Serious Summer Reading

The vicious cycle of book reviewing brought serious summer reading this year. I'll spend the season dipping into the rich, dense Wendy Doniger compendium The Hindus: An Alternative History.

A much smaller, more painful one to read is Andrew Levy's A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary. I had suspected I'd had migraines until menopause, but reading about them seems to be bringing them back--at least while I'm vicariously experiencing Levy's rough ride. His search for a solution brings resolution of his relationship with a painful Other living within his head.

Not quite as dense as THE HINDUS, but equally fascinating, is a fictionalized view of the beginnings of Islam. Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam by Kamran Pasha, tells the story through the eyes of "Aisha, the youngest and most beloved wife of the Prophet." Although the author's first novel, it is the product of a successful Pakistani-American Hollywood screenwriter, contributing to lush descriptions and intense characterizations that make this one closer to a "beach read."

But wait, there's more! I'm running out of room to mention :

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
Happy Trails to You: Stories by Julie Hecht
Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain by Lorie Tharps

The first two are rather dreary fiction, and the third--what can I say? A crazy, mixed-up black girl grows up in the vanilla Midwest, never happy with her self-imposed succession of identities until she finds out that slavery flourished in Spain. Huh?

These books were published by The Penguin Press, Simon & Schuster, Putnam and Washington Square Press.

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