Find a Great Book This Summer!

Host Bee on Monday, July 20th, 2009

Find a Great Book this Summer: A Selection of Beachy (and some not so beachy!) Reads!

I love to read and during the school year, I belong to two book groups, which in turn requires that I read two specific books each month. But this summer, I’ve set a very specific goal for myself: to read my way through a very tall stack of “non-book group books” that I’ve accumulated over the past year! Some of the books on my personal list include:

Testimony by Anita Shreve
Prague by Arthur Phillips
World Without End by Ken Follett (the sequel to Pillars of the Earth)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – A Novel by David Wroblewski

Beyond My Personal List

But beyond my own list, there are so many fabulous reads on the market that there is no excuse for failing to read this summer! So here goes:

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafron – this novel by the author of The Shadow of the Wind (which was fabulous) details the life of a young writer in 1920’s Barcelona who is commissioned by an older publisher to write a book which sets him off on a dark adventure of love and tragedy.
Brooklyn - is a classic coming of age novel in which the protagonist leaves post WWII Ireland for a new life in Brooklyn.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout - this Pulitzer Prize winning novel is a collection of linked stories about a New England woman for whom the term “backbone” was coined.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee – this novel takes place in Hong Kong where at two different points in time, two vastly different women fall in love with the same dangerous man.
Queen Takes King by Gigi Levangie Grazer – the author of The Starter Wife (a mini-series that I loved!) has penned a sinfully fun read about a high profile Manhattan couple in the midst of a very messy divorce!
Time of My Life: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch – a stay at home mom who appears to have a perfect life but is personally fed up, magically wakes up in her past, living with an ex-boyfriend in a shabby apartment. As she decides upon the life she wants, it’s funny and fantastic!
Madness Under the Royal Palms – Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach by Laurence Leamer: set in Palm Beach, Florida, this work of non-fiction, that reads like fiction, examines the innermost workings, scandals and scions of this rarified society.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is a fictional story set in post World War II London and Guernsey and told through letters. The characters, their love of reading and the fascinating history of the Occupation of the Guernsey Island make for a wonderful read.