Charlotte Readers Share Picks for Summer Reading
by Robbie Stanley

Ah, what a literary town Charlotte is! We love hearing what so many of us are reading this summer (or at least what we’re admitting to reading), which appears to be the usual range from light to heavy. Many thanks to all those who sent in their picks this year, and don’t forget that many of these titles are likely to show up at the Town Party booksale on July 11.

Great minds thinking alike
There are, naturally, several readers working on the same books. Two Whitneys (Williamson and Dunsmore) highly recommend Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Whitney D. found it to be a gripping novel that she couldn’t put down and that stayed with her for weeks. “It is the story of a contemporary American woman living in Paris married to a French man, who discovers a connection between her husband’s family and the round-up of 7,000 Jewish French citizens, mostly women and children, by the French Gendarmerie in 1942.  The novel tells the story of a young girl, Sarah, who lives through the experience, and Julia, the American woman who learns her story.”
Both Pati Naritomi and Marilyn Holmberg (and likely a few more) are into The Story of Edgar Sawtell by David Wroblewski. Roberta Whitmore, Katherine Arthaud and Whitney Dunsmore all recommend Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Several readers had a good time with the ever-popular Alexander McCall Smith’s books from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. And many recemmended the oddly-titled but wonderful story set in the Isle of Guernsey, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.
Heads up to Joyce Wallace, who “can’t wait for Chris Bohjalian’s new book to arrive” (Skeletons at the Feast) – Nancy Wood says she really enjoyed it. She adds that it is an intriguing story while adding new perspectives on life in Germany and Poland during World War II. Along with several others, Paula Joslin reports that her favorite book in ages is Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain. She says, “The narrator is a dog (not just any dog, of course) and the main human character is a race car driver--not usually themes I go for, but it works and is a poignant, charming book.” 
Frances Foster loved the new release, America, America by Ethan Canin and Sharon Beal liked Out Stealing Horses, a novel by Per Petterson that came out last year. Pati Naritomi raves about The Book Thief (Markus Zusak), saying that it’s maybe the best book she’s ever read; high praise indeed.

Soon to be a major motion picture
Marcia Vogler recommends Julie and Julia (an upcoming movie) by Julie Powell, a memoir of an inexperienced cook and picky eater in Queens, New York, who decides to make all of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I over the course of a year.
And in the books-as-movies theme, Dorrice and John Hammer are about to undertake The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. They just saw the movie on DVD (which John points out is available at the Charlotte Library) and were inspired to read the book in hopes that some of the questions raised by the movie will have an answer hidden in the book’s pages.
The Manning girls, Cassie and Mariah, each had to have their own copy of My Sister’s Keeper (Jody Picoult) to read this summer. It, too, is a recently-opened movie. In anticipation of the upcoming blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, CVU student Ian Meier is rereading various Harry Potter books. And Taka Bennett took on Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, which came out as a movie last year.

Older books are good, too.
Some of us are using summer reading time to get around to a few older titles.
Giovanna Brunini Congdon is going way back with the Oxford World’s Classics, particularly stories by Voltaire and Candide, and then moving up to the 19th century with Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Both Paula Joslin and Joyce Wallace are amidst A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Katherine Arthaud is in the middle of Prince of Tides (Pat Conroy). Wendy Bratt has just read Outlander by Diana Galbaldon and emailed a warning - “reading this book right before bedtime may not induce sleep!”
Elizabeth Bassett’s summer booklist is based on “African colonial/post-colonial books,” including When A Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin and Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller. Elizabeth is currently in Alexander Fuller’s Scribbling the Cat, about surviving a life in war-torn Africa. “Difficult but interesting.”
A Winter’s Tale by Mark Helpring is an on-going favorite of the O’Brien family. Tom says, “We’ve all read it, we all love it.”
The Charlotte News’ own Melissa Eyre reports from the road that, “My son, Nate (11), and I are on a grand summer Way Out West adventure and somehow we managed to pick the perfect book to read aloud to one another during our days and nights on the road: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen. It’s a hilarious, beautiful story about a 12-year-old boy who lives on a ranch in Montana and is a kind of genius cartographer. After winning an award from the Smithsonian, he sets out on a fantastic cross-country adventure, alone. You should hear us laughing outloud, or shouting, “Wait! Read that part again!” as we’ve crossed the vast farmlands of Wisconsin and Minnesota, sat beside Spearfish Creek in South Dakota and eaten breakfast in a cafe in Steamboat. But you don’t have to be a kid or leave home to love this read. Go directly to the Flying Pig and get this book today; we promise you will love it.
Seven-year-old Stuart Robinson wasted no time in getting to a favorite summer read, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.College student Cody Stanley is seeking deeper meaning in Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger).

Then there’s the nonfiction.
For anyone interested in combining their reading with this summer’s theme of the lake’s quadricentennial, both John Hammer and Carl Tatlock recommend Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer (available at the Charlotte Library). John reports, “It was interesting in view of the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial. A good book if you are interested in history and not too difficult to read. It is heavily footnoted for the true history buff.”
Stuart Bennett is reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkins. Publisher’s Weekly gives it a starred review and adds, “Filkins, a New York Times prize–winning reporter, is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book is based on his work in Afghanistan and Iraq since 1998.” Stuart - when you’re done, Laurie Moser wants to read it but hasn’t been successful trying to get it at the library. Ebeth Scatchard is in the midst of reading about another war, Our Great War Memoirs of WWII from the Wake Robin Community in Shelburne.
Joyce Wallace is currently reading The Sisters Antipodes, a memoir by Jane Alison; she describes it as a profound and beautifully written account of a tumultous childhood. Joyce and Dana Farley recommend The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, by Kevin Roons, a Brown University journalism student who goes undercover to Jerry Falwell’s ultra-conservative Liberty University for a semester. Joyce says that it’s “brilliant and required reading for those who believe they have open minds,” while Dana found it “fascinating, funny and totally eye opening.”
Some people profess to be in a self-improvement reading program. Nancy Wood is learning “more than I ever expected about the history of botany” with The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession by Andrea Wulf. Pati Naritomi is interspersing novels with The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, which sounds like as much of a beach book as Anders Holm’s recommendation, Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative by Nobel Laureate biologist Christian de Duve. Anders swears it’s a good read and the part about the RNA intermingling with the DNA is quite risqué.
Only one book of poetry made the list: Man and Camel by Mark Strand, recommended by Carrie MacKillop. The Booklist review says of Strand, “A painter before he became a poet, he translates into words the solitary spell of Edward Hopper and the mystery of Giorgio de Chirico.”

Who’s Who: the biographies
Jay Vogler and Carol Hanley are both learning about 20th century art this summer. Jay is reading DeKooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan while Carol is planning to start the autobiography Annie Leibovitz at Work, about the well-known photographer. Bonnie Christie is enjoying Bad Girls Go Everywhere, the biography of Helen Gurley Brown, who was at the forefront of the American sexual revolution in the early 1960s.
Some readers in town are reaching further back in history. Joanne Wallis’s imagination is residing in the 800s this summer while she reads Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross.
Carl Tatlock also recommends Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Walter Isaacson), the quintessential Renaissance man. Senior Center Walkers take note: it was Franklin who invented the odometer by attaching a counter wheel behind a carriage to establish the mileage between towns. Carl adds, “Statesman, scholar, scientist, inventor, author, printer, publisher and diplomat – the list goes on and on. Once during the last of his 84 years he traveled to Quebec on the terrible roads and trails of the day. Ignoring the painful jolting, he commented on how pretty Lake Champlain was. There are a lot of books about Franklin (one of which he wrote himself) but this is certainly one of the best.” Since Carl is a first cousin of Benjamin Franklin, seven generations removed, he has a special interet in ol’ Ben.

That sums it up for this year. Keep turning those pages, and keep track of your favorites for next time!