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Books: Summer Reads

What’s a summer read? Turns out it’s — a book. Screened gadgets give off an impossible glare and the ones that don’t can fall in water or get buried in sand. They’re just not made for the beach, the pool, the deck of a boat.

IMG_2730Books are.

Using a buoy for a cushion I read Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, an enjoyable tour of Singapore’s ultra-wealthy set. Yes, they are a frivolous bunch, and the story is forgettable, but I learned some things about that city’s rich history and matriarchal culture. A breezy read for foodies and fashionistas. (Thank you, Jennifer.)

Earlier, on dry land, I read Jonathan Miles’ Want Not. I admit to putting it down after the first (repellant) chapter, about New York City squatters who subsist on garbage. I’d loved Miles’ first book, Dear American Airlines — it seemed impossible he could write a bad book. So, I gave Want Not another try, and I’m glad I did. The story opens out to include a lonely linguistics professor and his dying father; also a wealthy debt collector and the suburban family he stitched together after 9/11.

wantnotI fell in love with every one of these characters, even the freegans. Yes, the book is overly long, but I didn’t mind — the three stories come together in surprising ways. Best of all, the ending is memorable, and deeply satisfying.

I am always hopeful. Stacey D’Erasmo’s Wonderland hooked me — about an aging rocker returned to the road — but petered out. Or as this reviewer put it, “fails to climax.”

Several friends recommended Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, telling me that I would understand race in a new and different way. Maybe. This is an episodic read, often a rant, lacking in plot, 588 pages long. There are some

americanahmoving scenes, particularly when main character Ifemelu is first in the United States, a desperately poor college student. But over the course of the book Ifemelu is tiresome and full of herself; the young man she leaves behind in Nigeria is more sympathetic, and has a more interesting life arc.

Why read Americanah? Well, everyone else is…and the magnificent Lupita Nyong’o is a producer and star of the film.

Ah, summer. More to come.

Also in the blog

I admit to putting down Lauren Groff’s Matrix months ago; I liked the writing but didn’t cotton to the 12th century story of an ungainly French girl sent from the royal court of Eleanor to prop up a failing nunnery in England. It seemed dreary. Later, my friend Deborah mentioned the book as a study

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I read all the time but there’s one place on earth I read most: Club Lac Pythonga in Quebec. My husband’s family has had a summer home there since the 1960’s. It’s a magical place deep in the woods, cut off from the Internet, cell phones, newspapers, cars. A central kitchen serves family dinners, freeing

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Should you trust the narrator? Depends on the book. Two I read this summer set me up to believe that its main character, and narrator, was seeking to repair a significant love (a wife, a daughter). Each starts with a similar premise — I need to get her back — then widens in the telling,

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