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Friday, June 27, 2008

Summer Reading Challenge Continued
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The weekend's almost here. In an effort to put off weeding, or any other chore that resembles work (and unpaid at that), we resume the Populist Summer Reading Challenge.

What are you reading this summer?

Each summer, the Populist tries to tackle a big book, one of those classics that most of us are embarrassed to admit we never read and we might regret never having read on our deathbed.

That's not to say that great books consitute all our summer readin, or that all Great Books are work.

Trollope proved enormously entertaining, both The Way We Live Now and Orley Farm. A few years ago, The Brothers Karamazov attracted a few snickers from fellow beachcombers but proved an absolute treat and surprisingly funny in parts.

During the summer, the Populist has also discovered some terrific true beach writers like mystery greats Robert Wilson, Alan Furst and Jake Arnott.

Please share your recommended summer reads or what you plan to devour this season.

So far we have recommendations of the new War and Peace translation, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,  James Joyce's Ulysees, Crime and Punishment, and Cry, The Beloved Country. Oh, and also Anna Karenina, which we candidly admit to having never read.

Other suggestions?
Posted by Karen Heller @ 11:44 AM  Permalink | 7 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:47 AM, 06/28/2008
    I reiterate the apparently-overlooked contribution of "Ecclesiastical History" by Eusebius.
    — Gruff
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:48 PM, 06/30/2008
    Ah, the ol' triple post.
    — Robert Moran
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:54 PM, 07/01/2008
    My choice this summer is Anthony Powell's 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time. Many readers compare it to Proust but really it's an extraordinary look at England, beginning with the time between the wars when the upper classes had little thought that they were going to dive back into the abyss.
    — Karen Heller
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:47 PM, 07/01/2008
    I still remember the day that I found Raymond Chandler's [i]The Long Goodbye[/i] in the rafters of an old beach house. That book changed my life, and is still the book I recommend for something worthwhile to read on a beach.
    — Chris Garrity
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:47 PM, 07/01/2008
    I still remember the day that I found Raymond Chandler's [i]The Long Goodbye[/i] in the rafters of an old beach house. That book changed my life, and is still the book I recommend for something worthwhile to read on a beach.
    — Chris Garrity
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:41 PM, 07/02/2008
    Just finished The Year of Magical Thinking. My mom is reading it now. It is a gorgeous meditation on loss and grieving.
    — Not_Serious
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 8:35 PM, 07/02/2008
    After reading Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for a book club a group of us decided to tackle The Count Of Monte Cristo for the summer. I'm only 80 pages into the almost 1400 pages...but so far so good.
    — karen Q


7 comments
About Karen Heller
This week Karen Heller is live-blogging the Republican convention in true blogger style - at home, surfing the Web and watching TV. She's covered five other conventions. Three were Republican, two were Democratic. Read all of Populist here.

Karen Heller has interviewed Philip Roth and Zsa Zsa Gabor, spent time with Pink and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the celebrated and the exemplary unsung. She's covered Miss America and political conventions. She's been a provocative voice at The Inquirer for nearly 20 years, garnering awards for criticism, feature writing and investigative reporting, and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary.

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