Read Street: Cool summer reads - A blog for a community of readers, in Baltimore and beyond.

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July 31, 2008

Cool summer reads

everest%20adeel%20halim%20bloomberg%20news2.jpg Baltimore's caught in its typical July/August funk of heat and humidity. So is Washington, where the Post's book blog, Short Stack, is recommending novels to beat the heat. Among them: Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston, and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

For a novel, I'd recommend Willa Cather's My Antonia, which makes you feel the grip of a deadly winter on the plains. And if we broaden the choice to nonfiction, I'd add Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, mountaineering books that are chilling in more ways than one.

What would you recommend for a cool summer read?

Photo of Mt. Everest by Adeel Halim, Bloomberg News

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Recommended

Comments

Just not "Cold Mountain." Anything but "Cold Mountain."

Posted by: Mary | August 3, 2008 9:40 PM

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About the bloggers

While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, Nancy Knight grew up reading nearly everything she could get her hands on, including a probably unhealthy amount of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike, with the obligatory Jane Austen thrown in. She'll still read just about anything you put in front of her, especially the funny or weird. She lives in the city with her books, cat and drum set.

Dave Rosenthal came to The Baltimore Sun as a business reporter in 1987 and now is an assistant managing editor and Sunday editor. He reads a wide range of books (but never as many as he'd like), usually alternating between non-fiction and fiction. Some all-time favorites: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; and anything by Calvin Trillin or John McPhee. He belongs to a book club with a Jewish theme.

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