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Today Show’s Top 10 Summer Reads!

by Jeanne on May 29th, 2008

The Today show has got you covered when it comes to picking a book to read as you soak up the sun over the hot summer months.  I know that I will need something for that long road trip I’m planning!  With the help of Cosmopolitan magazine’s book editor, they’ve come up with a list of the Top 10 Summer Reads (descriptions taken from Amazon).  Check them out (click on the images to purchase)!

“The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein

If you’ve ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein’s third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny’s old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny’s bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama.  Buy it now!

“Skeletons at the Feast” by Chris Bohjalian

In his 12th novel, Bohjalian (The Double Bind) paints the brutal landscape of Nazi Germany as German refugees struggle westward ahead of the advancing Russian army. Inspired by the unpublished diary of a Prussian woman who fled west in 1945, the novel exhumes the ruin of spirit, flesh and faith that accompanied thousands of such desperate journeys. Prussian aristocrat Rolf Emmerich and his two elder sons are sent into battle, while his wife flees with their other children and a Scottish POW who has been working on their estate. Before long, they meet up with Uri Singer, a Jewish escapee from an Auschwitz-bound train, who becomes the group’s protector. In a parallel story line, hundreds of Jewish women shuffle west on a gruesome death march from a concentration camp. Bohjalian presents the difficulties confronting both sets of travelers with carefully researched detail and an unflinching eye, but he blinks when creating the Emmerichs, painting them as untainted by either their privileged status, their indoctrination by the Nazi Party or their adoration of Hitler. Although most of the characters lack complexity, Bohjalian’s well-chosen descriptions capture the anguish of a tragic era and the dehumanizing desolation wrought by war. Buy it now!

More after the jump!

“The Story of a Marriage” by Andrew Sean Greer

As he demonstrated in the imaginative The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Greer can spin a touching narrative based on an intriguing premise. Even a diligent reader will be surprised by the revelations twisting through this novel and will probably turn back to the beginning pages to find the oblique hints hidden in Greer’s crystalline prose. In San Francisco in 1953, narrator Pearlie relates the circumstances of her marriage to Holland Cook, her childhood sweetheart. Pearlie’s sacrifices for Holland begin when they are teenagers and continue when the two reunite a few years later, marry and have an adored son. The reappearance in Holland’s life of his former boss and lover, Buzz Drumer, propels them into a triangular relationship of agonizing decisions. Greer expertly uses his setting as historical and cultural counterpoint to a story that hinges on racial and sexual issues and a climate of fear and repression. Though some readers may find it overly sentimental, this is a sensitive exploration of the secrets hidden even in intimate relationships, a poignant account of people helpless in the throes of passion and an affirmation of the strength of the human spirit.  Buy it now!

“Chasing Harry Winston” by Lauren Weisberger

Emmy is newly single, and not by choice. Leigh, a young star in the publishing business, is within striking distance of landing her dream job as senior editor and marrying her dream guy. Adriana is the drop-dead-gorgeous daughter of a famous supermodel.  These three very different girls have been best friends for a decade in the greatest city on earth. As they near thirty, they’re looking toward their future…but despite all they’ve earned — first-class travel, career promotions, invites to all the right parties, and luxuries small and large — they’re not quite sure they like what they see…  One Saturday night at the Waverly Inn, Adriana and Emmy make a pact: within a single year, each will drastically change her life. Leigh watches from the sidelines, not making any promises, but she’ll soon discover she has the most to lose. Their friendship is forever, but everything else is on the table. Three best friends. Two resolutions. One year to pull it off.  Buy it now!

“Love the One You’re With” by Emily Giffin

How do you know if you’ve found the one? Can you really love the one you’re with when you can’t forget the one who got away?
Emily Giffin, author of the New York Times bestselling novels Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and Baby Proof, poses these questions—and many more—with her highly anticipated, thought-provoking new novel Love the One You’re With.
Ellen and Andy’s first year of marriage doesn’t just seem perfect, it is perfect. There is no question how deep their devotion is, and how naturally they bring out the best in each other. But one fateful afternoon, Ellen runs into Leo for the first time in eight years. Leo, the one who brought out the worst in her. Leo, the one who left her heartbroken with no explanation. Leo, the one she could never quite forget. When his reappearance ignites long-dormant emotions, Ellen begins to question whether the life she’s living is the one she’s meant to live. At once heartbreaking and funny, Love the One You’re With is a tale of lost loves and found fortunes—and will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered what if.  Buy it now!

“Black Out” by Lisa Unger

“When my mother named me Ophelia, she thought she was being literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic.”  On the surface, Annie Powers’s life in a wealthy Floridian suburb is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is pricked when she senses that the demons of her past have resurfaced and, to her horror, are now creeping up on her. These are demons she can’t fully recall because of a highly dissociative state that allowed her to forget the tragic and violent episodes of her earlier life as Ophelia March and to start over, under the loving and protective eye of Gray, as Annie Powers. Disturbing events—the appearance of a familiar dark figure on the beach, the mysterious murder of her psychologist—trigger strange and confusing memories for Annie, who realizes she has to quickly piece them together before her past comes to claim her future and her daughter.    Buy it now!

“Bringing Home the Birkin” by Michael Tonello

With down-to-earth wit, Michael chronicles the unusual ventures that took him to nearly every continent, from eBay to Paris auction house and into the lives of celebrities and poseurs. Flirting with danger, Michael recounts the heady rush of hand delivering his first big score to famed songwriter Carole Bayer Sager in Paris; how he had to hire thugs to rescue a bag that one of his “shoppers” held for ransom; and the story of the Oscar-worthy performances that allowed him to snag “reserved” bags from other, less dogged Birkinseekers.  Buy it now!

“Wolf at the Table” by Augusten Burroughs

With A Wolf At The Table, Augusten returns to his literary roots as one of the most famous memoirists of our time, yet he makes a quantum leap forward into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. A Wolf At The Table is the story of Augusten’s relationship with his father, John Robison, Sr., a man only briefly touched upon in Running With Scissors. Told with shocking honesty and penetrating insight, A Wolf At The Table is more than the companion volume to Running with Scissors—it’s a story of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.  Buy it now!

“Summer of Naked Swim Parties” by Jessica Anya Blau

Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of 1976. It’s the summer when she has her first boyfriend, cute surfer Flip Jenkins; it’s the summer when her two best friends get serious about sex, cigarettes, and tanning; it’s the summer when her parents throw, yes, naked swim parties, leaving Jamie flushed with embarrassment. And it’s the summer that forever changes the way Jamie sees the things that matter: family, friendship, love, and herself.  Buy it now!

“Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan

Horan’s ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright’s first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century. Frank and Mamah, both married and with children, met when Mamah’s husband, Edwin, commissioned Frank to design a house. Their affair became the stuff of headlines when they left their families to live and travel together, going first to Germany, where Mamah found rewarding work doing scholarly translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key’s books. Frank and Mamah eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they were hounded by a scandal-hungry press, with tragic repercussions. Horan puts considerable effort into recreating Frank’s vibrant, overwhelming personality, but her primary interest is in Mamah, who pursued her intellectual interests and love for Frank at great personal cost. As is often the case when a life story is novelized, historical fact inconveniently intrudes: Mamah’s life is cut short in the most unexpected and violent of ways, leaving the narrative to crawl toward a startlingly quiet conclusion. Nevertheless, this spirited novel brings Mamah the attention she deserves as an intellectual and feminist.  Buy it now!

Happy reading!!!!

images via Amazon.com

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