On Lily’s Bookshelf: Authors to Get Into the Summer

Ah, summer. Not my favorite season of the year (I’m more of a Fall/Winter kind of girl); however summer always signals time for me to hit the bookshelves again and sink into a great story. Since I am female and come from a background where TV is truly for recreational purposes – I read A LOT of books in the course of 2-3 months. And I read fast too!

As I wrote last summer, this is the perfect time to pick up a series or a chunk of a particular author’s work. Most of us will be going on vacation and need something to kill time on the beach, in the plane, or on the road. And humans are nothing if not creatures of habit. I find that I’ll pick up something on a whim and find myself wanting EVERYTHING the author ever wrote.

So here’s my service announcement to all you bookworms for the summer. Here are three authors you can consume over the summer. Each one a little off the beaten path and with something different to offer.

Author: Christopher Moore
Books: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff and A Dirty Job
How I Got Hooked: A coaching colleague had recommended to me and Lenny Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff when I felt I had overdosed on Chick-Lit right before summer break. The pitch on the story was simple: What was Jesus like as a kid? The Bible tells us about his birth and his adulthood, but never about his formative years. And what if it was written as a buddy flick? At first, I was a little cautious about the book. Call it the suspicious Catholic in me. I have a sense of humor about these things, but I didn’t want anyone bashing or making a mockery of my Lord and Savior. But Lenny and I picked up the book and proceeded to LAUGH OUR ASSES OFF! Moore protects the sensibilities of those like me by narrating the story through Biff – Jesus’ lesser known childhood friend. I recently finished A Dirty Job as I traveled to and from Oklahoma and absolutely loved the story of “Beta-Male” Charlie Asher learning to wake up his Alpha-Male tendencies while trying to raise his daughter and avoid the epic showdown between Good and Evil in modern day San Francisco.
Why I’ll Pick-Up More Moore: Christopher Moore is easily in my top three favorite modern writers. He’s a writer after my own heart. While he can be a little pretentious at times on the narrative, he writes with a sarcastic wit that I can’t help but admire. While he challenges the ideas of Religion or the supernatural, he doesn’t shove it in your face that he may not believe the same thing. I think Moore is the voice of those who believe there’s something out there – but like a lot of us, he isn’t willing to buy the story being fed to us by those in charge. And it’s all done in a very funny and very well researched manner. You will connect with all human characters because you will find yourself saying, “I understand that…I do that all the time!”

Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
Books: Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
How I Got Hooked: I have spoken about my experience of catching HBO’s adaptation of Foer’s Everything is Illuminated during our New Year’s visit to the in-laws. The movie was so endearing and the characters so quirky, it really captured my attention. After picking up the DVD and the book for myself, I found the novel even better than the movie (which is tough because the movie was pretty good!). My sister-in-law gave me Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in my Easter basket. I had had an experience with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close through Speech and Debate; one of our state’s best speakers performed an excerpt from the novel for competition last year. It’s a post-9/11 story about a child who is looking for closure after losing his father at The Trade Center. I haven’t completed reading it, but the story itself is in essence about redemption and forgiveness. I’ll probably end up crying and feel good about it in the end.
Why I’ll Pick-Up More Foer: Capturing raw human emotion without melodramatic angst is a tough thing to do. And in the two cases of Foer, he does it very well. Both novels deal with topics that are often met with an eye roll or “Not again…” which may turn some readers off. While the Holocaust and 9/11 are life changing periods in our lives – human nature turns away from it for the fear of being depressed by it. But Foer brings out the good in it, even if the ending isn’t happy. While being a great fiction writer, he infuses his stories with realities that we might have to face in our own lives, thus reminding us of the tragedies without being to overbearing.

Author: Diana Gabaldon
Books: The Outlander Series and Lord John and the Private Matter
How I Got Hooked: I was at my favorite used book store, Changing Hands, trying to avoid Chick-Lit overload again. I saw on the top shelf a set of books in paperback. I immediately knew it was a series, so I picked up the first one entitled Outlander. The synopsis said it was about a World War II British nurse who time travels back into Jacobean Scotland while on vacation with her husband. With no idea of how she got there or how to get out, she finds love again in the form of Jamie Fraser, a strapping Highland Hero. And thus begins a sweeping historical romance that has now expanded into the beginning of the American Revolution. I’ll be honest: I read the first lines of the synopsis and was ready to put it down as a cheesy romance novel. But something made me keep reading to the point where it ended up in my basket. I brought it home and sat down for a quick read. THIS BOOK KICKED MY BUTT. It took me FIVE days to finish it. Why? The story was so rich and deep…and I had to stop and look up the Gaelic words before it drove me nuts. Anyway, by the time I finished the first book, I was addicted. I wanted to know how this ends.
Why I’ll Pick-Up More Gabaldon: Never has there been a destined romance than Claire and Jamie Fraser. You really can’t argue when your love spans HISTORY. Gabaldon makes you really root for them. Sometimes I get exasperated at Jamie’s constant hero status, because I really enjoy it when the hero has the moral dilemma. No one can be as lucky as this guy (and no couple should be having THAT much sex). The series is now six books and I have to catch up with the most recent one, A Breath of Snow and Ashes. The draw of the series to me is the fact that it’s not just a love story – but it’s an adventure. Gabaldon writes in detail and her vaunted old school research tactics (The original Outlander was written purely from library research and maps from the era) just make you feel like a fearless explorer.

Dig and get reading! If you’ve got any to add to the list, please give me a holler…I’m always looking for something funny and new!