SUMMER READING
month), but you can really pick any one and start there. I love them all so much I can’t even remember their individual titles. So I looked it up – the first one is called The Kill Artist. John Podhoretz I recently dusted off an old classic that is truly timeless: Endurance by Alfred Lansing. If you haven’t read this tale of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 ill-fated attempt to traverse Antarctica on foot, you need to add this book to your stack. It’s a poignant real-life reminder of Murphy’s Law in action. Based on the detailed journal entries of survivors, this is an entirely true story that’s hard to believe. First, the ship carrying Shackleton and his men becomes stuck, then crushed, in the ice pack. With rapidly dwindling supplies, Shackleton and his men must journey across hundreds of miles of ice flows in open rowboats through the most inhospitable, frozen corner of the globe. You get to read all about the bone- chilling, heart-pounding escapades from the comfort of your favorite rocking chair, on
deeply exhilarating about tales of other men escaping predatory sea lions and
*Or, you could drink Shackleton Blended Malt. Available in better liquor stores, it supposedly recreates the whisky that Shackleton brought on his expedition. (He brought a lot.) P.J. tried some (okay, a lot) over the 4th of July weekend. He says it’s, “Urp... Pretty good!”
subsisting off whale blubber in subzero temperatures while you stir a margarita* in the sunshine and ponder your stock portfolio. Enjoy. Buck Sexton Social Creature is a diabolical debut from Tara Isabella Burton, a theology PhD and religion journalist. Ambitious, penny- pinching Louise’s whirlwind friendship with glamorous party girl Lavinia spirals toward violent obsession, cast against a biting parody of Manhattan’s self-absorbed literary set. Often compared to a digital-age Patricia Highsmith thriller – we learn early on that Lavinia’s days are numbered – Burton’s book is devilishly diverting like Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley , and no less morally agnostic. But, in a new twist on the classic form, it has High Church theology expertly sprinkled throughout. Honestly, We Meant Well , a new comic novel by Grant Ginder, takes an unhappy family — a philandering writer, his classicist wife, and their untalented son — and jets them off to the sun-washed Greek island of Aegina for four weeks of redemptive togetherness. Or that’s the idea, anyway... Surrounded by the same crumbling columns and porticos the
the beach, or in the airport lounge. There is something
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July 2019
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