Adult Summer Reading 2011 – North America

With just a week and a half to go, you still have time to enter the Summer Reading Contest for a cool prize. Just read a book and enter your review by hand, on our Summer Reads blog, or on our Goodreads Group page.

If you’re running out of ideas, join us as we visit the last of our continents – North America (we’re separating the U.S. from this group, which we’ll look at next week).

1. Don’t leave the comfort of your hammock to learn more about these countries. Look through our handy-dandy Armchair Booklist.

2. If you want something substantial, try one of these classics:

• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
• Runaway by Alice Munro
• A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
• Early Poems by Octavio Paz
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• White Egrets by Derek Walcott

3. Want to beef up on your history? Grab one of these:

• The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush by Howard Blum
• Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs by Michael D. Coe
• The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner
• A Brief History of the Caribbean By D. H. Figueredo
• Cuba: A History by Sergio Guerra Vilaboy
• A Brief History of Central America by Lynn V. Foster
• A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland by John Mack Faragher
• Evil Hour in Colombia  by Forrest Hylton
• The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David G. McCullough
• The Life and Times of Mexico by Earl Shorris
• Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World by Jose Trias Monge
• The Penguin History of Latin America by Edwin Williamson

4. Try one of my personal recommendations:

• Outlander by Gil Adamson – After killing her husband, Mary goes on the run to escape her evil brothers-in-law, across the Canadian wilderness in 1903.
• Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros – Lala becomes fascinated by the meaning of a shawl, crafted by members of her family, as her family travels from Chicago to Mexico City.
• Galore by Michael Crummey – An odd man washes ashore in the belly of a whale and changes things in a small Newfoundland town.
• The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede – Tells the story of the day when 38 jetliners were rerouted to Gander in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene – A subtly sarcastic look at the world of espionage, as an ordinary man is recruited by MI6 in the pre-Castro days of Cuba.
• Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall – The title pretty much sums this one up, but it’s about the 50-mile race run by the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico.
• Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez – A retelling of The Tempest, a man is exiled to Trinidad, where his daughter finds friendship and love with a native boy.
• Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead – In 1916, a U.S. Cavalry soldier takes his men across the border in a hunt for Pancho Villa, a disastrous mission.