Beach Reads.

What are you reading?  This is my favorite question to ask strangers and friends alike, because I am a voracious reader and I’m always adding to my pile.  I thought I’d share what’s on my list for this summer, although you’re also welcome to follow along with me on GoodReads.  (My sister FINALLY convinced me to join GoodReads after getting after me for nearly a year.  I have no idea why I was so recalcitrant, because I’d been keeping tabs on my books using an Excel document for the last two or three years.  Sorry, sissy.)

OK, let’s see.  Next up is a book for my book club with some girlfriends up here in Chicago.  We’re reading a non-fiction piece called All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  Reading this on the heels of Gloria Steinem’s memoir may well mark me in Amazon’s records as a feminista, eh?

Then I’m going to take an intellectual vacation and read The Nest, which is about four wealthy siblings in NYC squabbling over an inheritance.  It’s supposed to be fluffy deliciousness.  A true beach read.

I’ve long been meaning to read Isak Dinensen’s Out of Africa.  I loved loved LOVED the movie growing up.   Robert Redford, C’MON.  What a dreamboat!  And a young, talented Meryle Streep.  Gorgeous.  And the costumes, and the romance, and that epic scene in the plane over Africa!  Plus, in a vortextual moment, I’d been planning to read this eventually and then Gloria Steinem mentioned it in her memoir and it was a done deal.

My sister recently read–and raved about–Astonish Me, about a former prima ballerina who is having trouble adjusting to life in suburbia after her dramatic earlier years.  It looks like a delicious summer read.

A fellow entrepreneur recently waxed poetic about the book Gilead, claiming it to be the most beautiful book she’d ever read.  If I understand correctly, this is a book set in the Civil War and built entirely around letters from a father to his children.

Maybe it’s the cover that jumped out at me, but A Wife of Suitable Character, sounds juicy: “a sprawling comedy of manners about a group of thirtysomethings navigating friendship, love, and their fledgling careers among Houston’s high-powered, oil-money elite.”

I seriously enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, a character study of one not particularly likeable  (but complex, intriguing) woman as she ages, as developed through multiple oblique shorter pieces around different folks with which she comes into contact.  So I’m curious about her newer work, My Name Is Lucy Barton, in which “a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.”

The second episode in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy series, The Crossing has been on my list since I read All the Pretty Horses last summer.  His prose is so sparse, yet so moving and imagistic.  The characters are tautly drawn in a way that befits the rough lifestyle they lead. Cannot wait for this one.

I love a good memoir, and as Diane Rehm is one of our generation’s most respected voices (literally, since she’s been an NPR host/institution for years and years), I can’t wait to read her retrospective, which centers around the years after her husband dies of Parkinsons’ disease.  I don’t think any work can compete with Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, which covers the same topic (the jarring death of her beloved husband), but I’m curious to hear what Ms. Rehm is like in autobiography.  (P.S. Joan Didion’s memoir is the single most important thing I’ve read since Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, which I love and cherish for very different reasons.  Didion is a breathtaking intellect and she reminded me to be thoughtful with words and relentless in the pursuit of education.  Roy is a stunning writer who has claimed her goal to be to return fiction-writing to a place of beauty after many years of post-modernist destruction and, arguably, ugliness.  And her book is so complex, tiered: her play with time and narrative structure is a book lover’s dream.)

I’ve never read (or heard much about) Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, but I love this quote from contemporary author George Eliot after it had first been released: “Villette! Villette! Have you read it? It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power.”  A girl flees her hometown and takes up a job as a schoolteacher in a cosmopolitan setting, where she grapples with independence and love.

What else is on your list?  Tell me!

P.S. — Some random shopping obsessions to ease you into your weekend:

+This striped romper reminds me a LOT of a Mara Hoffman dress I wanted but can’t find in my size anywhere…but for $57.  Done.

+I’ve heard rave reviews about this resurfacing mask ($58).  Apparently it leaves you with an incredible glow.

+A perfect wear-with-anything and wear-all-summer espadrille with a lovely wedge in a neutral metallic ($118).

+My favorite nail polish for summer is stark white, and I’ve been really into getting manicures with CND’s “weekly manicure” formula in the Cream Puff color.  You may have seen this at your nail salon: give it a try! They put the color straight on the nail without a base coat, which makes it different, and it lasts for at least two days longer for me than an Essie or OPI.