Read This

Summertime…and while the livin’ may not be as easy as it used to be pre-kids, we should all aspire to some deck, dock or hammock time with a good book. So to help you get started on that endeavour, here’s our annual summer reading guide.

If it’s been a while since you read a good book, you might want to start with one of our book club faves from the last few years, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer). It’s written as a series of letters between London writer Juliet Ashton and a member of an eccentric society, in the post-WWII era. Intrigued by their stories, she sets sail for the island of Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

You won’t be able to put down Girl in Translation (Jean Kwok), which tells the story of Kimberly Chang and her mother, who emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn. Kimberly lives a secret double life—exceptional schoolgirl by day, sweatshop worker by night—and eventually makes it to Harvard.

We recently devoured Making Toast (Roger Rosenblatt) the memoir of a grandfather who must step in to help when his daughter, the mother of three young children, collapses and dies of an asymptomatic heart condition. He and his wife immerse themselves in the world of small children and in reconstructing the family, as we learn to appreciate the day-to-day and the smallest family moments.

For something on the thought-provoking side, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Nicolas Carr) puts forth an argument that as we are getting even more adept at skimming and sampling all the informational bounty the Internet has to offer, we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science and part cultural criticism, this book might actually encourage you to stay away from the screens this summer and get through a few more books.

And if you’ve got a new baby (or just want to laugh at the craziness life brings when you do), How to Have Your Second Child First: 100 Things that Are Good to Know…the First Time Around (Kerry Colburn & Rob Sorenson) is definitely worth squeezing some time in for. In this reassuring and humourous book, 100 accessible tips from real-life, second-time parents can help new parents attain the savvy and calm of parents who have ‘been there, done that’.

So book it this summer—you deserve a little ‘read-time’.

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