Summer Reading

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century. Edited by Orson Scott Card - a series of the best science fiction out there, divided into 3 sections: the golden age, the new wave and the media generation. They are all essentially short stories, s you can jump in and out.

Any thing from the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman is an old-school British public school aristocrat in the age of the Raj. James Bond-esque, except that he is a drunkard and a cad and only thinks of himself. Hilarious and fun, not too heavy...
 
I am about half way through Richard J. Evans' historical work "The Third Reich at War." Don't try it unless you want to be equal parts depressed and repulsed.

Prior to that it was Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" about Lincoln and his cabinet.

Neither book is what I would call light summer reading. They are good for building up arm muscles - both are ridiculously heavy.

Once I'm done with Evans' text it will be time for the latest Daniel Silva novel.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Oh, also, Caro's Johnson biography volumes make a good sink-in read. Master of the Senate also incorporates a fair amount of institutional analysis and history, as well. Caro's earlier work, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses in New York, is also a good 'forget the the world for a while' read.
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Totally agree about Caro's LBJ trilogy, Ian. Have you heard whether he's planning any additional volumes Master of the Senate leaves off a few years of his life in which a few interesting things happened.

re: V v. GR -- I like them both, but Gravity's Rainbow is more typical beach reading to me.

Mark Lipton
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GR fell apart for me at some point, although I finished it: maybe that says more about me than about the book. Although I still think about the final rocket ride from time to time.

Caro is still working on the series, as far as I know. I heard a presentation he made a couple of years ago that was broadcast on the radio. He spoke, among other things, about the difficulty of replicating the quality of the earlier volumes as fewer and few key people who were involved in Johnson's career are available to assist with the research. What John wrote makes sense in view of the structure of Caro's approach: two volumes would allow Caro to cover his period as Vice-president and then as President.

So John, what's the dictionary definition of beach book, and how do you determine which tomes do and don't qualify?

There is also the Civil War history: Shelby Foote's series; Grant's or Sherman's memoirs; Wills on Lincoln. Or musical biography: Marek's biography of Beethoven, or Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers. Once you get started with this, it's hard to stop. There are also some decent books on wine.
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I'm Jonathan, but I think you are talking to me. For most people, beach reading, is light reading to while away hours in sun, sand and booze. For me, it tends to be long and engaging fiction that can merit hours of attention but not demand too much analysis. Hence, great 19th century fiction, heavy on plot and interestingly drawn characters will do. Masterpieces that get their power from what they do with plottedness work best and War and Peace was the occasion of a great summer read for me. But the Count of Monte Cristo works too. On the other hand, books that reward something like analytical attentiveness, In Search of Lost Time or, at a much lesser level, Pynchon, are for different places and different times for me. On Pynchon, his characters are indeed cartoonish. The prose in the books up through GR, though overwrought, was still worth the attention and his ability to structure plots along figural versions of odd conspiracies or his version of some scientific theory were worth the attention. I am less put off by cartoon characters than by the casual misogyny of the books. He does exemplify the element of postmodernism that is just about being a horny white guy. But there are countermanding virtues.

On Caro's take, read Dallek's biography for a much fairer, to my mind, view. Caro is an old 60s, New York leftist and remembers Johnson that way. So am I and so do I and I like his books. But there is a different version. And it is also just true for me that after an adulthood in which Democratic Presidents were Carter and Clinton, he looks a lot better to me. Hell, even Nixon's domestic policies were to the left of Clinton's and Clinton was about the best we had for a long time.
 
Otto - you might enjoy William Dalrymple if you haven't already read the books; I liked them more than T M-S.

I like Hello and OK! magazines for summer reading.
 
Ditto on all the Caro books (I think his feelings toward LBJ evolve, as Caro begins to appreciate, while writing during the Reagan years, what "traditional liberalism" and a strong Senate can do, and as the scars of Vietnam begin to heal). But Caro's wife, Ina, his only research assistant and a professionally trained historian, is a fabulous writer herself (very different style). Road from the Past, her book on France--history, anthropology, and food--has been widely praised. It's an utterly charming account of her and Bob's French travels and discoveries. I think she would approve of drinking something like Rimbert Saint-Chinian's Le Mas au Schiste with it.

Speaking of France, but probably redundant to this group, Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route is pretty amazing (must be read with Tempier Rose of course.) His Inspiring Thirst is fun, but probably more of a "bathroom book." I usually don't drink much there.

The Larsonn trilogy is ~1800 pages and utterly addictive. I envy you for not having read it yet. A Spatlese?

Nelson DeMille has written great and really dishy murder novels about the Gold Coast, Long Island, and you might enjoy the local angle with a local wine, too. Maybe the Castello di Borghese Chardonnay?

Depending on temperament, a book you might enjoy and that both my wife (Jane Austin-type) and I (beer-football-beer-football) reread last summer and loved was Anna Karenina. Usually voted the greatest novel ever during the Y2K nonsense, it really is astonishingly charming and disturbing. War and Peace, as Jonathan notes, is also a towering monument of literature. Either makes surprisingly good summer reading, and you can dominate all the fall cocktail parties. Vodka, nothing but vodka.

Hope the weather's great!!
 
Speaking of France, but probably redundant to this group, Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route is pretty amazing (must be read with Tempier Rose of course.)
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And here I thought we'd made some progress on the Tempier ros front.
 
originally posted by Nicolas Mestre:
Speaking of France, but probably redundant to this group, Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route is pretty amazing (must be read with Tempier Rose of course.)
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And here I thought we'd made some progress on the Tempier ros front.
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you mean that delicious rose?
 
Inherent Vice would make a fine summer read. It's Pynchon Lite, perhaps, but a delight all the same.
 
I just reread Anna Karenin this winter. Yes, a great, great novel, but it always threatens to make me want to join Anna in her fate at the end. Maybe it would work better in the summer, or maybe it would ruin the beach.
 
originally posted by Nicolas Mestre:
Speaking of France, but probably redundant to this group, Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route is pretty amazing (must be read with Tempier Rose of course.)
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And here I thought we'd made some progress on the Tempier ros front.
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Jeez, this is a tough crowd...that's Lynch's drink, after all. If you're reading his book....

Re: Anna. No worries about reading her at the beach: no trains nearby.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

On Caro's take, read Dallek's biography for a much fairer, to my mind, view. Caro is an old 60s, New York leftist and remembers Johnson that way. So am I and so do I and I like his books. But there is a different version. And it is also just true for me that after an adulthood in which Democratic Presidents were Carter and Clinton, he looks a lot better to me. Hell, even Nixon's domestic policies were to the left of Clinton's and Clinton was about the best we had for a long time.
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I certainly agree that, warts and all, LBJ is still my favorite President of my lifetime (1959-present). JFK wasn't given the chance to fulfill all of his promise and we of course will have to see what Obama can accomplish in the remainder of his tenure. Apropos of all this, Diane Rehm is currently discussing with James Patterson the Moynihan Report, the Voting Rights Act and Johnson's 1965 speech at Howard University. Hearing Johnson's reminds me of just how profound his accomplishments and, yes, his intentions actually were.

Mark Lipton
 
...for your recommendations.

FWIW I read the Caro's "The Power Broker" on an Amagansette Beach about 25 years ago and though it is of considerable length, Caro is so engaging, I found it impossible to put down - a must read for any native or aspiring New Yorker. I found the parallels between Robert Moses and Mohammed Bin Laden quite interesting. I have been eying the LBJ series for some time..

That said, I think I am leaning toward something more in the fiction vein, "to while away hours in sun, sand and booze". Pynchon has been in my Amazon Shopping Cart for some time but I think I may pass this time. Looks like it is going to be both Greene and Larsson, though I also have Wallace's, "Consider the Lobster" and Steinhauer's, "The Tourist" in the cart.

Hoping for good weather.

Jason
 
I enjoyed Wolf Hall but I was predisposed as a huge H Mantel fan. As I have been spending a lot of time in the 15th/16th centuries recently it was interesting to see things from across the channel.
 
After health care, I'm becoming more and more partial to Obama as at least high on the list of Prez of my lifetime (so far). LBJ will still be higher than I ever thought I would hold him while he was actually a Prez.

I'm going to repop, for Jason, my Trollope recommendation. You don't know what a compulsively readable book feels like until, to quote Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, you've taken a little Trollope to bed with you of an evening.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

I watched this movie about three weeks ago - great flick. The Havana police chief was pretty good too.
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And the location shots of the city are great.

Alec Guinness might be even better as George Smiley than as Jim Wormold, vacuum cleaner salesman.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

On Caro's take, read Dallek's biography for a much fairer, to my mind, view. Caro is an old 60s, New York leftist and remembers Johnson that way. So am I and so do I and I like his books. But there is a different version. And it is also just true for me that after an adulthood in which Democratic Presidents were Carter and Clinton, he looks a lot better to me. Hell, even Nixon's domestic policies were to the left of Clinton's and Clinton was about the best we had for a long time.
Click to expand...

I certainly agree that, warts and all, LBJ is still my favorite President of my lifetime (1959-present). JFK wasn't given the chance to fulfill all of his promise and we of course will have to see what Obama can accomplish in the remainder of his tenure. Apropos of all this, Diane Rehm is currently discussing with James Patterson the Moynihan Report, the Voting Rights Act and Johnson's 1965 speech at Howard University. Hearing Johnson's reminds me of just how profound his accomplishments and, yes, his intentions actually were.

Mark Lipton
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Did Caro impugn Johnson's motives? I didn't get that impression. He did not leave out the warts, for sure. But I thought he tried to be faithful to the man's complexity.
 
originally posted by Cole Kendall:
I enjoyed Wolf Hall but I was predisposed as a huge H Mantel fan. As I have been spending a lot of time in the 15th/16th centuries recently it was interesting to see things from across the channel.
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Oh yes!!! Wolf Hall is brilliant, though not entirely easy to get into. Give it 100 pages, as I've friends who've given up on it before then. Still trying to read her French Rev. book: will attack it again this summer.

Consider the Lobster is something very, very special: a cultural building block...a spiritual meditation...something that makes us realize that we're human and, for all our shortcomings, maybe more.
 
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