My reading list for the end of summer

The dog days of August have most readers looking around for what they are going to read next. Now that bookstores and libraries have reopened, you can once again browse their shelves looking for the next great read. 

I’m looking at Daniel Silva’s new thriller, “The Cellist,” featuring legendary art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon, along with James Lee Burke’s new book, “Another Kind of Eden.”  Although not set in Louisiana bayou country, anything by Burke is fabulous. This one takes you to ’60s Denver, where an aspiring author confronts cults, drugs and grotesque murders. 

I know that sooner than later I will visit Stephen King’s new summer thriller, “Billy Summers,” which features an assassin looking for an exit strategy. Also on my list is the new book by acclaimed mystery writer Louise Penny, “The Madness of Crowds,” featuring Chief Inspector Gamache. Penny’s Gamache is back home in the Quebec Village of Three Pines and murder is afoot.

While putting my list together, I began wondering what readers were spending their time with over the last 100 years. There weren’t a lot of titles I recognized from 1921 but several stood out, including “Main Street,” by Sinclair Lewis; “The Brimming Cup,” by Dorothy Canfield, a heralded author and activist who wrote more than 30 books and is credited with bringing the Montessori movement to the United States, and Zane Grey, the author and dentist behind “The Mysterious Rider.” Also on the list of bestsellers was “The Valley of Silent Men,” by Owosso’s own James Oliver Curwood, who was at the height of his popularity with his adventures in the great white North. 

Jumping forward to 1931, you were likely to be reading “The Good Earth,” by Pearl S. Buck, or “Shadows of the Rock,” by Willa Cather, and “Age of Innocence,” by Edith Wharton. In 1931, many readers were also introduced to Fannie Hurst through her book “Back Street.” Hurst was a populist writer whose fiction focused on social issues including feminism.

Stride into pre-war 1941 and readers were enjoying Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “The Keys of the Kingdom,” by A.J. Cronin, “Random Harvest,” by James Hilton, and “What Makes Sammy Run,” by Budd Schulberg, which became a Broadway musical in 1965. “Sammy,” the rags-to-riches story of a young man escaping the Jewish ghetto, is still a popular read.

Post-war, the 1951 adventure memoir “Kon-Tiki,” by Thor Heyerdahl, raced to number one on the New York Times Best Seller list, while Rachel Carson’s “The Sea Around Us” held the anchor slot of number two. 

“The New Joy of Cooking” also made the 1951 list. Irma S Rombauer and Marion Rombauer wrote “The New Joy of Cooking” in Northern Michigan during family vacations. Creeping up on the list was “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, and the World War II classic “From Here to Eternity,” by James Jones.

The year 1961 was blessed with several books on the best-sellers list that are still read today. These include “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” by Irving Stone, who would write books on Vincent van Gogh and Michelangelo, and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” beginning a long run for the book that would become a staple for high school reading classes. In addition, the racy novels “Tropic of Cancer,” by Henry Miller, and “The Carpetbaggers,” by Harold Robbins, made the best sellers list.

“Never having to say your sorry” became a pre-Internet meme for young lovers in 1971, after the book “Love Story” popped up on best-sellers list for Professor Eric Segal. Cue the tears.

1971 was no slacker, with best seller books like “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown, and the entrance of two lifestyle books, “The Female Eunuch,” by Germain Greer, and “Future Shock,” by Alvin Toffler. Another groundbreaking book was “The Day of a Jackal,” a spy thriller by author Frederick Forsyth, which sparred with another spy thriller, “Message from Malaga,” by Helen MacInnes, who would revolutionize the espionage novel genre.

What will you be reading this summer before it gives way to fall?

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