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My husband’s family have been members at Pythonga since the early 70′s. Every year I invariably pack more books than clothes and still can manage to run out of things to read! You have to have the “boat book”, something if it gets wet, no big deal. Then the “porch book” and “beach book” and of course the book to read until the generator goes off! My kids have grown up looking forward to their week in camp with no tv and now, no cell phones. That is a true blessing. — a note from Mary Lou Hughes, August 6, 2012

Leaving Club Lac Pythonga after two weeks, I set aside a stack of books I’d enjoyed, so others “in camp” would have something new-ish to read. We all run out of books (see charming note, above) and though our cabins are filled, they’re mostly shelved with well thumbed Hardy, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Greene. Richard Price and Jon Krakauer. Cheap — yet priceless — pulp novels from the 1930’s.

I hadn’t even left camp when Reed Brady snatched Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl.” This is a clever tale, nicely written, about a young woman who frames her husband for her murder on the morning of their fifth anniversary. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, it was not for me: the main characters are unlikeable and the last half strains credulity. I felt like I had to take a shower when I finished, to somehow rid myself of these people.

Next I read, and loved, Dave Egger’s “A Hologram for the King.” I hadn’t read any Eggers since his first book, a memoir, mostly because it’s hard keeping up with him: he’s published a book each year for the last 12 years. But this new one — so handsomely bound, and manufactured in the U.S. — landed on my desk, thanks to a publicist.

“A Hologram for the King” is the story of Alan Clay, a weary American businessman who needs to make a big IT sale in Saudi Arabia before the Chinese beat him to it. (The Chinese beat him to it.) Alan is an American everyman: divorced, father of an angry college student whose upcoming tuition he can’t pay, and barely employed despite years in sales and manufacturing. Moving Schwinn from its Chicago base was his first mistake; from there it was one poor outsourcing choice after another. Worse, Alan is mired in debt, after trying to bring high-end bicycle manufacturing back to the U.S.

Eggers paints a full portrait of Alan Clay, and we ride along on his Saudi adventure — sad, lurid, thrilling — wondering if he’ll ever meet the King. (He does.) This is a very good read.

Next I turned to a slender paperback, “The Sojourn,” by Andrew Krivak, which starts with an awful bang: a young mother dies, hit by a train, throwing her baby to safety. That child leaves Colorado with his father, and returns to Austria-Hungary. Set on the eve of World War 1, father, son and an adopted boy eke out a living herding sheep. To keep the sheep safe, the boy and his brother become expert marksmen. Once the war begins, they join up, and become sharpshooters. This is a war novel that ranks among the best, ever.

Jess Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins” was my last and best read in Pythonga. What a story! Set over 50 years, this is a weave of old Hollywood and new, with the filming of “Cleopatra” (1963) as its center. The story shifts time and place often, yet I never missed a thread. All of his many characters ring true; Richard Burton’s brief appearance is laugh out loud funny. This is masterful storytelling.