Books that Feel Like Summer

By Beth Green

For the last few months, I, ever the book lover, have been hunting down and web-snipping lists of “summer books.” As happens every year, celebrities, newspapers, National Public Radio and many blogs have weighed in on what they consider summer reads. Like Santa Claus, I’ve been checking them twice―looking for that elusive, definitive, capital-L List of books guaranteed to whisk me off to fantasyland on an e-ink carpet.

I haven’t found that List yet, but I discovered a few worth mentioning here.

For example, Slate.com has a list of books for the beach, about the beach.

The NPR has many lists, including lesser-known books for kids’ and teens’ books, and funny ones too for summer.

A chapter of the Sisters in Crime mystery writers' group (all of us Novel Adventurers are proud SinC members) has provided a list ofbeach-worthy reads written by authors in the group.

Perusing these lists and compiling them into my own List made me ponder what a “summer read” really signified for me.

Before starting high school, I was home-schooled and read non-stop, no matter the season. When I entered public school, I welcomed the summer months as a time when I could read something for pleasure, school weeks being hectically full of social activities. During summers in high school, I practiced Spanish by reading Harlequins from the bilingual section of the library and rummaged through garage sales for ten-cent books. At university, I decided summer reads should be more Educational (yes, thinking of it with a capital E), and I slipped into all the classics I could find: Anna Karenina, Thornton Wilder’s plays, Chekov, ancient Greek poetry, Ayn Rand, and a lot of literature that I’m glad I read but perhaps didn’t so much enjoy reading.

But, after my school days, it’s been hard for me to keep track of what books I’ve read in what season. Books snatch me up and carry me so far away from my normal life on their storylines that, while I realize that I must have been in some way aware of the passing of the seasons, I don’t connect it to the book I was reading at the time. It’s my favorite part of reading for pleasure―the journey outside my here and my now to wherever the writer has mandated.

So, I’d like to offer my own short list of books to the panoply of (probably better) lists on-line. The books I’ve selected perhaps at first glance seem dissimilar. They don’t fit in a particular genre and probably wouldn’t attract the same readership. But all of them are about getting out and doing the things we all want to be doing during the summer. They, at least in me, stirred up that last-day-of-school tingle of excitement.

Even if you haven’t got the time to sit down and read these books before summer greenery turns into autumn’s yard work, they’re worth finding and keeping aside until winter (or perhaps just until a forlorn bad-weather day that needs a touch of sunshine) because, if you’re like me, they will transport you to an endless summer.

1. Beach Music by Pat Conroy

I did read this book during summer―when I was still in school. Now, more than 10 years later, I remember the passages about food and the way Conroy evoked the feeling of walking on the beach, at night, even though I was actually on a bus, driving through the rain, on my way to a summer job.

2. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Perhaps because he wrote it during the summer, this, more than Hemingway’s other novels, pulls me into summertime feeling. The parties, the travel, the crazy nights―it all spells s-u-m-m-e-r.

3. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I get laughed at every time I mention this travelogue to my bookworm friends, but I will continue to sing its praises. In the summer, who doesn’t want to jet off to Italy for pasta and romance, to India for some spiritual cleansing, and to Bali for enlightenment and, yes, more romance?

4. Across China by Peter Jenkins

Travelogues almost always make me feel summery, so that’s why I’m including two on this list. This thick description of Jenkins’ trip to China when the country was just beginning to ‘open’ to foreign influences again is a pleasure as much for his physical journey from his farmhouse and pregnant wife to the Mt. Everest Base Camp as it is for his emotional journey as he sees and experiences new things.

5. The Vision by Heather Graham

One of my favorite warm-day activities is scuba diving. So, I knew I was going to like it when I picked up this paranormal mystery. Graham serves up plenty of scuba adventures, a strong female lead character, and a great backdrop of the Florida Keys. Sounds like sunny vacation time to me!

6. Careless in Red by Elizabeth George  

I do love a detective-on-vacation story and this one and the next book on my list are good both for thrills and for vicarious traveling. In this novel, George’s main series character, Thomas Lynley, seeks the remote Cornish coast to help him recover from the loss of a loved one (trying not to put in any spoilers for those who haven’t started the fantastic Lynley series). Though the fog-swept bluffs and rocky beaches described in the book won’t make everyone’s heart sing “summer,” I certainly got the feeling I was on vacation while reading.

7. The Web by Jonathan Kellerman

A different type of holiday is in store for amateur sleuth (and professional psychologist) Alex Delaware, Kellerman’s main series character, when Delaware accepts a short assignment on a tropical island in the Pacific. The island itself may be a figment of Kellerman’s amazing creative powers but it doesn’t feel like it while you are reading the book. The foliage, the beaches, the reefs…if you want an island vacation but your budget doesn’t, this book is a quick way to get a taste of beach-side living, with a thrilling storyline to boot.

What books make you feel like summer?

Culture in Translation

By Heidi Noroozy

Don’t you love seeing your familiar world through the fresh lens of a stranger’s eyes?

I do.

So do my husband’s relatives in Iran, who are amused at my take on things they accept without question. They grin at my naiveté when a shopkeeper at the bazaar repeatedly insists that my purchase is a gift for a guest to his country, and I believe him. In fact, he’s dissatisfied with the price we’ve negotiated and wants more money. Or my fascination with the way the small bags of garbage people put out daily seem to vanish overnight. And my puzzlement over why people put out bones for the feral cats that no one would allow inside their homes—to catch rats, naturally.

Firoozeh Dumas flips the coin for me in her book, Funny in Farsi, a memoir about growing up Persian in Southern California. Born in Abadan, Iran, an oil town on the Persian Gulf, her family moved to a suburb of L.A. in 1972. In this slim volume and its sequel, Laughing without an Accent, Dumas points out the idiosyncrasies of American life with an irony that is often laugh-out-loud funny.

She is bewildered by the unappetizing names we give to food: hot dogs, catfish, Tater Tots, and sloppy Joes. “…no amount of caviar in the sea would have convinced us to try mud pies,” she writes.

Her first trip to a public lending library introduces the book-loving Firoozeh to a concept so wondrous and perplexing she doesn’t quite believe it at first. Surely no one would actually lend her a book for free! She brings her purse and a few coins along just in case. At seven, Dumas learns that there is such a thing as a magic carpet, only it’s called a library card.

One of my favorite chapters in Funny in Farsi is “The F Word.” And no, she doesn’t mean that f-word. The essay is about her name and the difficulty many Americans have in remembering or even pronouncing it. In Persian, Firoozeh means turquoise. “In America, it means ‘Unpronounceable’ or “I’m Not Going to Talk to You Because I Cannot Possibly Learn Your Name And I Just Don’t Want to Have to Ask You Again and Again Because You’ll Think I’m Dumb or Might Get Upset or Something.’” And so she tells everyone her name is Julie. Nice and simple. Problem solved. Or at least until her American friends meet her Iranian ones and she can’t remember who knows her as Julie and who calls her Firoozeh.

Boy can I relate to that! But for me, the problem is reversed. I’m often confused by the various Persian/American configurations of names my Iranian friends and relatives use, but usually the Farsi versions are easier for me to remember. They are the ones I learn first. When I’m used to people calling themselves Shahab, Faribourz, or Sharzad, it throws me when they call on the phone and say, “This is Dean.” Or Freddy or Sherry.

In both her memoirs, Firoozeh Dumas writes with a gentle, wry humor. She pokes a gentle fun at Americans and Iranians in equal measure, pointing out not just the oddities of American culture through her non-native eyes but also the absurdity of her own reactions to it.

Whether you’ve lived abroad, married into another culture, or just have immigrant friends, these books offer something we can all relate to—with a smile and a chuckle.

Squashed Mosquito Poetry

By Alli Sinclair

I first “met” Alys Titchener through a mutual friend when my daughter was very ill. Through the kindness of her heart, Alys wrote a beautiful poem and sent a blessed crystal to help in my daughter’s healing process. You can read the story here. The poem sits in a frame next to my daughter’s bed and even now, six years later, it still brings tears to my eyes. I hope one day Alys and I will meet in person so I can give her a massive hug and thank her for the kindness and love she showed people who were (once) complete strangers.

Alys is the author of the poetry blog Squashed Mosquito;

(http://squashedmosquitopoetry.com) sharing poetry that traverses the landscapes

of her emotions and spirit. Alys is a freelance writer, with a commitment to

writing from the heart of direct experience. She can also be read on The Yoga

Lunchbox at http://theyogalunchbox.co.nz/author/squashedmosquito/

Traveling

I am here, I am in this moment

breathe

life's little pause

suspend me

in this place

now and forever

only to move on

  restless

  wanting

  contentment

life's little joys

bought by me

at a price

---

you speak of truth

you speak of truth

like someone had written it

on the back of your hand

I wish I could draw the galaxy there

so you would know truth

is not a set of words

but the space between

every cell and star

as they rest

---

silence

silence

it is an escape

like a drowning ocean

and it is a new world

  born into colour

it is resisted

  and harboured

esteemed

  and dulled to a froth

  of noise

it is pocketed by nature

in between raindrops

and clearly invisible

next to valleys

  or mountain tops

and sometimes it is

  indistinguishable

from the still wind

  or a falling leaf

   destined

---

I hear the mother's heartbeat

I hear the mother's heartbeat

it is the background noise of every life

and with us always

I hear the mother's heartbeat

it is the birth space, the lush embrace

the fecund warm breath

I hear the mother's heartbeat

it is ochre, it is sunset,

it is marigold, desert, Uluru, the red planet

I hear the mother's heartbeat

the tribal drums, the call to hunt

the prey offering itself, the knowing

the acknowledging, the sacrifice

I hear the mother's heartbeat

her serenity, her surrender, her dignity,

her grace

I hear the mother's heartbeat

when her own death is felt

before she dies

I hear the mother's heartbeat

she is the still point in every night sky

she is the nowhere to go

she is the ceasing fluctuations of mind

she is quiet ... she is quiet

she is ever more

she is ever-present

her love is her death

her fragile opening

her tender watering

her love is her body

her home in darkness

her fingers touching the almost in her life

her love is the offering

offering her best

back to heaven

the pre-born said she would

depart before she arrived

now she is the mother's heartbeat

it is the mother that holds you and me

she is that background

beat

that pushes us back into life

--

Upside down

this new heaven

bumpy and accelerated

white frothy isobars

changing like my moods

this new ocean grey and calm

or moody, what sits beneath

is above and

I forgot to let the ladder fall

land hovers

ungrounded

accumulations

waiting for gravity

to adjust

---

Shifts

I turned up full

of sleeping butterflies

and one took flight

and another

and another

deep in my belly

the birds are flying

in my mind

and they have lost

the vast sonic space to navigate

the vast sonic space to hear

home

the whale that kept me company

can't come up for air

and her calf

and her calf

lost her milk in a stormy

rocky bay

I am the poles shifting

true north

true south

they don't exist like they once did

something broke

something spoke

I am the prickling rain clouds

I am the new dark moon

I am the moment before dawn

where rainbows don't exist

where rainbows don't exist

---

the whole person

I am not ever a known

(that's a whole lot of exploring

and exposing to agitate) and

while some visibility might suit me

it really is a distraction

to seek to be known

I am not even a known

my ideas are not clever

my words not particularly

special, though a sentiment

climbs out the basement

and someone somewhere claims;

  hey, that's my shadow!

I am not ever a known

even when a seed of me

can be harvested in your life

like a random affirmation

of good timing

even then when you think you

know me, it is only because it is you

  you see

I am not even a known

my quality and form are shaped

like yours, two eyes, a nose

a mouth, words of an English

sound between two lips like any

and it is only because a blue print

'worked like magic' that an alien

can appear not so dissimilar

I am not ever a known

and you would injure me

if you said you knew me

  inside out

because then I would have to substitute

that into my being

wearing an idea that I thought sounded pleasing

---

Universe

in a boundary, in a border

in crossing a time zone

in stamping a passport

there is nothing left to call

mine, nothing left

in a flag on top of a mountain

in a gold medal ceremony

in a race to the moon

there is nothing left to call

home, nothing left

in a spinning top, in a rotating globe

in an aurora blue sky, in a fireworks parade

in a heavenly constellation moving, in a line on your palm

there is nothing left to say

in words, nothing left

as above, so below

so within, as with out

here and now, as in every where and when

there is nothing left

to say, there is nothing

left

A Tale of Three Misfits

Several decades ago, I enrolled in a university in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to study German language and literature with a focus on East German authors. When the time came for me to pick a topic for my Diplomarbeit, roughly the equivalent of an American thesis for a master’s degree, I had a ready topic. I wanted to explore the theme of social alienation in The New Sufferings of Young W., a 1973 novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf, an East German poet, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist.

You could have knocked my academic advisor over with a feather. Naively, I’d assumed I had freedom of choice in the matter but quickly realized my error when the professor offered a long list of more suitable candidates for me to study. Although Plenzdorf was not strictly a dissident author (his work was published, produced, and staged in the GDR), he nevertheless didn’t earn a lot of popularity points with the East German authorities, largely (although not exclusively) because of the novel I’d proposed for my Diplomarbeit.

First produced as a play in 1972 and turned into a novel the following year, The New Sufferings tells the story of Edgar Wibeau, a hydraulics apprentice who drops out of vocational school and lives for some months in a condemned cottage in Berlin, where he creates abstract paintings, listens to music, and sends taped accounts of his life and musings to his best friend, Willi. Edgar falls desperately in love with a young woman he nicknames Charlie, a kindergarten teacher who is engaged to be married to the much older Dieter.

The short novel (it’s only 84 pages long) is a modern retelling of The Sufferings of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), a classic 18^th-century novel by the German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832). Not only do the two novels follow the same plot, but they are populated by characters who play equivalent roles and have similar names. In Goethe’s version, young Werther (Wibeau) is a sensitive artist who falls in love with Charlotte (Charlie), a woman betrothed to an older man named Albert (Dieter), and Werther pours out the sorrows of his unrequited love in letters to a confidante named Wilhelm (Willi).

In The New Sufferings, Edgar finds a copy of Goethe’s novel in the outhouse of the cottage where he’s staying. Although he reads the book and quotes extensively from it to anyone who’ll listen, he doesn’t identify with Werther. “I can’t imagine that anyone ever talked like that, even three centuries ago,” he says. Instead, he relates to another literary figure – Holden Caulfield, the hero of J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Both young men rebel against the “phoniness” of social conventions and both feel youthful angst and alienation. In another parallel with Edgar’s story, Holden is expelled from prep school and hides out in New York while he tries to figure out how to break the bad news to his parents.

Like Holden Caulfield, Edgar has plenty of attitude to offer, much of it directed against the authoritarian society in which he lives. In a conversation with a movie producer, he criticizes “socialist realism,” the state-approved art form where entertainment plays second fiddle to the primary purpose of educating citizens to become better socialists. “I told him that a movie in which people are supposed to do nonstop learning can only be boring.”*

Edgar has plenty to say on the value of jeans as a fashion statement. Jeans, those symbols of the decadent West, are not just pants, they’re “an attitude.” In Edgar’s view they’re not to be worn by anyone over 25, an age group incapable of grasping the finer points of proper jeans wearing: low on the hips. “People over 25 are too dense to grasp that. Especially if they are card-carrying Communists who beat their wives.”

In publishing The New Sufferings, Plenzdorf’s timing was impeccable. Only one year before the premier of the stage version, the GDR relaxed its strict censorship rules, which had limited acceptable literature to the socialist realism category. Plenzdorf’s story was the first to openly criticize social conditions in the GDR, an idea so remarkable that the novel became the most widely discussed book among East German readers.

That social criticism is precisely what made Ulrich Plenzdorf’s novel an unacceptable focus for my thesis at the university. My studies there began ten years after the censorship rules changed, and most of my professors had been educated in a world where literature was meant to be edifying and not necessarily entertaining. My academic adviser likely couldn’t see a novel expressing the social dissatisfaction of Plenzdorf’s story as being worthy of academic analysis.

Although Edgar Wibeau has plenty of reason to rebel against the constraints of his world, The New Sufferings is not a wholesale condemnation of communism. Edgar merely objects to the heavy-handed way in which socialist ideals are applied. “No halfway intelligent person can have anything against communism these days,” he says. Like all the best literature, his story holds up a mirror to the society in which it was written and reflects a true-to-life image of that experience.

All citations of The New Sufferings of Young W. come from the 1979 translation by Kenneth P. Wilcox.