Too soon we’ll retreat, taking our tans and our totes back to the city to await the drop of mercury and the pick-up of northern winds. Soon summer will end, giving way to the gray skies and early nights of fall. But not yet! In the final few days of a sultry summer, we offer our final few picks for the recreational reader. Indulge! The season ends too soon ...
[BFF4EVER]
My Journey with Farrah: A Story of Life, Love, and Friendship by Alana Stewart (HarperCollins)
The constant acolyte of the late Farrah Fawcett, Stewart writes a touching and sentimental narrative of her days with the superstar. Compiled from her diaries kept over many years, My Journey with Farrah reminds readers why the world fell in love with the Charlie’s Angel and never escaped her charm. A celebration of a friendship and an intimate tribute to one of America’s sweethearts, the book augments our collective memory with never-before-seen photos and surprising, inspiring details of the late actress’s life. A must-have for any Fawcett fan.
[PAGE SEVEN]
Mercury in Retrograde by Paula Froelich (Atria)
New York’s been reading Froelich’s novel for months, but if you’ve not picked it up, don’t be alarmed—as Froelich would tell you, sometimes it’s fashionable to be late to the party. A delightful trio of New York female types—a nervous socialite, a fearless reporter, and a top-notch lawyer—collide while at their most vulnerable, finding themselves sharing more than a SoHo address and more in need of each other than any of them care to admit. A rather predictable but charming, light comedy, Froelich’s novel puts New York and its denizens on fine display, as she breaks out of the short form reporting that took her to the top while losing none of the insight or wit that got her there.
[PLANET AUSTEN]
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen edited by Susannah Carson (Random House)
Finally! After various movie adaptations (some better than others) and a half dozen Austen-themed books (even one with zombies), someone offers to explain our odd and inexplicable devotion to a 235-year-old woman who writes in a formal language most nowadays can barely read. Yale scholar Carson attempts to give reason to the Janeite community, a worldwide fan club rivaled only by Star Wars collectors, and that has spawned the female equivalent of Trekkie conventions. Carson’s smart enough to let others do most of the talking: Eudora Welty, Lionel Trilling, Anna Quindlen, Somerset Maugham, and Virginia Woolf all chime in with essay-length considerations of the ironic Englishwoman’s work. Though it’s full of academic jargon (and ego), the book gives it a try. But some things, like Victorian romance or American fanaticism, are better left to experience than exposition.
[A NEW SUPERMAN]
50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days—and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! by Dean Karnazes (Grand Central)
Some people drink martinis at ten in the morning. Some people do coke. Some people jump out of airplanes. Dean Karnazes just runs. And when running’s your drug, you do it for as long as you can—even if the world thinks you’re crazy. Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days—a feat that deserves a book more than any of the immersion memoirs (My Year of Living Biblically! The Month I Ate Only McDonalds! My Year Without Sex!) combined. If it was a heart-pounding book to write, it is a heart-healthy book to read. The stories of why running matters, what it does to the body and the mind and the world, and how anybody can do it (in slightly more moderate measurements) will threaten to make an aspiring runner out of the most sedentary of humans.
[THE CAPITOL OF HEDONISM]
Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach by Gerald Posner (Simon and Schuster)
Miami ends up looking a lot like Mario Puzo’s Vegas in Posner’s sweeping and energetic look into the contemporary American Sodom. Posner likes decadence, and in Miami he finds its birthplace and graveyard: sin may live in the desert, but it begins and ends on the southeastern coast. From swampland to Mobland, Miami is the incarnation of an American moral arc, starting with untamed nature and ending with untamed capitalism. Corruption, coke, and coral, the city is what it is: a thing of beauty and terror.
[HEEB-IE JEWBIE]
Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish edited by Shana Liebman (Grand Central)
Heeb is hip these days, a Jewish lifestyle magazine that’s unapologetically modern and Jewish, pondering at all times if the two don’t really go best together. Liebman makes her home at Heeb as arts editor, and parlays her connections and creativity into a collection of essays that capture modern-day Jewish experiences in their variety and eccentricity. Liebman’s creative, but that doesn’t mean she’s not organized, structuring the book by themes—sex, drugs, work, youth, family, body and soul. And she chooses wisely, picking some big names to balance the lesser knowns, but picking each for their pith and poignancy. If you’re not a Jew but like to imagine you are, here’s your prompt for the week. Go for it.
