For some people, summer is full of hectic, busy days spent running from one event to the next. Others like to enjoy summer at half speed: on a picnic blanket with a glass of lemonade and a good book. If summer for you is synonymous with "summer reading," then you'll appreciate our summer book show.
We talk to Josie Leavitt, co-owner of Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, and Stan Hynds, book buyer for Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, about what makes a good summer read. And we get some of their suggestions for what books we should throw in our picnic baskets.
Broadcast live on Tuesday, June 10 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
Josie Leavitt's picks
Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta
Koryta's book is "face-paced, very on the seat of your pants," says Leavitt. "It's just terrifying, but it's so gripping."
The Care and Management of Lies: A Novel of the Great War by Jacqueline Winspear
How About Never? Is Never Good For You? by Bob Mankoff
Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
"I like cartoons, and I especially like New Yorker collections," Leavitt says. The memoir, told in cartoons, depicts Chast's life with her aging parents. "You can dip-in and dip-out, so they're perfect for the summer. They're just delightful."
Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon
The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan*
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian*
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Stan Hynds' picks
The Painter by Peter Heller
"It's great book about art, about the West," Hynds says. The book is about a painter who becomes a person of interest in an unnatural death. "The thing is going, as you know, to some ultimate confrontation. It's a fantastic, page-turning novel that happens to be about art as well. If you're going to read one novel about a violent, fly-fishing painter this summer, I can't recommend it enough."
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The book is "the kind of fiction that describes a reality as well as any nonfiction could," Hynds says. "It's the best book I've read in a couple years … If you're looking for a piece of serious literature to really immerse yourself in, this is the book I would recommend. If I were going to reread a book, and I don't do that, this would be the book I'd reread."
The Hoops Whisperer: On the Court and Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players by Idan Ravin
Listener picks
The Kept by James Scott
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
Big Ole Striped Silas by Grannie Snow*
The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley*
The Lord Came At Twilight by Daniel Mills*
Chasing the Milky Way by Erin E. Moulton
The King Raven Triology by Stephen R. Lawhead
Indefensible by Lee Goodman*
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Son by Philipp Meyer
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (forthcoming)
Eternal Sky fantasy trilogy by Elizabeth Bear
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
The Sherman Quartet by Donald P.H. Eaton
When I First Held You by Brian Gresko
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
*Denotes a Vermont author
