"Sometimes a girl just needs to read a good book!"

"Amazon.com Announces
the Most Well-Read Cities in America"
An exciting headline and an impressive list of cities, but a totally silly ranking system based on sales data. Unfortunately, many of the more popularly purchased titles don't exactly qualify as literature (not even with a small "l" let alone with a capital "L"). They may be marketed and consumed in book form, but Tidying Up? Shades of Gray? coloring books for grown - ups? a Texas barbecue cookbook? C'mon amazon! We expect better! We know how to read!

Books / projects such as these, no matter how interesting or trendy, don't really make a person or a city "well read." But then again as Gilda Radner used to say (Was it Roseanne Roseannadanna? While looking at magazines in the beauty parlor?): "Sometimes a girl just needs to read a good book!"

In fact, the list of "well - read cities" includes some of my favorite spots, although no place that I actually live or have lived. As my friend Katie suggested, perhaps Philadelphia didn't make the list because folks there buy more high-brow books! Could that also explain why Indianapolis made the list but not West Lafayette? To claim a spot on the real list, how about if Amazon tracks down the cities where the most people have read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ulysses, or War and Peace?

While amazon may be tracking all the latest trends, my many well - read friends have given me so many excellent and timeless suggestions that I will never run out of summer reading ideas. I have more than enough to last well into the fall and thru the winter and even into next summer!

Awhile back (I'm always way behind), my friend Diane suggested the following audiobooks for "light" listening while driving or exercising -- complete with her "five star rating system":

THE TENDER BAR ***
J.R. Moehringer

THE HISTORY OF LOVE ****
Nicole Krauss

A LONG WAY DOWN ***
Nick Hornsby

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE ****
Jonathan Safran Foer

TALK TALK ***
T.C. Boyle

DRY **
Augustun Burroughs

MORAL DISORDER **
Margaret Atwood

WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE ****
Elizabeth Berg

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN ***
Cormac McCarthy

THE GOOD LIFE ***
Jay McInerney

THE PROBABLE FUTURE ***
Alice Hoffman

THE MERMAID CHAIR ***
Sue Monk Kidd

ON CHESIL BEACH **
Ian McEwan

THE ABORTIONIST’S DAUGHTER ***
Elizabeth Hyde

NEVER LET ME GO **
Kazuo Ishiguro

A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY ****
H. Kimmel

DIGGING TO AMERICA ***
Anne Tyler

My friend Heather's "three best books of Summer 2008":

OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA
Michael Pollan
[also recommended by Tammy Knox Sandel]


A GOOD INDIAN WIFE
Anne Cherian

THE GOOD FAIRIES OF NEW YORK
Martin Millar

Latest from Cate:

THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTO
Mary Hogan

And this from a couple summers ago
Deep South Summer Reading List