It's not actually quite the midpoint of summer yet (Google Gemini says that's August 7), but I found the random notes for my summer summary getting kind of long, so I decided to devote a post to thoughts/rants/whatever. So here they are:
- Apropos my yearly comments on trends in cover design, the NY Times Book Review recently had a good article about one particular trend that I had not noticed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/books/review/book-cover-trends.html. I think you have to be fairly familiar with art to recognize this trend, but it makes me want to look more closely at books to see if I can find any notes on the cover designs/art.
- Early summer saw new books by authors whose work I have loved in the past, but some were disappointing--not bad, just not as good as I hoped. These included The King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby, Twist by Colum McCann, and Murder Takes a Vacation, by Laura Lippman. Actually, I'm actively annoyed with Lippman, who is in her 60s and has written a book about an overweight 60-something character who is so stereotyped she belongs in a book set in the 1950s.
- In my last post, I talked about the spring selection of my online book group (University of Illinois alumni), Look Closer by David Ellis. As the online discussion progressed, I was astonished and somewhat terrified at the number of people who supported the revenge killings at the heart of the book. I never suspected so many people found murder a fit response to a wrong. Yikes!
- I've always been a memoir skeptic. While some are entertaining and/or insightful, many just seem unnecessary and self-promoting. In defiance of that general skepticism, I have had a fondness for culinary memoirs because I like reading about (and making and eating) food. Recently, however, I am wearying of the number of culinary memoirs that are really addiction memoirs. This ennui was furthered by reading Laurie Woolever's Care and Feeding. Although some of the stories from her time as an assistant to Mario Batali and then to Anthony Bourdain are interesting, there's more writing about drinking/getting high than about food. It's not until page 265 of a 331-page book that she stops drinking and not until page 317 that she quits weed. It's just not that interesting reading about drinking and being drunk/high. (Of course, I'm happy for her that she has now been sober for six years.)
- Finally, in mid-July I was noticing people posting on social media about "50 States" reading challenges, so I decided to go back and see how I was doing without trying. Turns out, I had read books set in more than half of the states so far this year. The thing that I found weirdest was that I had read a lot of books set in Maine! I've never actually been to Maine and it's not all that populous, but I've heard it's beautiful so that may explain why it's chosen as a setting. Worth noting that several of the Maine books were murder mysteries, which leads me to ask if Maine is also unusually creepy/crime-infested? (Just FYI: None of the Maine books were by Stephen King.)
Comments are open for any rants/thoughts/comments your summer reading has prompted!
