Summer Reading
With summer holidays looming, hotels and airlines safely booked, all that's left to do is select your most key bit of kit: the books you'll need to transport you places that Ryan Air can't reach. Here's our recommendations of books we've just discovered or loved over years of summer snoozy reading sessions. We hope you like them, and would love to hear your recommendations and reviews, so just follow the link through and let us know what has worked for you. Happy holidays and happy reading.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read / Pierre Bayard / £8.99
As you dither about what to pack in the holiday hand luggage, the one essential should surely be a copy of How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, new in paperback from Pierre Bayard. It's a playful, witty, yet serious meditation on the centrality of books in our cultural consciousness, even if we haven't read them or have long forgotten we had. Impress your friends in a Flann O'Brien/Myles na Gopaleen sort of way with that pile of books that never quite got covered in sand and sunscreen! Ah well, there's always the winter...
Purple Hibiscus / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie / £7.99
One book I have read, and enjoyed immensely, is Purple Hibiscus. The debut novel from current darling of The South Bank Show is powerful and beautifully written, with closely observed characters in the context of Nigerian politics and religion. Winner of the Orange Prize for Half of a Yellow Sun, she only now seems to be getting the recognition she deserves as a rising world literary star. And, if you'vre already discovered her, why not try her brand new collection of stories, entitled The Thing Around Your Neck?
The Northern Clemency / Philip Hensher / £8.99
To prepare properly for this Booker-nominated (2008) work, you will need to turn off the Blackberry, put the kids in a creche and cease all forms of communication as The Northern Clemency is so seriously immersive that you may well not surface again until you've turned the last — 738th — page of this hugely readable yet epic story. Hensher focuses on the secrets and lies that ferment and persist under the most ordinary of homes, in this instance beginning in 70s Sheffield and running right through to the 90s when the full effects of family and national tensions play out in some dazzling scenes that are beautifully observed and written. The pages fly by and you'll find yourself mourning their passing while recommending this on left, right and centre: I know that I have!
Nightingale Wood / Stella Gibbons / £7.99
For those who thought that Cold Comfort Farm was a one-off stroke of genius, there is good news: Virago Modern Classics has unearthed this delicious parody from 1938 and republished it along with a smart new introduction from Sophie Dahl to boot. Essentially a wickedly funny fairytale in which Our Heroine — in this case the newly widowed and tragically skint Viola, who is handily a rare beauty too — finds herself washed up with her horrid in-laws in deepest, dreariest suburbia. Gibbons treats us to some sparkling humour and wily manipulations before Our Heroines — because not all step-sisters turn out to be ugly, this being Virago and all that — finally get their hearts' desires. In a cynical world, this is a true pleasure to read.
Stardust / Neil Gaiman / £7.99
There are fairy tales, then there are Gaiman tales. As always with this writer he puts his own twist on every sentence that the reader savours. If there's one person who can take the conventions known to anyone with even a passing interest in fantasy fiction and give them a refreshing boost, it's Gaiman.
Take a boy, a girl, a small sleepy village, and from that seed an adventure will grow. Picture yourself on a sunny day under a tree. You imagine yourself in a far off, yet familiar land where anything is possible. Without being able to resist you walk amongst the characters and situations set up in this wonderful world. With a warm glow you will close the pages, put the book away and carry away with you the feeling that someday you may go back to Wall, smell the market scents again and take those first few steps into the unknown, beyond the gates, where the falling stars land.
If you want evil Kings, witches, riches, unicorns, sky pirates, spells, smells, and all of it wrapped up in a love story of misunderstandings, look no further. You're looking for a flawed hero with a hidden past that's catching up with him, in fact it's hurtling straight towards him with a bang. Of course you're hunting down a book that actually makes you feel good without pandering to crushing condescension. How about something tender and sweet with a playful nature and enough darkness as to retain its rough edges. There are surprises thrown in at every angle and it's all done in a page turning style that doesn't have to be ashamed of itself. This is a book for everyone over 15, as opposed to the film adaptation this fits into the adult fairytale bracket.
The Pastures of Heaven / John Steinbeck / £12.99
Written early in his career (1932), this is possibly Mr.Steinbeck's most personal fiction. Being a collection of connecting and interlacing stories that have an accumalative effect. All the stories take place in a rural farmland area based in Salinas, California of the 1920's. As this was the area that he grew up in Steinbeck knew these characters and events all too well. How much they are based on truth should not be in question, however the heartfelt nature of the writing is beyond question. Using a subtle stance on the issues encountered, the essence of these people breaks through the pages without exaggerated manipulation.
The families are realistically portrayed as simple people eeking out an existence who come a cropper often through negligence, greed, or living beyond their means. The latter coming through particularly in the most memorable chapter (10), this is expressed through a man called Pat Humbert. Life is a daily grind for Mr.Humbert in which he inhabits the old rundown farmhouse that his crotchety parents passed away in. Leaving their presence in the belongings that surround him, like the rocking chair sitting still yet bothering him as if the dead still reside there. A young neighbour, Mae, starts of a chain of events by pointing out the house's one area of beauty; a rose bush. The decrepit heap suddenly seems to have potential and Pat sees a way of escaping the clutches of bad memories by impressing Mae and winning her over. His act of being a man of business and means of course leads to tragedy and disappointment. Some may think that is all these stories will revolve around, but the poignancy lies within the pores of all human conditions, humour, joy, dignity, hope, empathy, as well as loss, pain, loneliness, poverty. While covering all the bases, positive and negative along the layered paths of the people in this arrid/lush community it builds up over the generations to reveal development. In ways that are only seen upon close examination the land contains the ghosts of what we are and go through in the experiences we live through.
Independent People / Halldor Laxness / £8.99
Some aphoristic soul, such perhaps as WH Auden, said that holiday reading should be set in the opposite climate to the place you are visiting. Whether you agree or not, the novel "Independent People" by Halldor Laxness is a meaty companion for your beach or berg.
The magnum opus of Iceland's only Nobel Laureate, it mixes the sweep and confidence of a Great Russian novel with the stoical purview and magic of the Icelandic sagas, to create a dense and satisfying read.
An immersive 500 page narrative of an Icelandic sheep farmer's urge for independence, it is suffused with the vivid poetry of the bleak but beautiful landscape of Iceland, and encapsulates the vast intense dramas lived in isolated lives.
Like all the best holiday books, it is primarily an escape to a strange and magical place, but is also a gargantuan meditation on the interconnectedness of humanity and the environment, and in the light of this, the ambiguity of man's quest for independence.
Collected Poems / CP Cavafy / £16.99
Each one like a luxurious world weary short short story, the decadent lyrics of Cavafy would be like a sensuous sorbet course amongst the other fat novels in your hand luggage.
Alongside well-known favourites such as 'Waiting for the Barbarians' and 'Ithaka', there are reimaginings of Greek and Ottoman history, philosophic yet bodily love poems, and majestic and langourous odes.
They all translate fantastically, and are a perfect accompaniment to encourage your poolside reveries and sun-kissed snoozes.
Slam / Nick Hornby / £7.99
reviewed by Khalil, aged 12
Slam follows 16 year old skater Sam (skateboarder — definitely NOT iceskater as Sam himself would say!) who lives with his single parent young mum and who worships skate superstar Tony Hawk.
When Sam finds himself at one of his mum's work parties he meets 16 year old Alicia and when things grow serious between them Sam begins to develop into a man in the time it takes for a pregnancy test to show a result!
Sam and Alicia's mums react to the news in totally opposite ways: Alicia's mum is horrified and wants her daughter to ditch Sam—and the baby—while Sam's mum feels that she has been an awful example to her boy as she herself was only 16 when she had him.
On two occasions in the book Sam has prophetic dreams in which he travels a year into the future, both times after seeking guidance (in his mind) from his hero Tony Hawk.
Overall Slam is a great book—even for someone my age—warning of the burdens that can bear down on a teen's shoulders as soon as you take off that condom!
Younger Readers
Little Boat / Thomas Docherty / £5.99
Beautifully detailed illustrations and simple, clear text which mirrors the actions of the Little Boat's journey across the big ocean make this a delightful picture book for young toddlers. Shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway medal 2009.
For 40 years John Burningham has been one of our most creative and imaginative writers and illustrators of children's books. Twice winner of the Kate Greenaway medal his latest book It's a Secret (£11.99 Hardback) tells the story of Malcolm the cat's secret night adventures and answers his young owner's question "where do cats go at night?".
