RSS
Home
Summer reading list: Part 1
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Since it's Memorial Day, I’d like to take a moment here to celebrate one of the many time honored traditions of the impending sunny season: the Summer Reading List.
Some of you may be cringing just hearing the words, remembering hours of wasted pool time spent trying to plod through a mandatory reading of Dostoyevsky. But if you were a budding book nerd like me, the moment your wacky bead-wearing English lit teacher passed out the Summer Reading List probably went something like this:
Cool friend: “What EVER. There’s no way I’m getting through this. Faulkner is sooooo boring!”
You: “Um, yeah! Totally…lame.” (shoving your worn copy of As I Lay Dying deeper into your bookbag)
But now that we’re that we’re all book-loving adults, there’s no shame in showing your excitement over a little summer reading. With upcoming beach time, slower days at the office and sunny lunch breaks, you might actually have time to get through a few pages in the next few months. And that, folks, is something to celebrate.
So to get you started, here’s my ever growing list of To-Reads. It’s cobbled together from exciting new releases, things I just haven’t had a chance to get to over the winter and a few classics that are embarrassingly overdue (I swear on my hardback edition of Ethan Frome that they were never assigned reading).
The Summer Reading List – Part 1
.gif)
1. Sag Harbor by Colson WhiteheadThe Colossus of New York was a mesmerizing, rhythmic love letter to the Big Apple, so hopes are high that this next effort will be just as fresh (and hopefully not quite as geographically esoteric. Colossus sometimes felt like an insiders club for native New Yorkers). This time Whitehead follows quirky teenager Benji Cooper as he navigates the confusing worlds of his mostly white Manhattan prep school and his mostly black summer retreat in Sag Harbor—secret lite FM radio addictions, bad haircuts, and other teenage mishaps included.
2. Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way by Ruth Reichl
Gourmet magazine editor-in-chief Reichl has used her mother as comic fodder for years. But it sounds like she never really fully understood her mom until she decided to write this book. Using her mother’s old letters and diaries, Reichl aims to articulate with warmth and wit that weird moment when you realize that your parents were actual people, with hopes and dreams and unfulfilled aspirations all the same.
3. Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin
A nice conservative friend recently challenged me to read Levin’s manifesto on building a generation of new conservatism that's focused on preserving the principles of American civil society and Constitution-based values. Levin, a radio-show host, attorney and former adviser to Reagan’s cabinet, has garnered quite a following, even in the midst of all the Obama-mania. So at the very least, you should read it to be a well-informed liberal.
If you don’t do sappy beach romance novels but still yearn for some emotional drama, this might be the book for you. Phillips follows Julian, a director who’s spiraling in grief after the loss of his young son and the subsequent combustion of his marriage. When he meets Cait, a beautiful singer, his trajectory changes in ways he never imagined. Death, crumbling marriage, true love, music - think that will satisfy your sweet tooth?
.jpg)
5. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-SmithFinally, a reason to read Austen! Sorry Jane, some of us just never really dug what you were dishing. Blasphemy, I know. But then Grahame-Smith came along and updated one of your classics, with Zombies no less. It’s an excellent example of the “fan fiction” genre that’s 85% original text, 15%“ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” That means all the familiar plot turns with Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, spiced up with anti-zombie combat training and ninja armies. Sign me up!
Ready for more? Jump ahead to Summer Reading List: Part 2.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
It’s a rough day for all you foodies out there. Conde Nast just announced that after 68 years of food, food and more glorious food, Gourmet …
In just one week, our nation’s backyard will be host to some serious megawatt literary talent at the 9th annual National Book Festival. Authors, …
