I’m always reading but I read most in or near a cabin in the woods, in Quebec, Canada, beside Lac Pytonga. Days are long and lazy there (well, I did take some 
epic runs) and nights are free of the usual distractions, since there’s no t.v. and no Internet and no cell service and someone other than me and mine has made, served and cleaned up dinner. Sure, we play Scrabble and hearts and this year unearthed Time, a trivia game that spans the Twenties to the Eighties.
During the day I swim and run and hike and kayak and pick wild raspberries and blackberries, the dogs along with me for the walk. At night, we have a popcorn tasting “war†with neighbors.
Mostly I read. I read on the boat, while others fish. I read on the beach, while kids gunnel-bob or paddleboard or jump from docks. I read when the weather turns cold and rainy and sends us indoors, beside a fire.
This year I read four big books, all of which I can recommend.
First was Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic, a multigenerational Irish and American saga. Easily he weaves seven interlocked stories, beginning with the hoopla of the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1919 and ending in 2011, with a mother grieving her then-19 year old son, slain by Irish terrorists. Poverty, immigration, daring, untimely death, race, peace negotiations and an un-opened letter. A slow, good read.
Next I read Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family, nonfiction published in 2003. (Thank you, Cherie.) Poverty in the Bronx is a seemingly endless cycle of teen pregnancy, absent or incarcerated fathers, drug dealing, children raising children. It’s not just men who disappear. A main character, the beautiful Jessica, spends years in Federal Prison for her role in a heroin drug ring. This is a long, brutal, magnificent story, which ends on a hopeful note. Of all these summer reads, this was the one that gave me book grief.
A friend in camp was hooked by Bret Anthony Johnston’s Remember Me Like This and lent it to me once he’d finished. It’s a compelling read, beautifully written, about a family whose missing son returns home after four years, now age 16. The boy’s captor is freed on bail. It’s hot and humid in Corpus Christi: add child abduction and rape for a potboiler. An engaging, thoughtful read. (Thank you, Larry.)
Finally, I curled up for days with Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, a beguiling tale set before and during World War Two, as residents flee Paris and later, with the German occupation and siege of St. Malo, a walled city in Breton. In alternating chapters we meet a blind girl in France who becomes a resistor and a German orphan adept at radio construction and use. How these two come together, in St. Malo, is the story of the book. I was completely taken in by this tale, even though it began to smell like a Disney movie. Skip the present-day ending; it’s treacly, and unnecessary.
That’s it for summer reading. On to fall.