By JENNIFER K. BAUER jkbauer@inland360.com
When someone asks what you are doing this summer, you can recite your unexceptional vacation plans or you can say you are taking a trip to Mars, escaping Armageddon and working as a double agent.
With the help of Erin Wallace, adult services librarian at Lewiston City Library, here’s Inland360’s list of summer reading to aid your quest in escaping reality.
FICTION
Mark Watney is the first man to walk on Mars and he may be the first to die there. A dust storm nearly kills him and his crew evacuates, leaving him for dead. Alone, he must find a way to survive and signal Earth. Ridley Scott is directing a movie starring Matt Damon based on the 2014 novel set to open in theaters this fall.
This book is a quirky, touching tale about human love and loss that revolves around three characters: Seven-year-old Millie Bird, whose widowed mother leaves her in the big ladies’ underwear department of a store and never returns; Agatha Pantha, 82, who has not left her house since she was widowed seven years ago; and Karl the Touch Typist, 87, a nursing home escapee.
It’s 1890, and Pen Davenport is an infamous European bookaneer, a word pirate who makes his living stalking harbors, coffeehouses and print shops for manuscripts to steal. However, his swashbuckling lifestyle will soon come to an end with the introduction of international copyright laws. In this richly imagined historical novel, he plots a final heist, heading for the island of Samoa where a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labors over his last book.
“Seveneves,” by Neal Stephenson
This epic sci-fi saga spanning 5,000 years begins when the moon inexplicably blows up. As the rubble hurtles toward Earth, scientists inform the populous that the planet will be destroyed in two years. Nations band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure humanity’s survival in outer space. In the ensuing chaos, the choices of seven women create seven distinct races.
NONFICTION
“H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald
Helen Macdonald was devastated by her father’s sudden death on a London street. In her grief she resolved to train one of the most vicious predators known to falconers, the goshawk. The decision tests the limits of her humanity in this bestselling work of naturalism and obsession.
The author of “The Devil in the White City,” narrates a story many people think they know. On May 1, 1915, with World War I entering its 10th month, a luxurious ocean liner departs New York bound for Liverpool carrying a record number of children and infants. Germany has declared the seas around Britain a war zone. Larson switches between the hunter and the hunted in a portrait of the era.
“How to Catch a Russian Spy”
For three nerve-wracking years, Naveed Jamali spied on America for the Russians, or so the Russians believed. In fact, the young American civilian was a covert double agent working with the FBI. But, everything he knew about undercover work, he learned from TV and movies. He reveals the whole story behind his adventure — from coded signals on Craigslist to the Russian spy’s propensity for Hooters’ Buffalo wings.
In a look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single, journalist Kate Bolick uses her own experiences to weave past and present in an examination of why she, and more than 100 million American women and counting, remains unmarried.
Want more? Here's three summer releases everybody will be talking about.
