Summer Reading Newsletter
Memoirs
In LET ME FINISH (Harvest, $15), Roger Angell’s delicate
remembering of his childhood and youth, Angell evokes an innocent time; in
many ways, this is an elegy to mid-century America. Is it factual? Angell says, “memory
is fiction—an anecdotal version of some scene or past event we need to
store away for present or future use.” So Angell remembers shuffling
between his father and mother after they divorced in the 1930s, his love of
sailing and of Maine, and his service during World War II. His attachment to The
New Yorker and his colleagues is pronounced. His tribute to E.B. White,
his stepfather, is exquisite. Carla Cohen
The only child of a British civil servant posted to the Far East, Martin
Booth, during the three years of his childhood he spent in Hong Kong in the
1950s, was witness not only to this colony’s exotic sounds, sights, and
tastes, but also, at home, to his high-spirited mother’s growing impatience
with his bureaucratic father. Despite the intensity of the mother’s verbal
assaults, the reader has to feel sympathetic to everyone in this little nuclear
family. Martin and his mother both fell in love with Chinese culture, and,
with or without her, Booth ventured all around this port city filled with rickshaws
and junks. Despite the marital discord, GOLDEN BOY (Picador,
$14) is an affectionately remembered story of a happy slice of childhood. Barbara
Meade
ALL WILL BE WELL (Vintage, $14.95), by John McGahern, is
a portrait of Ireland at mid-twentieth century, when the people eked out a
meager living in villages dominated by a repressive Catholic Church. John’s
father was a sergeant in the Irish Constabulary and lived in the barracks.
Sergeant McGahern was mean in every definition of the word; he was violent,
paranoid, and stingy. As long as John’s schoolteacher mother lived (long
enough to have seven children), she provided a secure home for the family,
but after she died of breast cancer when Sean was nine, the children were left
to their abusive father. All
Will Be Well is not only John’s way of getting back at his father,
it’s a final reckoning as well. McGahern died shortly after publishing
this book a year ago. He was a beautiful writer; words sing from the pages.
He spun his life into gold in his books. Carla Cohen
Growing Up in the ‘70s
MISS AMERICAN PIE (Bloomsbury, $11.95), by Margaret Sartor, is both a memoir
and a document from the times she reflects on. According to the subtitle, this
is “a diary of love, secrets, and growing up in the 1970s.” The
entries are often very funny; from September 20, 1972: “Today I got out
of the car and glanced at my reflection in the windshield and thought—my
hair looks awful! Then I looked closer and realized it wasn’t my hair,
it was a tree.” This book is a light and fast read, perfect for a hot
summer day. You can read it just for the fun of remembering what life was like
as a teenager, but there are deeper issues beneath the surface, as Sartor deals
with love, sex, friendship, racism, and religion. Susan Skirboll
Alison Bechdel and her siblings called the family mortuary business the FUN
HOME (Mariner, $13.95), and this compressed, darkly ironic wit suffuses her
memoir. Unfolding in hazy-blue panels, detailed pen-and-ink drawings (Bechdel’s
faces are especially revealing), and a series of literary allusions, this story
of a family unhappy in its own way focuses on Bechdel’s father, a domineering,
short-tempered perfectionist who, unbeknownst to his children, was gay. As
Bechdel revisits a childhood of books, secrets, well-kept antiques, flourishing
gardens, and her own incipient lesbianism, she uses her medium beautifully
to convey, as well as to control, a range of anger, regret, and love. The result
is a powerful and moving portrait of an artist coming to her own terms with
a complex father. Laurie Greer
Biographies
Roberto Clemente played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates with a natural
grace unlike any other. When he died tragically, assisting Nicaraguan earthquake
victims in 1972, the baseball world lost one of its great ambassadors. CLEMENTE:
The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (Atria, $15),
by David Maraniss, recounts his life and career, which included two World Series
victories, four batting titles, more than three thousand base hits, and his
early posthumous induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mark LaFramboise
History
English historian E.H. Carr is being rediscovered by a new generation, thanks
to Tom Stoppard, who borrowed liberally from THE ROMANTIC
EXILES (Serif, $24.95),
published in 1933, for his recent trilogy, The Coast of Utopia. I
read Carr to prepare for seeing the plays, which are based on all-but-forgotten
Russian thinkers and activists of the 19th century. Stoppard’s hero is
Alexander Herzen, who was a liberal democrat in the 21st-century sense: he
opposed dictatorships of the left and right. But lest this sound like a boring
political treatise, let me assure you that Carr gives as much space to his
subjects’ sexual and romantic relationships as he does to the politics.
This book is an import and expensive for a paperback, but the writing is wonderful
and it will give you hours of fun. Carla Cohen
This 4th of July, remember that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died
on July 4, 1826, just hours apart, and then read REVOLUTIONARY
CHARACTERS (Penguin,
$16), an engrossing study of the Founding Fathers and their legacy by Pulitzer
Prize- winning historian Gordon Wood. Wood believes there is a potential danger
in romanticizing these figures. Although he does not dwell on their animosities,
he stresses that there was a marked lack of respect among them. Still, they
all agreed on virtue and honor as the essential cornerstones of political life.
Although today’s voters sometimes yearn for the return of presidential
character as it was defined by the founders, the electoral process these men
devised, and which they based upon the democratic and egalitarian principles
set forth in the Constitution, does not mandate character as a qualification
for presidential office. Barbara Meade
Going Places
Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French journalist and philosopher, set out
to update Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th-century exploration of American
life and culture. Noting the trend of anti-Americanism in France, Lévy
writes in AMERICAN VERTIGO (Random House, $14.95) that “you
can no longer say [America] is the empire of evil.” To do so, you’ll
understand “nothing
whosoever about empire, evil, and America.” Lévy visits leftists
in Berkeley, and, at the other end of the political spectrum, Richard Perle
and Bill Kristol. He goes to Rikers Island, where he finds prisoners in hellish
conditions, and to a Quaker-inspired penitentiary in Pennsylvania. All this
is part of the multi-layered, multi-textured American canvas he paints with
miniature portraits. Barbara Meade
Peter Hessler has seen China from the perspectives of Peace Corps volunteer,
English teacher, and journalist. He draws on this range of experience for ORACLE
BONES (Harper Perennial, $15.95), his rich look at a country almost too large,
varied, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and fast-changing to be comprehensible.
His fascinating account is a travelogue of both time and space: he travels
around China with an eye to its history, describing the culture’s long
roots as evidenced in archeological finds, customs, and myths, as well as to
the more recent events of the Mao era, the Tiananmen protests, and the current
economic boom. He stays in touch with his students and neighbors (even following
old Chinese friends who immigrate to Washington, D.C.), showing how China’s
rapid change is affecting real people. Laurie Greer
A year ago, The New York Times Book Review praised Rory Stewart’s The
Places in Between, his chronicle of walking across Afghanistan. THE
PRINCE OF THE MARSHES (Harcourt, $15), his second book, is as good as the
first. In 2003 the Provisional Coalition Authority appointed the 30-year-old
Stewart as deputy governor of the southern Iraqi province of Amara. In Stewart’s
blow-by-blow account of his year-long effort to secure an armistice or establish
a coalition of the warring sectarian forces, he brings to vivid life the
local sheikhs and clerics, as well as members of the PCA. Despite his youth,
Stewart has tremendous negotiating skills, but given the inflexibility of
the opposing parties, and the cultural divide between the provincial government
and the Iraqis, he couldn’t accomplish much. Barbara Meade
Essays
Often compilations of articles fail to move me, but Marjorie Williams’s
posthumous collection, THE WOMAN AT THE WASHINGTON ZOO (PublicAffairs,
$14.95), edited by her husband, Timothy Noah, contains hours of marvelous reading.
Without being mean or intrusive, Williams can get into the psyches of the people
she profiles. Her picture of Vernon Jordan is masterful. Her tribute to her
mother is one of the best portraits of the Betty Friedan generation that I
have read. The smaller pieces are incisive. And thanks to Tim for including
her Cancer Memoir, which gives perspective to the volume. We see what journalism
and the Noah family lost. Carla Cohen
THE DEAD BEAT (Harper Perennial, $13.95), by Marilyn Johnson,
both a writer and an aficionado of obituaries, is a delightful book, one that
shows that while a well-lived life has many pleasures in its unfolding, the
well-written chronicle of that life bears equally great rewards for readers.
The reporters who work the graveyard shift take great pride, often with a good
measure of humor, in their recaps of the lives of both the famous and the ordinary.
Johnson writes about attending the Sixth Great Obituary Writers’ Conference,
in Las Vegas, where she and some fifty other participants swapped their most
prized clippings of life’s deadlines. Barbara Meade
Nature
THE CLOUDSPOTTER’S GUIDE (Perigee, $13.95) is a charming collection
of essays concerning the science, history, and culture of the myriad types
of clouds. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society
and takes cloud-watching seriously. This is a perfect volume to take on any
summer vacation. Katherine Broadway
Graphics
Brian Wood’s DMZ series, ON THE GROUND and BODY
OF A JOURNALIST (Little
Brown, $9.99 and $12.99), give us the story of an abandoned reporter adjusting
to life in a demilitarized zone; walled in, bombarded by propaganda from warring
factions, Matty Roth tries not just to survive, but to report the truth. The
United States has been torn apart by war, and New York City has become a neutral
ground where survivors have to develop new rules for existence—bartering
for food farmed in the basements of high- rise buildings, dealing with militant
conservationists protecting the trees of Central Park, and trading information
that’s more valuable than currency. As inescapable as the allusions to
contemporary events may seem, it is the story, characters, and mood of DMZ that
make it essential reading. This is easily one of the most important comic-book
series to emerge this year. Michael Link
Gilbert Hernández’s fictional Palomar is a town “where
men are men and women need a sense of humor.” A new bañadora (she
who bathes others) moves into town and quickly becomes more popular than the
resident bañadora, Chelo. When Chelo asks the sheriff, who
gets bathed by both of them, to shut her down, the sheriff throws them in jail
to sort it out for themselves. After the women leave jail arm in arm, Chelo
becomes the sheriff, the new bañadora has the town to herself,
and the old sheriff is pumping gas the next town over. That’s how the
relationship between the sexes is sorted out in HEARTBREAK
SOUP: A Love and Rockets Book (Fantagraphics, $14.95). Traditional
roles are constantly challenged, but not necessarily changed. Hernández
excels at drawing emotion and has true comic timing. When a disfigured man
and a beautiful woman stand together on a busy street corner, a passerby says, “Now
aren’t they a pair,” and
the man looks down, embarrassed that she noticed his mismatched shoes. Thad
Ellerbe
Children’s Page
A SEED IS SLEEPY (Chronicle, $16.95), lying beneath the
soil until it eventually pushes itself up to seek sunlight. Some seeds are
so sleepy that they are dormant for more than a thousand years! Dianna Hutts
Aston’s lyrical, poetic
companion to An Egg is Quiet features Sylvia Long’s gorgeous
watercolors. Ages 7 and up. Morgan McMillian
Silvano, a 16-year-old Umbrian bon vivant accused of murder, hides in a Franciscan
friary. Combining romance, faith, betrayal, and everyday life in and out of
the friary, THE FALCONER’S KNOT (Bloomsbury, $16.95),
by Mary Hoffman, illuminates the parchment of 14th-century Italy as subtly
and brilliantly as the finest Mediaeval scribe. Ages 11 and up. Sylvano
Bongi
Dodsworth’s motto is, “Try to do as little as possible,” and
he succeeds until he finds THE PINK REFRIGERATOR (Houghton
Mifflin, $16), by Tim Egan. The note on his junkyard find says to “make
pictures,” so
he does. Every day after that there’s a new sign, prompting Dodsworth
to discover many of life’s pleasures. Ages 3-6. Heidi Powell
Stephanie Edgley, age 12, finds herself in a world of crime and horror when
she inherits an ancient amulet. Evil thieves are trying to take it, but it
cannot be stolen while the owner is alive. Enter SKULDUGGERY
PLEASANT (HarperCollins,
$17.99), by Derek Landry, ace detective, street-smart living skeleton, and
now Stephanie’s partner in saving the world. Ages 10 and up. Gussie
Lewis
When Piggie decides TODAY I WILL FLY (Hyperion, $8.99), wise, Eeyore-like
Elephant says it’s impossible, only to discover that anything is possible
in an Easy Read book by Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Ride the
Bus). And poor Piggie tries to cheer him up, but is stymied when MY
FRIEND IS SAD (Hyperion, $8.99). Try to stop giggling as you learn to read, and look
for an old friend in the end papers. Ages 4-8. Dara La Porte
On Wednesday afternoons, when his Jewish and Catholic classmates go off to
religion school, Holling Hoodhood is forced to spend time alone with his teacher
in THE WEDNESDAY WARS (Clarion, $16). Gary D. Schmidt’s
touching novel, set during the Vietnam War, captures this tumultuous period
while intermixing humor, Shakespeare, Mickey Mantle, and the angst of junior
high. Ages 11 to 14. Morgan McMillian
Experience Jamestown’s desperate struggle for survival in Jean Fritz’s
fictionalized WHO’S SAYING WHAT IN JAMESTOWN, THOMAS SAVAGE? (Putnam,
$18.99). Fritz takes the reader beyond the familiar story of Jamestown, shows
the complexity of the relationships between the English and the Native Peoples,
and gives vivid insight into early American life. Ages 10-14. Ellen Mautner
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