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| Photo by Muffy Aldrich |
Dear Muffy,
I am looking forward to spending far too many hours on the beach this summer devouring a stack of books. Might you ask your readers to share what books they are enjoying or are looking forward to this season?
Thank you,
Everyone should read "The Big House" by George Howe Colt, but especially readers of this blog.
ReplyDeleteI read it and it would be a good choice.
DeleteWas going to recommend “The Big House“, too.
DeleteYes! That is the perfect book for this group.
DeleteJust purchased off EBAY for $3.76
DeleteSummer reads should be light and easy reads. Being from the South, my beach days would probably be spent in Galveston or Biloxi. I would go with a good Southern-centric mystery from James Lee Burke or Greg Iles.
ReplyDelete“White House by the Sea” - last summer vacation’s read. “Run with the Horses,” Eugene Peterson. Anything John Grisham. “Sisters,” Joel Vaughan about 7 Depression era sisters on the New River in Virginia.
ReplyDelete"Southern India" by Lady Lawley, wife of Arthur Lawley, 6th Baron Wenlock, a British colonial administrator who served as Governor of Madras.
ReplyDeleteLight reads — which are often best-sellers — and don't have to be recent. Older paperbacks like "Jaws", "The Last Convertible", and "The Godfather" — are very engaging. I would also recommend "Tales of the City". It was written to be daily installments in the San Francisco Chronicle. It reads as light as a comic book, but it's about swinging San Francisco in the 1970s — so pretty adult!
ReplyDeleteThe classic's never fail!
ReplyDelete"David Copperfield" is a good choice. Not light, but probably my favorite novel so far. You can't go wrong with Agatha Christie. "The Daughters of Yalta" could be read in conjunction with "The Splendid and the Vile" - I found both fascinating. I'd also like to say THANK YOU for the recommendations to read John P. Marquand-what a fantastic novelist and his work is not only compelling, but parallels what's going on in the world today.
ReplyDeleteEmailed from reader:
ReplyDelete“Ian Fleming - The Complete Man “ by Nicolas Shakespeare is enormously informative and well written with much revelatory information on Fleming's WW II role in British Intelligence including the relation with the US government. For some maybe a tad too much information about all the ladies Fleming courted …
Yours aye
XXXXXX,
Wesepe, the Netherlands
If you are into sailing, British yachting fiction writer, Sam Llewelleyns' sea thrillers are the best and wonderfully accurate in every detail.
ReplyDeleteI am a fan of the self-improvement genre. Naturally, books are a wonderful medium for such. “Crucial Conversations” has been a most utile tool to navigate some of the more difficult parts of life. I’ve found the ability to thoughtfully wordsmith ameliorate not only my professional and personal lives - it re-oriented my perspective from wanting to “win” conversations to wanting to better understand my fellow brethren. Would recommend.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby. The Big House.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I like rereading favorites, Barbara Pym and Georgette Heyer are great for that, along with Dorothy Dunnett’s historical fiction.
ReplyDeleteNewish stuff, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy is very fun, smart science fiction.
Allie Hazelwood is writing the best contemporary romances around. I think everyone who likes romance novels should check her out.
Lastly, Welcome To Lagos, (Chibundu Onuzo) is a page turner with a lovely set of characters.
Ann Patchett: The Dutch House, Commonwealth, or Tom Lake
ReplyDeleteAndy Weir: Project Martian
Blake Crouch: Dark Matter, Recursion
Any books by Elin Hilderbrand (queen of the beach read) or Amor Towles
Yep, Elin Hilderbrand + beach = perfect match. Also Nancy Thayer. Both live on Nantucket and write about it (well, fictional goings-on there) with an insider's knowledge of the island scene.
DeleteFor non-fiction, The Book of Wilding by Isabella Tree is a fascinating account of her family's efforts to return their farm to nature.
ReplyDeleteI normally don't like pop fiction, but my mother-in-law recently got me started on Dean Koontz, and I highly recommend his mature work (as opposed to earlier books written under pseudonyms, not that those are bad books). I read him mainly for his asides and observations; he's an astute man. The dialogue also tends to be very sharp. Another recommendation: Mel Torme wrote a novel titled "Winner" about a singer dealing with the demise of the Swing Era, and it's as good a page-turner as I've ever read. The sad thing is that he wrote it as a serious literary novel and his publisher made him cut it down to pop fiction.
ReplyDeleteAnything by Peter Mayle, particularly Hotel Pastis and the Sam Leavitt series. Also check out the Bruno Chief of Police series by Martin Walker.
ReplyDeleteif you like character-driven novels about people skirting the law or westerns, try Elmore Leonard. Law enforcement murder/crime novels, John Sandford. Sandford, under his real name, John Camp, won a pair of Pulitzer prices as a local St. Paul, Minnesota print journalist - and his writing is a cut above run-of-the-mill pulp fiction.
ReplyDeleteAll the Bond novels. The Sun Also Rises. Catcher in the Rye. Frannie and Zoey. The Jeeves and Mr. Mulliner P. G. Wodehouse books...all P. G. Wodehouse. Kurt Vonnegut books. So many more. I have fond memories of reading these books on the beach in the '80's covered in Bain de Soleil or baby oil and wearing Magnum P.I. short shorts or Birdwell Beach Britches.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Will
Working my way through Edmund Morris’s trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt. Highly recommend for those that enjoy nonfiction and the escapades of TR.
ReplyDeleteBeach reading. Ah yes, Edmund Morris. “One man gathers what another man spills.”
ReplyDeleteSince I will be returning to Lucca and hopefully to la costa tirrenica (Tyrrhenian Coast) this summer, I would like to finish Iris Origo's War in Val d'Orcia and A Chill in the Air, which are essentially her diary entries during WW2.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to July when the new new Daniel
ReplyDeleteSilva novel in the Gabriel Allon series is published.
Read ‘‘em all ( better in chronological order if possible.)
Also, the Randy Wayne White Doc Ford series. Doc is
the new Travis McGee.
The psychological crime thrillers written by Jo Nesbo, Janotahn Kellerman, and John Sandford. Ideal summertime reading. Haven't read anything by either author in a few years, so several new books have, no doubt, come out, and I must catch up with one, or another when we journey "Up North" as they say here in Michigan.
ReplyDeleteKind Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich
The Devil in the White City (or anything by Erik Larson); Empire Falls (Russo); The Midnight Library (Hain)
ReplyDeleteRealized my typo…it’s Haig not Hain
DeleteWe have already read White House by the Sea and The Outermost House, both of which were recommended here and I will read The Big House starting today. I also second the comments about bestsellers not having to be recent, such as The Caine Mutiny. Other than that, it's book sale season here where I live and there are always new old finds, such as an collection of French short stories with notes and many other older, signature-bound hardcover books with that delightful library smell of gently aged books.
ReplyDeleteThe Gervase Fen Mysteries by Edmund Crispin - fantastic stories, fun plots & an interesting lead British amateur detective.
ReplyDeleteI love a clean, intelligent mysteries for beach reading. Ann Cleeves and Louise Penny are two of my favorite authors. I recommend all their books.
ReplyDeleteW.Somerset Maugham : Cakes and Ale
ReplyDeleteI'm currently hooked on Freida McFadden's books. Most of hers are psychological thrillers if you like that genre.
ReplyDeleteMe too. The first one I read was The Housemaid - riveting! McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury, btw, besides being a talented writer.
DeleteAnything by the Portugeuse Nobel Laureate (1998), Jose Saramago.
ReplyDeleteAn aetheist, communist and lifelong troublemaker, his selection was not popular with the Vatican, or the Portugeuse Government.
I also like to reread The Hot Zone by Richard Preston - a true story that is more thrilling (try putting it down) than almost any novel. Especially pertinent since 2020.
Tana French books, especially The Dublin Murder Squad, starting with In The Woods. Every book Amor Towles writes; he’s an amazing storyteller.
ReplyDeleteAnything by Amor Towles, Walter Mosely, or C.S. Harris. Also, Walter Issacson's Benjamin Franklin biography and Percival Everett's James.
ReplyDeleteI think books with true adventures in exotic places are great at the beach. So try “West With The Night,” an autobiography by Beryl Markham about her wild times in colonial Kenya and in the cockpit of airplanes. “The Man-eaters of Tsavo” is a good follow-up.
ReplyDeleteHumor is also good at the beach, and I recommend Carl Hiassen for his Florida novels that are almost as crazy and funny as the real thing. Another Florida writer, Randy Wayne White, has a long series of Doc Ford mysteries with bits of humor and plenty of adventure. Start with the early books of both authors.
Especially for Maine lovers....My Love Affair with the State of Maine by Scotty MacKenzie...a hilarious romp through several years of two preppyish women in the 1940s running a summer grocery store, soda fountain and dance hall near Kennebunkport, Maine.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that one sounds good!
DeleteThe Hilary Tamar mysteries by Sarah Caudwell are wonderful, with witty dialogue and lovely settings (London and further afield). I also recommend Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries.
ReplyDeleteOn my list:
ReplyDeleteThe Guest House by Sarah Blake
Nine Stories--J.D. Salinger
Noble Life: Memories Of A Summer Camp In Maine--Barry Macnutt
The Unexpected Guest---Agatha Christie
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle---Jon Meacham
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s ---Doris Kearns Goodwin