There is nothing like having a great book, hanging out in the sunshine – or inside when it rains – and heading off to the land of adventure or inspiration or knowledge.  Here is a list of reads for Summer 2009 – some old, some new - Angela

1. Love Will Tear Us Apart – Sarah Rainone
A Nick Hornby-esque story of six childhood friends reunited for a wedding. The story – peppered with nostalgic musical references (anything from Nirvana to Madonna to hip hop) – takes us through their tumultuous friendships; from awkward children to insecure adulthood. Rainone is a wonderfully lyrical writer, who shows us how music not only reminds us of our past, but can also fuel our connections. It is at times nostalgic and sad, but with an undercurrent of dark humor that makes it incredibly enjoyable andd with a title named after a Joy Division song, it has to be good. 

 

2. The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World – Andrew Merrifield
Andrew Merrifield decides to downshift, which means heading for Gribouille, France and borrowing a friend’s donkey. On its way towards enlightenment, The Wisdom of Donkeys clip-clops through all manner of musings about nature, literature, science, truth, beauty, all the big stuff.  The Wisdom of Donkeys is a quietly persuasive book that deserves more attention at this time when our whole way of life is questioned. 

 

3. Suzy, Led Zepplin and Me – Martin Millar
Millar’s nostalgia trip back to the days of feathered hair and bell bottoms tells the story of a mildly fictitious young Millar whose life is forever altered by a Led Zeppelin concert. It’s like being there, minus the acid.

  

 

4.  The Letters Of Allen Ginsberg – edited by Bill Morgan
The Beat icon’s entire life—from his literary efforts to his experiments with LSD—is on display in more than 3,700 letters to fellow poets, journalists, and politicians, ranging from Jack Kerouac to Ezra Pound to Bill Clinton. 

 

 

5. Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way – Ruth Reichl
Gourmet magazine editor-in-chief Reichl has used her mother as comic fodder for years. But it sounds like she never really fully understood her mom until she decided to write this book. Using her mother’s old letters and diaries, Reichl aims to articulate with warmth and wit that weird moment when you realize that your parents were actual people, with hopes and dreams and unfulfilled aspirations all the same.

 

6. The Song is You – Arthur Phillips
If you don’t do sappy beach romance novels but still yearn for some emotional drama, this might be the book for you. Phillips follows Julian, a director who’s spiraling in grief after the loss of his young son and the subsequent combustion of his marriage. When he meets Cait, a beautiful singer, his trajectory changes in ways he never imagined. Death, crumbling marriage, true love, music – think that will satisfy your sweet tooth?

 

7. Lies My Mother Never Told Me – Kaylie Jones
The perfect 20th-century hybrid—the drunkalog/celebrity autobio—by the daughter of iconic author James (From Here to Eternity) Jones is a cut above the rest, thanks to Jones’ dry wit and some fantastic literary anecdotes about not sleeping with Frank Sinatra, and what to do when your famous late father’s famous best friend propositions you when you’re barely 20.

 

 8. The Scenic Route – Binnie Kirshenbaum
The Scenic Route looks like a harmless little romance — divorcee Sylvia meets Henry in an Italian cafe and cancels the rest of her vacation plans in order to drive around Europe with her new man, as they tell each other their life stories. Henry is a little slower to divulge his truths — including the fact that he’s married, a detail that emerges only after he and Sylvia have become physically involved. “Does that concern you any?” he asks her. Kirshenbaum’s tale certainly takes its time getting to its destination, but it’s so bitterly funny and intelligently pieced together, you won’t be complaining.

 

9. Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa – Mark Seal
The Vanity Fair contributing editor pens his own White Mischief with this tale of the conservationist Joan Root. While Root came to prominence as a wildlife filmmaker in Africa with her husband Alan, her story really began after their divorce—and was soon cut short by her shocking murder. 

 

10. Desert Queen: the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell, adventurer, adviser to kings, ally of Lawrence of Arabia – Janet Wallach
Turning away from the privileged world of the “eminent Victorians,” Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) explored, mapped, and excavated the world of the Arabs. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders.

 

 11. Sachel – Larry Tye
Woody Allen named one of his children for the “majestic and enigmatic” pitcher born Leroy Paige in pre-civil-rights Alabama. (The nickname comes from his work as a railroad porter.) Well-known for his remark about age—“If you don’t mind, it don’t matter”—Paige emerges here as a child of a washerwoman who developed his pitch in reform school and went on (at age 42!) to lead the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. 

 

 

12. The Bolter – Frances Osborne
The author is the great granddaughter of Idina Sackville, a Jazz Age femme fatale who flouted convention by doing exactly as she pleased, the woman some say inspired the character of “the Bolter” in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. Through diaries, letters, and countless interviews, Osborne recreates her ancestor’s life and loves, from England to Kenya and back again.

 

 

13. Woodsburner -
True fact: One year before he built his cabin on Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau accidentally scorched 300 acres of the Concord woods. In Woodsburner, John Pipkin’s lyrical debut novel, Pipkin re-creates the events of that day from the perspective of Thoreau and several other Concord residents — an opium-addicted preacher, a pompous bookseller and, in some of the novel’s most flat-out beautiful passages, a love-starved Norwegian farmhand — who will see their lives irrevocably changed by the fire.  Despite the fact that this accidental fire melts into the background of most of his biographies, there has always been debate about how much his guilt over this fire impacted the rest of his life–most particularly his decision to move into the cabin in the woods.

 

14. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove – Christopher Moore
The resident psychiatrist of Pine Cove, Californa, Val Riordan, has been issuing prescriptions willy-nilly without making the effort to treat her patient’s underlying issues. When Val has a moment of guilt and decides to stop prescribing medication and instead give all of her patients placebos. While the residents of Pine Cove are reeling from their lack of mood-enhancing drugs, a sea beast emerges from the Pacific and comes ashore, giving off pheremones that make the inhabitants crazy with lust.

 

15. Follow Me – Joanna Scott
Joanna Scott’s Follow Me also revolves around the telling of a life story, but hers is more slippery with half-truths and obfuscation. A 60-something Sally is recounting her life’s journey to her granddaughter — it begins in the 1940s, with her being knocked up by a cousin, and winds its way through town after town and mishap after mishap. The only problem is, Sally’s own son — her granddaughter’s estranged father — shows up and contradicts the tale.

 

16. Shadow Country – Peter Matthiessen
Paris Review cofounder Matthiessen, whose books epitomize his generation with their coverage of far-flung lands and spiritual journeys, has retrenched his Watson trilogy based on the 1910 murder of a south Florida farmer. The new version shed 400 pages, and though it still weighs in at nearly 900 pages, this doorstop is well worth the lifting. 

 

17. The Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
The book consists of six nested stories that take us from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read by the main character in the next.   Like Scheherazade, and like serialised Victorian novels and modern soaps, he ends his episodes on cliffhangers and missed heartbeats. But unlike these, he starts his next tale in another place, in another time, in another vocabulary, and expects us to go through it all again. Trust the tale.

 

18. The American Painter Emma Dial – Samantha Peel From former Jeff Koons studio assistant Peale, an introspective examination of art, talent and motivation in the contemporary New York art scene. Emma Dial is 32 and the right hand to prominent New York artist Michael Freiburg: Michael dreams up the ideas and Emma—armed with her skill and his trust—does the painting. Through their stormy six-year relationship, Emma has reached a certain level of comfort, painting five or six major works a year at $20,000 apiece. Yet as art becomes work and her talent is appropriated to someone else’s vision, Emma finds it increasingly difficult to visit her own studio, much less come up with ideas of her own.

 

 19. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa – Peter Godwin
In this exquisitely written, deeply moving account of the death of a father played out against the backdrop of the collapse of the southern African nation of Zimbabwe, seasoned journalist Godwin has produced a memoir that effortlessly manages to be almost unbearably personal while simultaneously laying bare the cruel regime of longstanding president Robert Mugabe. In 1996 when his father suffers a heart attack, Godwin returns to Africa and sparks the central revelation of the book—the father is Jewish and has hidden it from Godwin and his siblings.  This is a tour de force of personal journalism and not to be missed. 

 

 

20. West with the Night – Beryl Markham
Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s, she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.