My pile of books is coming down. I'd be happy to hear about suggestions for summer reading, if you say why the book is worth reading.


Mine would be "Us" by David Nicholls. An absolute must! The summary is:


"Douglas and Connie, scientist and artist, and for more than twenty years husband and wife, until suddenly their marriage seems over. But Douglas is going to win back the love of his wife and the respect of Albie, their teenage son, by organising the holiday of a lifetime.
He has booked the hotels, bought the train tickets, planned and printed the itinerary for a Grand Tour of the great art galleries of Europe.


What could possibly go wrong?"


Unassuming Douglas and his scientific, rational, punctual mind but emotionally clumsy and a bit gauche personality, contrasted with the sharp wit and pragmatism of Connie were brilliant. British dry wit at its best! For anyone who has had a few years behind already in their marriage, you are bound to identify with one or the other!

Sounds like an intriguing read.

Don't know if I'm going to do any recreational reading over the summer, but there are a few books I look forward to leafing through, including "The Traveler" (M. Katakis), "Me talk pretty one day" (D. Sedaris), "Air Guitar" (D. Hickey), "Girl in the flammable skirt" (A. Bender) and "The Circle" (D. Eggers)

I'm reading that at the moment. I bought it for my sister recently and she normally seems to like the books I buy for her but I realised I hadn't actually read this one myself so I ought to.
I've been standing up putting on my socks since reading the opening chapter!

I read 'The Martian' by Andy Weir earlier in the year, it stole 4 days of my life, couldn't put it down.

I rarely read fiction, but during the summer I will allow myself to "zone out" so to speak and read mainly humor and other lighter styles.

In the last few weeks I've read Jonas Jonasson's "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared" as well as his "The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden."

Both were gut wrenching funny. I'd recommend either of one of them - they're light, they're absurd... in short they're perfect for summer.

Try an audiobook, that way you can read all summer without the crick in your neck... the link goes to Audible's Great First Listens page

"Keeping an Eye Open" by Julian Barnes - picked it up because it looked interesting - essays on art I have more time to read than to go to an art gallery.

I just googled his name and found out he is a Man Booker Prize winner.

One of my favourite books from anthropologist and ethnographer Nigel Barley about his first fieldwork in northern Cameroon:

Adventures in a Mud Hut: An Innocent Anthropologist Abroad

He describes the whole drama, frustrations, loneliness of fieldwork in a foreign culture in a hilarious way:

" Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize in slamming into walls and falling, fluttering onto your face. As my own 'piece of equipment essential for the field' I would strongly recommend a tennis racket: it is devastatingly effective in clearing a room of bats."

“Faced with the impossibility of eating off the land, I decided to keep my own chickens. This, also, was not a success. Some I bought, some were given to me. Dowayo chickens, on the whole, are scrawny, wretched things; eating them is rather like eating an Airfix model of a Tiger Moth. They responded to treatment, however. I fed them on rice and oatmeal, which Dowayos who never feed them at all found a huge extravagance. One day, they began to lay. I had fantasies of being able to eat an egg every day. As I sat in my hut, gloating over my first day’s haul, my assistant appeared in the doorway, an expression of bland self-satisfaction on his face. ‘Patron,’ he exclaimed, ‘I just noticed the chickens were laying eggs so I killed them before they lost all their strength!’”

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Guns don't kill people, George R.R. Martin kills people.

McTAVGE might get some other good book suggestions from this thread:

What are you currently reading?

One of my favs and an all time classic.
Great Expectation by Charles Dickens. A beautiful romantic tale of a poor boy who comes to sudden riches! Worth a read if you haven't

I'm currently reading The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Issacson. A wonderful tale of how computers and the entire electronic industry was moulded by a few geniuses and how a team succeeds.

Lisa Genova's "Still Alice"- read it in 4 nights.
Thinking of watching the movie , but still do not know if it is worth to.

Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. Some of the best fantasy fiction I've read in a long time - beautiful use of language.

All 13 of Lemony Snicket - A series of unfortunate events. Very funny and black humour suitable for adults as well.

I'm first in line should you want to get rid of (all of) these books.

Yes, still waiting on the third book in that series. Also Joe Abercrombie's Half a War and some more Brent Weeks before the next Robin Hobb comes out.

Some nice books to read this summer:

Anthony Doerr: All the Lights We Cannot See

Helen Garner: The Spare Room

Peter Hoeg: The Effect of Susan

Michael Ridpath: 66 Degrees North

Mihail Shishkin: Maidenhair

John Williams: Stoner

The Big Money and Manhattan Transfer

- both by John Dos Passos

You Can't Go Home Again

- Thomas Wolf

Ueli der Knecht (again)

- Jeremias Gotthelf