The eNotes Blog Summer Reading Recommendations

Summer Reading Recommendations Ahhhsummer.   Time to catch up on some reading, but so many choices. Here are some suggestions to sure please every reading taste: Memoir One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest When Paul Guest was twelve years old, he broke his neck in a horrific accident on a bicycle. The author takes the reader from those immediate, difficult years following the accident into his manhood. Guest became a teacher, an award-winning poet, and a husband. One More Theory About Happiness has been called : â€Å"Wonderful†- John Ashbery; â€Å"Astonishing†- Jorie Graham; â€Å"Fierce and unnerving†- Robert Hass.   You can read an excerpt here. Fiction The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall Included on many summer reading favorites of critics is Brady Udalls   tragicomedy, The Lonely Polygamist. Golden Richards is married to four women. He has twenty-eight children.   And he is having one hell of a midlife crisis. His business is failing, his wives and children are fighting amongst each other, and he is trying to come to terms with the death of his daughter and the stillborn death of his son.   To cope, Golden has an affair which threatens his family and business. Read an excerpt here. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo By Steig Larson The first in Larssons acclaimed trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a good way to begin your summer reading and then continue on with the second volume, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and conclude with the final installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. A summary from the publisher: Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist is hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance of Vanger’s great-niece Harriet. Henrik suspects that someone in his family, the powerful Vanger clan, murdered Harriet over forty years ago. Starting his investigation, Mikael realizes that Harriet’s disappearance is not a single event, but rather linked to series of gruesome murders in the past. He now crosses paths with Lisbeth Salander, a young computer hacker, an asocial punk and most importantly, a young woman driven by her vindictiveness. Non-Fiction The Facebook Effect by David Kilpatrick A summary from Amazon: IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effectseven becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran. Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebooks key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo An summary from Amazon: Thrilling, true tales of   three of the greatest detectives in the worlda renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor and lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as the living Sherlock Holmes-were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders. Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugà ¨ne Franà §ois Vidocq-the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes-the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch. Poetry The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry,   â€Å"The Shadow of Sirius is a collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory. Cookbook The Big Summer Cookbook: 300 fresh, flavorful recipes for those lazy, hazy days   by Jeff Cox Combine two summer loves, reading and eating!   Sample a recipe for Tomato Tarts here.