What are you reading this summer?
July 20, 2008
I need your help in preparing next week’s column for The Review Mirror on books for dockside reading. Please pick a good one from your summer stack and let me know in a comment below. Feel free to add other titles which fit the bill, as well.
Thanks,
Rod
BTW: I guess I should mention that I have just finished Single and Single, the 1999 John Le Carre novel I had somehow missed when it came out, and am currently halfway through Ernest Langford’s Chombuk. Printed posthumously in 2007, it seems to be a Canadianized rewrite of Swift’s The Voyage to Lilliput. Its humour is as gross as the original’s, and the satire is fairly light and gentle, as well. Stealing a page from Lolita, another voice offers comments in the persona of the main character’s aggrieved ex-wife, who sounds very much like Mary Walsh’s Marge Delahunte. I predict that Chombok will be banned from school libraries with great fanfare as soon as it catches on.
the Walnut Diary 
July 22, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I’ve been reading far too much non-fiction lately, but I have come across some good ones:
The Song of the Dodo – David Quammen
Quammen gives a historical account of how islands (and the weird animals that live on them, like lemurs and komodo dragons) have contributed to our understanding of speciation and extinction, while recounting his own journeys to Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Galapagos to witness island biogeography for himself. This is a popular science book that is certainly entertaining enough for the dock. (another good one by Quammen that I finished recently is The Reluctant Mr. Darwin)
In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan
On the problems with the modern western diet, and how the processed food industry figured out how to use nutrition science for profit at the expense peoples’ health. This is a pretty quick read & it is fascinating. I have also been meaning to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Pollan which is supposed to be even better.
July 22, 2008 at 2:37 pm
One of these days I’m gonna get Mark Steyn’s America Alone finished.
The man is simply brilliant.