August 09, 2012
Summer Reading?
Posted by Christine Hurt

Summer reading is upon us:  beach reads, required summer reading, book clubs.

My ten year-old son is in a "boy book club" (obviously organized my moms in book clubs).  This has been a surprisingly successful plot to keep reading going over the summer.  July's book was The Magic Thief, which was a big hit.  August's book is Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham.  (Our pick and a family favorite.)

My freshman daughter's required reading was To Kill a Mockingbird, which of course she had already read.  (Her parents are lawyers, after all.)  The eighth graders read A Princess Bride, which I thought was a brilliant choice.

As for my summer (pleasure) reading, I have to admit I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked.  (I think because I learned how to download movies onto my Kindle, turning airplane reading time into airplane Downton Abbey time.)  I continued my journey through Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series.  I am now on The Leopard, but I realize that I missed The Redeemer because it is not available on Amazon Kindle.  However, it is on Amazon UK, but the website tells me in a somewhat patronizing manner that the UK Kindle downloads are for residents of the UK only, Christine Hurt.  So, I'll have to get a hard copy so I can see what happened to Hole's supervisor. 

I also read Paul Theroux's Lower River, which is about a man's late-in-life return to the Malawi that he loved in the 1960s when he was a Peace Corps volunteer there.  It turns into a Mosquito Coast-type of disaster.  I would like to sit down with Theroux and make some points about Malawi culture that I believe he overlooked as I disagree with many of his premises.  Also, the entire plot hangs on our believing that a man in the 2010's hates cell phones so much that he would leave the U.S. for Malawi without one, and have a stranger drop him off in a remote village where he knows no one without a phone or a plan to leave.  It's sort of like watching Home Alone and suspending disbelief that none of the McAllisters in France can get hold of anyone in the Chicagoland area, friend, family, neighbor or law enforcement, to tell them that 8 year-old Kevin has been left completely alone.  I couldn't ignore a popular fiction book set in Malawi, but I was disappointed nevertheless.

Any suggestions here at the waning crescent of August?

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