2004 Readers & Writers on the Air Summer Reading List

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This is ridiculous. I just sorted through the piles of books at home, I’m getting ready to do the same at work, and a huge box arrives from a publisher who regularly sends me new releases. It is, of course, filled with books. Almost twenty. Yikes! Is it possible to drown in paper?

Okay, this is a test:

• How many books are stacked on your night table or next to your reading chair?
• How many of these books have you read?
• How many of these are borrowed from the library?
• How many did you buy?
• Do you spend more money on books than on doctor visits, vacations and presents for friends and family…combined?

If you answered the first four questions with a number higher than ten, and the last question with a “yes,” you have, well, what we used to call a “jones”—a serious book habit. Which is fine with me...makes my own book addiction seem normal—like a Hollywood star in rehab, pretty run of the mill when everyone you know has either just checked out or in.

Thanks to you, to station staff, to friends and to a few sources from around the country, we’ve compiled the following reading list. Something for everyone. Keep those titles coming…there’s always another list in progress…there’s always room for a new stack of books…

Ellen Rocco, July 2004
Station Manager/Co-host, Readers & Writers on the Air
North Country Public Radio, Canton, NY 13617
ellen@ncpr.org
877-388-6277

It is not only the way she lived that people remember.
What is the greatest understatement ever about Isadora Duncan?

All my friends from high school have children.
What did your teenage daughter say just before you transferred her to the military academy?

More elsewhere in this list…read on…

Here are a few suggestions, in no particular order, from my reading in recent months. If there’s a theme, albeit a loose one, it’s “war.”

• War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges. Fifteen years as a war correspondent in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central America gives Hedges substantial life experience to draw on as he explores man’s (and it is mostly a guy thing) addiction to war, including his own. This book was published in the months between the September 11, 2001 attack and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Hedges writes for The New York Times and frequently files stories with NPR. I consider this a “must read”—while I wish Hedges had pushed his analysis of our obsession with war even deeper, his perspective is clear, honest and rooted in his years as a student of the classics.
• The Stone Carvers, Jane Urquhart. This novel, from a fine Canadian fiction writer, is centered in the years preceding, during and just after WWI. A great story. Perfect for summer—some heartache, magic and surprises.
• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. This Afghan-American’s first novel tells two stories: one a personal narrative about the protagonist’s privileged Kabul childhood; the other a painful overview of Afghanistan’s recent history. The interior conversation is lucid and honest, very honest. It made me want to do right, and be courageous…always.

Three novels on my to-read list:

• The Known World, Edward P. Jones. A different perspective on the American slavery experience—well-received by critics around the country.
• Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors. Set in 17^th century India, this is a story about the Taj Mahal and the civil war that followed its construction. From McPherson & Company, a fine, small publishing house in NYS, and highly recommended by Kathleen Masterson, the director of the literature program at the NYS Council on the Arts: “It’s my favorite book of the past year.” Wow! When we spoke to John Shors during the show, I asked him what he recommends for this list: Bangkok 8, John Burdette, and Bel Canto, Ann Patchett.
• Before You Know Kindness, Chris Bohjalian. Chris, who lives in Vermont, was a guest on Readers & Writers on the Air last year. A wonderful, irresistible storyteller, whose career really took off with his novel, Midwives. Chris just emailed my co-host, Chris Robinson, to tell him this new book hits the stores in October. There’s an on-line trailer for it (oh you’re slick, Mr. Bohjalian, very slick) which you can check out at www.chrisbohjalian.com/before_kindness.htm -- be sure to turn on the audio.

Because of time constraints I broke a summer tradition of concentrating on one author’s works.  Had I the time, Zora Neale Hurston would have been this summer’s choice.  Alas. Here is the list of books I have read and can recommend:

• Poetry: For the first time since I have been putting together lists for Readers & Writers, my top choice is a book of poetry.  Paul Muldoon’s Moy Sand and Gravel is just great.  He’s funny, sad, and playful. I savored each poem and wept over a few. There is also Muldoon’s Collected Poems, 1968-1998.  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, put out The Poetry of Pablo Neruda this past spring.  A Neruda poem a day keeps the ugliness at bay. Muldoon is a closer.
  
  
• Fiction:  This list is woefully light.  Barry Silesky wrote a very fine biography, John Gardner: Literary Outlaw.  If you like John Gardner (and I do), then the biography will leave you wanting to read all his stuff over again.  I am a late-comer to Richard Russo and I know Empire Falls won a Pulitzer Prize, but it deserves a recommendation here because I could not put it down.  Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist is brief, but memorable as a study on grief.
  
  
• Philosophy: This is always a tricky category.  Most philosophical works are written for teeny academic audiences and will bore the pants off you.  Two that might appeal to larger, trousered reading audiences are Stanley Cavell’s Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of Moral Life, and Edward Said’s Humanism and Democratic Criticism.  Cavell is not an easy writer, but his subject matter here – films about remarriage and how the moral life is a process of self-correction, compromise, and adjustment – will remind you of why you loved your philosophy classes.  Said’s book was published posthumously and contains the material he was to deliver at St. Lawrence University last fall had his health not deteriorated.
  
  
• Politics: We have been busily preparing next season’s Readers & Writers series devoted to “War and Peace,” and my list here reflects this.  Mike Marqusee’s Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan’s Art is a lot of fun and manages to be profound at the same time.  David Goodstein’s Out of Gas is a sobering, scientific account of the depletion of the world’s oil and its consequences.  Goodstein will be speaking at Clarkson University this coming fall.  David Orr, The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics and the Environment in an Age of Terror is a lucid polemic against the Bush Administration’s (anti-)environmental policies.  David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism is a brilliant critical encounter with the racism that resides in the administration of the Patriot Act. Benjamin R. Barber’s Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy completes my trilogy of studies on anti-democratic responses to 9/11. Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication is an absorbing historical study of mass media.  Gore Vidal’s Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson is a learned, cranking, and entertaining examination of why the founders chose a Republic over a more democratic form of government for this nation.
  
  
• Memoir: Tony Hendra’s Father Joe lives up to the great reviews it received upon publication.  We all need a peaceful center and anchor to our fast-paced, erratic, and corrupt lives.  This is a must read for fallen Catholics and agnostics everywhere.
  
  
• If I Had Time: These books deserve some attention.  Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, because what I don’t know about super strings could fill a book.  Gene Santoro, Highway 61 Revisited: The Shared Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock & Country Music, because the only category for music we need is Ellington’s “if it swings…” Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, because Bill Moyers told me I should read it and I do what I am told.  And J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello to remind myself of what beautiful sentences look like.

  Another honorable mention from the Washington Post Style Invitational:

  If it looks like it hasn’t been used in 10 years, it probably hasn’t.
  Have any tips for dating older men?

Three books about Afghanistan:   

• The Book Seller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad. An illuminating view of contemporary Afghanistan, just after the Taliban’s fall. In this book, translated from the Norwegian, Seierstad tells of her time in the family of Sultan Khan, who has made his living for many years selling books, both legally and illegally.    
• The Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra, translated from the French. A chilling fictional portrayal of Kabul, Afghanistan, under the Taliban, and the horrors that punctuate daily life in a nation so contemptible its official language is the whip.
• The Mulberry Empire, Philip Hensher. Set before the United States invaded Afghanistan, the perspectiv that this literate, engaging historical novel brings from the 1839 British invasion of Afghanistan and capture of Kabul is therefore singularly prescient.

My favorite non-fiction book of the year:

• The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier, Tad Carhart . Carhart’s charming book does three things extremely well. First, Carhart admits the reader to a world of instruments, odd personalities, and passion for music.  Second, Carhart takes the reader through the piano as a technical marvel, explaining its construction, historical development, tuning, and other esoterica. Carhart notes that "a musical historian I once met commented that the mechanism [of a piano] was as complicated as a clock. ‘But the big difference,’ he pointed out, ‘is that you don’t pound on a clock.’ This combination of delicacy and sturdiness, of finesse and vigor, makes the piano unique, and the skills to build or repair it are not often found in one person." I never knew the piece of furniture sitting in my living room was so remarkable. Finally, Carhart describes with great humility and humor his own rebirth as a musician.

My favorite novel so far this year:

• The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay. A classic coming of age novel, set in South Africa during and after the Second World War. Placing in context and conflict the English and Afrikaners, blacks and whites, this marvelous novel tells of Pekay, a boy born to English parents, nursed by a black woman, and physically abused by members of the surrounding Afrikaans culture. Pekay is a survivor, and a series of successive mentors, each drawn by Courtenay with great care and affection, sharpen both his craft and intellect.

  Two more from the Style Invitational:

  Most experts expect it in 10 to 20 years.
  When is the next issue of Martha Stewart Living?

  Don’t leave any big lumps.
  What is Rule No. 1 when you interrogate a suspect?

More worthwhile reads:

• A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, Gil Courtemanche. This first novel both appalls and enchants. Set in the 1990s, Valcourt, the main character, is a middle-aged French Canadian journalist in Kigali, Rwanda to escape a failed life. "Valcourt had not left his country in order to live more or better. All he had craved was the right to drowse in peace." Sunday at the Pool appalls in its unblinkered description of the brutal genocide--as one character remarks, Rwanda at that time was what Nazi Germany presented to the Jews, but without the technology. Despite this horrifying theme and a literalness in description which caused at least this reader to squirm and turn away, Courtemanche’s novel, oddly enough, contains much of charm and joy.     
• A Corner of the Veil, Laurence Cossel. What would happen if God’s existence were clearly and persuasively shown by written proof? What would this do to the Catholic Church? Would people still go to work? Would governments function? Such are the questions raised by this humourous, slightly subversive novel.  
• Baltimore’s Mansion, Wayne Johnston. This Canadian is one of my favorite writers, and his memoir only solidifies his stature in my mind. Growing up in the Avalon Peninsula, the most isolated part of Newfoundland, Johnston tells the story of three generations of men (grandfather, father, and himself), in a time and place of both climactic and political hardship. The central event in both Baltimore’s Mansion and Johnston’s magnificent novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, is the 1949 vote in Canada on the issue of Confederation, by which Newfoundland was (narrowly) made part of Canada. As his father (who, after Confederation, took a job as a Canadian civil servant) lamented to the author as a boy, "My God, Wayne, what a country we could have been. What a country we were at one time." If you only have time to read one Johnston book, read the novel.
• QBVII, Leon Uris. First published in 1970,  this novel ably stands the test of time. In broad outline, the novel begins after World War II when Jewish Poles seek to have Polish physician Adam Kelno extradited from England on charges of being a Nazi war criminal. Kelno defeats extradition through written testimonials to his compassion and probity, then spends years in self-imposed exile in Fort Bobang, Borneo, where his work as researcher and physician eventually win his fame and a knighthood. A key question which Uris asks – but does not answer – is whether, even if the charges are true, there comes a point where a man can rehabilitate himself through good deeds such that atonement may be made for the past? When, or for how long, is vengeance justified? A fine and still-troubling work.
• The Huntsman, Whitney Terrell. Even if I had not lived for a number of years in Kansas City, Missouri, I would still consider this a fine story. Terrell’s gift in this fine first novel is his fine mix of character, place, unsettling plot (after all, this is a murder mystery), and the uniquely American questions of race and economic justice. Recommended.

I have read several books dealing with medicine/medical issues/ and rescue workers, all of which are well worthwhile.

• In Our Hands: A Hand Surgeon's Tales of the Body's Most Exquisite Instrument Arnold Arem. An exquisitely written, compassionate study of how the hand works, what goes wrong, and what the doctor (and patient) can do to fix problems.
•  A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body, Darshak Sanghavi. This explores the bodies of children, system by system, and shows both how healthy bodies work and the unique issues in treating children. Sanghavi writes like a dream!
• Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande. The author writes on medicine for The New Yorker, and many of his fine articles are collected in this volume.                
• Jerome Groopman's several books on medicine, hope and the role of intuition are all excellent.
• Ambulance Girl, Jane Stern. The public radio food commentator, in order to deal with her own depression, became an EMT. Her memoir tells of her poignant, humorous and life-changing journey.
• Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, Michael Perry. Experiences -- good, bad, and downright strange -- of being a volunteer fireman in a little Wisconsin town.
• Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson’s Disease, Morton Kondrake. The well-known journalist has written nothing less than a love letter to his wife. At age 47, Parkinson’s appeared in Milly, leaving her angry at God, unable to walk, and barely able to speak. Any married person, and any person facing disease or a loved one’s imminent death, would do well to read this book.

  Two more honorable mentions from the Style Invitational:

  They lead to a poorly lit back room in the basement.
  What have I found out about my degrees in philosophy and humanistic studies?

  I went to music school for almost a year.
  Except for “Smoke on the Water,” what’s the last thing you want to hear when a guy pulls out an accordion on the bus?

• Blue Light and Futureland, Walter Mosley. Two science fiction outings by the author of the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones detective novels.
• The Earthsea Cycle (Trilogy): A wizard of Earthsea, The Farthest Shore and The Tombs of Atuan, and its newest additions Tehanu and The Other Wind, Ursula LeGuin.
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Ursula LeGuin.
• Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke and The Far Field (posthumous collection), Theodore Roethke.
• Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, Stephen Batchelor.

• Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke.
• The Sea Wolf, Jack London. A classic I’d never read until recently.

• Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, Ole Edvart Rolvaag.
• Maurice, E.M. Forster.
• The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown.

• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis. The best seller about how the cash-poor Oakland As win so many games by reinventing baseball statistics and thinking creatively with players no one else wants. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, it’s a can’t-put-down book about number theory, management strategies, and a bunch of fascinating characters who outthink traditions. (And this from a fan of the big spending Yankees!)
• Home Baking, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. A tribute to home baking from around the world, with fabulous color photos, travel anecdotes, personal stories and recipes—it’s a cross between a cookbook and National Geographic. Great for cooks when it’s too hot to use the oven and you just want to sit on the porch and read about baking.
• Last year’s critically acclaimed biography of Franklin, and the new work about Hamilton, both breathe life and substance into those guys on the bills:
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson.
• Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow.

• Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, James Moore.

From listeners and friends from across the region, suggested via phone, email and post…a fabulous potpourri…

• Morte d’Urban, J.F. Powers. Listening to your book show last week when you and your guests got into a brief discussion of Catholic writers, recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Catholic writers. It’s a gentle satire about a bishop caught up in the worldly chores of raising money and wooing rich parishioners. Powers also wrote three collections of stories, all about the church. Although not prolific, he has been described as a writer’s writer.
• A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley. I’m sure this North Country writer has been discussed before on your show. For those who may not have heard of the book, it’s a fictional memoir about the narrator’s obsession with football and his battles with the bottle and mental illness. Lots of dark humor. Much of it takes place in Watertown, where Exley grew up.

  Style Invitational Fifth Runner-Up:

  In Virginia, Asian Americans also have been wooed by both parties.
  Is it true that even politicians insult people now by poking fun at their ethnic names?

• The Everglades: River of Gras, Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Pre-dates Rachel Carson’s work.
• The Hazards of Good Breeding: A Novel, Jessica Shattuck.
• The works of the three giants of 20^th century American hard-boiled detective writing: James Cain (e.g., The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity), Dashiell Hammett (e.g., The Maltese Falcon), and Raymond Chandler (e.g., The Big Sleep).

• Aloft, Chang-rae Lee.
• Doctored Evidence, Donna Leon.
• The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown.

• La Novia Oscura and Delirio, Laura Restrepo. Two by the Columbian author.

Maybe it’s part of growing older, though I doubt it, but I care less and less about the latest novel, about the latest problem of the latest minority group—or, for that matter, about their latest triumph. Or, for that matter, the latest social problem. More and more, I look back—well, I’ve always been a re-reader, since the days when Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and the Alice and Dr. Doolittle books were my usual fare. And I’m more likely to re-read Tolkien or Eddison—or Asimov or Heinlein or even Pratchett—than pick up whatever’s the latest. In that spirit, these contributions…

• Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett. The latest…entertaining as always, but I don’t believe one of his best.
• The Second World War, 6 vols., Sir Winston Churchill. I have just been reading this for the first time. I like it, not only because it is well-told or because those were great events, but because of the way the values of civilization itself are implicit throughout the work. More than that: it shows what a real wartime government in a time of total war--as opposed to what I sometimes think is a playtime war on terror in these days--looks like, feels like, almost, day-to-day, with the future unknown and all plans as tentative as hope, but waged, against real evil, with unshaken moral conviction. Moreover, it has the ring of a genuinely straightforward account, so far as is possible to a man who was at the center of affairs: straightforward and honest. It is certainly the best war memoir, from a command level, since U.S. Grant’s. And it is strange to read Pratchett, who is nothing if not skeptical, beside Churchill’s account.

(And besides, who else in such massive memoirs would stop to write a footnote about the words “depotable” and “depotabilize”? [“This was the wretched word used at this time for ‘undrinkable.’ I am sorry.”] Vol II, pg. 431) Off and on, too, observations more than a little relevant—for example (4 June 1944, to FDR):

We should not be able to agree here in attacking countries which have not molested us because we dislike their totalitarian form of government. I do not know whether there is more freedom in Stalin’s Russia than in Franco’s Spain. I have no intention to seek a quarrel with either. (Vol.V, pg. 627)

• Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President, Harold Holzer. I’m just reading this now. The whole story in detail of how the opportunity was offered to Lincoln to speak in New York and what he made of it, how his speech was received and what it meant. The speech itself is included as an appendix to the book. It’s a good narrative history, besides being a thorough inquiry into the event. The speech itself is much worth reading, the result of considerable searching of old records, and as ironic as Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar. Very good and very worthwhile. And if you’ve seen the reading/performance by Sam Watterson on C-SPAN 2BookTV, so much the better.

New youngster’s books for this summer include:

• Spirit Wolf, Mark Holdren. The tale of a blind boy’s Adirondack encounters with a phantom white wolf. Holdren lives in Naples, NY.
• The Great Train Robbery, Justin Van Riper and Gary Van Riper. This is the fourth book in the Adirondack Kids series authored by Justin (now 14) and his Dad, Gary. The series began when Justin was 11 and having difficulty with his English writing class. It has been a popular and critical success for the 6-10 year old readers from the first day. The books detail summer experiences of youngsters on vacation in the Adirondacks.
• Knitlit: Sweaters and Their Stories…and Other Writing About Knitting and
• Knitlit (too): Stories from Sheep to Shawl…and More Writing About Knitting, Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf, editors. Good reads for non-knitters as well as knitters. Got into these because we added a yarn shop in the Old Forge Hardware Store.
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series, Alexander McCall Smith.
• Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks: The Story of the Lake, the Land, and the People, Jane Barlow, et al.
• The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth Century Conspiracy Along the Black River Canal, Michael Doyle.

Here are the titles of my Adirondack Detective Series, distributed by North Country Books, Utica:

• Adirondack Detective
• Adirondack Detective Returns
• Adirondack Detective III

Also, a biography I authored:

• One Cop’s Story: A Life Remembered

  Style Invitational Fourth Runner-Up:

  In a good way.
  What line never works after informing your wife that her new outfit does indeed make her look fat?

I polled my grandchildren, who are all good readers, and have come up with this children’s reading list…

From Karen, 12 years old:

• My 13^th Winter, Samantha Abeel.
• Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd.
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card.
• Harry Potter (all of them), J.K. Rowling.
• Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (parental guidance—language), Mark Haddon.
• Diary of Ann Frank, Ann Frank.
• The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke.
• The Giver, Lois Lowry.

From Stephen, Jonas, Mia, all 10-year-olds:

• Muddle Earth, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.
• Charlie Bone Series, Jenny Nimmo.
• Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism, Georgia Byng.
• Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket.
• Redwall Series, Brian Jacques.

From Max, 6 years old:

• Mr. Putter & Tabby, Henry and Mudge, Poppleton…anything by Cynthia Rylant.
• Frog and Toad, Arnold Lobel.
• Chip Wants a Dog, Mark Wegman.
• The Lorax, Dr. Seuss.

• Talking God, Tony Hillerman. If you are someone who has never read any of the Tony Hillerman mysteries, please, please start now! The danger is that you may become hooked and you will then be faced with the wonderful job of reading all of the other dozen or so books about crimes in or near Navajo country. The good news is that most of them are carried in libraries, and are in paperback. Although you may want to begin with the first book, and go in order, it doesn’t really matter. The author gives you enough information about previous events for you to catch up. Talking God is one of the first in the series, featuring tribal policemen Chee and Leaphorn. As I read, I enjoy the cultural background, as well as the distinctly Indian approach to solving criminal puzzles.
• Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire. On the NY Times bestseller list for many weeks. A fascinating memoir of Mr. Eire’s Havana early years in Havana, the child of wealthy, influential and eccentric parents. After Castro came to power, the family emigrated to the U.S. I suspect a sequel covering the author’s life in this country will be forthcoming.

• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss. As a librarian and as an editor this is really a field trip. Now that grammar and punctuation are an endangered species, attention must be paid. It is great fun, too!

• The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. I am a bibliophile who gets to listen to the radio during my daily commute, sometimes even in the evening. I love fiction but, so often, non-fiction gets shortchanged. One of the best books I’ve read lately is this one. There is so much myth and hype about the topic of marriage lately, it was nice to have a summary of a mountain of research, whether you agree with the conclusions of the authors or not.

• My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki. Highly recommended.

• Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese. Literate, insightful popular history—intellectually engaging but with no academic jargon. I wish I had written it! I was born and grew up in West Virginia, so coal is particularly interesting to me, but the topic is important to everyone: it touches on social, cultural, and environmental history, and it looks at climate change, which is probably the most important issue of the next century.

[Editor’s Note: Phil Terrie is the author of more than one book himself, including the recent absolute must-read, Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks. –ER]

Style Invitational Third Runner-Up:

Don’t run, don’t make any loud noises.
What advice from his mother does Howard Dean regret not taking?

• Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann. This is one for the most hard-core Conspiracy Theorists among us! It’s great summer reading—a compelling “page-turner” for anyone who really wants to “get the goods” on the folks who (like it or not) run our country.

• Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow. It’s just the perfect summer read for folks like me who enjoy a big, thorough, well-written biography. And if you missed Titan, his previous book on John D. Rockefeller Sr, it’s a lot more interesting than you might have thought. JDR had quite a life before he was a superannuated geezer handing out dimes.

• Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, Carlos Eire. A National Book Award-winner. Terrific read and hard to put down.

• The Big Year, Mark Obmascik. An interesting read about three birders in their chase to record the most North American sightings in a calendar year. The book is more about the men and their passion than it is about birds and should have wide appeal.
• A Good Year, Peter Mayle. Mayle writes with a light pen and much insight. I’ve read all of his books and each new one is a real treat. (Fiction.)

• Summerland, Michael Chabon. Masterfully written. A young clutzy boy with a quirky inventor father and a tomboy girl from the wrong side of the tracks travel with their friend who thinks he’s a robot to alternate realities next door to play baseball with fairies and giants and wolves and demons and save the universe. Great fun for younger readers, but I loved it too.
• Ender’s Game series, Tales of Alvin Maker series, or anything else by Orson Scott Card. One of the best sci-fi fantasy authors. His books are usually chock full of moral dilemmas and deeper things, but the action and world creation is top notch.
• Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind. The best fantasy book I’ve ever read. First book of a massive series, each of which is good.
• Otherland series, Tad Williams. Also massive in scope, but well worth the read. Blends fantasy genres with science and virtual reality into a wonderful multiple plot tapestry which ties together into a very neat package at the end.

Tudor History and Fiction

• This Sceptered Isle, Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis. Alternative history, probably the first of a trilogy, set in Tudor England. Begins shortly before Henry meets Anne Boleyn and ends shortly after her death.
• The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Children of Henry VIII, The Life of Elizabeth I, Alison Wier. Straight history but not political or economic history, more an attempt to look at the people themselves, their lives and how they interacted. I started re-reading Six Wives to see how close the alternative was to the actual, then got caught up in the story and kept on going. The aternative is quite close where it comes to humans—there is no historical documentation of elves, goblins, air spirits and the like…that I know of.

Ancient Mediterranean History and Fiction

• Joust and Alta, Mercedes Lackey. The beginning of a new series, roughly modeled on Ancient Egypt in the same way her Valdermar series is roughly modeled on Medieval Europe. I can’t wait for the next volume in this series.
• Unearthing Atlantis, Charles Pellegrino. History and archeology pointing toward Atlantis having been what is now a large and deep volcanic crater in the Mediterranean.
• Voyage to Atlantis, James W. Mavor, Jr.

Mysteries

• Ghost Riders, Sharyn McCrumb. I have just started this, but I like her books and settings.
• Now May You Weep, Deborah Crombie. The latest in her series featuring Scotland yard dectectives, Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. Set in Scotland.
• Bell, Book and Murder, Rosemary Edghill. Actually a set of three short novels featuring the same character.

Biography

• Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, Cokie Roberts. While the founding fathers pondered the large issues, so did their wives while also keeping the family businesses and farms running, raising the children, organizing support for the troops and generally staying on top of things so there would be a country to found. Sound familiar?
• The Real James Herriot, Jim Wight. Jim Wight is the son of Alf Wight, the real James Herriot and this is his biography of his father.
• James Herriot’s Yorkshire, James Herriot. Pictures of many of the places mentioned in the books.

Miscellaneous

• Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond. A brief history of the last 30,000 years looking at why people moved where they did, why some groups developed one way and others another way. Fascinating.
• Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe, Richard Gott. Do Einstein’s theories predict time travel? And if so, why haven’t we met anyone from the future?
• Kangaroos in the Kitchen, Lorraine D’Essen. I read this book when it first came out in the 50s and was delighted to find it again. It’s the story of the woman who introduced trained animals into television. No, not Lassie, but kangaroos, penguins, borzois, llamas, wombats and other such fascinating animals that lived in her house and performed bits on early TV. The wombat learned to raid the refrigerator carrot drawer, the llama ate a check from CBS, and they all generally lived together in harmony.

  Style Invitational Second Runner-Up:

  We look forward to completing the proposed merger after all conditions have been satisfied.
  How did Al announce his engagement to Tipper?

• When the Music Stopped, Thomas Cottle. An NPR story introduced me to this very interesting book about the author’s mother, the pianist Gitta Gradova, one of the greatest pianists of the century, and the emotional impact of her withdrawal from concert performance.
• War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges.
• A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power.

• St. Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb, Valerie Hurley. Anyone who hasn’t read this is missing a literary treat. Raine Rassaby is one of the most engaging young characters in modern literature. Afflicted—or blessed—with scrupulosity, an extreme sensitivity to horror and violence in the world, she must decide nothing less than whether to participate in life. Ms. Hurley tells her story with humor, insight, and empathy, using language that is both quick and lush, a delight to the eye as well as the ear.

• The Keeper’s Son, Homer Hickam. I just did not want this one to end.
• The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper. A classic that should be read by everyone living in the north country.
• The Exraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty, Christopher Angus. A must for Adirondackers.
• Lightning and The Face, Dean Koontz.
• The Americanization of Edward Bok, Edward Bok.
• Just About Everything in the Adirondacks, William Chapman White. A great collection of essays that were originally printed in the New York Times.
• The Last Juror, John Grisham.
• Healing Tuberculosis in the Woods: Medicine and Science at the End of the Nineteenth Century, David L. Ellison.
• Touching the Void, Joe Simpson.
• Wish I Might, Isabel Smith. A wonderful autobiography from a patient during the TB era in Saranac Lake.
• Adventures in the Wilderness, William H.H. Murray.
• The Sky and the Forest and Plain Murder and Payment Deferred, C.S. Forester.
• The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness, Paul Schneider. This is the first Adirondack history that explained the logging business in a way I could comprehend.
• The Devil in the City, Erik Larson. A great non-fiction about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and a serial killer on the loose during the fair.
• Northwest Passage, Kenneth Roberts.

• The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, Ann Packer. With great writing and emotional suspense, the author pulls the reader in several directions. It wasn’t one of those books with a plot-thickener planted here and there, but rather picks up on day to day occurrences that ask the reader, “How much do we owe those who love us, and those we love?”

• Sailing Alone Around the World, Joshua Slocum. First published in 1895. I found an anniversary edition that reproduced the original, and it’s the best version. A Yankee sea-captain found himself without a command and decided to build himself a boat (well, technically, rebuild a rotten one) and sail around the world. Because he had spent his life at sea the dramatic storms, etc. are downplayed, giving a matter-of-fact feel to the story. A different time and world. Very engrossing to those who know a little of the lingo—a fun armchair traveler’s read. Slight caution: it’s a bit dated in race relations, though his attitude is surprisingly open.

• Burning Marguerite, Elizabeth Innes-Brown.

  Style Invitational First Runner-Up:

  Bill Murray, hands down.
  What did Jane Curtin often have to say during costume changes at “Saturday Night Live”?

• The Worried Child, Paul Foxman. A book about helping children heal from anxiety. There is a chapter especially for children. Excellent book for parents, teachers, and anyone else who cares about our children.

• St. Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb, Valerie Hurley. The author is a north country writer who happens to be my wife. For reviews and more about the book, visit the author’s website: www.valeriehurley.com

• Journey to the East, Hermann Hesse.
• The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experiences, Ralph Metzner.
• Man and His Symbols, C.G. Jung. A re-read.
• Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life, Jean Hay Bright. An expose of Helen and Scott Nearing—they lived off trusts, inheritances, and annuities.
• Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich. Section on Walmart is apropos to our situation here.
• The Congruent Life: Following the Inward Path to Fulfilling Work and Inspired Leadership, C. Michael Thompson.

• The Adirondack Atlas, Jerry Jenkins and Andy Keal. This is an entirely amazing collection of maps and information on the social, historical and ecological aspects of the Adirondacks and the North Country. It just came out a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been glued to it. It’s the kind of book that you can leave on the coffee table and just open up to any page and learn something new. From cougar sightings to forest cover type to missile silo locations to the best ice cream stands. Great stuff.

• Paranoia: A Novel, Joseph Finder. A fast-paced well-written read about corporate espionage.
• The Last Juror and The Partner, John Grisham. After a Grisham reading hiatus (became bored with repetitious plots/devices), I’ve returned with a vengeance and enjoyed both of these.
• Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow. Reading this and loving it. It has the same sweep to it as did David McCullough’s John Adams.
• A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George. She has a number of books, with wonderful character development and a marvelous English sensibility. This one was made into a public TV program a few years ago.

• Alaska, James Michener. Always a cool book to read on a hot summer day or night.

• The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Deception Point, Dan Brown. Really liked them all.

• The Beatrix Potter books.

• Matilda and The BFG and James and the Giant Peach, Roahl Dahl. Anything by Dahl.

• Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, Louise Rennison.

• New & Selected Poems, Mary Oliver.
• Eyes at the Window, Evie Yoder Miller.
• Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas.

• Adirondack Atlas, Jerry Jenkins and Andy Keal.

• Nickel Mountain, John Gardner.
• The Farm on the River of Emeralds, Moritz Thomsen
• Milagro Bean Fields Trilogy, John Nichols.

• Out of the Deep I Cry and In the Bleak Midwinter and A Fountain Filled With Blood, Julia Spencer-Fleming. The three Rev. Clare Ferguson mysteries, set in the Adirondacks.
• The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zacharia.

• Dylan’s Vision of Sin, Christopher Ricks

  First Place Winner of the Washington Post Style Invitational:

  I know I have to get up in the morning and put my underwear on first and my pants on next.
  After receiving some helpful advice on the subway today, how will I change my dressing regimen tomorrow?

• Visit our friends at the Corner Bookstore on Madison and 93 Street in New York City, at cornerbook@aol.com. Lenny Golay and Dan Lettieri put together a terrific recommended reading review on a regular basis. Lenny has been a guest on our reading call in shows in past years.
  
  
• NPR has a wonderful collection of reading lists, ranging from political titles to celebrity suggestions, classic re-reads to vacation reading. Go to www.npr.org and click on “books” in the left hand menu.

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