Redbery Books

Summertime Reading brings out the differences in reader’s tastes. Customers are looking for everything from a summer long tome to a stack of quick beach reads. Find your style and see our recommendations that follow.

•  If you read in your comfortable zone all year and want to step out for something a bit avant-garde, pick up this year’s Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Award A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

•  If you want to be uplifted by ordinary lives, try Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister. You’ll find yourself thinking up challenges to round out your life, just as these friends did.

•  If you want to read what everyone else is reading go for Room by Emma Donoghue. This is the book you think you can’t bear to read but you’ll be glad you did. The focus is on a mother and the world she created for her son while in captivity, not on the crime or criminal.  Innocence meets survival.

•  If you want to have a food event with a book, it’s The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  A helping of southern comfort food goes with this longtime bestseller now out in paperback.

•  If you want to read about the next one from a favorite author, Work Song by Ivan Doig or Dreams of Joy by Lisa See are two possibilities. On the non-fiction side are new books by David McCullough and Erik Larson.

•  If you want to pick up books you might have missed last summer, there is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson are still favorites.

•  If you have titles from previously mentioned books in this column but are waiting for the paperback,  Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass and The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman are now available.

•  If you want all-time favorites for the northwoods, you can’t miss with Summer Guest by Justin Cronin or Driftless by David Rhodes.

•  If you want to be in touch with the artist in you, pick up Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland.

•  If you want to channel the Hemingway in you, it’s The Paris Wife by Paula McClain.