Summer reading club.

Call me a terrible librarian, but I sort of despise the idea of a beach book. You know, the embarrassing (for me, anyway) paperback tucked into your tote bag, something with Shopaholic or Shoe-a-holic or Alcoholic in the title, probably written in pink lipstick scrawl. I'm not saying we shouldn't read mindless books from time to time (fangirl posts on Ann Brashares and Plum Sykes coming soon), I'm just saying we shouldn't put down anything that isn't fluff once the sun starts shining. The idea that just because it's hot and we happen to be sipping a margarita as we turn the pages, our reading should be simpler or lighter or whatever, chaps my hide. Simplicity and levity are relative, of course, but that statement alone is too philosophical for this exhausted, chardonnay-swilling professional. Instead of unpacking it I'm just going to leave it at this: I do some of my best, most interesting reading in the summer, and you should too. Here's one to get you going.

I just finished reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and I'm pretty sure you should all run out and find a copy. It's one of those meaty character-driven novels, one where personal reactions are more important than actual action, one where you seriously will laugh and cry and find yourself more entertained than at a Broadway musical. It is also an excellent beach or cottage read--beautifully written enough to keep you turning pages, and linear enough that it will still make sense after four cans of Keith's. (That's right. Cans. Of Keith's. I do what I want.) This book won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and you can see why. Strout's writing reminded me of another near, dear Puliter-winning favourite of mine, Carol Shields. Her characters are just so fully-formed, hilarious and sympathetic and goofy and difficult. The lynchpin here is Olive Kitteridge, an aging former math teacher who appears in each episode of the book, sometimes as a semi-unlikeable protagonist, sometimes only in passing. When we're not following her, we're peering in the windows of the houses in the small town in Maine where Olive has always lived, eavesdropping at the dinner tables and community halls of her friends and neighbours. This is one of those books where nothing really happens, but the nothing of the characters' lives is so rich and strange and irresistible that you can't put it down. In short, this is my favourite kind of book. I love other people's lives. Just like all librarians, I'm a nosey parker (we deal in sharing information, whether it's how to build a volcano or whose daughter's wedding is totally going to hell), and it's nice to get my fix from a novel every once in awhile. Find a copy for yourself, and a tree to sit under, and thank me when you're done.

So what do YOU like to read in the summer?