Ever since Rinda published her summer reading list, I've been meaning to do a book review post. Over the last several months, I've read several excellent books and thought I'd share them. I'm not going to write a long summary of each, but I will add the links to the Amazon reviews. If you click on the book it will take you there.

I didn't read this on my Kindle but I posted that image since it was the cover of the one I read from the library. When I was in my 20's and 30's I read most of what Ernest Hemingway wrote. I especially loved A Moveable Feast about his years in Paris. This is a fictionalized account, most of it told in his first wife's voice, of their marriage and the years in Paris. It was a quick and enjoyable read with lots of little details about Paris in the 1920's and the literary greats who lived there.

I did read this on my Kindle, and my requirement for an e-book is that it be compelling and easy to pick up if you don't read it every day. This certainly fit the bill. If you've read The Glass Castle, this book is the same gene, a story of beating the odds when you are born into a truly disfunctional (but nonetheless loving) home. I heard Liz Murray interviewed on PBS and knew right away I wanted to read this book. I wasn't disappointed.

This is our current book group book. We'll be discussing it next week. It'a memoir about a boy who grew up in Malawi. His fascination with physics and the great needs of his village compel him to build a windmill from spare parts he finds over time in a junkyard. But the story is more than that; the description of the famine in Malawi is heartrendering. This is another book about the resilance of the human spirit as well as one of a very inventive mind!

Sarah recommended this series of mysteries to us. I've read just the first in the series. I think Sarah has finished four of them and my husband has finished the first three. Maisie is a dectective in London. The series begins just after the first World War, and much of this book is Maisie's back story that takes place during the first World War. This was a very quick read. I like mysteries, but I especially liked this one because of the historical background and details of the time.

Jennifer Haigh will be one of the speakers at the 2011-2012 Arts and Lectures series here. I needed a book for the Kindle for our flight home last month and this was perfect. I could barely put it down. It's fiction, and the narrator is the sister of a priest in Boston who has been accused of child molesting. It's a riveting story of a blue-collar family from South Boston as well as a look inside the workings of a Catholic church and diocese.

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I finished this book yesterday afternoon. It was one of the most profoundly moving books I've read in a long time. Little Bee comes to mind as the last book I read that was so moving (although some of my friends did not like that novel at all). Both books had sections that were very disturbing and hard to read. This book has a more hopeful ending, however. This is another author I heard interviewed on PBS, and it's worth listening to if it's on podcast somewhere. The narrator is a five year old boy who has been living since birth with his mother in captivity. The captor is a mean-spritied, evil man who abducted the mother at age 19 and has kept her locked up in a room he built in a shed in his backyard. It's based on a true story (but totally fictionalized) that took place in Ireland, but there are too many stories like this woman's here as well.

So what's on my list for the summer? It's a short list. We'll be away again this summer, and yesterday we signed a contract for a new kitchen. If all goes well with the local planning board, the demolition will start late this summer as well. I started Caleb's Crossing last night. I already know I'll like this book. It's by Geraldine Brooks; her People of the Book is one of my all-time favorite reads. I have Cutting for Stone on my Kindle, and I've read about 150 pages of the 688 pages. My friend, Peter, who we visited in Tucson (a former member of our book group) said it was the best book he'd ever read. It's been on my radar for a long time, but I never put in on my short-list because of its length. I'm glad it's there now; it will take me awhile to finish it, but it's exceptionally well-written and fascinating. Our book for July's book group is Freakonomics, not a book I would choose to read, but that's why I love my book group. I'm guessing that will be it for me this summer, although I do have a cross-country flight again for our summer trip. That's always good for a lot of reading time.