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To the bona fide reader, there’s only ONE choice – not about WHAT to do, but the best PLACE to do it.
You see, at the beach there are MANY good spaces to sit with a book and discover new places. A porch with its offering of rockers and shade; or the hammock tied up in a cool, leafy glade; sipping some pages with a glass of white wine or out by the pool, both places work fine! And finally the best place of all – on the beach! By the sea, in a chair, a good book within reach! Don’t think about work! Let the kids go berserk! Let hubby get lunch while you work on the bunch of the books
that you saved and you hoarded ALL YEAR to read on vacation and now the TIME’S HERE! (With apologies to Dr. Seuss, the old dear, whose Cat in the Hat turns 50 this year.)
If your household includes a canine member of the family (or two or three!) pick up Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. (Merrill Markoe, Villard, $22.95) The quintessential summer read, it features a pretty dysfunctional family – divorced parents (Dad is a fifties greaser throwback, Mom’s latest million
dollar idea is a year-round Christmas tree kit featuring all major holidays), and sisters, Halley and Dawn. Halley is a would-be life-coach
to the stars who lives in a Hollywood Hills Winnebago and dated Scott Peterson, before his conviction. Dawn, our hapless heroine, is a dog/house sitter (read: permanently displaced), works in a doggy day care (with her side kick pound puppy-pit bull, Chuck) and makes
terrible decisions about men (twice divorced). Hitting an emotional nadir, Dawn is astounded when Chuck and his canine pals begin talking to her in a wordless, mind-speak manner to which she responds with the same. From there the book becomes hysterical, and I do mean laugh out loud. At one point, Chuck convinces Dawn to let him pick out her next potential suitor. He swears on a three-minute method
by which he can tell a keeper or a weeper. He immediately hones in on a local butcher who seems like a nice guy and invites Dawn to his monthly “Meat Club” party. She goes only to discover that he and the entire Meat Club are swingers with a capital S. When she confronts Chuck with this info, all he can say is that the guy smelled “meaty and humpy,” which to him signaled a win-win combo! I can’t tell you how funny this book is or how much I enjoyed it.
My favorite “off the radar” book this year
is Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam (Skye Moody, Sasquatch Books, $16.95). Moody blends science, anecdotes and geography in this captivating little tome that explains things like how a cargo container of Legos washed overboard near the British coast in 1997 was tracked by scientists who can
predict that some of these Legos will wash up in Alaska in 2012, Washington State in 2020. More disheartening is Moody’s description of the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, which lies in the dead center of the North Pacific gyre and contains thousands of tons of flotsam – much of which is degrading plastic and, in one researcher’s observation, forms a viscous “synthetic broth.” Fortunately, the many
driftwood, message-in-a-bottle and maritime stories counterbalance the depressing environmental comment. If you are like most beach lovers and live for beachcombing, you MUST read this book if only to discover, once and for all, the difference between flotsam and jetsam (and don’t forget lagan)!
Two of my favorite books this past year come from the ever-popular historical fiction genre: Abundance (Sena Jeter Naslund, HarperCollins, $26.95) and The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak, Random House, $16.95). Abundance traces the life of Marie Antoinette from her arrival in France at age 14 as the
bride of the Dauphin (Louis XVI) to the fateful day 24 years later when she loses her head. Naslund’s rich narrative and attention to
accurate historical detail make this page-turner a sympathetic portrayal of the doomed Queen as a wildly naïve, out of touch girl-child (albeit in a very womanly body). The Book Thief is a new treatment of an enduring subject – the Holocaust. In this incredible novel, Zusak paints a portrait of Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of two non-Jewish children, who, along with most of their adult brethren, find themselves helpless in the face of Hitler’s regime. The novel is narrated by Death, a compassionate, touching and witty character who doesn’t dispense mortality but is the receiver and transporter of newly deceased souls. The Duck’s Cottage Reading Group adored this book and I‘ve been telling
everyone about it; Zusak’s writing is exquisite, almost indescribable, and produces a book
you won’t put down until the end.
Virginia author Jerry Radford, a local favorite, is back with his fourth novel, Captured Audience (Publish America, $19.95), another good thriller. Boom Boom Gragnani, diagnosed with ALS at age 58, is fed up. He has watched his parents, his wife and countless other friends and relatives pay into the Social Security system their entire lives, only to die before ever taking a dime out. His father alone paid in over a half-million dollars only to die before the age of 62, leaving his wife with a $250 death benefit. A man with nothing
to lose, Gragnani decides to kidnap Alfred Longwater, the Commissioner of Social Security, and video his diatribes in order to expose the crippled system for the fraud he believes it to be. As Boom Boom tries to
come to grips with his impending death,
contemplates remarrying and sets the FBI
off on a huge man-hunt, we learn a lot more than we probably should about the state of
the American Social Security system in the 21st century. His excellent research produces
a thought-provoking book that will leave
you with lots to talk about around the water
cooler! Be sure to check out some of his earlier works like Follow the Money, set mostly in Duck, and Swimming in Terror (both by AuthorHouse).
No visit to the summer fruit and veggie stand is complete without a copy of Vegetable Love waiting at home. This heavy tome (Artisan, Barbara Kafka, $35.00) is my current “must have” for the kitchen, with recipes for every type of veg imaginable. Arranged by
origins, you‘ll find Avocados under Vegetables of the New World; Bok Choy in the Asia
and Africa section; Arugula anyone? Leaf through the Citizens of the World chapter (under Weeds and Odd Leaves). If it sounds confusing, it isn’t; there is a wonderful index, alphabetized by vegetable. My favorite haunt
is the Cook’s Guide in the back of the book. According to Kafka “here is where I have stashed much of what I know about the
vegetables and herbs mentioned in this book” and she includes under each heading (from Amaranth to Watercress) directions not only on the best cooking method to use, but how to buy and store each item, its attributes, yields, textures and tastes. From this book I learned several ways to cook jicama, found more recipes for my favorites, beans and greens, than I knew existed and even discovered how to make Bacon Lardons (yes, there are a few
non-veggie recipes; but only for items that
will ultimately enhance a vegetable based dish!). With summer’s veritable smorgasbord beckoning from the farm stand, grocery and maybe even your own back garden, this is a book to buy now and use all year long.
Kite Runner fans rejoice! Khaled Hosseini’s long-awaited sophomore novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead, $25.95), is here!
Lisa See is also out with a new one, Peony in Love (Random House, $23.95), which my Random House rep assures me is every bit the equal of See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Former Outer Banks resident Wendy Howell Mills latest, Island Blues (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95), features another adventure of amateur sleuth Sabrina Dunsweeney on Comico Island. An up-and-coming author to watch is Mary Gordon protégé Maxine Swann. She won
multiple awards, including an O’Henry, for her short story, Flower Children, an introspective look at the upbringing of four children-of-the-70s under the laissez-faire tutelage of their
parents who are children-of-the-’60s. Swann has expanded the story into a novel of the same name (Riverhead, $21.95), which is receiving rave reviews. I also highly recommend her first book, Serious Girls (Picador, $14.00). Alison Weir’s Innocent Traitor (Ballantine, $24.95) is at the top of my
summer reading list. This historical novel focuses on the short, tragic life of Lady Jane Grey, my favorite figure from the annals of English history. For another great book by Tudor scholar Weir, check out The Six Wives
of Henry VIII (Grove Press, $15.00). This
book it has everything – Love! Betrayal! Adultery! Greed! and I’m pretty sure every
single one of the seven deadly sins as well! Hollywood can’t make up stories this good!
Up in Virginia they’re celebrating the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. To go along with the year-long
celebrations, there are a number of new books out on the topic, including The Buried Truth, (UVA Press, $29.95) by head archaeologist William Kelso, which details the excavations at Jamestown, their findings and the new information extracted from those gleanings.
If you only read one book on Jamestown,
it should be Kelso’s! 1607: A New Look at Jamestown, by Karen Lange (National Geographic, $17.95), helps the younger
crowd (grades 3 to 6) understand the history behind the legends and takes them into today’s fieldwork at the site. For first-person accounts, try Ed Southern’s The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony (Blair Publishing, $11.95). Southern, a descendent
of a Jamestown settler, has put together a
collection of first-person colonist accounts
for the most accurate depiction yet of life at Jamestown.
Let’s see, let me think, have I left something out? If I did, is it causing the kiddies to pout? Now what could be ready to fall from book heaven? A novel referred to as “book number seven”? I hear it’s the end, it’s the last, it’s the most! It’s got witches and wizards and probably ghosts! Wherever you are this
summer, do not tarry! Be ready to find out what happens to Harry! (Harry Potter and
the Deathly Hallows, Scholastic, $34.99)
And have a wonderful vacation! |
