Summer reading picks: Books Mountain Brook writers are enjoying this summer
Lanier Isom
Recommends Tongues of Flame by Mary Ward Brown
I’m currently rereading Mary Ward Brown’s collection of short stories, Tongues of Flame. In Wayne Flynt’s commentary “Mary Ward Brown: A Black Belt Treasure Passes,” he wrote, “She was probably the most famous Alabamian you never heard of. That is because she wrote brilliant short stories about the people who inhabited that magical and conflicted land, black and white, in the solitude of that house midway between the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers, halfway from Demopolis to Montgomery.”
Lanier Isom is the author of Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond.
Kari Kampakis
Recommends The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I love reading at night, when my girls are down and I need to unwind. One book I’ve enjoyed recently is John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. This novel, about two teenagers facing imminent deaths who fall in love, draws you in through quirky characters and smart writing. It, too, is thought-provoking and full of complexities that illustrate how it’s the hardships and difficult decisions we face that lead us to better places and give our lives a richness bigger than any obstacle in our way.
Kari Kampakis writes the “Life Acutally” column for Village Living and is working on her first novel.
Jim Noles
Recommends The Guns at Last Light
by Rick Atkinson
Last month, the final volume in Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy arrived in bookstores. Atkinson’s first two books in the series, An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle, recounted the American Army’s World War II campaigns in North Africa and Italy. The trilogy’s conclusion, The Guns at Last Light, tells the tale of the battles to liberate Western Europe in 1944 and 1945. Ever since I read An Army at Dawn, I’ve been waiting for the next books to be published. In these histories, Atkinson’s writing strikes just the right note – deftly literate but not pretentious – and he does a wonderful job of being able to weave the individual narrative threads of individual soldiers’ experiences into the grand strategy of the campaign. The book may be a little bit big to stuff into your beach bag, but it’s worth the extra weight.
Jim Noles is the author of A pocketful of history: Four hundred Years of America-One State Quarter at a Time, May 5, 1862: A Story of Cinco de Mayo, Mighty by Sacrifice and other titles.
Patti Callahan Henry
Recommends The Summer Girls
by Mary Alice Monroe
The Summer Girls is the first book in a trilogy about three granddaughters and the summer they spent in a seaside summer house. Mary Alice Monroe weaves her incredible love of the Lowcountry and of dolphins into this heartwarming story. Monroe captures the complex relationships between three half sisters scattered across the country — and a grandmother determined to help them rediscover their family bonds.
Patti Callahan Henry is the author of And Then I Found You, Coming Up for Air, Driftwood Summer, and other titles.