The days are long, and my attention span is short. Thank goodness I’ve finished Cleopatra.
Stacy Schiff’s book was phenomenally comprehensive, but comprehensive isn’t really what I want in the heat of summer. That biography was much too detailed and scholarly for these relatively lazy days.
Besides, it’s way too heavy for my beach tote.
I’m looking for more entertainment and less information ... but some information. That’s why Lobster: A Global History, by Elisabeth Townsend, was first up on my summer-reading menu.
Townsend takes us from the lobster’s prehistoric past (they are pretty much unchanged since they first appeared some 250 million years ago, and we’ve been eating them since the Stone Age) to modern-day meals (the reason lobster has long been associated with luxury is because it used to cost so much to transport them inland; why they still are expensive, I don’t know). She even goes into the present-day controversy over how to kill them. “Lobster is practically the last food that non-hunting humans kill themselves and then eat,” she writes. I’d have to agree with that.
After the lobster lore, it has been a summer of pure escapism. Here’s what’s in my summer book bag:
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty takes the idea of getting away from it all to a whole other level. Alice Mary Love, 29, pregnant and madly in love with her husband, goes to the gym, passes out and wakes up a decade later—at age 39, with three kids and in the midst of a nasty divorce. What’s more, she doesn’t like the person she’s become. Time for a huge do-over.
Internationally acclaimed Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo brings back investigator Harry Hole in his new thriller, The Snowman. Women are going missing on the day of the first snowfall, and a snowman is left as a chilling calling card. Soon Harry becomes deeply (perhaps too deeply) involved in the mystery. The cold-clime setting of this book should be especially welcome by the end of this month!
With The Peach Keeper, Sarah Addison Allen offers another captivating novel set in a charming and eccentric Southern town. Peopled with fabulous characters and ripe with magical realism, this is the story of Willa Jackson whose family home (long a monument to misfortune and scandal) has been restored by an old classmate. It appears that Willa’s troubled family history might be laid to rest—until someone finds a skeleton buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree.
Short stories lend themselves to summer reading, I think, and Elizabeth Berg’s new collection, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, is brand new in paperback. Her lovely, funny stories always seem to get right to the heart of personal discovery. And she depicts relationships—between women; with spouses and friends; with extended family; and, especially in this book, with food—in ways that are both hilarious and heartbreaking. In the title story the character goes AWOL for a day from Weight Watchers. Her first stop: Dunkin’ Donuts. “It was sexual in a way, but more yeasty and better.”
I’m joined in my reading most days by my youngest child who has been practically inhaling books since school let out. (Eleanor has her eyes on our local library’s summer reading prize: a Nook; she’s also part of a crowd of contenders.)
I should mention that there’s still lots of summer reading fun at our air-conditioned area libraries. The Jefferson County Library Cooperative has summer reading programs for kids, teens and adults. There are nearly 40 libraries in our area with your ticket to world travel. (Armchair travel, in one guise or another, is the clever theme this summer.)
- Children will enjoy the “One World, Many Stories” program with magic, movies, family story time, inflatables, puppets, South African Umdabu dancers, T-shirt painting, Italian folktales, canine athletes, cooking, martial arts and the always-popular Roger Day.
- Teens have a program called “You Are Here.” And here is some of what they can do: beading; group games of Just Dance 2; tie-dye; cooking classes; an improvisation workshop; tons of gaming opportunities; a water balloon war; exploration of different cultures through music, foods, crafts and customs; an eco-craft class making hardware jewelry; painting instruction; a program on forensic science; and an event called “chalk and chocolate” (sweet art anyone?).
- The adult summer reading program, “Novel Destinations,” features a book club with a cinematic twist, crafts, rain barrel construction, a look at Birmingham’s historic homes, paint-it-yourself art night, foods from around the world, gypsy dance lessons, and Destination Birmingham programs (on creek walking along urban waterways, the Civil Rights Institute, Sloss Furnaces, Red Mountain Park and more) to get you better acquainted with home.
Go to www.jclc.org to see the full calendar of events. (And while you’re there, you might want to donate a few dollars to keep our One County, One Library Card system going.)
Summer’s not over.
Neither is summer reading.
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