The power of storytelling

Looking for ideas for what to read in English this summer? The June magazine presents the current favourites of the Spotlight staff. Here, Inez Sharp offers a few more of her own.

I am in love with reading. I will read just about anything anywhere — though I'm not quite as crazy as a friend who, finding there were no books in the chalet where he was spending a holiday, read through the telephone directory.

Anyway, every year I have one single special book lined up for the summer. Sometimes a friend will lend me a book in the winter or spring and if I think it looks promising, I'll save it for the summer holidays. It's not a method that always works, but I have discovered some favourites by this system.

In the summer of 1986, I was given a copy of Joan Didion's collection of essays, The White Album. I was a small child in the 1960s, when most of these essays have their roots. No other piece of writing evokes the mood of that era for me like the essay "On the Morning after the Sixties". Here's a link to the original New York Times review of the book.

In the summer of 1996, I read the three main novels in John Updike's Rabbit series about the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a kind of American everyman. What do I have in common with Updike's hero? Nothing. It is just the power of his storytelling which carried me — mesmerized — through the life of Angstrom. Der Spiegel provides plenty of good background material to John Updike and the Rabbit books.

The summer of 2002 was a hot one, but only because I read and then reread The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. For a few happy weeks, I was Precious Ramotswe, driving my little white van around the streets of Gaborone, Botswana, and solving mysteries having mainly to do with love and money. In 2008, McCall Smith gave an interesting interview to The Times on the Ladies' Detective Agency series.

This year, a biography of Cleopatra (Cleopatra: A Life) by Stacy Schiff is waiting to go into my suitcase. It might be put aside after a few hours and replaced by a novel bought at the airport, but I have a feeling that 2011 will be the summer of Cleopatra. Will you find a favourite in the books we have presented to you in our summer reading feature in the June issue? If you do, why not write and share your impressions with us?

*See all of our recommendations in Spotlight 6/2011. Download a PDF of the first two pages of the article. Then be sure never to miss an issue. Check out our special prices for students!