Still testing with Bill! This is a newly initiated post as opposed to a response to another post. I found the link for "New Post" difficult to pick out against its background even after I knew to look for it. Maybe a different color font?

Summer Reading - 2015

As the reality of a 3 month Summer hiatus for the Book Group hits home and you are looking for a way to stay connected, here are some suggestions for Summer reading:

• Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr - The collection contains the first 3 books of the Bernie Gunther series. We would have read this instead of The Quiet Flame except for the length.
• Light Years or A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter - He passed away last week at the age of 90 and these are his master works. I am so glad we read All That Is earlier this year. He once referred to himself as a “frotteur,” saying he liked to rub words between his fingers. 
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt or All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - These modern epics continue to be enthusiastically recommended by many in our group but are just too long for our regular meetings.
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra -  If you loved The Orphan Master's Son, this book is set in a small village in Chechnya and spans two wars.  Curiously both Marra and Adam Johnson teach creative writing at Stanford.
• The Palace of Treason by Red Sparrow author Jason Matthews - This spy/thriller series set in post-Soviet Russia and written by a 33-year CIA veteran has great characters and depictions of spy craft.
• True Grit by Charles Portis (with fantastic intro by Donna Tartt) or The Sisters Brothers (winner of the 2012 Tournament of Books) by Patrick DeWitt - As a companion to The Son but with a Butch Cassidy flair.
• The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St Aubyn - These four short novels in one collection are an interesting modern follow up to our Lucky Jim discussion on the deterioration of the English class system. Highly autobiographical, St Aubyn is considered the greatest living prose stylist and once you are familiar with these you will see references to them constantly.
• And of course, Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel - Our selection for the September meeting of the Book Group and Winner of the 2015 Tournament of Books.

For what it's worth, here is my reading plan for the summer:

•  Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
• The Dog  by Joseph O'Neill
• 2666 by Roberto Bolano
• Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
• The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind and head a different direction. Please respond via comments about books you plan to read or have enjoyed over the course of the Summer.

Bill

James Salter RIP

The Obituary was in today's Boston Globe.  All There Is was his last novel. He was 90 and apparently at the gym working-out when he died.  Moral: Exercise is not necessarily good for you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/books/james-salter-a-writers-writer-short-on-sales-but-long-on-acclaim-dies-at-90.html