Summer Reading, Part One

Summer Reading


In my school, you had a summer reading list. There was no question that you were expected to keep up over the summer, and as I got older, more and more reading was to be chosen from the listings and then consumed. The favorite reads were easy to tackle, but there was always that one book that I dreaded. Which titles, you ask? Anything by Sir Walter Scott, but other than that, I can't remember now. I did try to avoid the books that I was pretty sure I wouldn't like. War stories, or fantasies didn't appeal; they were books that sounded as though they would not draw me in. But others could be counted on: Nancy Drew was a favorite and I probably read every one of them that the local library had.

So now it's the beginning of summer, and I am trying to get a list of recommended reads assembled for you. Here's the problem: my reading list is narrower than it should be and won't appeal to everyone. So in the next week or so, the other booksellers and I will be suggesting books and you will find them on the books page of our website.

Some of the books I am listing below are on the list of books I have read in the past year, ones that strike me as ones I can recommend. I would like to read ten hours a day, but alas, I can't, so I am always looking at a pile of reading that I haven't got around to reading. So I will suggest a few other books that I have not gone unnoticed and will hope to file reviews of for your sake later on in the summer.

Let me just add that the internet has become a bigger and bigger part of Cranesbill's day-to-day operations. We are finally, after several years, about to get online ordering, and our inventory will be constantly updated and will include just about everything, with the exception of very small items and a few other things that would seem silly to ship anywhere. This ability to offer online ordering has involved an ordeal in the background: a team of tech-savvy types (managers and web masters who deal with the store's computer systems more directly)have spent months truly trying to decode why the internet is still so clunky and full of glitches. We know that you would appreciate the convenience of online ordering, but nothing's simple to fix. My personal thanks to Leslie, Al, Catherine, Marianne, and Mike for their valiant team efforts. Soon their labors will bear fruit, perhaps as soon as next week. We'll keep you posted by email…

My Summer Reading List

Maria Doria Russell

Dreamers of the Day:
Released this spring, this is the story of spinster schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin, a drab Midwestern woman whose life is suddenly upended by the death of her family during the flu epidemic of 1918. She suddenly finds herself in a lot of money and decides to travel to Egypt, where she finds herself in the midst of a historic crowd, including Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”). The growth of the woman is what keeps you riveted, but in strong second place is the geo-political backdrop of the Middle East as it emerges from World War I. The political, the personal and the personalities converge, not always very believably. making the book clearly relevant to the present. Still in hardcover only, but worth every penny.

A Touch of Grace:
Set in Europe at the tag end of World War II, the story follows the Blum family, exiles who are trying to survive while the Nazi army continues to attack and occupy Europe after the fall of Mussolini. What Claudia Blum sees is the mutual support of the exiles, the resistance in Italy, and the Catholic Church in trying to foil the Third Reich's final, self-deluded push to dominate all Europeans. The result is another Russell potion of history, fine portraits of personalities and exquisite writing skill - the marriage of craft with careful research.

The Sparrow is on my to be read pile, and it has received raves from many corners.

Kris Radish

Dancing Naked At The Edge of Dawn:
This is a fantasy novel, but one that will appeal specifically to women of a certain age who still feel that they should follow dreams, if only it were possible. The heroine, Meg, finds herself in a lifeless marriage, confirmed by the fact that her husband has found a mistress. From that point in the story, magic happens in her life: she finds out about the real life of her beloved and recently deceased Aunt Marcia. She travels to Mexico to take in both her aunt's history and what that history augurs for her future.

Like other Radish characters, she is surrounded by women friends, and her road starts getting more and more exciting, until by the end of the book, she discovers her own strength and grows into the new life with great ease.
This is not the case for most divorcing women, but the ideal world that Meg finds herself heir to provides a great escape, and the issues involved are quite serious and universally personal. The ritual that ends the book, a reverse wedding shower, is a joy, something that will stick with me for a long time.

Annie Freedman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral:

Annie Freedman has died and has gathered friends together to take a trip to scatter her ashes everywhere that was important to her. The trip is haphazard, but as the late Ms. Freedman has clearly intended, each friend gets some new direction along the way that will in part replenish her life.
Not the heaviest reading, but reading that will relieve the stress of ordinary life and put the reader's problems in perspective.

Lauren Groff

The Monsters of Templeton:

This is a debut novel, but as debut novels go, it's a remarkable one. In this case, I found about it from a January booksellers' meeting. So many books emerge at any given time that it becomes necessary to figure out which you might really enjoy. The publisher's rep spoke eloquently and I responded.

Templeton is Cooperstown, and the Monsters of Templeton- including a aquatic monster that surfaces and an assortment of descendents of Marmaduke Temple (James Fenimore Cooper), who are revealed as less than wonderful. Like Cooperstown, Templeton has a Baseball Hall of Fame, but baseball and sea serpents are the least of the weirdness, although they do enhance the scenery.

The heroine of the novel, failed grad student Willie Upton, returns home pregnant, having been caught in a romantic triangle with her Anthropology professor and having tried to run over the prof's wife. Now she has to face her past, including her former hippie mom, Vivianne, who sets her the task of figuring out which of Templeton's fine citizens is her father.

This sends Willie into a long investigation of Temple family geneology, which by itself would not hold a reader's interest for long without a mystery and a villain or two. The people on the family tree and their descendents who still inhabit Templeton turn out to be both monstrous and very human, holding the most interest of all. There's the drama of a young woman trying to find herself, and her discoveries that help her figure out her place on the vast Temple family tree. There's the relationship between mother and daughter. There's the nuanced portrait of a town that lives on its past, which should hit home with anyone who has lived in a historical setting that tries to survive in the current day.

Not to give away the solution, it is a very satisfying one, and the novel sticks in your mind for its complexity, its sense of humor, and the persistent and lovable Willie. It won't be out in paperback until February of 2009, but it may be one that will signal the beginning of an illustrious career.

Deb Baker

The Yooper Mysteries: Murder Passes the Buck, Murder Grins and Bears It, Murder Talks Turkey

In mid-May Cranesbill was very fortunate to have Deb Baker visit the store to read from and sign her novels. I had heard of them before, but in anticipation of her visit, I quickly consumed Murder Talks Turkey. By the time Baker appeared, I was already a devotee of her sleuth, Gertie Johnson, and simply loved the whole world she created in the pseudonymous town of Stonely. Since her visit I have finished the other two novels and found that they don't disappoint.

Gertie is the key to Baker's success. She is a 60-odd widow who needs to get a life, and as three murders unfold in Stonely, she dips into each case with equal parts naivete, gutsy investigation, and a certainty that her son, the Sheriff, has no real idea what each of the cases is about. Teaming up with friends Kitty and Cora Mae, she finds the clues that matter, but these stories are not only about solving a crime. They are also about starting life over, about the tilted perspective that life in a small rural community brings to its members, and about the value of persistence in the face of discouraging twists and turns of cases.

Baker told us that these will be the only Yooper Mysteries from her pen, but I hereby announce that I am writing her to beg otherwise, since Gertie is a gem, a one-of-a-kind genius, a Northern Michigan Miss Marple with bright orange hair, with an aversion to fancy clothes and makeup, and a talent for refusing to stay away from cases that should have any easy solution, but don't. There are recipes for pasties and other delicacies as well, but don't confuse these as being cute little cozies because the world of the Upper Peninsula is rendered in all its glory, from the sauna to the bars, to opening day of hunting season for deer, bear, and turkey. There's nothing too slick or superficial about her view of humans, and that knocks back the cutesy factor considerably. Her description of an abandoned hunting trailer in which Gertie is forced to hide out had me rolling on the floor. I should add that she has written another series of Dolly Mysteries, set in the cutthroat world of doll collecting, that I am saving for this fall, since I don't want to run out of Deb Baker's charming voice during the colder months.

Elizabeth Berg

Dream When You're Feeling Blue

Chicago writer Elizabeth Berg has published quite a bit, but after a trade show last fall where I heard her speak, I got my hands on Dream When You're Feeling Blue and gulped it down with gusto. Let me say that I am a nut for World War II and its fashions, the seemingly endless nostalgia it inspires, and even the music. However, her story is about Kitty Heaney, born of a typical Irish Catholic family in Chicago, who becomes one of many defense factory workers,widely known as the iconic Rosie the Riveter. But Kitty is not an old-fashioned girl. Her thoughts and responses to the deprivations and opportunities of wartime are not always predictable. And Berg gives us a description of the homefront that is far more nuanced and interesting than many other fiction accounts of World War II.

The novel ends many years after it begins, but the fates of the characters and how the war shapes them for life are not made simple or convenient or easily predictable. A wonderful glimpse into a time that came before my life span, but one that reminds the reader how much women's lives have changed- and not always for the better. I also was relieved that in place of Berg skimps on the big melodramatic scenes that might be the expected fare for a wartime novel. Her characters and the effort she makes to allow us into each one's thoughts and emotions become the force driving the narrative. As she delves into Kitty Heaney and her family, Berg tells the timeless story of a woman who has to learn to stand for herself.

Her new volume of short stories, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, was released in April. The stories therein are all tales of women defying some sort of convention, and is on my bedside bookcase, to be reviewed when completed.

Dorothea Benton Frank

The Land of Mango Sunsets

I first encountered this lively woman at a booksellers' gathering, but from her presentation to bookstore folks from all over the Midwest, I was already hooked. Frank is a great creator of memorable characters, and her character, Mellie, the narrator of the book, is both a by-the-book Southern lady and an urbane sophisticate from the upscale streets of New York City. This story unfolds some years following her divorce, but it also roughly describes the point in her life when she is forced to face the baggage left behind from that failure and to accept her own limits as they really are, without the unnecessary drama that continues because she refuses to move forward. Colorful characters abound, especially her mother, Miss Josie.
A satisfying read not only for the beach or vacation, but also thoughtful and well-crafted.

Other fiction books on my short list to read include:
The Third Angel Alice Hoffman
Loving Frank Nancy Horan
The History of Love Nicole Krauss
The View from Castle Rock Alice Munroadult
The Seamstress of Hollywood Erin McGraw
Gilead Marilynne Robinson












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