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We asked our fellow Seattlests: What's the last good book you read? And what's coming up on your summer reading list?
James: I just finished Songs of Innocence, Richard Aleas's second book about ex-PI John Blake. Like Aleas's first book, it's a noir mystery where you're a little ahead of the hero; the tension comes from wondering how the hero will handle the truth. On deck: another dead woman and the detective obsessed with her, John Burdett's Bangkok Haunts, his third book about Bangkok cop Sonchai Jitpleecheep. And on the non-mystery front, Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital.
Jeremy: I read way too many books at once to have anything that constitutes a summer reading list, but I'm pretty stoked to be starting The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, which is supposed to be a postmodern thriller in the same vein as House of Leaves. That's it for my frontlist hardcover. I've got a pair of paperbacks from McSweeney's new publishing arrangement with Grove/Atlantic, Icelander and Here They Come. Politics-wise I've got Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom and Reza Aslan's No god but God (because I can't read anything that's not been on The Daily Show).
Matt: I'm about a fifth of the way through the phone book sized Thomas Pynchon new one Against the Day. I was leery about it at first since I hated V and Gravity's Rainbow but its actually pretty fun so far: weird turn of the century anarchist terrorist plots and strike breakers, a brief encounter with a sentient cloud of lightning, a side-tracked subplot at the earth's core and a barely described battle between the core people and a team of children adventurer kids who tour the world in a hot air balloon, etc. Just keeping track of the trillions of different characters and their plots and sub-plots is kind of a challenge but its a fun read.
Seth: It being summer, I find it impossible to focus on anything but the lightest of reading. Currently I'm moseying through Kiowa Trail by the inimitable Louis L'Amour. Next up: my annual re-reading of P.G. Wodehouse's Uncle Dynamite, the greatest comic novel ever.
Jack: I just finished Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an homage to 1940's crime noir and detective thriller set in present day Sitka, Alaska. It was an exciting, fun, at times heart-wrenching, extremely rewarding read. And Michael Chabon's sentences are rich, savory meals all their own. Next up: Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. I just started this one on the plane ride back to Seattle a few days ago. Only a few chapters in, it's already an amazing story. Believe the hype.
Clint: I'm between the covers of The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (for the first time--finally). Next up will be Stephen King's lost-in-the-desk-drawer toss-off Blaze. Then I'll raid the neglected shelf for either Dave Eggers' What Is the What or Updike's third look at Harry Angstrom, Rabbit is Rich. That's the plan, anyway.
Michael: I just finished up with Jose Saramago's The Double (this guy discovers he has a double, see) and am catching my breath before plunging into some super-size summer reading: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. That's set in the Swiss Alps.
Dan: I'm reading Absurdistan which is fine and funny but very similar in voice (Eggers) and setting (Central Europe) to a thousand other things I've read in the past few years (no offense to Seattlest club pick Red Weather or Everything is Illuminated, The Corrections, Chasing the Sea or You Shall Know Our Velocity individually, but...enough already.) I did just finish Love in the Time of Cholera, which was quite different from the Eggers Voice and set in the Caribbean and is an all-around awesome summer book.
David F.: Last week, while watching the Chatham A's of the Cape Cod League get their clocked cleaned by the Hyannis Mets, I finished Crazy 08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History. Was it the greatest year? I don't know, but this is one of the most engaging baseball history books I've read in a while. The author, intentionally or not, wrote it in something close the bombastic tone of sports coverage of that era. After a few pages, it ceases to seem like schtick and helps transport you to what really was an important moment in baseball and US social history. I also brought with me the latest book from Elliot Bay Book Co. Maiden Voyage program, The Landsman. I could put it down. I'll give it another chance now that I'm further from sand and scallops.
And you, gentle readers? What are you reading?
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What are the women at Seattlest reading?
They refused to tell us!
I brought Absurdistan with me on my bike camp road trip extravaganza, but haven’t found it yet to be as engagingly funny as everyone claims it to be. Maybe I need to get further in to get hooked, but overall it isn’t hitting the right summer reading nerve (fat, drunk Russian != breezy, hot weather entertainment). Other than that, I’m mostly reading bike magazines and Phil Liggett’s tour coverage.
I was on a road trip when this roundtable went around and really didn't feel like typing that much into my BlackBerry.
I recently started reading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which I think is full of Kingsolver's signature beautiful use of language; but so far, there's not much of a plot. I'm also reading this helpful guide for writers, which really just tells you everything every other book for authors tells you. Honestly, I'm only holding on to those two until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out on July 21.