August Reading Theme: Summer!

Our August reading theme is… Summer! Yes, classes may be starting, but we have weeks of long, hot summer days between now and September 22nd. These summery books are just the thing to help you savor the golden afternoons before assignments begin in earnest.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy

In a sleepy Irish town in the 1960s, the Ryan family thrives on hard work and simple pleasure until American millionaire Patrick O'Neill converts an estate into a luxury hotel, bringing about unforeseen changes. (Publisher’s summary)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

The enthralling debut from bestselling novelist Michael Chabon is a penetrating narrative of complex friendships, father-son conflicts, and the awakening of a young man’s sexual identity. Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway. (Goodreads.com summary)

Tell Me How the Wind Sounds by Leslie Davis Guccione

Fifteen-year-old Amanda Alden's summer vacation in New England turns out to be a summer of learning and love when she meets deaf, 17-year-old Jake. In spite of his brusqueness, Amanda learns to communicate with Jake through sign language, and soon realizes that her feelings for him are more than friendship. (Goodreads.com book summary)

The Shrimp and the Anemone by L. P. Hartley

An evocative account of a childhood summer spent beside the sea in Norfolk by brother and sister, Eustace and Hilda. (Publisher’s summary)

Last Summer by Evan Hunter

'Last Summer' is a remarkably simple novel with a powerful punch. Three teenagers, two guys and a girl, meet and become friends on a summer island community. These kids are at the cusp of adulthood, and social morals are in flux (..the story is set in the late 1960s). Lots of mischief ensues, mostly harmless stuff. But then they meet a nerdy girl who joins their threesome. At first it seems she will blend in but then it all goes so badly. No spoilers here but let's just say the social interactions of the threesome combined with the studipity of youth and exploding hormones yield a disturbing outcome. (Review by Amazon user lazza)

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

Set in a small, coastal town in Maine, this enduring sequence of intimate stories has assumed its rightful place in the pantheon of American classics. A series of small, beautifully rendered sketches as a sustained narrative, perfectly evoking the inexorable decline of coastal New England after the Civil War. (Goodreads.com book summary)

Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

Wildlife biologist Deanna is caught off guard by an intrusive young hunter, while bookish city wife Lusa finds herself facing a difficult identity choice, and elderly neighbors find attraction at the height of a long-standing feud. (Publisher’s summary)

A Separate Peace: A Novel by John Knowles

The Devon school in the summer of '42 is a lot like the fantasy kingdom of Camelot, and Phineas is its King Arthur, giving off a warm exuberance that attracts loyal followers and beguiles normally suspicious adults. No one loves him more than Gene, but this is Gene's "sarcastic" summer. (Publisher’s summary)

The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing

A middle-aged woman's search for freedom, this is classic Lessing, here given a stunning new image. Her four children have flown, her husband is otherwise occupied, and after twenty years of being a good wife and mother, Kate Brown is free for a summer of adventure. She plunges into an affair with a younger man, travelling abroad with him, and on her return to England, meets an extraordinary young woman whose charm and freedom of spirit encourages Kate in her own liberation. Kate's new life has brought her a strange unhappiness, but as the summer months unfold, a darker, disquieting journey begins, devastating in its consequences. (Goodreads.com book summary)

The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters

In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England. The armies of King Stephen and Empress Maud, the two royal cousins contending for the throne, have temporarily exhausted each other. On the whole, Brother Cadfael considers peace a blessing and agrees to accompany a friend to Wales. When Cadfael is captured by an army of Danish mercenaries, he finds himself in the midst of a brotherly quarrel that could plunge an entire kingdom into deadly chaos. (Publisher’s summary)

The Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart

When a charred corpse is discovered in the linen closet of her family's Maine retreat, a woman must do some fast sleuthing of her own--before a dangerous killer burns, her, too! (Goodreads.com book summary)

Farewell, Summer by Helen Hooven Santmyer

This slim novel tells, in the leisurely, old-fashioned style that has endeared Santmyer to many readers, about an ill-fated love affair that occurred in the town of Sunbury, Ohio, one summer, long ago. Damaris, a high-spirited beauty, returns home from a convent school and announces she wants to become a nun, an unthinkable idea to her Dutch Presbyterian family. Her cousin Steve, a dreamy young man who yearns to be a poet, comes to Sunbury after his father's death to seek his fortune. The inevitable happens. The two young people, with some encouragement from Damaris's grandfather, begin a flirtation… The author shines in her loving recollections of turn-of-the-century Ohio and her exploration of the ties that bind and break families. (Publishers Weekly)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women. (Goodreads.com book summary)