a legit genre in bookstores–there are so many books set in summery locales. Here are a few winners: Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (Before he won back-to-back Pulitzers, he wrote funny and piercing autofiction about his teen years in this historically black Hamptons enclave), Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan (A musty old summer house, deep family secrets, and multigenerational discord. Yes. I’m forever searching for a novel that hits all the buttons the way this one does), Who is Rich by Matt Klam (hilarious, high-intensity, literary satire by one of my favorite writers), A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (what if armageddon happened while you were on vacation?), and Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (Blume’s novels for grown-ups are delicious).

The Best Deal on Books

I usually link the title I recommend to Indiebound instead of Amazon; I like to think of myself as a flea on the hide of Jeff Bezos. Truth is, the first place I usually go when I want to read a book is my public library, via Overdrive. If you’re not using it yet, I am excited for you to try. Search on any title, and have it delivered to your local library or digitally via Libby. The wait list for hot new titles is a downside, and why I dropped everything when Whistler was available, but for some of these older titles, you will probably be in luck.

Please hit the heart if you liked this and happy reading!

1. TBR = To Be Read. Is this a way to establish nerd cred, or just another method to make myself feel stressed out and behind on life?

2. *Can we pour one out for the 4X7 pocket book paperback? Publishers are doing away with them. It makes me feel sad and old, but truth is I was definitely on the Vintage Contemporaries trade paperback bandwagon in the 1980s–I felt like a more serious reader with one of those crammed into my Papagallo Bermuda bag.