On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

I did a lot of my summer reading back in the spring when I read and reviewed 16 books for The Minneapolis Star Tribune. Now that they have been published in the paper and online, I can write about them here and on Goodreads. My stand-alone review of Anthony Horowitz’s clever The Word is Murder ran this past Sunday, June 9, https://tinyurl.com/yb8j7a4o  The others were part of book editor Laurie Hertzel’s June 3 summer reading package, https://tinyurl.com/ycgsa9au

I wrote a full review of Kate Christensen’s  July novel The Last Cruise, short reviews of Silas House’s Southernmost, Thrity Umrigar’s The Secrets Between Us, Tatjana Solis’ The Removes and Leah Franquis’ America for Beginners; and mini-reviews of 10 more. (I’m posting all the covers.) It’s a diverse group of novels that Laurie and I came up with after much discussion, but it doesn’t include several of the season’s most anticipated books — Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance, for example, or Lauren Groff’s Florida — because they’ll be covered by Laurie and other reviewers as the summer progresses. I’ll be blogging about them, too, in the near future.

It’s no secret that I liked all 15, some a bit more than others, but all worth reading. Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand affirms her reputation for riveting psychological suspense. Umrigar’s is a sequel to her best-selling The Space Between Us, although you don’t have to have read the first book to be drawn into this story of friendships forged in the Mumbai slums. Fatima Farheen Mirza’s first novel about a Muslim-American family, A Place for Us, is winning deserved raves from critics. Solis’ The Removes is an historical novel about the American West, while Hannah Pittard’s Visible Empire explores the aftermath of the 1962 Paris plane crash that killed more than 100 of Atlanta’s leading citizens. Southernmost immediately plunges readers into a devastating flood in Tennessee before heading for Key West. So, plenty of pages to read this summer. Take my word for it.