Dirty books for summer
With summer upon us, it’s time to start assembling a list of the Best Dirty Books. Not that kind of dirty. I mean books meant to be read outdoors because they carry a whiff of salt spray or the grit of sand. For me, they’re the perfect read for a summer vacation. Here are a few classics that meet the standard. If you have other recommendations, let me know.
Dune. Frank Herbert’s science fiction tale, which started a trilogy and led to several lesser works by other authors, takes place on a planet covered by sand. Makes O.C. seem like a sandbox.
In a Sunburned Country. Bill Bryson, one of my favorite comic authors, describes in hilarious detail his travels around Australia, dodging the continent’s evolution-challenged and surprisingly lethal animals. You could read A Walk in the Woods, but this is a far sight better, mate.
Wind, Sand and Stars. Antoine de Saint-Exupery is more famous for Le Petit Prince, but his prose offers vivid descriptions of life as an airborne mail carrier in the 1930s, including a desert crash.
Desert Solitaire. Edward Abbey captures the beauty and grandeur of an unspoiled West as few people can. He voices awe for nature’s power and anger at those who try to tame it. One of the best books about nature ever written.
On Oct. 7, Laura Lippman’s latest, a short story collection called Hardly Knew Her, will go on sale. (For the obsessive fan, HarperCollins’ website includes an up-to-the-second countdown reminiscent of a Space Shuttle flight.) 
One Book for Greater Hartford's pick for 2008 is The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, the University of Maryland Baltimore County math professor who has carved out a second career as novelist. 
Here's a bite-sized (146-page) but thoughtful food-related book that hasn't received much attention. 
One hallmark of Southern writing is the Civil War. Even if the war isn't mentioned outright, its heroic and tragic themes loom in the background. For recommendations about war-related books, I turned to local author Charles Mitchell, whose Maryland Voices of the Civil War is a collection of letters, diary entires and other contemporaneous writings. To get grounded in the war, he suggested these five great reads: 
Baltimore's caught in its typical July/August funk of heat and humidity. So is Washington, where the Post's book blog, 
Over on the 
Food writer Betsy Block has 
Just finished The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, an Australian crime novel loaded with great writing and biting social commentary about race relations Down Under. Because Temple's rough characters speak in Aussie slang, the book included a glossary. How else would you know that Maccas means McDonald's, or a chook snag sanger is a chicken sausage sandwich? (For a more exhaustive list, try 
Our anxious friends at the Washington Post have put together a list of 
As if your summer reading list was not long enough, here are some audio book award-winners and others that caught the attention of the editors at People magazine. The winners of the 2008 Audie Awards, honoring spoken word entertainment and presented by the Audio Publishers Association, are:
OK, so this list is a bit specialized. But it's a good one for some light summer reading, nu? The list came to mind as I was reading Absurdistan, a farcical look at geopolitics, love and religion. Most of these picks were read in my book club, which has a Jewish theme, but not all were universally loved. In fact, some were roundly criticized, despite my praise. Go figure. The list (in no particular order):
Barbara Walters blazed a trail for women in news and in television, but it is her voice that is her signature. So it makes sense that she would be the reader on the audio version of her new book, Audition.
I can't recommend that you take a cassette player to the beach so you can listen to a title from your summer reading list. 
Cam Northouse of Clayton Fine Books offered these largely Chicano authors to those who enjoyed Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me Ultima: 
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
