It’s been months – months I tell you! since I’ve posted anything other than a reality recap on this blog. Believe it or not, I do a lot of other things besides watching horrible women on Bravo and writing about it afterward. One of my favorite things to do on my “own time” is read. Here are five books I’ve read this summer that I have really enjoyed; hopefully one or two are new suggestions for you and might make your end-of-summer reading list.
1. The Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll
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The Luckiest Girl Alive is, unsurprisingly, being called “this summer’s Gone Girl“, and it’s entirely due the praise. (And is much better than Dark Places, “this summer’s other book by the author of Gone Girl, which I couldn’t get into on two separate occasions.) Jessica Knoll’s first novel brings us the improbably-named Ani FaNelli, a bitter, ruthlessly-ambitious magazine editor in Manhattan who appears to have it all, having fought hard to get it. At first Ani is nearly impossible to like, but as she tells her story – starting in her adolescence, tracing through to how she got here and now – it becomes impossible not to begin to empathize and see a bit of yourself in her (at least, if you are female). Just when you think you’ve arrived at the twist that you anticipated, suddenly there’s another one that you never saw coming. Unlike The Girl On The Train, another current novel to which it’s been frequently compared, Ani is a protagonist that you don’t want to take out back and throttle four times a chapter. There’s sardonic humor, raw tragedy, and the flickering lights of Manhattan.
2. The Woman I Wanted to Be, by Diane Von Furstenberg
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OK, first of all: stupidest title ever. Second? This isn’t particularly well-written, and on the whole left me thinking this woman is perfectly ridiculous. But: I love DVF, both for her fashion and her larger-than-life personality, and to be honest the only reason I downloaded this book was because a magazine article about another member of her family made me wonder about the dirt. I’ve now come to realize that So Morgan is totally Single White Femaling DVF and hoping (a) it works, and (b) nobody notices. This is a fun, light read, dancing through the fashion and social whirls of my lifetime with plenty of name-dropping, juicy gossip, and preposterous activities all thanks to a true diva of fashion, who in the end seems genuinely filled with love and joy. Who minds that?
3. The Hundred-Year House, by Rebecca Makkai
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I picked this paperback up on a whim passing through my favorite small bookseller, immediately before Small got his fingers pinched in the door hinge and we had to pay and make a break for it. He came out unscathed in the end and I ended up with an unexpected jewel of a book to read at the end of our summer travels. This is the story of a fictional house: Laurelfield, constructed in the northern suburbs of Chicago (my native stomping grounds) by and for the outrageously wealthy industrialist Devohr family of Canada, several generations of whose members lived in it, tragically died in it, and may have carried on haunting it as it became an artists’ colony before reverting back to sheltering, and possibly destroying the lives of, more Devohr descendants. The novel is told in three parts: on the cusp of the Y2K; in the 50s, after the colony; and finally during the last days of the colony itself. Only until the final paragraph do all the threads tie together. This is one book I’d love to re-read to catch the Easter eggs I missed, and reminds me that there’s something you get reading a good story on paper that eludes digital reading. Also: be sure to read the Acknowledgements to the final line.
4. The Ride of Our Lives, by Mike Leonard
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If you watch the Today show you might know Mike Leonard, and might even have seen some of his dispatches from the road as he criss-crossed America in an RV with his elderly parents and several of his children along for the ride. Mr. Leonard grew up and still lives in my hometown, so he’s a local celebrity and the flashbacks to his childhood feature the same locations and experiences of mine. This is really not as much a memoir as a love letter to Mike’s wacky, often unintentionally hilarious parents, the wine-loving, profanity-spewing Marge and the sober and effusive Jack. This is a easy read that will make you laugh out loud, love Mike’s family, and want to hit the road with your own. (And most of the reviews on Amazon erroneously refer to some sort of nonfiction book about Barry Bonds and steroids in baseball, so disregard.)
5. A Pleasure and a Calling, by Phil Hogan
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So this is the book I am currently reading, and I offer the recommendation with the caveat that I am only on chapter four and have no idea where this is going. But I am one hundred percent absorbed. William Heming is an “estate agent” (read: realtor) in a charming English village (aren’t they all?), who has a wee little secret hobby: he is a peeper. Not a window peeper; no, Mr. Heming has the keys to every house he’s ever sold, and he likes to use them to keep tabs on things. I love anything told in a droll British voice, and I especially love British humor, and so far there’s a lot of it in dark form. But I can already feel the tension building and the unexpected about to unfold. Anyone who leaves an unbagged dog turd as a calling card is my kind of antihero.
Happy weekend, and happy reading!
