Memorial Day marks the de facto start of summer, but since it also marks a lot of rad TV marathons (which reminds us: SoapNET, thank you so much for Donnarama), it’s understandable that you may not have had a chance to pick up your big fat beach book yet. (We spent the weekend finally finishing up Richard Price’s much-buzzed about Lush Life, a crime mystery which was good, but ended with a bit of a whimper. And definitely not a beachy read.) To get you started, here’s a summary of what the Internet’s literati are recommending.
The Daily Beast gives a thumps-up to The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson’s follow-up to last summer’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Accidental Billionaires, an insider account of the faces behind Facebook, and new books by Gigi Levangie Grazier and Pat Conroy.
Amazon divides their picks into Blockbusters (Janet Evanovich and co.), Fiction (John Updike, another score for Conroy, and Colm Toibin) and Nofiction (An Edible History of Humanity).
New York Magazine touts gritty fiction like Dark Places, How To Sell, and a Henry Ford biography that depicts the magnate as “was less a visionary than a wack job.”
USA Today wants you to check out Conroy too, along with Larry King’s autobiography and Julie Metz’s memoir of becoming a widow just as she discovers her husband’s adultery.
So what’s on your list — are you going to give in to the Pat Conroy love fest, finally get around to Proust, or something else entirely?
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