I've read a lot of books this summer and intend to read a lot more before it's over. The ones I remember most:
My favorite (so far) was
Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession and How Desire Shapes the World. The author is a jewelry designer with degrees in history and the book is about historic events loosely centered around gemstones and pearls (and Faberge eggs in one chapter). Sometimes her connections are a bit of a stretch, but the history is interesting and she has an engaging writing style lightly touched with sarcastic humor. I thought it was very entertaining.
True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray: I wouldn't call myself a true crime addict, but since I immediately knew the case in question and read the book for that reason, I can't say I'm not. Certainly I am not as obsessive as the author, who basically turned his life upside down trying to solve the case--and not just this case. Spoiler alert for those who might be interested in a solution: He does not solve the case, although he does speculate quite a bit about it and I, at least, learned some things I didn't know about the case. He also talks quite a bit about his personal life, warts and all, and comes across, at least to me, as a flaming asshole, but he knows how to write a page turner.
The Herd: A thriller that, according to the review that led me to get the book, reveals the truth about female friendships. If your idea of female friendships is hugging your dear friend while burying a knife in her back, that might be true, but otherwise, it's a pretty standard kind of thriller told from multiple viewpoints in which every unlikable character involved has a secret agenda. WaPo says it's an airplane novel and that works.
The Flight Attendant: A friend of mine watched the series on HBO (maybe?) and thought it was great, so I read the book. I understand the show was a comedy-drama? The book is definitely not a comedy. A flight attendant with a drinking problem wakes up one morning beside a murdered one-night stand. She can't remember much about the night before and certainly doesn't remember him being murdered; did she do it? She doesn't know, but she decides to run. Ah, but there is video of her leaving the hotel and the bad guys are hot on her trail. Another airplane novel (heh). I was actually surprised by the twist at the end, although I shouldn't have been, which leads me to....
When Stars Go Dark: A thriller by an author best known for writing historical novels about women (Hemingway's first wife and Beryl Markham). The writing quality is very good and her insights into the victims of sexual abuse clearly come from someone who is herself an abuse survivor. There is a lot going on in the story, maybe a little too much. I knew who the bad guy was pretty early on, not because it's obvious so much as there are only two ways that a story like this can go--the bad guy can be a total stranger introduced at the end, which readers hate even though that's pretty realistic, or the bad guy can be a character who is already there but not obviously the bad guy. This usually limits the choices to one or maybe two people. In this case, though, I wasn't as interested in whodunnit as I was in the story itself.
The People We Meet on Vacation: I really liked the author's first book,
Beach Read, and I liked this one almost as much, mostly because the male protagonist is so much like my husband and both main characters are from my hometown, more or less, and so I felt quite fond of all involved.
The Unhoneymooners: A hate-to-love story that has some really good zingers. I laughed out a loud a few times and snickered quietly many more. Warning to anyone with a weak stomach--the story begins with a wedding and nearly everyone gets food poisoning at the reception. Much grossness ensues.
The Plot: An obnoxious writing seminar student shares his killer plot with his seminar teacher, a writer whose creative well has run dry. When the teacher later learns that the student has died of an overdose, the teacher turns the plot into a thriller of his own, which becomes a huge success. Ah, but someone knows he stole the plot and that someone starts making anonymous threats to expose the writer. It is again pretty obvious who the someone is, but for me, the best part of the book is the first section, which focuses on the writer's failed career and what it is to teach writing. I also found the central question of the book interesting--who owns a story and who has the right to tell it? When I saw the
articles about Amanda Knox and Stillwater, I immediately thought of this book.
The Devil and Webster: Former radical lefty Naomi Roth becomes the president of a small liberal arts college after the board of directors admires her handling of a conflict involving a transgender student and housing. Naomi is coasting along, still a lefty but too middle-aged and tired to be radical, when students begin camping on the quad in protest. She regards the students with fond tolerance, admiring them for standing up for something (although no one seems to know what that something is, exactly) and complacently waits for winter weather to drive them back into their dorm rooms. But winter comes and the protest only continues to grow, pitting Naomi's political sympathies against the politics of her position.
The last two books were written by the same author, who is best known for writing
You Should Have Known, which became
The Undoing on HBO. She writes in long sentences with many clauses and parentheticals; she's not quite Henry James, but sometimes I had to go back and find the subject of a sentence in order to follow it. But she sure knows her subjects, at least in these two books--clearly she knows whereof she writes when she she writes about writing, teaching, students, and campus politics.
Right now, I am reading
For Your Own Good, which is about a sociopathic English teacher working at an exclusive private prep school. What? Why are you looking at me like that? And yes, I am supposed to be grading papers. Why do you ask?
I told my neighbor that I was looking for a light but engaging summer read that would be a good distraction from real life. For some reason, she recommended "Nine Perfect Strangers." 
I'm browsing this thread because I'm in the middle of reading it and don't think I can make myself finish. So, I need a new book.
