Summer Loving Reading

What are you reading?

It’s a benign enough question. We’ve got a little box right over there on the right-hand side of our blog, where Jacquie, Beth and I – all enthusiastic readers – can report what we've got going on.

It took me forever to slog through I-can't-even-remember-the-title, so that title sat there in that little box for ages. Embarrassing, really. But then I tore through 2 books in 2 days – Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian and The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker – and all felt right with the world again. And yesterday I started Eat, Pray, Love. I know! It is, in fact, all it’s cracked up to be. As everyone knows. Lots of times a book will make its rounds among my sisters, mom, friends. Everyone’s reading it. It happened with The Kite Runner, with The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, with Water for Elephants (well, except for Mom, who didn’t like the title, and didn’t like the cover), with A Million Little Pieces (which, despite the fallout, was still a great read). Everyone read Eat, Pray, Love last year, and I missed that particular boat. But now I’m on it. And I love it.

At the risk of wasting a blog post on what should be an email
(which is as bad as wasting an email on what should be a blog post):

(Jacquie sent me that. I love Zits.)

(Oh, speaking of the funny papers, my friend Mark sent me this, “the best cartoon ever”:)

Anyway, at the risk of posting when I should be emailing, or, emailing when, oh, never mind.

I need a summer reading list.

I always have a list going. In the Fort Davis and Alpine TX libraries this past winter, I looked for the books on my list constantly, hoping, well hoping the libraries would actually GET some books in.

Yeah, right.

But somehow those books now seem like yesterday’s news. I need NEW books to put in alphabetical order in my excel file. It’s summertime. I need a stack of library books on my bedside table.

And I need your help.

MB, I remember a recent email when you maybe stopped at a park on your way home, or on your way back to work, to finish a touching or poignant or devastating novel? I saved the email, natch, but didn’t mark it, so will never be able to find it in my jumbled inbox.

Jane, what’s the name of the book you (and Mom) just read, by the guy from La República Dominicana?

The Gathering, by Anne Enright, is high on my list.

And the New York Times gave the most incredibly glowing review to a first novel the other day, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. The review is here, but listen to this excerpt:

That’s a good way for a boy to meet a dog. It’s an even better way to get acquainted with the most enchanting debut novel of the summer. Written over a decade by the heretofore unknown David Wroblewski and arriving as a bolt from the blue, this is a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana. Absent the few dates and pop-cultural references that place the book somewhere in the post-Eisenhower 20th century, its unmannered style, emotional heft and sweeping ambition would keep it timeless.

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And this one:

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One of Mr. Wroblewski’s most impressive accomplishments here is to exert a strong, seemingly effortless gravitational pull. The reader who has no interest in dogs, boys or Oedipal conflicts of the north woods of Wisconsin will nonetheless find these things irresistible. Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.

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I mean really. How can you not put this on hold at the library today?

Patricia, I depend on you for non-fiction titles. And Renee, you always recommend great reads (books already read: another blog post for another day).

So. Recommendations, please.

And now, I've got to go. Liz Gilbert is calling me . . .