What An Unashamed Book Nerd Plans to Read This Summer.
I mentioned in the last blog that someone had put my book on their summer reading list. Well, I thought I would share mine with all of you. These are the definite reads for me this summer. There might be some books that sneak in unexpectedly, but here is what I absolutely will be reading this summer.
FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King.
A book I am presently halfway through. This is the sequel to MR. MERCEDES, King’s terrific mystery novel from last summer, which won the Edgar Award a few months back for Best Mystery Novel. This time, retired cop Bill Hodges and friends must save a teenage boy and his family from a vengeful man just released from prison, who is looking for stolen manuscripts that he took from a J.D. Salinger-like author who he murdered back in the Seventies, and that the boy has found. Stephen King is one of our great living authors, able to work in nearly any genre he chooses to write in. He has gone way beyond being a great “horror writer.” He is just a great writer—period.
THE FATEFUL LIGHTNING by Jeff Shaara.
Jeff Shaara, the son of Michael Shaara, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of THE KILLER ANGELS, which was adapted into the movie GETTYSBURG, has gone on to his own very successful career as a historical novelist, beginning with GODS AND GENERALS back in 1996, and continuing on with thirteen more novels. This new book is the conclusion of his four-book series set during the Civil War, and focusing on the Western campaigns, such as Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. This final book is about Sherman’s march through Georgia and into the Carolinas in 1864-1865. If you love great historical fiction, you can’t go wrong in reading Jeff Shaara.
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS by David McCullough.
David McCullough is a national treasure. Historian Douglas Brinkley put it about as well as anyone when he said, “David McCullough should be on currency.” The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning books TRUMAN and JOHN ADAMS, and the voice behind Ken Burns’ magnificent 1990 PBS documentary series THE CIVIL WAR turns his attention to Orville and Wilbur Wright, and their invention that changed the world forever. McCullough is so popular and so successful at what he does simply because he takes historical people and events, and weaves the facts that might have seemed boring and repetitive in school into a riveting story. Plus, he has written all ten of his books on an old manual typewriter he bought back in the 1960s. I admire that loyalty to old technology, though I cannot imagine writing now on anything but a computer.
THE ENGLISH SPY by Daniel Silva.
I’ve read a lot of international thrillers over the years, beginning with Robert Ludlum, and going on to such masters as Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Jack Higgins, and Tom Clancy. Of the current crop of thriller writers, Silva is my favorite. He is a wonderful writer and does what any writer of thrillers should do: keep you turning those pages until the very end. His character of Gabriel Allon is one of the most fascinating characters to ever appear in spy novels. He is an art restorer, but also an Israeli spy and assassin. His books are like John le Carre’s in that they are stylish, but unlike le Carre, he to me is much more readable and accessible. The scenes in each of his novels when Gabriel visits his ex-wife (he has since remarried), now confined to a psychiatric hospital in Israel after a bombing that shattered both her mind and body and killed their young son are heartbreaking.
GO SET A WATCHMAN by Harper Lee.
Perhaps the most eagerly awaited novel of 2015, the follow-up to one of the great novels of the 20th century, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I need say no more, except that I hope my great expectations (no pun intended) for this book are met.
Well, those are the definite reads this summer. I would like to finally sneak in Robert Caro’s MASTER OF THE SENATE, the third of his masterful biographical series about Lyndon Johnson, dealing with his years as Senate majority leader in the 1950s, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. I’ve had the paperback edition of this book since 2003 and just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. I have read the first two volumes. Since the release of book three, he’s published a fourth book dealing with his vice presidency under JFK, the assassination of JFK, and the early years of the Johnson administration, culminating in the passing and signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I am eagerly awaiting what will presumably be the final book, about the second half of Johnson’s presidency and Vietnam. But MASTER OF THE SENATE clocks in at over 1,000 pages. Intimidating to say the least. But I keep telling myself I’m going to get to it soon. But he certainly takes his time writing these books. The first book, THE PATH TO POWER, came out in 1982. The second book, MEANS OF ASCENT came out in 1990. MASTER OF THE SENATE came out in 2002, and THE PASSAGE OF POWER came out in 2012. And he's 79! I hope he doesn't die before he can finish the last one. Also, I would like to read Richard Preston’s THE HOT ZONE, published back in 1994, about an outbreak of the Ebola virus back in the Eighties. Stephen King called the book's first chapter, “One of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” I found it recently at a used bookstore in Harrisburg, IL, and will probably get to read it here in the near future.
Hope all of you have a safe and wonderful summer. And read some good books. Mine, if you haven't gotten around to it yet, and you're so inclined.
