Worth the Weight: 8 lbs. 5 oz. of Portable Summer Reading

How do we select our summer reading? I remain stalwartly old school, preferring to browse brick-and-mortar bookstores or to scavenge bona fide book sales, to pay cold hard cash for real live books, to plop myself down on a cool porch in a comfy chair and read those real live books from cover to cover, to lovingly place my hands on real live dust jackets, to turn real live pages, to use real live bookmarks and—here’s the tricky part—to do the heavy lifting and carry real live books with me when it’s time to hit the road. I know, I know: An e-reader would lighten the load, allowing room for extra pairs of socks, multiple toothbrushes, and supplemental underwear in the rolling duffel. A Kindle or a Nook would pull me ever-so-electronically into the twenty-first century. But no. No! Just no.

A few months ago, I stumbled across an article at Smithsonian.com that will be of clarifying interest here. A Brief History of Taking Books along for the Ride trips the timeline of literacy and the tradition of real live books-on-the-move, affirming humankind's shared inheritance of mobile libraries and ambulatory reading. An accompanying photograph, circa sometime in the 1930s, shows a resourceful young British woman with a rather cumbersome-looking shelving system—a lending library—affixed to her back. She is at once a purveyor of literature and a paradigm of aerobic fitness… a kindred spirit in black and white! Bearing this photograph in mind, I am sharing selections and net weights from my Summer 2017 Walking Library:

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.

Harper, 2017. 260 pages, plus 236 more.

Mysteries and Suspense

If we’re bound and determined to lug a library about the countryside this summer, it’s only sensible to include a book that’s really two-books-in-one: in this case, a mystery wrapped in a suspenseful enigma, a doubly-troubling page-turner, a classic British whodunit combined with an edge-of-our-seats contemporary detective story. Narrator/Editor Susan Ryeland thinks nothing of it when Alan Conway sends her his latest manuscript. She has worked with Conway for years and is well-acquainted with the bestselling writer's lucrative, if slightly formulaic, story-spinning style and with protagonist detective Atticus Pünd’s impressive, if slightly clichéd, investigatory ways. Narrator/Editor Susan invites us to read the manuscript: we find a sleepy English village, a manor house crime scene, an accumulation of dead bodies, an embarrassment of sketchy suspects. The more Susan reads and the more we read along with her, the more we become convinced that there is something terribly amiss here: that there is another story hidden within the manuscript pages, a tale of ruthless ambition, rampant jealousy, ghastly greed, and murderous intent. 
Net Weight: 1 lb. 4 oz. of Sleuthy Summer Fun.

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard.

Doubleday, 2016. 381 pages.
Non Fiction and Biographies

Admittedly under-read on both Winston Churchill and the Boer War—and always up for a Daring Escape—I plucked this from my husband’s to-be-read stack and plunged into fine narrative non fiction describing Churchill's formative experience and extraordinary exploits during turn-of-the-century colonial conflict in Southern Africa. Valet and vintage wine stash in tow, twenty-four-year old to-the-Blenheim-Palace-born Winston Churchill arrives in theater in 1899, prepared to excel as a war correspondent and to secure a measure of illustriousness that will, he believes, advance a nascent-yet-already-foundering political career. Two short weeks after his arrival, his company is ambushed on an armored train; Churchill behaves bravely but is taken captive and marched off to a Boer prison camp. After the titular and therefore expected Daring Escape, Churchill traverses hundreds of miles of enemy territory alone, fortified by a wad of cash and a few chunks of chocolate, aided and abetted by British sympathizers along the way. Churchill does not carry reading material with him; however, hiding in a veldt office behind packing cases, he spends quality time with a borrowed copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. This is a tale of wile and will, of fate and fortune, an epic biographical adventure that defines a man and, in a roundabout way, determines the course of twentieth-century history.

Net Weight: 1 lb. 4 oz. of Enlightening Entertainment.

In Support of Real Live Books: If you cannot read all your books... fondle them-- peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that at least you know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances. -- Winston Churchill

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Penguin Books, 2003 (1855). 450 pages.

Oldies But Goodies

Churchill’s surreptitious reading experience on the veldt reminds us of the value of keeping classics close at hand—while holing up, hiding out, or high-tailing it on holiday. We turn, then, to this mid-nineteenth century English social novel, a time-tested masterwork and an instant favorite, a wonderfully absorbing narrative—with intimations of Austen, Dickens, and the Brontёs. When her father leaves the church in a somewhat perplexing yet plot-propelling crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from a pastoral existence in southern England and thrust into life in fictional-Milton-shades-of-non-fictional-Manchester. Initially repulsed by the grit and grime and unabashed Industrial Revolution-ness of her new northern environs, our admirable heroine becomes increasingly aware of the poverty and plight of local mill workers, evolves into a bit of a proto-social justice warrior, and develops a tempestuous, suitably complicated relationship with self-made man and mill owner John Thornton. 

Net Weight: 15.2 oz. of Victorian Romance, Social Commentary, and Geography.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontё.

Penguin Books, 1996 (1848). 535 pages.

Oldies But Goodies
When bit-of-a-proto-feminist Helen Graham and her young son move into rural Wildfell Hall, moody, twenty-something farmer Gilbert Markham finds himself drawn to the beautiful, inscrutable, reclusive new tenant. He proffers friendship and she, as pages turn, accepts it. When predictably venomous gossip and vicious speculation about Helen's beauty, inscrutability, and reclusivity circulate amongst the villagers, however, Gilbert begins to wonder if his admiration, empathy, and trust are horribly misplaced. Difficulties ensue, and impediments to felicity and understanding arise. The story unfolds through Gilbert's dutiful letter-writing and Helen's daring diary-sharing-- resulting in a compellingly modern read-- intimate, relevant, with a smidgen of ironic wit. 
Net Weight: 1 lb. of Engrossing Epistolary (!) Literature.

Vintage Northern New Jersey Bookmobile.

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson.
Random House, 2016. 479 pages.
Historical Fiction
Summer, 1914, Rye, East Sussex, England: lovely weather they've been having for reading and rambling about the idyllic coastal countryside. Everyone is ruminating on the prospect of war, but most remain hopeful that rumblings in the Balkans won't amount to much. Medical student Hugh Grange is on break, visiting his conventional-yet-somewhat unconventional Aunt Agatha, who has endangered her conventional reputation by unconventionally lobbying for a woman to replace the local Latin master. When the replacement arrives by train, it quickly becomes apparent that Beatrice Nash is indeed a woman-- and that she is fairly freethinking and far more attractive than previous local Latin masters. Mourning the death of her father and pretty much destitute, Miss Nash wants nothing more than to be left alone with her well-traveled crates of books, her teaching assignment, and her quiet literary aspirations. Just as Beatrice begins to embrace her new life-- with its attendant social complications and conventional and unconventional relationships-- the breezy, blue-sky Edwardian summer ends, and clouds of war and testing times gather on the ever-broadening horizon. 
Net Weight: 1.6 lbs. of Artful Historical Fiction.

Avid Summer Reader: Diminutive French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte demanded a diminutive traveling library, several boxes holding about sixty volumes each, favorite books miniaturized for ease of transport about the Empire.

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain.

Gallic Books, 2015. 159 pages.

Fiction Favorites

When Unassuming and Earnest Bookseller Laurent Letellier finds an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street, he feels preternaturally compelled to personally return it to its rightful owner. There is no formal identification in the bag. There is, however, plenty of captivating miscellaneous content providing insight into its owner’s life, including the titular red notebook, filled with all manner of jotting and musing and heartfelt disclosure. With graceful intellect, effortless style, and a bit of gentle, he thought/she thought humor, this sliver-of-a-novel manages to feel old-fashioned yet modern, simple yet complex, frivolous yet philosophical. 
Net Weight: 3.5 oz. of Diminutive Storytelling.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley.

Knopf, 2000. 576 pages.

Fiction Favorites

Our annual Saratoga weekend is right around the corner, so I would be remiss to not include a selection with simultaneous appeal to fans of horse racing and to admirers of portable, satirical fiction. Ever the keen observer of hominid nature, Jane S. (not to be confused with the consummate observer of hominid behavior, Jane A.) presents us with an impressive cast of idiosyncratic humans: jockeys and trainers, grooms and glommers, rappers and socialites, animal psychics and New Age scholars. As it turns out, Jane S. is also a keen observer of equine behavior and presents us with a distinctive cast of idiosyncratic horses to interact with the idiosyncratic humans. I’m not a big fan of anthropomorphism in literature, but Horse Heaven's hardscrabble, prankish gelding Justa Bob is an all-time four-legged favorite. This is a tour de horse, brimming with authenticity, wicked humor, heart-changing wisdom and hey—or hay—a touch of whimsical coincidence. Jane S. obviously takes great pleasure in writing and is, like Jane A., a great pleasure to read.

Net Weight: 2 lbs. of Happy Horses.

Depression-Era Librarians on Horseback, Eastern Kentucky.

Giddy-up: Off we go, then, rambling and reading until summer’s sweet end, foisting literary opinions and hoisting real live books about the countryside....