Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

[issybird]

Tomorrow marks the start of summer here, and I'm thinking about books that somehow evoke or capture the essence of summer. I just finished Ray Bradbury's quasi-memoir, Dandelion Wine, and I've also thought of The Great Gatsby and The Go-Between and a few others, but I run out pretty quickly.

I'm looking for novels and memoirs in particular, but I'll entertain any non-fiction book on the topic (not baseball, though - I like baseball, but it's a given). I'm not interested in books typically cited as beach reads unless summer is a theme, and I don't care for chicklit. Given the parameters of no chicklit and no baseball, what do people suggest as good reads about summertime?

[Catlady]

The first book that comes to mind is Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer. I listened to the audiobook version of this a year or so ago, and loved revisiting a gentler time.

I associate Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar with summer, because of the summer camp sections. Another suggestion is Megan Abbott's The End of Everything.

And there's always Jaws! Or Michael Capuzzo's Close to Shore, about the actual shark attacks that may have inspired Jaws.

[crossi]

Don Quixote, USA by Richard Powell. It's set in the tropics, so while not specifically in summer I associate the sunny weather with summer. Anyway its a light fun read.

[Dr. Drib]

When it comes to Wouk, I would recommend "City Boy," a joyous excursion into childhood of the 1920s.

This is a joyful, wondrous novel, and is very funny.

Check out the sample from Amazon and see if it has the ring of truth, much like Bradbury's 'Dandelion Wine' delights.

http://www.amazon.com/City-Boy-Herma...oy+wouk+kindle

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by issybird

Tomorrow marks the start of summer here, and I'm thinking about books that somehow evoke or capture the essence of summer. I just finished Ray Bradbury's quasi-memoir, Dandelion Wine, and I've also thought of The Great Gatsby and The Go-Between and a few others, but I run out pretty quickly.

I'm looking for novels and memoirs in particular, but I'll entertain any non-fiction book on the topic (not baseball, though - I like baseball, but it's a given). I'm not interested in books typically cited as beach reads unless summer is a theme, and I don't care for chicklit. Given the parameters of no chicklit and no baseball, what do people suggest as good reads about summertime?

Not sure if this Herman Koch book fits your bill or not (maybe too heavy?):
Summer House with Swimming Pool

Spoiler:

When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business.

Personally, he's not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high profile doctor to the stars, Marc can't hide from the truth forever.

It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meier's extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean.

Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach.

But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted.

As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralph's (later) death begin to reveal the disturbing reality...

I've got the book but have yet to read it. And looking at the price I'm guessing that I got it in one of the 90% sales.

[BenG]

Well, there's the sequel to Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

The first book that comes to mind is Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer. I listened to the audiobook version of this a year or so ago, and loved revisiting a gentler time.

I associate Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar with summer, because of the summer camp sections. Another suggestion is Megan Abbott's The End of Everything.

I haven't read Seventeenth Summer, a lovely book, since I was a girl and listening to it sounds delightful.

I keep running into Megan Abbott as a name and haven't read anything by her, so The End of Everything it is. No horror, though!

Similarly to Marjorie Morningstar, I also associate To Kill a Mockingbird with summer. Not all the action happened in the summer, but the main thrust of the story did.

Originally Posted by crossi

Don Quixote, USA by Richard Powell. It's set in the tropics, so while not specifically in summer I associate the sunny weather with summer. Anyway its a light fun read.

Totally new title to me, thanks.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

When it comes to Wouk, I would recommend "City Boy," a joyous excursion into childhood of the 1920s.

This is a joyful, wondrous novel, and is very funny.

I'm enjoying the suggestions of books I've read and didn't think of, as my thinking about summer books continues to coalesce. As for the Wouks, I probably won't reread Marjorie Morningstar, which I remember quite clearly. City Boy is but a dim memory, though, and it's going on my reread list. Both books also fit the New York theme I'm working. City Boy was one of my father's favorite books. He grew up in the Bronx and while he would have been somewhat younger than Herbie, there was a lot of overlap in their experiences.

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Not sure if this Herman Koch book fits your bill or not (maybe too heavy?):
Summer House with Swimming Pool

<snip>

I've got the book but have yet to read it. And looking at the price I'm guessing that I got it in one of the 90% sales.

I know people love this, but I found it strained my credulity too much. Fortunately, OverDrive had it, so I wasn't out of pocket. I appreciate the suggestion just the same - it goes on the list I'm compiling. Again, I had forgotten about it.

Originally Posted by BenG

Well, there's the sequel to Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer.

Yup, I'll get to it. But I don't want to rush it, especially as I know the tone changes signifiicantly and I don't want to be let down.

Going back to the suggestion of Seventeenth Summer, I realize it's not surprising that summer is a significant factor in many children's books and books about children or adolescents. Other children's books that occur to me are the Arthur Ransome, Edward Eager and E. Nesbit books, but I know there must be many, many more.

Thank you all, and I'd love to hear more ideas.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

I haven't read Seventeenth Summer, a lovely book, since I was a girl and listening to it sounds delightful.

I keep running into Megan Abbott as a name and haven't read anything by her, so The End of Everything it is. No horror, though!

Similarly to Marjorie Morningstar, I also associate To Kill a Mockingbird with summer. Not all the action happened in the summer, but the main thrust of the story did.

Overdrive has the audiobook of Seventeenth Summer.

Megan Abbott's first few novels were noir, but now her last three have shifted; she's been writing about teenage girls and the dark side of adolescence--but they're definitely not YA. The End of Everything was the first of the teenage ones, followed by Dare Me and The Fever. I think Dare Me is the best of the three, but doesn't fit in with your summer theme. (Of the non-teenage ones, I especially like Bury Me Deep and Queenpin.)

If you want to sample her writing, "Cheer," Abbott's short story that evolved into Dare Me, is available online in both a text version and an audio version (podcast; story read by the author).

More than you ever wanted to know about Megan Abbott's books, I'm sure!

[paola]

an Italian slant :-) on my TBR list

Alberto Moravia, Agostino,

Spoiler:

Thirteen-year-old Agostino is spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful widowed mother. When she takes up with a cocksure new companion, Agostino, feeling ignored and unloved, begins hanging around with a group of local young toughs. Though repelled by their squalor and brutality, and repeatedly humiliated for his weakness and ignorance when it comes to women and sex, the boy is increasingly, masochistically drawn to the gang and its rough games. He finds himself unable to make sense of his troubled feelings. Hoping to be full of manly calm, he is instead beset by guilty curiosity and an urgent desire to sever, at any cost, the thread of troubled sensuality that binds him to his mother.

Alberto Moravia’s classic, startling portrait of innocence lost was written in 1942 but rejected by Fascist censors and not published until 1944, when it became a best seller and secured the author the first literary prize of his career. Revived here in a new translation by Michael F. Moore, Agostino is poised to captivate a twenty-first-century audience.

Niccolo' Ammanniti, I am not scared (Io non ho paura) (don't be fooled by the blurb from Amazon, there are no monsters or nothing supernatural here):

Spoiler:

A sweltering heat wave hits a tiny village in Southern Italy, sending the adults to seek shelter, while their children bicycle freely throughout the countryside, playing games and getting into trouble. On a dare, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano enters an old, abandoned farmhouse, where he stumbles upon a secret so terrible that he can’t tell anybody. As the truth emerges, Michele learns that the horror in the creepy old house is closer to home than he ever imagined.

A widely acclaimed international bestseller, I’m Not Scared is a spine-tingling novel that combines a coming of age narrative with a satisfying, enthralling story of suspense.

Maria Corti (transl. Jessie Bright", Otranto

Spoiler:

One of Italy's leading writers recounts the sack of Otranto by the Turks in 1480. Like the film "Rashomon" or Robert Browning's "The Ring and the Book," this novel relates the events in overlapping tales told by survivors and victims. As "Otranto" weaves its web of memories, it also focuses on the beauty of everyday life: the essence of place - the fragrance of oleander, the feel of new linen and old wood, the sky, sea and wind, lovers and friends. Corti's style is riveting, her eye for detail compelling.

Not by an Italian author, but set during summer in Venice:
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice:

Spoiler:

Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.

In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is the story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."

[BenG]

I thought of To Kill a Mockingbird also.
Many of the scenes take place when the children are out of school.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by issybird

City Boy is but a dim memory, though, and it's going on my reread list. Both books also fit the New York theme I'm working. City Boy was one of my father's favorite books. He grew up in the Bronx and while he would have been somewhat younger than Herbie, there was a lot of overlap in their experiences.
snip ......
Thank you all, and I'd love to hear more ideas.

Issybird, are you looking for books with a New York theme to the exception of other places? Or is it just that NY themed are particularly of interest to you, and you are also interested in non NY themed books with summer themes?

I offer Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers (non NY themed):

Spoiler:

Haunted by the brutal murder of a local couple, David heads to his weekend shack with his new lover, Lydia, and his children from his recently crumbled marriage.

Together they find escape, if only briefly, in the ocean and the bush.

The Bodysurfers,the title story of Robert Drewe's classic first collection, is a vivid evocation of love, passion, terror and the beauty of the beach.

And from an Amazon review:
My job takes me to Queensland every couple of years, and I always look for Australian writers when I'm in the bookstores there. This is a book I came away with on my last trip, and it was the kind of lucky find every reader hopes for.

The Bodysurfers is Australia in miniature, a collection of short stories following different members of a single family across several generations, mostly in the suburbs and beach towns around Sydney.

The writing can remind you of both Ellen Gilchrist and Raymond Carver, but it's pure Aussie, with a surf-scented wind and the morning cries of currawongs rising from the page.

Most of the twelve stories are less than twenty pages long, and it's an ideal book for reading in quick snatches over a few days. The subjects include finely drawn portraits of families at play and in turmoil, the spectacular downfalls of small-town heroes, the rambling candor of a sex criminal who's spent much of his life in prison, the role of fish venom in budding romance and a snapshot of the last days of a once-celebrated explorer who helped open the continent's interior from the back of a camel.
http://www.amazon.com.au/Bodysurfers...s=robert+drewe

I read it (whenever I was at the beach if I recall correctly) when it was first published in 1984. I don't have much recall of the stories nor my thoughts about them, sorry (shrug).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by paola

an Italian slant :-) on my TBR list

Thank you, Paola! Duly noted and the local library has 'em so I can be a cheapskate.

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Issybird, are you looking for books with a New York theme to the exception of other places? Or is it just that NY themed are particularly of interest to you, and you are also interested in non NY themed books with summer themes?

I offer Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers (non NY themed):

Thanks, Lynx. My New York theme is separate, it's just that Wouk is a twofer.

I shall definitely look out The Bodysurfers which sounds excellent.

[mitford13]

How about Rumer Godden's The Greengage Summer? Somewhat similar voice (teenage girl) to I Capture the Castle but not quite as whimsical.
John Mortimer's Summer's Lease I fell in love with years ago though it's really not out of the ordinary...just makes me want to be in Tuscany...
...A Room With a View...
Elizabeth Bowen, Heat of the Day. (Okay, I haven't actually read that one. But I intend to!)
Something in Provence would be good.
Miss M.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by mitford13

How about Rumer Godden's The Greengage Summer? Somewhat similar voice (teenage girl) to I Capture the Castle but not quite as whimsical.
John Mortimer's Summer's Lease I fell in love with years ago though it's really not out of the ordinary...just makes me want to be in Tuscany...
...A Room With a View...
Elizabeth Bowen, Heat of the Day. (Okay, I haven't actually read that one. But I intend to!)
Something in Provence would be good.
Miss M.

The Godden is a great suggestion; I've enjoyed many of her books, especially the memoirs, but missed out this one.

Will look out Mortimer, which sounds like a lovely read. And I've read some Bowen, but must confess that they all run together. Clearly time to revisit!

Thank you; more for the list.

[Catlady]

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene: good YA, but despite the title, can't say it feels especially summery to me.