Beach-Approved Books
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 7:00AM I love reading. Like REALLY love to read. My perfect summer afternoon is a comfy place to sit, with a frosty beverage, a cool breeze, and a good book. About a year ago, several of my friends and I started a book club. Every six to eight weeks (depending on how busy we are), we'll meet up to discuss our latest book club pick over lots o' wine and cheese. We used to meet at each others' houses, but we've since realized that field trip meetings mean somebody else cleans up. We're nothing if not lazy. :) Our next book pick is a doubleplay... The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot and My Bloody Life, by Reymundo Sanchez. I can't wait to read Henrietta Lacks, but I am scared to read My Bloody Life - it seems... bloody.
Our last meeting involved burritos!
I don't know about you, but I am always looking for my next great book - the kind that keeps me up all night because I HAVETOKNOWWHATHAPPENSNEXT! When I meet a book I love, I want to share it. It's like evangelizing, except I only give out ice cream and popsicles, no hellfire or brimstone. SO, without further adieu... here are my very, very, very favorite books for chillout time at the beach - enjoy!
1) Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
From Penny: I could not love this book any more if it were a man I could kiss. Breathtaking - the characters will reach into your soul and smash it into a million pieces - There is a very good reason this book won the 2009 National Book Award.
From Amazon: It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.
2) The Believers, by Zoe Heller
From Penny: Caustic to the core, this novel turns conventional writing on its head to deliver characters with zero redeeming qualities... and yet your brain and heart will have never been so engaged. If you liked Notes on a Scandal, you'll love The Believers.
From B&N and the Publisher: When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, has found herself drawn into the world of Orthodox Judaism and is now being pressed to make a commitment to that religion. Karla, a devoted social worker hoping to adopt a child with her husband, is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper stand outside her office. Ne’er-do-well Lenny is living at home, approaching another relapse into heroin addiction.
In the course of battling their own demons—and one another—the Litvinoff clan is called upon to examine long-held articles of faith that have formed the basis of their lives together and their identities as individuals. In the end, all the family members will have to answer their own questions and decide what—if anything—they still believe in. Heller has... invoked a whole new set of questions about the way families go awry.
3) Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
From Penny: I read this book a couple years ago, and it still. haunts. me. By the time you find out what happened on that Nigerian beach, you'll wish you hadn't - and you will never look at immigration the same way again. Beautiful and brutal - this is one of the best books I have ever read. Ever. (Serious face!)
From Amazon: The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state.
4) A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
From Penny: Rich, colorful, deep - I could not put this book down... I read it in only a few days (it's 624 pages!)
From Kirkus: From the Toronto-based Mistry (Such a Long Journey, 1991), a splendid tale of contemporary India that, in chronicling the sufferings of outcasts and innocents trying to survive in the "State of Internal Emergency'' of the 1970s, grapples with the great question of how to live in the face of death and despair. India under Indira Gandhi has become a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power. The four protagonists (all victims of the times) are: Dina, 40-ish, poor and widowed after only three years of marriage; Maneck, the son of an old school friend of Dina's; and two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, members of the Untouchable caste. For a few months, this unlikely quartet share a tranquil happiness in a nameless city--a city of squalid streets teeming with beggars, where politicians, in the name of progress, abuse the poor and the powerless. Dina, whose dreams of attending college ended when her father died, is now trying to support herself with seamstress work; Maneck, a tenderhearted boy, has been sent to college because the family business is failing; and the two tailors find work with Dina. A sweeping story, in a thoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens's vivid sympathy for the poor with Solzhenitsyn's controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of the human spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams.
5) The Vagrants, by Yiyun Lee
From Penny: OK, I have to warn you... this is a tough book to read. By tough I mean that many things happen that will make you angry and sad and... angry. This book has less mass appeal, which is why it's lower on my suggested list, but I LOVED it, so I listed it anyhow. A beautifully written book that will make you feel you are right in the middle of the story, even when you wish you could look away.
From Amazon: During the Cultural Revolution countless unspeakable acts went down in the otherwise unremarkable industrial town of Muddy River. Lovers betrayed lovers, children denounced their parents, and neighbors became sworn enemies. A few years later, the townspeople have convened at the public stadium to witness the execution of Gu Shan. A Red Guard leader in her youth, she has received the death penalty for her counterrevolutionary writings and unrepentant attitude. In Yiyun Li's startling debut novel, The Vagrants, we are introduced to Gu's parents, neighbors, and a handful of Muddy River's social outcasts whose lives have been irrevocably affected by her life and death. Yiyun Li's unblinking and unpredictable fictional narrative demonstrates how corruption and cruelty, fear, and moral ambiguity at the level of the individual reflect the dehumanization of an entire society.
THE BONUS ROUND: Books I Really Enjoyed but Just Missed the Cut
Waiting, by Ha Jin
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The Blood of Flowers, by Anita Amirezzvani
OK, now it's YOUR turn... What's your favorite book for beachside reading?
Reader Comments (8)
I'm a huge reader too, so I adore posts like this. Are you still a book-reader, or do you have a Kindle or something similar? I'm still on books right now, but my fiance is considering buying me a Kindle as a wedding present! (Still looking to get other people's reviews though!)
I love a real book, but I also own a Kindle! It takes up SO much less space and is so great for travelling, but... I am saving up for an iPad. A friend of mine owns one and the reading app is PHENOMENAL. I should post about it.
I'm an avid reader too, although it means a lot of different things for different people! I'm not a series author follower (like Janet Evanovish or John Grisham-type books) but some fo these suggestions look great and I'm added them to my library list!
Here are a few favorites I've read with my book club lately :-)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Pulitzer prize winner)
Dream of a Thousand Lives by Karen Connelly
Let the Great World Spin is one of my favorite books ever-- great recommendation! Can't wait to check out some of your other suggestions!
The Book Thief is amazing, just amazing! You'll cry but it's so worth it.
So glad you posted this! I haven't read any of them (except for the first one for book club, which you already know!). An awesome summer read of mine is Ahab's Wife by Sena Naslund. It is delicious!
Ok, so I am a week late to this post, but I had to throw down some of my latest favorites:
Right now I am finishing up Stieg Larsson's Milennium Trilogy--The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Hands down, favorite books of 2010 so far...they are SO intriguing and such page-turners that I couldn't put any of them down (ahem, even sneaking a few pages in while on a "coffee break" at work). I cannot recommend them enough--you will read them all in like five days. SO GOOD.
My other favorite book to recommend is one you might love because it centers around Chicago! The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It's the true story of how the Chicago World's Fair came about, and simultaneously, the tale of a handsome doctor--who also happened to be a serial killer--operating at the same time. This is, without a doubt, one of the most engaging non-fiction books I have ever read. It reads like a novel but it's a non-fiction piece. It takes a minute to get into, but once you're in, you're hooked!
Also, as another aside: I own a Kindle and LOVE it. I still buy "real" books and go to the library, but the Kindle is amazing for traveling and when you need instant gratification--like you just finished a book and want to read its sequel right away.
Whew, that was a long comment. Sorry, I just love books! :)
Prodigal Summer is one of my top 10...Barbara Kingsolver is so amazing. This book is so beautiful, you will be blown away by the relationships and you'll fall in love with her description and appreciation for nature.