Whew! We’ve certainly had a run of classic New York City summer weather these past weeks. Does the weather affect your reading habits? At our last Open Book Night at Mid-Manhattan Library, we asked readers to share a quintessential summer in the city book, a book that evokes summer in New York or another city or a book that helps them survive summer in the city. We got recommendations for some heavy and absorbing reading as well as lighter fare, which we’ll share here. Do you have any favorite summer in the city reads? Tell us about them in the comments section below.

And this month we'd love to know all about your favorite international authors! Please join us for Open Book Night tomorrow  evening at 6  and swap world literature recomendations with other readers. Open Book Night meets on the second Friday of the month at Mid-Manhattan Library. We hope you'll come talk about books with us!

Fiction

Melissa chose a book set in New York, Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham. She enjoyed the way the protagonist, Lionel, who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, plays with language in this highly original take on the classic detective novel.

 

 

We stayed in New York with our next recommendation, and the Christmas setting might offer a mental respite from summer heat. Cecil enjoyed the story, the characters,  and the New York setting in Mary Higgins Clark’s All Through the Night, a light-hearted mystery involving a baby abandoned on the steps of a rectory and a valuable chalice gone missing. For entertaining summer reading, Cecil also recommends the romantic suspense of Danielle Steel’s Undercover, set largely in Paris.

Inspirational historical fiction was our next reader’s choice. In Where Trust Lies by Janette Oke, a frontier teacher visits 1920’s New York with her family during summer vacation. This is the second novel in the Return to the Canadian West series, and our reader couldn't wait to read the next one, Where Hope Prevails, released this month.

 

Summer in the city makes me think of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, which offers a portrait of San Francisco life in the 1970s. The book opens with Mary Ann Singleton, a secretary from Cleveland, deciding to turn her week’s vacation in San Francisco into a permanent stay. She has the good fortune to find an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, a building owned by Mrs. Madrigal, and the fun begins. There is a wisdom and a celebration of humanity at the core of this series of seemingly light-hearted books that keeps me coming back to visit.

Nonfiction

The passing in early July of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel called to mind one of our reader’s favorite books, Night. She remembered reading Wiesel’s powerful autobiographical portrait of a teenage survivor of Nazi concentration camps in one sitting. She highly recommended reading or re-reading Night at any time, not just the summer.

 

Another young reader was inspired by Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard (2010) by Liz Murray. He said that reading about how this young woman, neglected by drug-addicted parents and living on the streets, persevered to complete high school and ultimately attend Harvard, could only “get you motivated.”

 

Our next reader offered a book on engineering for engineers and non-engineers alike.He explained that The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman, published in 1976, conveys the real satisfaction people derive from building things, and also looks at the portrayal of engineering in the arts and sciences.

 

Summer means summer school for some teachers, and our next reader recommended Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire (2007), in which award-winning teacher Rafe Esquith describes the methods and activities he uses in his 5th grade classroom in Central Los Angeles. She noted that while the book offers inspiring suggestions for teachers, as with any guide to successful teaching, it all boils down to having enough time to adequately prepare.

 

Another recommendation for unputdownable nonfiction was Unbroken (2010) by Laura Hillenbrand. Our reader was riveted by this story of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic athlete who survived harsh internment in a Japanese prison camp during World War II and worked to heal the rift between the United States and Japan as he healed himself.

 

Thank you to all the readers who joined us at Open Book Night, those who recommended books and those who preferred to listen to the recommendations of fellow readers! If you love to talk about books, we hope to see you soon at one of our Open Book Nights. In the meantime, happy reading!

Upcoming Open Book Nights

• August 12, 2016 - World Literature
• September 9, 2016 - Game Changers
• October 14, 2016 - Horrifying Tales

Past Open Book Nights

Click to see the list of books discussed.

• February 13, 2015 - Love
• April 10, 2015 - New Beginnings
• May 8, 2015 - Nature
• June 12, 2015 - Sports
• June 26, 2015 - Open theme
• July 10, 2015 - Open theme
• August 14, 2015 - Travel
• September 11, 2015 - New York
• October 9, 2015 - The Occult
• November 13, 2015 - Thanksgiving
• December 11, 2015 - Food and cooking
• January 9, 2016 - In With the New!
• February 25, 2016 - Love Makes the World Go 'Round
• March 11, 2016 - Women in Print
• April 8, 2016 - Feeling Healthy
• May 13, 2016 - The Natural World
• June 10, 2016 - Escapism