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I love to read articles where different people talk about what they are planning to read on the beach or by the lake. While I’ve been known to cart War and Peace (the new translation is tempting me) around while on vacation, ideally Summer reading should be light, easy to carry around and fun to read – a break from the thick biographies and such that are more fitting for a long winter night. I’ve already read three great books this summer which were purely self-indulgent, fun reads:
1) Desolation Island, by Patrick O’Brian. Any other O’Brian fans out there? I’ve been hooked on these books since the movie, Master and Commander came out a few years ago. They are filled with action on the high seas during the Napoleonic wars, but the character development and attention to detail is also amazing. As a huge fan of Jane Austen, these books that are exactly contemporary with her period complement her more interior, local village scenes by showing what the men were up to: the brothers at sea (as were her own), the Admirals called back on duty, the militias that moved on. I usually detest the fake feeling of many historical novels, but such is O’Brian’s meticulous scholarship that the dialogue, values and actions of the characters ring as true as if he had been an actual contemporary of Austen. (Desolation Island is the fifth in the series).
2) Speaking of Jane Austen, I enjoyed Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club, both the book and the movie were fine tributes to my favorite author. I gave her latest book, Wit’s End a try and was mildly amused and entertained by it. The setting, an old Victorian house in Santa Cruz that had been built by a survivor of the Donner Party, and the characters were all pretty well done. Her writing is good-natured, with many sly bits of humor sprinkled in, little recurring jokes that work. The plot was a little clunky and overdone, but on the whole it was worth a read.
3) I really like Australian mystery novelist Peter Temple and just finished his latest, The Broken Shore, which I’m a little hesitant to recommend. It has gotten great reviews, but the Australian slang and vulgarity may be difficult for some readers as is his elliptical writing style, which leaves a lot unsaid and much going on under the surface – rather like Hemingway; however, his characters, detailed descriptions and laconic humor reward the persistent reader. This was not my favorite of his because of the nature of the crimes and some of the grisly descriptions; however, I will definitely be on the lookout for his next novel Truth which should clear up some of the unfinished business and dangling plotlines from this one. (If you like to read everything by a new favorite author, be forewarned that all of his books are not yet available in the U.S.)

For the rest of the summer, I’m interested in two unique books about poets: Fall of Frost by Brian Hall, a somewhat controversial fictionalization of the life of Robert Frost and Posthumous Keats. I’d also like to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (didn’t everyone read this one a few years back?) and an older book that was referenced by Fowler (her heroine was named Rima) in Wit’s End: Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson (also a movie starring Audrey Hepburn).