By Suzanne Nash
School is out and the weather is heating up. Time to head to the pool or beach with a stack of books to chill out and relax. Of course, you need a list of good books to take with you. Look no further than Keswick Life this summer for all you summer reading choices. I have a selection of memoirs and fiction to kick your summer off right.
Michael Hayden’s Playing to the Edge is a serious look into the NSA and CIA under General Hayden. This is a very candid book that gives you his first-hand account of his time in the field and as Director of the CIA in the last three years of the Bush administration. If you are at all interested in the Intelligence world and want to learn more about how decisions were made and why they were made, this book offers no apologies and takes on the critics. I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated his up front writing style. This man cares very deeply about this country and carried the responsibility with very capable hands in a time that was critical at the start of the terrorism that is so prevalent today. If you are looking for an inside view of the NSA and CIA as you relax on the beach, this is the book for you!
Another controversial book came out a few years ago and I am just now getting around to reading it…but it is especially fun as we are all looking at vacations and where to travel this time of year. I always have loved travel writing and often dreamed of being a travel writer myself so Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? by Thomas Kohmstamm has been on my radar for some time. If you are at all familiar with Hunter S. Thompson as a writer you will see glimpses of his style in this book, but I do think Thomas takes things in a different direction because I believe he actually feels a bit sad that he cannot actually render a better service to those he is writing for. Kohnstamm has the perfect life….a wonderful girlfriend, a lucrative job in New York City and the stability so many seek. And of course he throws it all away to enter the fast paced world of travel writing. If you are like me, you often browse the travel books in the library or bookstore dreaming of your next adventure and you love to read up on all of the places you want to go. Warning….this book may make you decide to take a pass on those Lonely Planet books you so longingly page through. Kohnstamm gives us the underbelly world of the travel writer and swears that his path is the path of so many others…hedonistic and a bit sad. This seedy tale will give you pause but I actually enjoyed his witty style and it was good to understand the difficulties of trying to cover a broad swath of a country without enough funds or time. I have decided I don’t think I am cut out for travel writing!
I have two lovely pieces of fiction this month that will be perfect poolside reads. The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan is a sweet, charming book that takes place in England during the start of World War II. The choir in this small village is going to have to close as all the men are off fighting the war. The women of this village decide that they are going to do something revolutionary….create a women’s choir. I highly suggest that you get this as an audible book because it actually has a ladies’ choir singing and it is truly beautiful and stirring. The narration is lovely and will put you into the story even further than the written word might. The story is told through letters and journals, which gives the reader a lovely perspective and sets up the tension in the book as a village mystery unfolds. The characters are well developed and each one has its strengths that it brings to the village. It is at times very funny and then very moving as it takes you through the struggles a small village faced during this terrible war.
Lynda Cohen Loigman’s first novel, The Two Family House, is complex, suspenseful and compelling. Two brothers and their families share a two family home in post-war Brooklyn. It seems an idyllic life as the brothers run a successful box company and their families are close and loving. When their wives, Rose and Helen become pregnant at the same time, the mood changes and these families find themselves at odds. This story follows the family through decades as the readers see how one fateful decision and years of secrecy can destroy friendships and lives. Loigman’s family saga also engages in alternating perspectives, which keeps the tension and moves the narrative along in a meaningful way. This is another timeless classic story about family, love, loss and redemption.