Fasten your sun hats, and load up on the sunscreen, BPR is announcing its summer book club! Alex Beam chose books for June, July, and August, (he suggests stopping by your local library to get the best bang for your sand dollar). We'll all read them. You can email, tweet, or facebook us questions and thoughts as you go, and then Alex, Jim, and Margery will host a conversation with callers about each of the books at the end of each month. Grab your bathing suits, we're starting with a beach read:
JUNE:
Three women arrive at the local airport, observed by Josh, a Nantucket native home from college for the summer. Burdened with children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues, the women--two sisters and one friend--make their way to the sisters' tiny cottage, inherited from an aunt. They're all trying to escape from something: Melanie, after seven failed in-vitro attempts, learned her husband was having an affair, and then discovered she's pregnant; Brenda embarked on an affair with an older student that got her fired from her prestigious job; and her sister Vicki has been diagnosed with cancer. Soon Josh is part of the chaotic household, acting as babysitter, confidant, and lover. --Amazon
JULY:
Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge. --Amazon
AUGUST:
Eighteen months to the day after she quit drinking, Knapp stumbled upon an eight-week-old puppy at a local animal shelter, took her home, and named her Lucille. Now two years old, Lucille has become a central force in Knapp's life: "In her," she writes, "I have found solace, joy, a bridge to the world." Caroline Knapp has been celebrated as much for her fresh insight into emotional and psychological issues as she has been for her gifts as a writer. In Pack of Two, she brings the same perception and talent to bear on the rich, complicated terrain of human-animal relationships. In addition to mining her own experience with Lucille, Knapp speaks to a wide variety of dog people--from animal behaviorists and psychologists to other owners whose dogs have deeply affected their lives--about this emotionally complex, sometimes daunting, often profoundly healing alliance. Throughout, she explores the shift in canine roles from working partners to intimate companions and looks, too, at how this new kinship, this wordless bond, becomes a template for what we most desire ourselves. --Amazon
GET READING, We'll be talking about Pack of Two on September 10, 2015.
