One of my neighbors posted something on Facebook a few weeks ago that caught my eye. It was, it said, a “social experiment” in which you send one of your favorite books to someone and then, eventually, you get a bunch of books in the mail from other folks. It was a good old-fashioned chain letter, but with books.
After being disappointed time and again as a youth, I finally grew wise to the chain letter and stopped sending them along. But I’m a sucker for a good book — and sometimes even for a bad book, as evidenced by the fact that I read a tome called “Saint Dale” in its entirety. So I signed on for my neighbor’s literary Facebook experiment, sent a Graham Greene paperback off to her friend and hoped for the best. Worst-case scenario, I figured, was someone would get to read “The Quiet American.”
And then a few days later Abraham Verghese’s “Cutting for Stone” arrived. And then “Supreme Courtship” by Christopher Buckley, and then “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote. Then we went on vacation, and when we came home Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rob Sheffield’s “Love is a Mix Tape,” Lisel Mueller’s “Alive Together” and Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” were there waiting for me. I love a good book recommendation, and it’s been delightful getting things in the mail that aren’t bills.
The moral of the story? I don’t know. Take a chance on a chain letter now and again? Have a little faith in goofy Facebook things? Regardless, I’m loving having a stack of books waiting for me to read.
I heard a lot of positive reviews of Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale,” so I put it on hold at the library and then forgot about it because a ton of other people had also put it on hold and it took a long time for me to get it. It was worth the wait, though. It’s set in World War II, and it focuses on the women left behind when the guys head off to fight. I cried.
I picked up “Niceville” by Carsten Stroud because Stephen King said it would be a good summer read. I disagree with Mr. King on this one. It’s the first of a supernatural/crime trilogy. It didn’t capture my interest enough to make me want to read the rest of the trilogy.
I thought “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein would make me cry, but it did not. The book’s narrator is a dog. It’s somewhat charming.
I’ve been hearing about how good Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” is since it came out in 2010. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale, which is right up my alley. But it features crazy horror-beasts, which I try to avoid. I finally picked it up, though, and it is gripping. I was eager to read the rest of the story, so I found a copy of…
“The Twelve,” also by Justin Cronin, and it was a disappointment after “The Passage.” I’m still going to read the last book, though, since I’ve come this far already. 
Sometimes I can’t find anything available to borrow from the library via the Kindle so I just grab something and hope for the best. It turned out great in the case of Hugh Howey’s “Wool.” It’s a broken-Utopia / post-apocalypse story that was originally written as a series of novellas called “Silo.” It’s an inventive take on the genre. 
My dad’s girlfriend frequently picks up random books at yard sales, so I find something different there most summers. “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel has been sitting there for a few years now, and I finally decided to give it a try. It was weird and great, and the sequel is on my library wait list.
“The Girls” by Emma Cline is another one for which I’ve read a lot of glowing reviews, and it is very well-crafted. It’s also very dark, and I didn’t much enjoy it.
Judy Blume’s “In the Unlikely Event” was another desperation pick from the library’s eBook selection, and I didn’t love it. I didn’t find the characters all that relatable, for one thing, but mostly it was because it read very much like a Judy Blume book that just had some adult language tossed in. That doesn’t seem like it would be a bad thing, necessarily, because Judy Blume is very good at what she does, but it didn’t work for me. 
I can’t remember where I heard about “Circling the Sun” by Paula McLain, but I’d like to thank whomever told me about it because I loved it. It’s a fictionalized biography of Beryl Markham, who out-interestings the World’s Most Interesting Man by a long shot. She grew up in Kenya — you’ll recognize some of the other folks in the book if you’ve read or seen “Out of Africa” — where she trained racehorses and was one of the first bush pilots, and she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. Markham wrote her own biography (“West with the Night”), and I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as it’s my turn on the library’s wait list.