Summer is the time for many of us to pull out a book and read just for the fun of it. Others want to catch up on some of the titles they meant to read during the previous months, but just didn’t have the time for. Below is a list of our members’ recommendations for a good summer read. Many thanks to our contributors, and happy reading to all! –Rosemary S.
AWC SUMMER READING RECOMMENDATIONS
Out of Control by Suzanne Brockman
This is the Navy SEALs meets it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. The hero is a brash youngish SEAL who has no filter between his brain and his mouth. The heroine is an uptight heiress who needs to go to Indonesia to help her favorite uncle. It turns out he’s been kidnapped and the pair are thrown (almost literally) into the jungle with a bag of money, scrambling for their lives. There are two or three different sets of bad guys who are looking for them and the money, and hijinx ensue.
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The Wedding Dress by Virginia Ellis
An all – time favorite romance novels set in the south, post-civil war. It’s a beautiful story about three sisters – the two elder decide to make a wedding dress for the youngest, regardless of the fact that there are no men left to marry. (Kind of a variation on if you build it, they will come!)
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It Had to be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, or Honey Moon, or anything she’s ever written.
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Dark Lover by JR Ward
If you want to enter the world of vampires, my absolutely favorite romance author (for darker, dangerous stories). Dark Lover is the first book in a series about a team of larger than life heroes, who just happen to be vamps.”
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The 39 Clues Book One: The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan
A wealthy matriarch scatters clues to a mysterious fortune around the globe, and her orphaned grandchildren compete with less honorable members of their clan to claim their inheritance. This first installment in a projected 10-book series is tons of fun. Readers can also collect cards, each of which contain evidence, and play the online game (www.the39clues.com), for which Scholastic is offering over $100,000 in prizes!
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller (daughter of Arthur Miller)
Fifty-year-old Pippa Lee feels she is too young to be living in a retirement community. But her 80-year-old husband, Herb, a famous publisher, thinks it’s time to simplify their lives. But all is not well as Pippa begins to walk, cook, and even drive in her sleep. She soon reveals the price she paid to secure her successful lifestyle.
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Five Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History by Helene Stapinsky
In the memoir Mary Karr calls “a page-turner,” Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City—a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight—with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.
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Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
From Publisher’s Weekly: Horan’s ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright’s first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century.
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September or The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
She’s a very evocative writer. You can smell the sea and feel the mist on your skin when you read her words. Both books are out in mass market and trade paperback versions, and are available at the library.
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19 Minutes (or anything else) by Jodi Picoult
Her stuff is “ripped from the headlines” but reasonably lightweight. She likes to use the technique where different chapters are told in different voices, and they differentiate by using different typefaces. 19 Minutes is about a Columbine-type school shooting.
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Anything by Meg Cabot. She wrote The Princess Diaries series, which is YA. Definitely good funny, racy beach reads.
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Jane Austin in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATS by Paula Marantz Cohen
Head of guidance at Fenimore High, Anne Ehrlich is knee-deep in worried students, demanding parents and the politics of college admissions when her old flame Ben Cutler returns to Scarsdale and enrolls his nephew in Fenimore. Pulled back into Ben’s orbit, Anne can’t hide from her long-suppressed feelings anymore, but she’ll try her best by getting involved with grieving poet Peter Jacobson. Endearing and fun, this narrative will ring true for anyone who’s had a peek into the madness of college admissions, as well as anyone who’s been unlucky in love.
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Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
In Ellen Foster, the title character is an 11-year-old orphan who refers to herself as “old Ellen,” an appellation that is disturbingly apt. Ellen is an old woman in a child’s body; her frail, unhappy mother dies, her abusive father alternately neglects her and makes advances on her, and she is shuttled from one uncaring relative’s home to another before she finally takes matters into her own hands and finds herself a place to belong. There is something almost Dickensian about Ellen’s tribulations; like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or a host of other literary child heroes, Ellen is at the mercy of predatory adults, with only her own wit and courage–and the occasional kindness of others–to help her through. That she does, in fact, survive her childhood and even rise above it is the book’s bittersweet victory.
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She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn’t she be? She’s suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender’s most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single, Dolores was grappling with divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you’re disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you’ll be drawn into Dolores’s warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world.
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A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
“Few books have caused me to laugh out loud the way this chronicle of Bryson’s attempt to hike 2100 miles from Georgia to Maine did. Bryson and his buddy Stephen Katz are unprepared in every way imaginable for the rigors of trail life, and this wry account of their misadventures will leave you smiling.”
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Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death by M. C. Beaton
At age 53, the irascible Agatha Raisin sells her London public relations firm to retire to the picturesque village of Carsely. Determined to gain acceptance among the villagers, the hopelessly undomestic Agatha enters a local bake-off. The judge not only snubs her entry, but later dies from poison traced to Agatha’s quiche. Of course Agatha is innocent: her “homemade” entry came from a London delicatessen. Knowing that news of her cheating will light up the village, Agatha hopes to save face by proving who murdered the judge. Beaton’s playful depiction of village life adds a familiar note of humor for those of us living in a small town!
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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveler’s Wife)
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her estate to the twin daughters of her twin sister, from whom she has been estranged for twenty years. When Valentina and Julia show up to claim their inheritance, they soon discover that Elspeth is still in residence, in ghostly form. Historic Highgate Cemetery, which borders Elspeth’s home, serves as an inspired setting as the twins become entwined in the lives of their neighbors: Elspeth’s former lover, Robert; Martin, an agoraphobic crossword-puzzle creator; and the ethereal Elspeth herself, struggling to adjust to the afterlife. Niffenegger brings these quirky, troubled characters to marvelous life, but readers may need their own supernatural suspension of disbelief as the story winds to its unexpected and twisty conclusion.
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Reading Schedule
For the summer months, we will be participating in the 4,3,2,1 Reading Program.
