Look closer...
...and you'll find some unexpected reading pleasures this summer
Most of the summer-reading lists you usually see are long, as are many of the books. Here’s a quirkier sort of list. It has three criteria.
1. The books are all short gems, about 250 pages or fewer.
2. Most have been overlooked.
3. While none is a "beach read" all are more for pleasure than improvement.
GOOD FICTION BY UNFAMILIAR WRITERS
All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen. A funny and touching first novel about young men, during and after college, looking for love, or something like it, and literary success. Al Gore (though not by name) has a background part.
All That Road Going by A.G. Mojtabai. In this variation of the "on the road" theme, we learn the sad stories of several passengers on a long bus trip across the American interior, with a reflective driver as a kind of one-man Greek chorus.
A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer, translated from the German by John Brownjohn. A wistful continental novel, in a tone similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day," with a character apparently modeled on German novelist Thomas Mann and a forgotten passion recalled after 30 years.
What I Was by Meg Rosoff. A novel for adults by the Boston-born and London-based author of "How I Live Now," which was a young adult bestseller in Britain. Speaking in the middle of the 21st century, a centenarian remembers a year in a grim boarding school, and a love for a wild boy who turns out to be not at all what he thought.
North of the Port by Anthony Bukoski. Twelve poignant short stories about Polish immigrant families in the mid-20th century, most set in Superior, Wis., a few in Louisiana. Something of the feeling of Willa Cather's "My Antonia," catalyzed with a powerful Catholic atmosphere.
MEMOIRS THAT ARE NOT ABOUT HORRIBLE CHILDHOODS
Autobiography of a Wardrobe by Elizabeth Kendall. A nutty and delightful biography of the author, written - we're not kidding - by her wardrobe. Starting with Kendall's 1950s childhood, the witty wardrobe relates the pinafores and saddle shoes of childhood, the Marimekko prints of youth, and the quiet denim of late middle age to the person who never herself speaks.
Sloop: Restoring My Family's Wooden Sailboat - An Adventure in Old-Fashioned Values by Daniel Robb. Author of "Crossing the Water," about the Penikese Island School for troubled boys in Buzzards Bay, Robb writes of his painstaking restoration of a rotted 12 1/2-foot Herreshoff that had floated on memory and emotion, and finally again on water.
Blueberry Summers: Growing Up at the Lake by Curtiss Anderson. A far-from-woebegone summer book for a summer day. Anderson, the retired editor of Ladies' Home Journal, writes in a sweet way about the 1930s and '40s with his Norwegian Lutheran family at a lake in northern Minnesota.
BOOKS ABOUT AMERICA, MINUS VENOM OR PARTISAN SCREAMING
Washington's War: The American War of Independence to the Iraqi Insurgency by Michael Rose. General Sir Michael Rose, veteran of the Falklands War and commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, connects our first and most recent wars by the common thread of great powers (Britain in 1776-81; the United States today) trying to get a grip on a complex and baffling foreign adventure. Whether he's right or wrong, Rose is erudite and writes beautifully, and his book is a fascinating and unsettling exercise.
Dreaming Up America by Russell Banks. A long rumination about the history and values of America, based on an interview with novelist Banks for a documentary by French filmmaker Jean-Michel Meurice.
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country by Howard Fineman. "Who is a Person?", "What Is an American?", "The Role of Faith," and "The Limits of Individualism" are some of the points of contention explored by journalist Fineman. A book for liberals and conservatives both. Fineman doesn't try to tell us the "correct" answers.
Memo to the President-Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership by Madeleine Albright. Despite the ringing title, this is no call to the barricades. In a quiet, reasonable, and witty way, the former secretary of state explores the foreign-policy decisions that the next president, whomever he is, must face after the balloons and balls are ended.
POETRY. YES, POETRY.
Silence Fell by Josephine Dickinson. This English composer and poet's life could not be fiction - too implausible. Profoundly deaf since age 6, in her 40s she married an 85-year-old Cumbrian farmer, learned the farm ways, and took care of him to the end of his life in 2004. She has never heard these starkly beautiful poems about lambs, life, and improbable love.
Fidelity by Grace Paley. Verses in the unmistakable, now-stilled voice of the great short-story writer. Finished just before Paley's death in 2004, several of the poems imagine long-lost loved ones back into life.
Earthly by Erica Funkhouser. Funkhouser lives in Essex and teaches writing at MIT. The heart of this fifth collection is a cycle of 15 poems under the title "Pome," inspired by the life of Johnny Appleseed. In "10. The Horses," a group of old nags turned out in the woods to die is fed apples by a mysterious man in a tin-pan hat.
The Ghost Soldiers by James Tate. The Pulitzer laureate's sprawling poems have a sort of prosey way about them, yet they seem to leap from the heart and mind, like verse at its best.
