The harpies always started circling at the end of May. It was the same refrain every summer: get a job, or enlist in 6 weeks of summer school. The one significant upside to my adolescent allergies was that it saved my bacon from toiling in the Dole pineapple cannery; once an employment beacon, every kid searching for a summer job could count on being hired by the cannery. Today, the rubber gloved assembly line and the rolling pineapples are a relic of the past. Dole has moved on to cheaper labor in the Philippines and Thailand, but keeps a working plantation on the North Shore of Oahu primarily for tourism purposes. Looking back on all of those high school summers, the math classes were insignificant. Typing 101 was 'user friendly.' Etiquette classes. WTF? And so it went. Kept by daylight. Howling at night. The classic summer cocktail for juvenile shenanigans. Youth has given way to wisdom and treachery. The boys of summer are on the diamond. The Indy 500 has come and gone. World Cup is about to descend. The tomatoes are flowering. The beans are massing. The faaavas have been eaten with Chianti. And the summer reading list has fruited:
1. Any volume of the cult phenomenon Steig Larsson trilogy. The last volume 'Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest' has just been released in hard cover. Soft cover order from the UK for about the same price. The writing might not be exceptional. However, this trilogy is the ultimate summer read.
2. Abraham Verghese's, 'Cutting for Stone.' A great work of fiction by the senior associate chair for theory and practice of medicine at the Stanford school of Medicine.
3. 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel. What's not to like? It's the two Tom's...Cromwell vs More; Henry vs the Pope. The Boleyn's vs everyone. And the Seymour's in waiting at Wolf Hall.
4. Any work of fiction by Jennifer Egan. A brilliant short story writer...a favorite of the NY Yorker. As good as or maybe better than Ann Beattie.
5. If you can find it...used: 'Foxfire' by Joyce Carol Oates. Written in the style of an adolescent. A bit dated, about a girl gang (!), really not that kind of gang, but interesting; hey, when was the last time anyone read a book about hard scrabble adolescent girls? Here's some trivia...the book was made into a movie and became the first 'real' film that starred Angie Jolie as the character 'Legs' Sadovsky. The movie was filmed in Portland which gave it a poignant quality. Good coming of age fare.
6. 'The Nasty Bits,' a salty, entertaining read by jaded rogue chef, Anthony Bourdain. We love his candor and his outrageous flair.
7. 'War' by Sebastian Junger.
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