Summer Reads I Adore!

Here are several wonderful books I have come across over the past few years. Many of you all are sure to have heard of most, but since they are ones I have loved (and one my mother adored) I thought I would share! I have included the book and author's name as well a a super short summary I wrote. However, so you all can get the real 4-1-1 I also included an Amazon summary. Enjoy and please let me know if you all already love these or your feelings after reading some!

Muffy Martini, this is dedicated in part to you!

Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing Historyof the White House Years (Barbara Leaming)

This is my favorite book/biography on my style icon: Jackie O. The book sheds new light on many occurances and gives the reader of the life Jackie lived.

Despite the welter of material on Jacqueline Kennedy, biographer Leaming has indeed produced an original and compelling portrait of Jackie as first lady. Leaming has plumbed primary sources heretofore unused (such as the letters of Harold Macmillan) and conducted interviews with sometime friends and associates, perhaps more willing to talk now that Jackie has died. Leaming makes a persuasive case for Jackie's substantive contribution as first lady in the role of diplomat. Jackie did the research and softened up visiting leaders, who then met the president already impressed with his administration. Leaming also explains Jackie's highly criticized absences from the White House: she was fleeing her husband's flagrant womanizing. Leaming's extensive documentation of his shameless conduct and his cruelty to his wife is breathtaking. (Her theories about why they married and why Jackie stood for such treatment are less dispositive.)

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)

This book will capture you! You will not want to put it down. Think mystery and intrigue; a great read at any time of the year!

In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.

Redeeming Love (Francine Rivers)

I know many of you already know and love this book. If you have not read it I strongly urge you to buy a copy. This is one of the most captivating books I have ever read and the story will leave you in tears.

In this splendid retelling of the biblical story of Hosea, bestselling author Francine Rivers pens a heartbreaking romance between a prostitute and the upright and kind farmer who marries her; the story also functions as a reminder of God's unconditional love for his people. Redeeming Love opens with the Gold Rush of 1850 and its rough-and-tumble atmosphere of greed and desire.

Summer at Tiffany (Majorie Hart)

This book is written by a fellow KAPPA and impossible to put down! It is too, too cute and fun and a MUST for all!

At the age of 82, Hart, a professional cellist, recalls 1945, when she and her best friend, Marty, students at the University of Iowa, spent the summer in Manhattan, in this pleasant but slight memoir. Failing to obtain work at Lord & Taylor, the pair, self-described as long-limbed, blue-eyed blondes, were hired at Tiffany's—the first female floor sales pages, delivering packages to the repair and shipping department, for $20 a week. Hart details their stringent budget ("1. Two nickels for subway. 2. Sandwich at the Automat: 15 cents") and describes, somewhat breathlessly, what a thrill it was to see such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland shop at the fabled store. Her romance with a midshipman, the combat death of her cousin, the news of the dropping of the first atomic bomb and a vivid account of the celebration in Times Square after Japan's surrender convey a sense of the WWII era, but without adding much illumination. She does, however, evoke New York City as seen through the eyes of two innocent smalltown girls.

Burning Bright (Tracy Chevalier)

After Girl With the Pearl Earring and all my years of Art History this was hard to resist. Not as amazing as the previously noted, but a great beach/pool read!

Chevalier turns in an oblique look at poet and painter William Blake (1757–1827). Following the accidental death of their middle son, the Kellaways, a Dorsetshire chair maker and family, arrive in London's Lambeth district during the anti-Jacobin scare of 1792. Thomas Kellaway talks his way into set design work for the amiable circus impresario Philip Astley, whose fireworks displays provide the same rallying point that the guillotine is providing in Paris. Astley's libertine horseman son, John, sets his sights on Kellaway's daughter, Maisie (an attention she rather demurely returns). Meanwhile, youngest surviving Kellaway boy Jem falls for poor, sexy firebrand Maggie Butterfield. Blake, who imagined heaven and hell as equally incandescent and earth as the point where the two worlds converge, is portrayed as a murky Friar Laurence figure whose task is to bind and loosen the skeins of young love going on around him—that is, until a Royalist mob intrudes into his garden to sound out his rather advanced views on liberty, equality and fraternity.

The Perfect Summer (Juliet Nicolson)

I had to include this as it is one of my mother's favorites and it is all about England. I meant to order my copy before I left, but my to-do list got too long. She raves about it so i know all of you will adore this read!

The granddaughter of Bloomsbury notables Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson chronicles the minutiae of the hot, sunny summer of 1911, when the rich crammed in a succession of parties as industrial strikes almost brought the country to a standstill, and WWI loomed on the horizon. Under Nicolson's lavish attentions, "upstairs" and "downstairs," the weighty and frivolous spring to vivid life. While Mary approached her upcoming coronation as queen with dread, Leonard Woolf fell in love with his Cambridge pal's sister, the budding novelist Virginia Stephen. The bewitching marchioness of Ripon arranged for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes to perform at Covent Garden, and the Times revealed that certain servants were selling juicy tidbits about their aristocratic employers to American newspapers. Trade unionist Mary Macarthur's fight for women's rights meshes artfully with racy novelist Elinor Glyn's adulterous affair with ambivalent lover Lord Curzon. Lady Diana Manners's tart observations of her debutante season segue to a rendezvous between a footman and a kitchen maid. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources—from Churchill's memoirs to the tell-all What the Butler Winked At—journalist Nicolson's debut, a British bestseller, serves up a delightfully gossipy yet substantial slice of social history.

The Last Mrs. Astor (Frances Keirnan)

I like to miss some history into my reading so that I actually learn something. For all you that love NYC society and a good biography this is the book for you!

Until last summer's reports that Brooke Astor's son was keeping her on a shoestring budget in her Manhattan apartment, the widow of millionaire Vincent Astor was known as a society maven who doled out money to worthy causes. But in this enjoyable and flattering biography, former New Yorker editor Kiernan, who knows Mrs. Astor personally, describes how the thrice-married woman was raised to be charming and agreeable, and learned her lessons well. Kiernan finds some detractors, who saw Astor's charm as manipulative and her agreeable nature as sugarcoating on a single-minded determination to advance her status. But even the negative comments have a positive spin. Responding to the theory that Astor married the ill-tempered and reclusive Vincent for money, Louis Auchincloss said, "I wouldn't respect her if she hadn't. Only a twisted person would have married him for love." Then again, it was an odd pairing, and not just because the matchmaker was Vincent's then-second wife, who allegedly wanted out and believed the way to obtain a generous settlement was to find "a suitable replacement." Tidbits like these add zip to Kiernan's affectionate portrait of the poet and writer who really made her mark when she took over her husband's philanthropic foundation. A portrait of the grande dame in decline, manipulated by her son is a poignant end to a grand saga.

One Special Summer (Bouvier sisters)

This is more of a fun book to look at then a real read; very enjoyable still!

It took most of spring 1951 for Jacqueline Bouvier, age 22, and sister Lee, 18, to convince their mother to let them board the Queen Elizabeth for Europe. In her preface, Lee Bouvier Radziwill describes the scrapbook of the trip they made for their mother as "a period piece." In fact, it evokes any European grand tour undertaken by two pretty and smart young things—even those who don't have society connections or extended correspondences with famous art historians like Bernard Berenson. The two women gaily write out their adventures in longhand, embellished with artful and amusing illustrations and a snapshot here and there. A delicious sense of respectable naughtiness underlies the text. Next to a photo of Jacqueline being embraced too tightly by a distinguished gentleman, mischievous Lee writes: "they treat us just like their children and really seem interested in showing us their country." Next to a photo of Lee in shorts and Jacqueline in capris: "We never go out in big cities except in what we would wear to church in Newport on Sundays." Jacqueline's often elaborate and colorful illustrations show genuine talent and humor.

PS: Since I did not want to burn you all out I did not include Lady of Milkweed Manor. I have posted about this amazing, Redeeming Love like book twice previously and urge you all to order a copy. It is a marvelous read that you will not be able to put down!