famous people reading
Back when Presidents and their children read books, Malia Obama was photographed clutching Outside Beauty by Cynthia Kadohata.
I haven’t read it yet but it’s the story of four sisters, their beauty obsessed mother, and the way their lives all change after an awful accident. (I've read one of Kadohata’s other books — Kira-Kira — which I really liked. It’s a great book for early teens about life for Japanese Americans in the 1950’s.)
This looks like a great way to spend a birthday—reading and sunbathing on a car bonnet in Martha’s Vineyard. The pic is from New York Jackie: Pictures from Her Life in the City and was taken on her 60th birthday.
She’s reading The Most Beautiful House in the World, which I gather is a bit like a cerebral version of Grand Designs! The author is architect and prolific author, Witold Ryczynski—a man of forthright and strongly held opinion, including:
Bill Gates has a book reviews section on his blog—it runs heavily toward the highbrow end of town. (No surprise there, I guess!) There’s a smattering of ‘beach’ books for light relief too, and this is one of them. I read The Rosie Effect myself a year or so ago and loved it.
I love short stories for travelling—I can read one or two on a domestic flight and then put it away without thinking about it all day while I’m doing other things. The Stories of John Cheever is a collection of 61 short stories
Do you do this too? Snatch out a moment anywhere you can to keep up with a great action book? That's Stephen King reading Lee Child's Tripwire between innings at the baseball—looks like he’s deep into one of Jack Reacher’s exploits. (Apparently King’s a big Boston Red Sox fan, so it’s not like he’s wishing he was somewhere else.)
Have you seen Bill Gates’ 2017 summer reading list? While it's a little less cerebral than many of his recommendation lists—still not exactly vampires and romance—there's more accessible content with a nice blend of memoir, fiction and philosophy. Here are the 5 books: