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Summer Break, Or, Saturday Morning at 8:29am

I’m going to take a week-long summer blog break, everyone. I’ll be back Tuesday, September 4th.

If you’d like to leave me your ideas on any good summer reads in the comments below, I’d be more in your debt than I am already. Thanks for reading, and have a lovely weekend.

42 Responses

  4. Enjoy your break Lisa. My favorite is “Mediterranean Summer” by David Shalleck. It’s about the five month journey of a chef on a mega sailing yacht on France’s Cote d’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella. Not all about food by any means. I re-read it every year and feel like I’ve been with him to the marketplaces and entertaining all of the guests aboard.
    Sam

  5. Have a good blog vacation! I’m reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration for an upcoming book club. It’s good.

  6. For fiction I recommend Ann Tyler (my favourite Digging to America) and Anne Patchett, (The Magician’s Assistant and Bel Canto), for biography The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal, and I found this fascinating: Imagine, How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. Have a great holiday!

  8. Swamplandia by Karen Russell
    The Girl who fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
    The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern
    Mink River Brian Doyle
    State of Wonder by Anne Patchett
    Hunger Games series

  9. Lisa, I really enjoyed “Hidden in Paris” by Corine Gantz. Read it on my Fire, it’s light, it’s funny, and it really takes you to the intimate corners of Paris as residents see it. Sending love, sweetie…

  11. I really enjoy State of Wonder too. My most recent reading delight was The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. If you like old fashioned spy vs spy cold war suspense novels, Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon is fine fun. BTW I so agree with you that Seating Arrangements is truly awful. I ended up deleting it from my Kindle about a third of the way through. Not worth my time!

    3. I, too, couldn’t put Gone Girl down, but overall I didn’t find it a very satisfying read.

  14. The Light Between Oceans. Very compelling.
    Swimming Studies by Leanne Sharpton
    The Hare With Amber Eyes
    18 Bookshops

    Happy reading – enjoy your break!

  16. Yes, yes, yes to “Where’d You Bernadette.” Delightful, funny, and it resonates for a long time. Way over the top at the end, but the middle section is a gorgeous novel unto itself.

  17. I just cracked the cover on Cherly Strayed’s Wild and have Elizabeth Cline’s Overdressed waiting in the wings. Have a good break.

  18. Jeanette Winterson – well, any of her work, really, but The Daylight Gate just arrived and has already been read. It’s about the Pendle witches of Lancashire in the reign of James I of England.

  19. China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh. I found it at Oxfam, it was written 10 years ago. It’s kind of science fiction but no mysteries, no chases, no light sabers, just people (the protagonist being a gay young American born Chinese) trying to figure out what to do next and how to fit in in a world where China has taken over the US. Settlers’s day-to-day problems in the Mars colony thrown in for good measure, goat raising included. A great honest voice, wry intelligence and the protagonists actually work and it defines them.

  20. I was excited to read the comments because I just knew your readers would have wonderful book suggestions.

    My faith was rewarded.

    Have a fabulous break and happy reading.

    xo jane

  21. I recommend two things:

    1. the September issue of Vogue
    2. get going on that book we’re hoping YOU’ll write

  22. I hope you enjoy a very relaxing break! How about Mansfield Park by Jane Austen or Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery.(Christmas with Anne is another one of my favorite short story collections). Can’t wait to hear what you enjoyed!

  23. I loved Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Imagine (which isn’t light, but quite interesting) on the science of creativity, and I’m currently reading Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, which I like so far. Have a fun week off!

    1. “Wild” is great – I love Cheryl Strayed’s writing. It is deep and intense but also very entertaining, as a story about a journey.

      I’m currently reading “My Family and Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell, and it’s so funny and well-written. Definitely a light-hearted (but intelligent), interesting summer read!

      Bill Bryson and David Sedaris are other great humor writers that are fun to read in the summer — even out loud! I recommend Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” and Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” though other books of theirs are great too.

  24. And of course “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is one book I’ver read many times. I love to read it when I have a lot of uninterrupted time.

  25. Another vote for Hare with Golden Eyes and for Wild. Recently very much enjoyed Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, just a delight. And if you liked Wolf Hall, you’ll be happy to follow up with Bringing Up the Bodies. Enjoy your break!

  26. Highly recommend …. “Midnight in Peking” by Paul French. Well-written, riveting story (non-fiction) of unsolved murder of young woman in Beijing just prior to the arrival of Mao.

    Also, Richard Ford’s new book, “Canada.”

  27. Add to my recommendation of “Gone Girl” is “The Thirteenth Tale.” So those are two not to be put down reads. You would probably enjoy “The Rules of Civility,” it’s your people. (G) I’m only on the second chapter but thought of you while reading it.

    Have a good time. You will be missed.

    Sandy

  28. DEAD END GENE POOL by Wendy Burden.

    Most sad to see it end it was that much fun to read.

  29. Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann was wonderful. Nantucket, Cambridge and much WASP angst. Also, this is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon. “Love Story”
    In Dublin. Both books “must reads”. Enjoy

  32. Recently fell in love with Lionel Shriver. I think you might enjoy her – she has your wit and you’ll be amused by her overtly rebellious streak.

    I’ve read “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “The Post Birthday World”, both different, both good. Have bought “Game Control” but not read it yet.

    I also echo someone else’s comments about David Sedaris – he is a very entertaining writer and is not afraid to examine the truth. Qualities that Shriver has as well come to think of it.

  33. Just read The Art of Fielding, fabulous philosophies rather than baseball, but found the end a bit “Meh” Maybe he’s planning a sequel. “Where’d you Go Bernadette” is a hilarious play on our helicopter parenting society.

  34. I’ve just inhaled Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, about her tenure as the New York Times restaurant critic. Stunningly written about food, set against the backdrop of NYC. Loved it! (I’m about 15 years late on this one, I know!)

  35. A fabulous collection of books here. I recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society (think that is the odd title) – such an enjoyable book. Hope you are enjoying your break. X

  36. During our recent power outage, I read/re-read all the Marilynne Robinson novels: Housekeeping, Gilead, Home. Earlier, I re-read James’s Golden Bowl–worth it, as I had a different reaction than I had during earlier reads. My next re-read will be Embers by Sandor ???, which is one of my son’s favorites.

    Oh, and if you haven’t read David Mitchell’s novels–Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas, and 1000 Autumns–you really should. I will stop myself.

  37. My summer books were:
    “Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes – thoughtful, beautiful, haunting.
    “In the Woods” and “The Likeness” by Tana French (they are a series, but I read in the wrong order – it didn’t matter). Good Irish detective stories that are well written

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