It is too hot for yardwork: gardens have withered against the triple-digit temperatures baking the MidSouth, lawns have gone crackly-yellow, and trees are dropping leaves in earnest, trying to survive.
The young and the hardy (along with some who are just foolish) are outside playing soccer, jogging for fitness, or using the sunny months for outdoor building projects.
The dog days of summer are here, along with the great summertime reads. In some cases, the reading material may not actually reach the great category, but certainly has managed the level of bestselling.
Jaycee Dugard, whose harrowing experience as a kidnapping victim was recently chronicled through a much-watched primetime television interview, has released a memoir of her time as a victim and the story behind the book has taken the popularity of A Stolen Life to the top of the book charts. Dugard was a young girl when she was taken from her family, and as she describes it on the book jacket, “For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name.”
“I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.”
The Simon & Schuster publication has received positive reviews from readers, although it is described as “difficult to read” due to the subject matter.
George R. R. Martin has been a journeyman fantasy and science-fiction writer for decades, but the HBO network release of his series A Game of Thrones has pushed him once again into the limelight. The boxed-set of the first four books in the series and the follow-up A Dance with Dragons have readers calling Martin “the American Tolkien.”
Movies, like the HBO treatment of Martin’s series, always help book sales. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is another that has jumped to the top of the sales charts after steady pre-movie sales. Another is Hunger Games, a trilogy from Suzanne Collins that has sold steadily in its pre-film days. The movie has not yet been completed.
Rounding out the mid-summer top five is another stalwart on the charts, covering a topic of perennial interest. Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo, is a father’s account of his son’s account of life after death, with revelations that had origins in a near-death experience. The book has generated interest for months.
The country’s top five may be compelling, but they aren’t waterproof. Use caution while reading in the pool or under the lawn-sprinkler.
