If y'all are looking for some quality summer reading, get thee over to Pajiba and check out their latest guide to what's good for you, featuring a compilation of books suggested by readers. Since Pajiba-ites tend to be smarter than your average bear, it doesn't look like there's a clunker in the bunch. I'm looking forward to a last summer fling with novels, and spending many langurous Sunday afternoons in the grip of some of these beauties before I am consumed in November with endless loads of laundry and taking care of my son.
Worth a Read
The Ones I Know
June 21, 2007
Recent Posts
Books
Annie Dillard: The Living: A Novel
Currently reading.Azar Nafisi: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Part feminist outcry against the Islamic regime in Iran, but mostly a love letter to books. Nafisi looks at Lolita, Daisy Miller, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice not only as works of literature themselves, but through the lens of students during the heyday of the Islamic revolution. My only caveat? It helps to have read the books she discusses.Lauren Weisberger: Everyone Worth Knowing
I picked this up at the airport. After hearing about my grandmother's death I just couldn't deal with "Silent Spring," and this seemed less objectionable than Nora Roberts or Michael Crichton. I finished it, mainly to see if it could really keep up the flow of utter awfulness and banality right up until the end. Easily the worst book I've read since that romance novel about the Corgi. Avoid at all costs.Amy Stewart: Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers
One of the most interesting nonfiction books I've read recently. Stewart examines the cut-flower industry, and you'll never look at flowers the same way again. A must-read for anyone who buys flowers.
Listening
She moved through the fair
Jean Redpath: First Flight
Redpath does the most evocative version of this song I've ever heard.I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)
Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell II- Queen Jane
Custer LaRue: Custer LaRue Sings The Daemon Lover Funeral Ikos
Christopher Robinson: Tavener: Song for Athene/Svyati
One of the most starkly beautiful melodies I've ever heard, this meditative chant on death and the afterlife stuns me anew every time I hear it.