Beach Reads

By and large we seem to equate beach reads with mindless reads. I don't really discriminate - I've read some super heavy things while sitting with my ass in the sand. But it is nice sometimes to drift away with a book that doesn't require a ton of thought...even though personally, I like for them to require some as you'll see reflected below. As we roll into Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial kickoff to the summer season, here are some books that might fit the bill.

1. The Archy McNally Series by Lawrence Sanders - McNally is a funny, quirky, playboy character living and private detecting in Palm Beach. A little mystery, a little weirdness, and a little beach background. I think there are more than 10 books, the later ones are co-written.

2. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles - Lose yourself in 1930s Manhattan - the gin and the jazz and the streets are almost so descriptive that you can feel them. The story is good too.

3. A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams -  It starts on Memorial Day 1938 in a little seaside community in Rhode Island and whirls around you from there until you're entrenched in it.

4. Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky - The setting calls to me so I put up with some of the crap I wouldn't stand for in a story normally.

5. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells - I hope you haven't seen the movie, but even if you have, you should read this book. I loved it fiercely. It's full of some hard stuff but there's a lot of perseverance and love and southern charm.

6. Beach Music by Pat Conroy - This is also heavy. Very. But the story is so intricate and there's so much going on, plus you get The Drifters and the book itself being a basic love letter to the Low Country. This is Conroy at his best.

7. Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons - I love the writing in this book, it seems urgent and melancholy all at once. There's a lot of quotable passages in this book and I love the southern in Siddons.

8. Summer Sisters by Judy Blume - Judy for adults. A weird and complicated friendship set against the backdrop of Martha's Vineyard.

9. Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956 by Garrison Keillor - Ah, the good old days. A book about a geeky boy coming of age in the heartland with a passage about a fart that made me laugh so hard I cried numerous times. Not a bad way to meander through an afternoon.

10. Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt - I read this book over and over as a young adult. It's one of my favorite books. I've also read it as an adult and still enjoyed it. Yes, it's YA, but it's also a Newberry Award winning novel.

What do you recommend for people looking for beach reads?

Happy long weekend! As we enjoy our flags and our burgers, don't forget why we are able to do so freely. Memorial Day is not Veterans' Day. Memorial Day is in observance of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice - their lives for our freedom and interests. I mean no disrespect to anyone serving now or who has served, but every day is a day to thank a veteran, yes? Monday belongs to those who didn't come home.

What I Read This Summer

Hey party people. I threatened to start doing a dedicated book post every month. Here it is.

For those of you that hate reading, never fear, Thursday Thoughts returns next week.

Going forward they won't be so long, but for this one I'm covering three months because that's how I roll. I'm going to kick it back to June and cover the books I've read since then.

If you want to know what the book is about, you should click on the title to get to a summary. I'm not in the business of summarizing books. There are people who do that for a living and they will always be better at it than me, so just go read what they have to say about it. What I am in the business of is telling you why I did or didn't like it as best as I can.

Sometimes it's hard for me to describe, and I'm sure it is for you too. Sometimes a book will hit something so personal, so intrinsic to our personality, that we've never even really explored it before. So it resonates with us without us being really able to say why.

Big shout out to the Philadelphia Free Library system for supplying me with all of these books. Much obliged.

June Reads
May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Holmes - This one was a marathon, not a sprint. When I first started, I wasn't sure if I would finish but it drew me in and I genuinely wanted to know how things would end up. There was just enough zany to provide levity to some serious issues.

Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky - I could've done without the gimmicky shit in this book about relationships and secrets and sickness, but I really liked the backdrop and it was an easy, mindless read. If I find myself wanting to be where the book is taking place, if the location and description of it call to me, I will put up with some bullpucky to keep reading about it.

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh - I was psyched about this book. It was really promising but it ended up tripping over itself a lot. There was definitely potential for more to the story, and I wish McHugh had gone further with some things. Still liked it, wanted to like it more.

Lakeside Cottage by Susan Wiggs - If there's something I really hate, it's repetition in story telling. There's too much of that in this book.

How to be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman - There was some weird shit in this book. I kept reading to find out exactly what.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri - By page 63 (13 pages past the time I typically discard a book), I was ready to give up on this. I didn't, and I'm glad. This was a heavy read, and parts of it broke my heart. Really sluggish to push through on the front end for me, I wish I would've clicked with it a little faster.

July Reads
The Accident by Chris Pavone - The premise of this book is totally awesome. The execution is a little lacking. Still, it was my first time reading Pavone, and I've added The Expats to my list. I liked the writing. Who knew the publishing world could be so exciting and fraught with danger?

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart - I absolutely hated the writing style. But the story was compelling enough to carry me through, and it was overall a pretty quick read.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt - Another heavy book for summer. I loved it. It was not happy, but the story was important. I'm glad the early years of the AIDs epidemic is getting play in books like this one and movies like The Normal Heart. While that's a facet of this book, it's more about relationships, love, and loss. It's a good read that sits low in your gut for a while when you've finished.

The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe - I was not expecting such heavy shit from this title. But there was a lot going on in here and it was a page turner.

The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams - Williams wrote my favorite novel of last summer (One Hundred Summers) so I had high expectations of this book. She delivered - it was something juicy to sink my teeth into without stretching my brain too much. Williams weaves a good tale and I'd love it if she came out with one book a summer. Perfect for a lazy summer reading fling.

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken - YA dystopian lore, the first in a series. Sometimes I wonder how authors come up with this shit. It was a quick read and I'll continue on with the series.

August Reads
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman - To me, this was two different books - the flashbacks (which I loved) and the present day (not so much). I don't think she did a good job fusing them together. I put it down sort of saying, "So? What was the point?"

The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen - This is the first of Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles books (in which Isles does not make an appearance). I had a hard time in the first 30 pages separating what I was reading from what my brain knows of the TV show. I'll carry on with the series in book form.

The Vacationers by Emma Straub - This was supposed to be the book of the summer? Read Violet Grant instead. It was hard for me to find anyone to like in this book.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty - I adored this book. I think the storytelling and writing style are perfect for the actual story. The characters are great and you can like the good guys and dislike the bad guys a little bit - the author blurs them enough to make them realistic. None of us are perfect and none of these characters are either. I really enjoyed it.

The Arsonist by Sue Miller - I really enjoyed While I Was Gone and The Senator's Wife, so I expected to love this. And I did for a while. But the title didn't really represent the book well and that annoys me. The way Miller packaged the end annoyed me too. It felt hurried while some other parts of the book felt draggy. I like you, Sue Miller. Try again though.

Do any of these sound good to you? What were your top reads this summer?



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