What is it about summer reading - do people really want a "light read" for the beach? I don't think so - I think summer reading is a time to read a much longer book that you would never be able to get to, or through, during the rest of the year or to go back and read a classic that you'd missed or forgotten because you'd read it so long ago. People ask me for reading suggestions and, despite how much I read, I'm often stumped - realizing my taste is not in the maintstream and for that matter that everyone's taste differs. A web site like goodreads can help people find books that others with similar tastes have liked. But here, in response to latest request, from AR @ work, are some thoughts:
Classics: great time to go back and read some. AR mentioned just finishing a John Irving novel, so why not go back to the Ur-Irving and read Dickens: Great Expectations stands up to any re-reading, and someday I'll re-read Bleak House and Little Dorrit. (Tried Our Mutual Friend a few years ago but couldn't get through it). Last summer I re-read Moby-Dick and really enjoyed it. Friend PP is recommending re-reading Jane Eyre, too. And of course there's always Anna Karenina and, for the daring, War and Peace. I re-read Proust one summer - but maybe he's more of a winter writer, requiring darkness and concentration.
Recent novels: when people think of contemporary fiction, we think of books published within the past few months, but there are a lot of excellent books from, say, the past 10 years that people aren't talking about much any more but if you haven't read them, they will still bring great pleasure. Among the longer ones that I think make for good summer reading: Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, God of Small Things, Atonement, The Known World, Snow Falling on Cedars, Jhumpa Lahiri's novel whose name I can't remember right now [The Namesake], Cold Mountain. For those with a little more taste for the exotic: Austerlitz, Mr. Mani
And finally some 20th-century classics that are not so well known or are too often overlooked: The Leopard, Confessions of Zeno, The Rabbit quartet (Updike), Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Could this get you through a summer? Or two?
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Such great suggestions, EK! Kavalier and Klay has been on my list for quite a while now - I start it and then get distracted by another smaller read. This is a good reminder to pick it back up and give it an earnest try.
ReplyDeleteYour contemporary fiction list brings up many familiar reads - Lahiri's Namesake is a favorite of mine, although overshadowed (in my mind) by 'Interpreter of Maladies'. Hm. Perhaps after K&K I'll give Moby Dick a try. Or your 20th century classics. or...! Thank you!