Summer Reading

What is everyone reading this summer?

I know Jen plans to reread Gone with the Wind. The neighborhood book club is reading Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Those two are on my list.

Right now I'm reading The Believers by Zoe Heller (unavailable on Kindle last time I checked, so I bought the paperback). I'm liking it so far, it's a dysfunctional family kind of a story.

Two fabulous books I've read in the past month or so are

(1) The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. This one is a story of the lives of various messed-up people involved in producing an English-language newspaper in Rome. Lots of interconnected stories, very funny.

(2) The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. The story of a man with four wives and 28 children, living in a *plyg* community in Utah. He is a sorry, lazy, hapless father, which means that he's a failure at being the leader he's asked to be. Also very funny, but deals with some serious issues like child neglect, etc. A joy to read -- main character is a loveable screw-up.

I read Jane Smiley's latest, Private Lives, and it was okay if you like quiet books. The main character is a wife who lives her life in a kind of a fog, which makes you want to shake her by the neck and yell *wake up.* But it's also the story of a long loveless marriage, with a fair amount of the outside world and its history intruding. (It's set from about 1900-50s, World War II)

I am planning to read the latest Steig Larrson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest over the summer.

Anyone else read something good?