NEWS: Suicide Bookshelf: Summer Reading (Had me a Blast)

CULTURE: Suicide Bookshelf: Summer Reading (Had me a Blast)

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Memorial Day is the official unofficial start of summer. That means it’s also the beginning of hot dog season and the start of Summer Reading time. It seems, however, that we apologize too much for what we read during these hot months. “Oh, this Danielle Steel? No, it’s not great. It’s just a summer read.” Why do we do this? Is winter the only time you can curl up with Dostoevsky? Is summer exclusively the realm of Clancy, King, and Hiassen?

Probably not. But I do think there are a few qualities that a book should have to be considered a Great Summer Read.

First of all, it has to be exciting and gripping enough for you to want to read it instead of taking a dip, or eating another burger. If action is what you seek, check out Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon if you haven’t already. The story manages to combine code-breaking during World War II, treasure hunting in the Philippines, the invention of the digital computer, international finance and half a dozen other things, but the plot moves at at such a breakneck pace that you never feel weighed down with all that information. You just want to find out what happens next .

At over 1,100 pages, you might just have a read that will take you until Labor Day, but don’t be surprised if you’re finished after the first rainy day.

If you’re done early, why not try another tale of international intrigue, revenge and deception? Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo has been a perfect summer book for over a century. The basic story of Edmund Dantes: the innocent man arrested and thrown in prison, his love stolen from him, and his subsequent escape and revenge is familiar to everyone, but the book has so much more. Like Cryptonomicon, it is long, but also exciting enough to keep you hooked.

Another rule that a summer book should follow is that you should be able to put it down once in a while. Despite what all the cool kids say, life’s not all about reading your summer away. I like to pick up a collection of short stories every summer. I don’t read them very fast, but there are few things better than spending the summer with a great story teller. The Stories of John Cheever should be required reading for anyone interested in what the modern short story can do. Winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book award when it was published in 1979, this collection contains all the stories that Cheever published during his life. Mostly set during the post-war years in the tonier parts of the Northeast, it is essential summer reading if only for The Swimmer, the story of a man who decides to swim home, pool by pool, from one end of his suburban town to the other.

But maybe you like your stories a little less blue-blooded and WASP-y? How about the world of down-and-out Scotland? James Kelman is famous in America for, if anything, his Booker Prize-winning novel How Late it Was, How Late and the controversy that surrounded its selection. He is also a fantastic short story writer, and his collection Busted Scotch is one of the best of the last dozen years. Some of it might seem too grim for summer, but it’ll definitely make you appreciate the warmth a bit more.

My last requirement for summer reading is a bit less concrete, but maybe just as important. I like to find something new in summer. Whether that means finding a new writer, like Kelman, or discovering the fun in 19th Century French potboilers, like Cristo, I don’t really care. I just think the summer is time for discovery. What better way than picking up some non-fiction and learning something new? Nick Tosches’ Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘N’ Roll has everything: drinking, drugging, and some of the weirdest and wildest musicians of all time. Rescuing the music from the likes of Billy Ray Cyrus and Shania Twain, this is the real story of real country music. Oh, and Tosches is one hell of a badass writer. Imagine a history-loving Hunter S. Thompson and you might get an idea of what his writing is like.

Ok, so maybe Country music isn’t your thing. Maybe chess is more your bag (nerd!)? JC Hallman’s The Chess Artist is both a history of the great game, as well as a gripping story of the author’s immersion into some of the fringes of the chess world, including a trip autocratic Soviet republic ruled by a dictator who is also the head of FIDE, games played by death-row inmates, and the chess hustlers in New York’s Washington Square park.

So, there are a few books to keep you reading all summer long. Of course it’s a small list, and you can’t go wrong by picking up something by Elmore Leonard, one of John D. Macdonald’ Travis McGee novels, or a good Heinlein space opera. Why not tell me what you’re excited to pick up this summer? Oh, and don’t forget a good pair of sunglasses. Your eyes are important!

RIP, Lloyd Alexander
On a less summery note, I’d like to say a big thank-you to Lloyd Alexander, who died almost two weeks ago. Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain was one of those discoveries I made as a child that made me want to read and write for the rest of my life. He was 83.

The Count of Monte Cristo is the first book you two have reviewed that I've actually read beforehand. I feel all cultured n' stuff.

and rip kurt vonnegut jr. there's a quick potent summer read on the travails of war and the one warning that was on my mind when i joined the army and on the plane ride over to the sand box. that is of course slaughterhouse five. those are some rocking picks man.

but i might add hosseini's new book is out as well as chuck's. a nice biography on einstein. and i found a few nice reads in buy two get one free the other day:

rebecca by daphine du maurier is the self same novel you might have seen as a alfred hitchcock movie. the night listner that jordan recommended to read as well as the movie, though the movie's questionable. and the free one ended up being arturo perez-reverte's the flanders panel. you might recognize the name if you happened upon polanski's movie starring johnny depp entitled the ninth gate.

Those books are ace - I've been reading & re-reading them for nearly 25 years now. I like the sound of the Tosches book.

It was actually El Club Dumas/the Club Dumas that got turned into a movie by Polanski. But both Club Dumas and the Flanders Panel are greaty books.

I just started "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell" by Susanna Clarke, a Victorian-style narrative about the revival of English magic. It's got 1000 page so it should keep me busy while the bloody weather of western France keep being wet, windy and miserable.

yes, i love the count of monte cristo. what an amazing fucking story. i could rave about it for at least twenty pages on a message board. i am also a huge fan of the stranger. is it uneducated, or over-educated that i find so many modern writers to sound too topical, clinical and sterile, a la stephen king? im certainly not as well read as many who respond here, but the classics are just so, well, classic. i echo cahirzzs comment on vonnegut, world-class wit and prose. pynchon, if inaccessible, makes me feel like i am reading about myself in the strangest way.

boo-fuckin-ya for recommending Neal Stephenson! Cryptonomicon is one of the best novels I've ever read.. Snow Crash is also particularly good by him, especially if you're intersted in language/psychology and/or religion (in terms of how people interact with all three factors). Haven't read the others (so much for me being cultured), but I'll be checking at least some of them out this season.

Great list. I'm right in the middle of the latest Lydia Davis ... short fiction, mostly previously published. Marvelous.

its good to see the kids reading again. I liked Toches's book Dino, a bio of dean martin. and i read Alexander's The Sky King in grade school. it was neat.

I think I'm going to pick up that Cheever collection.

Ditto, with the exception that the book in question for me was Cryptonomicon (which I love to freaking death) and not the Count of Monte Cristo.

Although I did read some of it in the original French, for French class. Beat that.

Might I suggest one of the following works by Gary Jennings for a good read, The Journeyer and/or Aztec. Both of these enthralling historical novels may be described as epic and imaginative. Other words that quickly spring to mind are revealing and vivid, sometimes even sultry and macabre. Oh yes, I do believe you'll be entertained from beginning to end.

Seconded.

This summer I am really into Chuck Palahniuk.

Ooooh. Nice one, PB. I would like to second the Cheever motion.

Crypto...i loved it.
I've read Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante, which is also excellent.

I really, really recommend this one:



The Diary of a Teenage Girl: an Account in Words and Pictures

Writer/illustrator Phoebe Gloeckner's harrowing tale (which she claims isn't autobiographical) of a girl growing up among drugs, prostitution and a seriously messed up family in mid-70s San Francisco. Not exactly light reading, but fascinating and gripping.

Thanks for the great recommendations.

Although I got to say when I read Nick Tosches' "Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'N' Roll" I only made it about halfway trough. I think I got lost in all those weird characters and histories and names. Hard to appreciate unless you're really into digging up musical roots. That's not to say Tosches is not a good writer. But for summer reading one might actually be better of with the aforementioned book on Dean Martin or Hellfire, his biography of Jerry Lee Lewis.

you people are cheeseballs; pick up some mickey spillane.

I love all this colummns They are my favorite regular feauture in this site

"colummns" oops

Cheever's journals also are good, especially after you've read the stories.

+1
I had a whole string of d & d characters (bards or course) named Fflewddur something. [/dork]

The Cheever is now on the list, as is Cryptonomicon, though I have quite a stack on the nightstand as it is.