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Summer reading recommendations

June 19, 2009 at 9:56 am by Monica Potts

Nancy Pearl, a librarian, author, and critic, visited NPR’s morning edition today to recommend newly-released books for your summer vacations. On the show’s site, you can vote for the best beach book ever. What are yours?

Monica Potts

Posted in General | 4 Comments
4 Comments »

  1. I don’t know about the best beach book ever, but as far as new titles this year, I liked Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor.

    If you didn’t get to it last year, now in paperback Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland.

    And lastly, I was having a discussion with a friend about this the other day, you really should pick up the Great Gatsby again if you haven’t read it since the 8th grade. I think you can finish it in one sitting, even before you get sunburned…

    –CP

    Comment by Chris Preovolos — June 22nd, 2009 @ 11:46 am

  2. I might be a year behind on the recommendation, but yesterday I finished the The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz — last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner. I tore through it in a weekend — it’d make an excellent beach read.

    Told from the perspective of a Dominican family, the book rolls 1980s New Jersey, the sword-and-sorcery genre, and more than what the author calls “the standard two second of Dominican history” (which, I confess, I must have slept though because it was all new and fascinating to me).

    And I completely fell for the book’s title character an overweight “ghetto nerd” with aspirations to be the next Dominican JR Tolkien with talks like a 19th century Jedi — or at least how I imagine some chivalrous sci-fi Oscar Wilde to talk.

    So better late than never, I hope. If you missed this one last year, check it out.

    Comment by Devon Lash — June 23rd, 2009 @ 11:02 am

  3. I am going more low-brow than my colleagues here, but I am starting 10 days off Saturday and hope to rip through some mysteries during my vacation. Most of my favorite authors — Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos — have new books out. I need the escapism!

    Comment by Dave Ruden — June 23rd, 2009 @ 12:42 pm

  4. You know Devon, I tried to get through the Junot Diaz book, I really did. I liked the parts with Oscar but grew really tired of his style and the endless descriptions of his mother’s fine Dominican culo.

    Enough already.

    Comment by Chris Preovolos — June 27th, 2009 @ 3:54 pm

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AmericanLion

For November, I'll be reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. We'll update our book club selection for December and January shortly.

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Meet the Authors:

  • Marilyn Ramos is a partner at the Stamford litigation law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell. She is a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Fairfield County Bar Association and the Fairfield County Bar Foundation. She received her law degree from Pace University School of Law in 1989 and is a member of the Connecticut and New York bars. Prior to her career in law, she was a teacher with the Greenwich Public Schools and worked for the Stamford Human Rights Commission. Her views expressed on this blog are completely her own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.
  • Roy J. Nirschel is president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. He grew up in Stamford and his father was a firefighter on the West Side. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Miami. He has traveled around the world, visiting 35 countries, but said, "I can’t credit on the road with getting me on the road."