The number one book that I'm recommending this summer is The Art of Racing in the Rain. It was one of an armful of books that I picked up at the start of summer vacation, and it was recommended by a clerk at Borders. I was a bit skeptical at first . . . after all, it's narrated by a dog, and it takes a skilled writer to pull that one off in a believable fashion. Stephen King managed it in Cujo. Enzo had me convinced on the first page, however, and the world from his point of view made sense.
I chose this for my book group's July read. It was a toss up between this, City of Thieves and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. City of Thieves was a good book, but rather grim for a summer reading group discussion, and Guernsey was a pleasant surprise. An epistolary novel (written in the format of letters), it takes a few pages to enter the rhythm of the correspondence, especially since we seem to have lost the art of letter writing in the age of technology, but it's a great story with a bit of weight . . . not at all what I expected.
I'm currently in the middle of Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I have mixed feelings about this one. The plot echoes Donna Tartt's first book, and the author certainly engages in some impressive creative language play, but many of the literary devices seem contrived, and the continual citations are distracting. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing how it is resolved.
