Summer ’24 and the Reading is Easy
July 2, 2024
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One summer long weekend behind us already! Hope you’ve been finding some reading delights. As is tradition, I’m here to share a few of my own summer recommendations. As is also tradition for a few years now, Amy of Redfern Book Review and I have cooked up a podcast version to listen to for full discussion of these books and some random meanderings. Come join us! You can tune in to anywhere you listen to podcasts or simply click here.
You Are Here by David Nicholls – The latest from the British writer best known for the novel and recently televised One Day. This focuses less on young love and more on the mature variety. The charming story follows two single middle-agers who through circumstances (and best intentions of friends) end up hiking through all manner of weather and emotional drama across Northern England. There is delightful and funny repartee and some pretty relatable predicaments. A blend of humour and poignancy along with some travel makes for an ideal summer escape.
Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes – Speaking of escape… and England … and humour. Check, check check! But quite different adventures. This one promises full on farcical fun. Set in the linked villages of Little Bottom, Middle Bottom, Great Bottom and Monkton Bottom for starters, a cast of Gucci-clad socialites gets wound up in all sorts of shenanigans. “Take a grand English country house, one (heartbroken) American divorcee, three rich wives, two tycoons, a pair of miniature sausage dogs and one (bereaved) butler; put them all into the blender and out comes the impossibly funny Wives Like Us, the new novel from the best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes and Party Girls Die In Pearls, Plum Sykes.” Just add a beach if you wish and you’re set for an ideal summer read.
The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier – She’s back! Prolific historical fiction writer Tracy Chevalier has found a new milieu. Not Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring) or textiles (A Single Thread, The Lady and the Unicorn) or fossils (Remarkable Creatures) or the underground railway (The Last Runaway) or … this time it’s Venice and specifically, Murano glassworks. The story follows a family of glassblowers from Renaissance times to present day, through rivalries and love stories and historical events that challenge the family and the women who work to keep their glass legacy alive. A writer with a talent for immersing her reader into exotic worlds of art and significant times in our history. Looking forward to the journey!
Sandwich by Catherine Newman – Catherine Newman cornered the market on honest new parenthood tales some years ago and has become a treasured voice we turn to for guaranteed hilarity and frank commentary along with a little heartbreak. She is a frequent essay writer, blogger (I find her contributing to Cup of Jo or on her own substack Crone Sandwich) and She recently wrote We All Want Impossible Things about the loss of a best friend which was an emotional rollercoaster (laughter! tears!) and a moving tribute to long term adult friendships and having to say an early good-bye. Sandwich is a novel that follows a mid-life menopausal mama through a week of the annual multi-generational family vacation on Cape Cod. And what a week it is. While working on hormonal anger management and empty-nest syndrome, she is also grappling with the reality of independent but aging parents. Her long-suffering husband and their marriage demand her attention too. Meanwhile, sandwiches need to be made! Humorous and poignant … sensing a theme yet?
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman – Unlike the other books on this list, Anxious People is not a new release. It was published in 2021 after Fredrik Backman’s other hits, A Man Called Ove and Bear Town perhaps the most familiar. Backman has great range in topics and deftly handles all aspects of the emotional spectrum. I was prompted to head to the back list after viewing the most hilarious video of the author presenting his thoughts on “Creative Anxiety and Procrastination” (click link to view) to a group of writers gathered by Simon and Schuster. It is comic gold.
And all the motivation I needed to order up Anxious People – the story of a group of people randomly taken hostage at a real estate Open House. A couple of retirees who may have outgrown one another, an overworked executive, confused expectant parents, an emboldened 87 year old woman, a realtor and a mystery man each struggles with their own challenges and emotions. Together they try to find a way through this highly anxious experience. Apparently, a similar encounter of his own prompted Backman to pen this one.
The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard – This squeaked onto the list at the end as it’s one I’d just recently read and enjoyed. Captivating and creative, kind of in a category of its own: a little time travel and fantasy with emotions tied to friendship and family and identity and big choices. This follows a young woman who lives in a community located in a central valley. A valley to the East and one to the West are populated by Life Past and Life Future and travel between is forbidden except in very special circumstances. Any movement is secret and tightly managed and monitored. When a visitor from a neighbouring valley is accidently noticed by our protagonist, she becomes part of an upper echelon and is swept up in a close friend’s family story. A debut Canadian author. Looking forward to what’s next already!
Let us know what makes its way into your book bag. Happy reading!
Summer Reads 2022
June 17, 2022
Amy Mair of Red Fern Books Podcast and I recently sat down (in person this time) for our second annual Summer Reads tie-in. Read the highlights below and then listen to more in our conversation over here.
If Amy managed to execute some editing wizardry, you will miss out on an epic coughing fit as this guest-of-the-week almost combusted. Mic-off is a safer bet for (hack, hack) this gal. Otherwise, we had a really fun chat!
These six books are chosen with an eye to variety across eras and themes. My hope is that we’ll all get a fresh glimpse into new worlds through these pages and be inspired and entertained along the way. Now just add some sunny weather, a cool drink, and uninterrupted time to read!
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
By the time this blogpost/podcast hits the airwaves I have no doubt you’ll be very familiar with this choice. Lessons in Chemistry has spent all of its young life on the bestseller and recommended lists, far and wide, unanimously celebrated. Bonnie Garmus is a debut author (at 65 years old) whose story was picked up for publication in 35 countries – impressive! If you liked Eleanor and Bernadette of Eleanor Oliphant or Where’d You Go Bernadette? you’ll most certainly enjoy Elizabeth Zott of Lessons in Chemistry. Despite her quirky outspokenness and her identity as an advanced scientific researcher, Elizabeth becomes a reluctant TV cooking show personality of the early 1960s. You’ll delight in plenty of chuckles but there’s surprising poignancy and social commentary and personal growth in the story as well. Elizabeth has a charming supporting cast of characters including a very special dog. This is a great summer read – any time of the year!
You Had Me at Pet-Nat – A Natural Wine-soaked Memoir by Rachel Signer
I’m sure you may wonder at times how I narrow down my book choices, especially when the selection may be a little bit off the radar as this one appears to be. In this case, it was simple, I encountered the paragraph below and was had. I don’t think I can really improve upon it so I’m sharing!
“It was Rachel Signer’s dream to be that girl: the one smoking hand-rolled cigarettes out the windows of her 19th-century Parisian studio apartment, wearing second-hand Isabel Marant jeans and sipping a glass of Beaujolais redolent of crushed roses with a touch of horse mane. Instead she was an under-appreciated freelance journalist and waitress in New York City, frustrated at always being broke and completely miserable in love. When she tastes her first pétillant-naturel (pét-nat for short), a type of natural wine made with no additives or chemicals, it sets her on a journey of self-discovery, both deeply personal and professional, that leads her to Paris, Italy, Spain, Georgia, and finally deep into the wilds of South Australia and which forces her, in the face of her “Wildman,” to ask herself the hard question: can she really handle the unconventional life she claims she wants?” (Hachette) Cheers!
Letters To a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us by Colleen Kinder
If you’re a regular reader of Bedside Table Books, you’ll know that I’ve been singing the praises of essay collections as a way to re-boot one’s reading or to embrace variety. I recently stumbled upon two terrific pieces of writing, independent of one another, and discovered that by chance they were both selections in this Letters to a Stranger collection. I knew instantly that the connecting themes of brief encounters/missed connections/moments of shared humanity would be perfect for deep Summer sighing and if these two examples were any indication, the reading would all be excellent. 65 great writers have shared their experiences with strangers – you’ll encounter names like Maggie Shipstead, Lauren Groff, Pico Iyer … Can’t wait to savour this collection!
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
Another debut receiving a lot of positive attention, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a multi-generational saga which begins in Chinese occupied Tibet of the late 1950s and follows a family’s refugee experience through to modern-day Toronto. Family connections impacted by displacement, threatened cultural identity, and the haunting of harsh experiences are the basis of this compelling story. While author Tsering Yangzom Lama was born and raised in Nepal, she has strong ties to Vancouver and a BA in Creative Writing & International Relations from UBC. She followed that up with an MFA (Columbia) These descriptives taken from a wide array of blurbs are pretty convincing that this is some very fine writing: “achingly beautiful” “symphonic” “transcendent” “a marvel” and “magnificently textured”. Wow. I’m really looking forward to this one.
Carolina Built: A Novel by Kianna Alexander
There is a particular delight in the discovery of a story that has been hiding away in the archives just waiting to be celebrated. Thanks to Kianna Alexander’s writerly curiosity, we are now able to enjoy a story inspired by one remarkable Josephine N. Leary. Leary was a freed black woman, born into slavery on a Southern Plantation in the 1800s. As a wife, mother, and entrepreneur, she overcame an incredible number of challenges but used her savvy financial management and investment skills to build an impressive real estate empire. A feat at anytime but particularly in the early 1900s. Kianna Alexander researched deeply into her fellow North Carolina native’s story and the result is this exciting new novel, based on Leary’s life.
I really don’t need to say much more than “Geraldine Brooks” to flag this one. Brooks has several hugely successful and popular reads under her belt and each one is a unique and fascinating tale based on extraordinary research. Think: Year of Wonders (worth re-visiting with present day pandemic context), Caleb’s Crossing, March, and People of the Book among others. Horse, released June 14th, 2022, grows out of more impeccable research, and links three stories through different eras all tied to the famous race horse “Lexington”. “A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.” (Goodreads) As she has in previous novels, the author has provided a fascinating Afterword. Don’t skip those pages!
Summer is Here at Last – Your Recommendations
July 4, 2010
Here are the most popular responses to Bedside Table Books’ request for summer reading recommendations – they either appeared on your wish list or you wished to share them with others…
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, otherwise known as The Millennium series by Stieg Larsson – overwhelmingly the choice of the summer. One devotee among you has located another Swedish writer with a thrilling series on the go: Death Angels and others in the Erik Winter series by Ake Edwardson. She aims to compare the two.
Another huge hit of this summer is unfolding: Justin Cronin’s The Passage. This is apparently the first in a series yet to be entirely released. Described as a thriller, post apocalyptic, and featuring some of the scariest monsters ever – enthusiastically cheered by those who’ve read it. Stephen King is a fan and writes: “Read this book and the ordinary world disappears”.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett – Another candidate for most-talked about book this summer. “A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope.” I have personally been encouraged to read this numerous times and can’t wait to get my hands on it.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. Many of you are reading this and unanimously telling me it’s a great read. The House at Riverton is another of Kate Morton’s popular reads.
Open by Andre Agassi. The tennis great reveals all … and more! Eye-opening I’m told.
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream both by Barack Obama. Immensely readable, timely and inspiring. Politics aside, Mr.Obama has a gift for words worth considering.
New York by Edward Rutherford (also London, Sarum, Russka etc) Reminiscent of James Michener – long sagas of fictionalized history. Great characters spanning generations as history unfolds. Huge dedication to research here.
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay is a classic and yet his newer works, Whitethorn for instance, are also coming to be considered classics. A fantastic storyteller who fills thousands of pages with captivating characters and adventures. Trivia note: Courtenay didn’t start writing until he was fifty-five! Love him already.
More summer reading recommendations next time!
