May 22, 2011|By Carolyn Kellogg |
Los Angeles Times Here at Book Review, we know what looked good to us on the summer bookshelves, but we couldn't help but wonder what some of our favorite authors were looking forward to tossing in their travel bag or bringing out to the backyard or the beach for one of those long, sunny afternoons. For many, the coming months seem to be a chance to catch up on those beguiling titles we somehow don't have time for the rest of the year but are oh-so made for summer.
Peter Bognanni, recently awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction for "The House of Tomorrow": Since I'm teaching a class on the novella in the fall, I'm looking forward to reading "Goodbye, Columbus" by Philip Roth again. There's something about that book that pulls me back. I read it for the first time as a teenager, and it has seemed to find me every few years since. I'm willing to admit that this might be because I have yet to fully enter the world of adulthood. Or maybe, it's just that good.
Chris Adrian, author of the novel "The Great Night," a retelling of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" set in San Francisco: I will be spending a large portion of the summer with Dumas Malone's multi-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson.
Jonathan Evison, author of the novel "West of Here": Is this the summer I finally revisit "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," two of my all time favorite novels? Perhaps. I might have to take them both out in my 1976 motor home/remote office and make that happen.
Yunte Huang, author of "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History": I'll be judging the National Book Awards this year, so I look forward to reading about 600 nonfiction books this summer. The best summer reading I did in the past was in 1993 — I was working my butt off at a Chinese restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., but I stole some time to read Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner on the greasy kitchen floor. Literature had never been tastier.
Tayari Jones, author of the novel "Silver Sparrow": I'd love to give a little love to some L.A. writers: if you're not familiar with the work of Nina Revoyr and Nichelle Tramble, check them out.
Anne Kreamer, author of the book "It's Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace": I'm eager to read Téa Obreht's "The Tiger's Wife," and my book club is reading Naguib Mahfouz's "The Cairo Trilogy" and Junichiro Tanizaki's "The Makioka Sisters."