I don’t know about you, but I definitely need a diversion at the moment, so let’s do as we always do—turn to books. Specifically, the beach read. You know the ones, the rereads or new reads that don’t require much effort to pay attention to, the ones that you can pick up and put down as you nap (or drink) by the pool or shore. What books are coming out this summer that you are waiting for with bated breath? Who’s got a pre-order of Carrie […]
CBR12 Book Bingo – Friendship
Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
Big Summer was not what I was expecting, but it was thoroughly enjoyable all the same. While the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads run the gamut from one to five stars, I wouldn’t swing too far in either direction. I feel this nicely fits in the three-to-four star range. It contains all of the elements of a fun beach read, even if some aspects feel squeezed in. Big Summer tells the story of Daphne Berg, a plus-size influencer, and Drue Cavanaugh, a nauseatingly beautiful socialite. Six years […]
Everybody said: so? As in so what?
Summer by Ali Smith
The closing volume of the Seasons Quarter by Ali Smith. Arguably, this is the best or at least most impressive of the books, but I will get to that. The books are not sequels, so you can read them in any order. Instead, each novel focuses on a season (and things attached to that season) and generally try to capture the current moment (as of publication) while also trying to place things within broader contexts or connected thematic moments. So in this book, the absolute […]
A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood at the doorstep.
Summer by Edith Wharton
Don’t let the seasonal image of idyllic warm months fool you; this one is pretty bleak. Charity is seventeen, more or less an orphan, and leaves her small rural life with relatives, to move to town and work with a local lawyer. The lawyer is stern and officious, and more offensive, he offers to marry her. She is repulsed and turns her attention to a hot local boy, Lucas. They flirt, it’s exciting, they have sex a bunch of times, and she gets pregnant. Later, […]
Surprisingly Serious Truths from a Seriously Silly Guy
Vacationland by John Hodgman
John Hodgman is many things: Daily Show correspondent, a “PC”, podcast guest and host, internet judge, former literary agent, and generally droll New England weirdo. He wrote several books prior to Vacationland, and all of those books were collections of “facts”. I say “facts”, as that is what he might say as well: Hodgman (with the help of Jonathan Coulton) created three full books of completely made-up facts that he presented as being VERY true. They are a weird delight, and sometimes they are correct, […]
I am forty-six years old and that is my insight, that life is made up of events that have to be parried.
Spring; Summer by Karl Ove Knausgard
Spring – 5/5 Stars Summer – 4/5 Stars The first two volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard’s Årstidsencyklopedien Cycle (which translates to something like Seasonal Encyclopedia) function more or less as the title suggests. A few years ago, after completing what is likely his masterwork My Struggle, a six-volume series of novels based on an interpretative view of his life (and I have to say having read the first three, that while they do focus on a lot of minutia, they are much more structures, focused, and […]