Seven Page-Turning Book Recommendations for Your Summer Reads

Duchess Reads

Jul 19

How’s your summer reading challenge coming along? What with the searing summer heat, followed by the eery, dystopian silence that had settled into a thick, smoky haze brought on by the burning forests up north; trailed by a biblical cluster of torrential downpour, thunder and lightening, a possible tornado, that had our smart phones buzzing with “Critical Imminent Threat Alerts” for flash floods and “life threatening” situation ~ I believe the time has come; we may need to rebrand “Beach Reads.” Ha!

Let’s pivot to the cozy armchair, the weeping couch, or bed, and keep a fan near to circulate the air. Us bookworms can manage any obstacle. Just don’t take our books; be they enjoyed as audio, digital, paperback or hardcover.

Readers Gotta Read!

To help you navigate and enjoy the new “Cozy Climate Reads” (this is my rebranding moniker suggestion), here are my reviews for a number of books I had the joy of reading since the start of this summer. I veered from some favorite novelists I hadn’t spent enough time with to best-selling (hard to get) memoirs, to some classic tales, to pre-release book reviews offered by NetGalley.

Let’s Get to the Recommendations

Amy and Isabelle, Published in 1998, it is the debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author, the prolific Elizabeth Strout. I love her Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton series for their tender, intimate story lines and characters, and figured I should see how she began her opus.

While Amy and Isabelle is set in a mid-century, steamy summer Maine mill town, it’s not a frothy, what-would-have-been “beach read.” Rather, the mother/daughter relationship focuses on the tense, but loving dynamics between the single mom and her 16-year old daughter. Both wrestle with finding a true and fulfilling identity, their sexuality as it relates to men, along with their independence and value, as well as finding their best girlfriends who support them ~ no matter what. In other words, Life.

Besides self discovery, shame is another theme here, as each seeks to mature and grow within the confines of a small town and its long-held traditions including the inevitable gossip, the pecking order of its citizens and the Shirley Falls community’s resistance to change. This friction is acute in Amy and Isabelle. Strout skillfully layers in complexity as Isabelle navigates her job and boss ~ who she has an unrecognized crush on, and Amy, who has to navigate the usual high school hierarchy, not to mention, has a first-time teenage fling with her math teacher.

While the story is seemingly as slow-paced as the Shirley Falls’ sultry summer, it is a propulsive read. You want to know how these two emerging women will resolve their relationship within themselves, with each other, and with their would-be lovers and friends. And oh, the writing. Strout is a mind reader. She can grab a character’s innermost thoughts and lay them bare in way we can relate to with tenderness and compassion

I highly recommend Amy and Isabelle.

Isabelle Allende, Nora Ephron, and Ruth Reichl are three of my most favorite female authors. (When will we arrive at the point where we don’t need to characterize “women writers” as such?? Is it a stigma or a critical lens onto the work’s perspective?)

Until we figure that one out, I’ll just celebrate these writers and without flinching will read anything they’ve penned. To that end, I wonder why I haven’t consumed each of their oeuvres. Have you ever done this? Or do you mix it up, varying your author reads?

I so adore Isabel Allende and her ability to create entire worlds using her imagination. I have listened to her on the Wiser Than Me podcast, and taken her Master Class. She is irrepressible, delightfully charming and of course, a great, award-winning writer.

City of Beasts is a slight departure from her usual writing style and is the first in a three-book series of what might be considered Young Adult or YA. But like Harry Potter, the adventures in City of Beasts appeal to “adults” as well. I particularly liked the story because, like my emerging novel, it uses mythology and historical fiction. Here, 15-year-old Alex is sent by his father to spend time with his headstrong, eccentric cosmopolitan grandmother (who resonated much like Allende ^:^) while his mother battles cancer. Abuela takes him on her journalist’s assignment to the Amazon for a geographic magazine. The expedition group is composed of a slate of curious personalities, including photographers, a local businessman, a beautiful eco-physician, the commander of the village military, along with their local guide and his spirited 12-year-old daughter, Nadia. Wise beyond her years and open to the mysteries of the indigenous, Nadia introduces Alex to the shaman who will eventually help them seek their destinies, experience their quests, and then help lead their way back after the two are taken by the “beasts” ~ the mysterious People of the Mist, who will befriend and initiate them into their world, teaching them the ancient ways. Alex and Nadia become their spirit animals, Jaguar and Eagle, to help navigate their heroes’ journeys; exposing the conspiracies within their expedition that they learn has led to the wholesale murdering of the indigenous by way of false vaccines. The story moves ahead with some magic realism, grit and guts, as they survive their crucibles, and eventually, triumph over the “bad guys.” Back in camp, Alex and Nadia, along with the adults, promise to use their power and influence to protect the tribe’s area in the Amazon ~ setting up a happy kind of ending and a bridge to the two succeeding books in the series: Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of the Pygmies.

I enjoyed the mix of magic, history, myth and environmentalism cloaked in adventure and family love in City of Beasts.

I think you will too.

Few, if any, can write the way Ruth Reichl does. She can describe food, ingredients, drinks, menus, places and people with a remarkable incandescent sensuality. You want to savor the words, the experience she relates and the people and characters she illuminates and creates in her books. The Paris Novel is no exception. It’s a love letter to Paris set in the 1980s, and an homage to its food and culture, propelled by Reichl’s keen interest in a female painter and model for other artisans (hey, a girl’s gotta’ pay the rent), who was in the cohort of Manet and Degas in the late 1800’s, posing nude for his Olympia, and for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the then 19-year-old Victorine Meurent. Astonishingly, even though Meurent’s paintings were selected for showing at the Paris Salon, she was denied any real recognition or respect because she was ~ wait for it ~ a woman! Reichl discovered a bit about Meurent when studying art history while in graduate school in Paris. In real life, Reichl’s historical research over the years, finally led her to a profile of Meurent. The author was so excited that she could celebrate this long-overlooked artisan.

In The Paris Novel, the author has the protagonist uncover a hundred-year-old mystery about Meurent, and in the process, we all get to celebrate the artist's rightful past-due recognition.

Reichl knows the City of Lights so well and that love shines here. She pulls out all the stops so we get to experience it all. Les Deux Magots, Dior, L'Ami Louis, and Shakespeare and Company, are characters in her rich bouillabaisse of a novel, that is, at its heart, the personal self-discovery sought by the young woman, Stella, (star ⭐) whose dead mother, Celia, having raised her as a single parent in New York City, gifted her a mandate to visit Paris, where her eccentric mother once lived, loved, and reigned among the artists: from sculptors and painters to culinary artists, too. Stella soon finds the enchantment of Paris irresistible. The city wooes her with its promise of adventure, mystery, gastronomy and art, and soon, love. There is tenderness here. Reichl captures the kindness that Stella never experienced growing up with no small amount of trauma and with no sibling, no father, no real family of any kind. She overcomes her intense shyness and preference for being isolated to find her true family among the staff at Shakespeare and Company, in the restaurants’ waiters and cooks, shopowners, and in the wealthy widower who takes her under his wing. The author guides us on a sensual journey that is full of Stella’s adventures and cautious forays into a better, happier world brimming with love, art, and respect as its foundation.

Of all the books reviewed here, this one is closest to that traditional beach read. It’s a kind of romantic fantasy, with all the sensuous elements of food, literature, and fashion that the author renders in a sumptuous, delicious way. Like a celebrated holiday meal, you won’t want this feast to end.

Il nous restera toujours Paris. (We’ll always have Paris)

I highly recommend The Paris Novel. With a glass of really good Saint-Émilion and some really good cheese 🍷

All the Light We Cannot See, Pulitzer Prize winner

Speaking of Paris, I have to insert here, the Paris, France-based novel, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, who earned a Pulitzer Prize for this novel. I can’t remember what drew me to this book and why now, but historical fiction is probably the spotlight. And then, shortly after I finished the book, the “what to watch” suggestion list that populates my in-box, noted the film was available. Kismet.

I found both the book and the Netflix series, beautifully tender and hauntingly compelling. That some of my favorite actors, Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie star in the series was exciting; plus I was introduced to Aria Mia Loberti, who I didn’t think looked like the Marie-Laure I pictured when reading the book but who, nevertheless, I came to believe was perfect for the role.

The story is focused on two protagonists—Marie-Laure in Paris and Saint-Malo, and Werner in the Hitler Youth who gets sent to France because of his superior radio skills. Their paths cross in Nazi occupied France near the end of the war.

Growing up in an orphanage with his sister, Werner becomes a radio whiz who we learn was enchanted and influenced by Marie-Laure’s uncle who hosted an evening radio show that Werner clandestinely listened to, albeit it was forbidden by the Nazis.

Marie-Laurie goes blind at age six and her single-parent, doting father, builds her a perfect miniature of their Paris neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. He does the same when they are forced to flee Paris and his museum job as the master of the locks. It’s a harrowing adventure to get to his brother’s home on the coast in Saint-Malo.

There is mystery, a kind of Indiana Jones curse (that I later read is true Indian myth), with the vagaries of war as the frightening, deadly backdrop. Soon, her father must return to Paris, promising to return quickly only to be taken to a concentration camp. This creates a tension that propels the story to even greater risks for the family and citizens of Saint-Malo.

Soon, Marie-Laurie courageously takes on the role of delivering encrypted messages from the French Resistance at the bakery and sending to the Allies not far off shore, using her uncle’s radio technology. The radio continues to be a major communications character, playing a major role in this historical fiction.

No spoilers here. However, I’ll just say that there is a bit of an ending that I wouldn’t have guessed. Yet it is so beleivable that you embrace its bitter conclusion. I do highly recommend All the Light We Cannot See. It has so many appealing elements that make for a great story.

That it was again on the Best-Selling lists of major and social media and Book-Tok reviews recently ~ so many years after its published release (of book and film), that it had me thinking that perhaps the influencers and Times reviewers were following my Goodreads’ challenge! ha ha. Seriouslu and a bit meditatively, I marveled at the lovely coincidence in a zeitgeist kind of way; believing that books and their stories have their own kind of agency ~ the ability to reach us when we most need them...

Leaving Paris ~ regrettably, for even war-torn Paris has its charms ~ and getting back to my book reviews from some of my favorite female authors.

Heartburn, is the semi-fictionalized telling of Nora Ephron’s eventual divorce from Washington Post reporter, Carl Bernstein. It was also made into a film, starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. I listened to Streep’s performance in the audio book and it was near perfection. No one does inflection, cadence, poised modulation or silent beats better. Streep can convey sarcasm and frustration and anger in a pitch-perfect rendering.

While the subject matter is a poignant telling of the tragedy of a divorce, Ephron’s incomparable wit manages to keep the story from becoming maudlin or egocentric. She brings the reader in on the absurdity of it all. You’ll laugh out loud and also wince with compassion in Ephron’s telling of this life experience, bringing in her family, her appalled and supportive friends ~ and their snarky gossip (trying to figure out who’s having an affair with who is golden! 😂) all while she’s pregnant and figuring out where to live and work post-divorce.

I very much recommend Heartburn for a hilarious experience ~ and even if you read awhile back (in 1983), listen to Streep on this audio version.

Plus, Rachel, Ephron’s “character” in Heartburn is a cookbook author; thus there are 15 real recipes in the book, meant to amplify the protagonist’s emotions of love, betrayal, revenge, and heartbreak via the lens of food. Which certainly resonated with me and also reminded me of the time I got to meet Ephron, truly one of my “sheroes,” at a downtown book party at Chelsea Piers in 2010 that was to mark the New York Times’ revision of their classic cookbook, with The Essential New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser.

It was actually a double-feature because Hesser’s Times’ cooking associate, Melissa Clark, (who I’ve always referred to as a “culinary cutie") was a co-host, launching her book, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. It was such a swell event, with 20 chefs cooking up the books’ recipes. This was back when chefs were just emerging as the rock stars they’d soon become, especially with the launch of the Food Network and the plethora of cooking shows. At the event, I got to meet many who would soon be celebrity chef broadcast stars and/or create their own restaurants. It was a heady time.

Dorrie Greenspan (L) ~ Nora Ephron at the 2010 event

Just for giggles, I looked back to the chefs who were there at that cookbook launch ~ see below. Quite an impressive list. Some were included in my Homegrown cookbook… ahhh, the magic of agency and meeting face-to-face in a New York moment...

Alex Raij * TXIKITO

Ben Van Leeuwen * VAN LEEUWEN ICE CREAM

Bill Telepan * TELEPAN

Brian Bistrong * BRAEBURN

Bruce and Eric Bromberg * BLUE RIBBON SUSHI

Dan Barber * BLUE HILL

Dan Silverman * STANDARD GRILL

Dorie Greenspan * Author of "AROUND MY FRENCH TABLE"

Frank Castronovo & Frank Falcinelli * FRANKIES SPUNTINO

George Mendes * ALDEA

Karen Demasco * LOCANDA VERDE

Marc Murphy * LANDMARC

Michael Anthony * GRAMERCY TAVERN

Michael White * MAREA

Marco Canora * TERROIR

Pichet Ong * SPOT DESSERT BAR

Sara Jenkins * PORCHETTA

Sisha Ortuzar * RIVERPARK

Zak Pelaccio * FATTY CRAB

Belle Burden’s Strangers Best-Selling Book

Speaking of divorce, I think I inhaled Belle Burden’s best-seller, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage in spite of myself. This kind of book is not one I usually go for ~ salacious tell-all’s and celebrity or socialite’s dramas are a wee bit too Kardashian for this bookworm. But I was curious what all the hub-bub was about. Burden has done all the talk shows and interviews on the book tour launch. I got the audio book (after many weeks of being on a wait-list) with Burden reading her own words and I can’t deny how powerful that is. She plucked true emotional shock and heartbreak from the ashes of a 20-year marriage without sacrificing integrity or reputation. It’s raw and real. I couldn’t stop listening as I worked in the gardens. I had an overwhelming need to know how she navigated this body blow for herself, and her children. While everyone cops to the head-scratcher of “why” her husband just closed the door and threw away the key to their decades-long marriage without so much as a teeny explanation, there’s never an explanation even at the conclusion. Rather, the book takes us from discovery of a short-lived affair and him packing his bags to the emotional rollercoaster of shock, shame, and fear she experiences. While I think that too many folks focus on her money issues, I didn’t have that takeaway at all. It was truly about the emotional damage ~ a bomb had been dropped onto Burden so that, like someone sufferin from PTSD, she was trying to cope in some way/any way, and put the broken pieces of her heart and life back into some workable form.

That she told her story at all, is a personal triumph, as she notes. Why? Because folks in her social stratosphere ~ especially the women, the wives who become cuckqueans, know to never, ever talk about it, especially in public. The upper crust aristocracy has a longstanding truism or saying that they’ll agree to be in the news only three times in their life: at birth, marriage, and death. Research shows that this philosophy “emphasizes privacy, modesty, and the belief that only tasteless people seek the spotlight for attention.”

Burden argues that she is not vying for any attention but rather has shared her story as a cautionary tale. I believe her sincerity. Burden conveys her vulnerability and sense of abandonment with a tempered stoicism we can admire. So give the woman some grace! We can all learn from her despair as she rediscovers herself.

Burden first wrote of the abrupt dissolution of her marriage for a Modern Love column in the New York TImes back in 2023. It turned out to be one of the most widely read columns of that year. A memoir was soon sure to follow. And when you have people, it did. It will also soon be on the big screen, with Gwyneth Paltrow playing Burden in the starring role. She’ll be perfect.

By way of background, Burden is an heiress with a priveleged pedigree from both parents. Her ancetors are from storied American roots including the cream of the crop: Vanderbilt and Morgan. her grandmother is Babe Paley (married to CBS czar Bill Paley) and one of Capote’s Swans and a Ladies Who Lunch original; her mother is urban planner and socialite, Amanda Burden, and so on. Her family tree is adorned with abundance. To boot, her former husband is a hedge fund executive and lawyer. (So while he didn’t have the aristocratic background, he had money, which begs the question of why he wanted to take hers…)

So you can understand the heightened interest in this marriage scandal and the lifestyle they embodied. Especially since a big part of the twisted knife revolves around the ex trying to cheat his way out of any payments, child support (he even refused any custody), and the curious timing of his abrupt departure to enforce the prenup he made her sign which meant that while she wouldn't be able to touch anything he'd earned in his very successful career, he would be entitled to half of their two homes! That she ponied up the money for ~ in Tribeca NY and on Martha’ Vineyard. Rather upscale real estate that he tried his hand at land grabbing.

Burden’s focus is on the emotional toll, so it never screams money grab. Its sadness is made all the more poignant because it takes place from the start of the pandemic where the family retreats to. Their nesting ~ with long walks on the beach and in nature, cooking, bonding, is then abruptly shattered.

This felt like a crime novel! I was looking for clues in her methodical, plodding, painful narrative as to why and how this could have happened. It was such a strange time ~ and the strangeness is amplified by her dislocation from a man she now felt she didn’t really know. Her book’s title: Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage captures her alternate reality and the zeitgeist.

You will very much enjoy Strangers. I highly recommend the book, especially the audio version read by the author.

Keith McNally’s memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything” tugs your heart

I Regret Almost Everything, by restauranteur Keith McNally is not a divorce book, although he has been married twice, maintaining good relations with his first wife and business partner, Lynn, and, as far as I can figure, not so good ones with his second wife, Alina. Divorce and money do figure into this best-selling memoir (it’s always the money), however the main story line is how McNally rose from working class British origins to become the successful architect of downtown Cafe Society in Gotham, or as he’s been referred to most often, “The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown,” creating some of my favorite dining experiences, including Pastis, Morandi, Balthazar Restaurant, Balthazar Bakery, Minetta Tavern, Pravda, Schiller’s Liquor Bar, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Cafe Luxembourg, The Odeon, along with the nightclub, Nell’s, to which I’ve never been to but heard good things about.

This book could’ve been a rather banal retelling of “Bright Lights, Big City” ~ that author Jay McInerney who wrote about the vestiges of the nightclub scene and its energies found in McNally’s Odeon in the 80’s, (and whose glowing red neon sign is famously featured on the cover of the book), if not for the sad fact that McNally suffered a stroke in 2016. The book is his honest, humbling story of life post-stroke and looking back to how he got “here.)

The author seemingly holds nothing back. He tells of his personal frustrations in recovering, whose efforts reignite his childhood demons of lack of self confidence and failure and not fitting in, in spite of his commanding, brusk, public persona. Even his suicide attempt feels part of the life puzzle. The writing is crisp and while it may come across as sad, he never lays at the bottom of the pool in self pity. It’s a story of a life with all the nuance and pain ~ and yes, joy. His unbridled enthusiasm and committment to fatherhood is visceral.

So while Frank Sinatra may have few regrets; Keith McNally has many….

I listened to the audio book version. I highly recommend you enjoy I Regret Almost Everything this way.

Note: there were four books I experienced that I cannot recommend. This is a new experience for me ~ usually I “punish” myself be plowing through. But then I asked “why?” When there are so many books that I DO like and enjoy. Books appeal to each of us differently. Don’t torture yourself with a book you just don’t connect with.

One unread book will remain nameless; two I marked Unread on Goodreads’ new “Did Not Finish” tab, and one I did not like but did read because the author is a best-seller. That I didn’t care for her Goldfinch, should have had that red flag waving more fervently. I was hesitant but The Secret History was lauded so much that I ordered it up. Even though I did not care for the story at all, I did appreciate a lot of the writing. However I am not recommending it. Too weird. And I couldn’t muster caring much about the characters who possess no real personality or any integrity… (They kill one of their “friends” in cold blood with callous, pointless rationale. Lots of binge drinking and smoking and tantrums and incest… whoo boy. But yet, there are lots of folks who liked it so if you’re into that kind of thing...

Enjoy your “Cozy Climate Reads” ~ wherever your fancy leads you.

The heavy rains washed most of the smoke away so today I can see more of the blue water and blue sky ~ almost normal.

And the really good news? The season is not even half over ~ so we have a lot more reading time left to indulge in our Summer reading passions.

*You can access your books like I do from a mix of sources: your Public Library (please support your local libraries), Chirp, Independent Book Stores (yesss!), Amazon ~ I am a First Reader with the behemoth; B&N, and I am also provided author’s copy via NetGalley and other, single-source publishers.

And while I haven't done this lately, I see the neighborhood lending libraries on homeowners’ lawns, where they offer books to take and exchange. Sweet way to read ~ maybe organize a book club with your neighbors, too.

We’re still enjoying the cookbooks I recently had autographed at book talks and are now part of our home library, including fellow Dame Lidia Bastianich’s Pasta, and Dorrie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Anytime Cakes.

Please let me know what you’re enjoying reading now; your take on my suggestions ~ and perhaps offer a moniker to replace the “Beach Reads” we probably need to retire. Or at least augment.

With Love,

Garden Glamour