A Few Books I Read This Summer

On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Gatsby's Girl, Caroline Preston
The Simplest Game: An Intelligent Fan's Guide to the World of Soccer, Paul Gardner
I Chose to Stand and Fight, Margaret Cho
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailickas
March, Geraldine Brooks

Out of the whole bunch I HIGHLY RECOMMEND March. The main character is the missing father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. He heads off in 1861 to serve as a chaplain in the Union Army, then as a schoolteacher for freed slaves. That story intertwines his young adulthood with being an idealistic, Transcendentalist, abolitionist married family man. I can't do justice to the amazing story that unfolds concerning relationships, idealism, and war. There are twists (but believable ones) until the very last chapter. I wish I could read it all over again for the first time.

I'd write more, but it's late and tomorrow is another dose of early morning tortue--uh, I mean yoga.

*PS. My list reminds of a reading program from elementary school called Book It. You got to put gold stickers on this big, ugly Book It button with so many pages read, then the major reading prize was a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Yum. Probably contributed to my current pizza-monster status.