What I Read (and Where I Was) This Summer

It’s the last day of summer, so here’s what I read, and where I was, mostly, when I read it. 

• Pity the Beautiful, Dana Gioia
  (read largely on the couch in my living room)
   


• The Group, Mary McCarthy
  (mostly in bed before dropping off to sleep)
   


• The Receptionist, Janet Groth
  (began while on a train to Albany; finished while sitting by the pond at Mt. Holyoke College during Glen East this June) 
   


• The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  (began while sitting by the bank of the pond on the Mt. Holyoke campus; finished while sitting at a restaurant on a dock in Gloucester, Massachusetts a few weeks later)
   


• Reforming Hollywood, William Romanowski
  (began at home, and finished at Glen East; my review ran in Christianity Today in August)
   


• Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
  (began one sunny morning, sitting out by the remains of a smoldering fire from the night before, while visiting friends in New Hampshire; finished in a Cuban restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, on the fourth of July over sangria - this was my favorite book of the summer)  
   


• Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semiotics of Communication, Crystal Downing
  (read largely while sitting on a dock at South Street Seaport in early July; review forthcoming) 
   


• All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
  (a re-read for my MFA residency; began at the open-air pubs on Stone Street in downtown Manhattan in July; finished on a flight to Los Angeles)
   


• Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner
  (re-read on a plane home from Los Angeles, in preparation for workshops at my MFA residency since that’s where I began a year of study with Lauren)
   


• Blue Arabesque, Patricia Hampl
  (which I re-read on my way to Santa Fe for our workshop)
   


• The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick
  (which I read mostly in Santa Fe and on the way home, and will be teaching this fall)
   


• How I Grew, Mary McCarthy 


• Intellectual Memoirs, Mary McCarthy
  (plowed through both of these the week after returning from Santa Fe) 
   


• The Financial Lives of the Poets, Jess Walter
  (read mostly at home in July and August, though also sometimes on the subway) 
   


• Aftermath, by Rachel Cusk
  (read for an MFA annotation, and did not like, but finished just this morning) 

Have also been reading the following: Anathem, by Neal Stephenson (a long, long long long book that I read in 50-page chunks on the weekends); Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy by Frances Kiernan (I’m doing lots of research on McCarthy and her circles right now for an upcoming writing project); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe (a poet Lauren wisely recommended to me); As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 by Susan Sontag (not as gripping as the first volume, but still good); The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy (her first novel);  and other bits and pieces here and there.

The real work is about to begin in earnest again.