I wish some paper of record would tell its readers how one can be expected to purchase all the recently published reads on its annual summer recommendations list after one has just shelled out upwards of 2500 clams a week for the use of a musty cottage in the Hamptons or the dunes of Cape Cod. Fortunately for the impoverished beach book worm, along with a kitchen cabinet full of poorly rinsed yogurt containers and at least fourteen pounds of oyster shells, driftwood and rocks, other Augusts' tenants will have left behind a library's worth of reading material from which a worthy parallel list can be easily culled.
1. The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey
"An investigation of art and artifice" -- The New York Times
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Psychoanalysis Is A Great Big Help! by Hubert I. Bermont, drawings by Susan Perl (Stein and Day, 1972)
Weighing in at least seventy thousand words less than Hickey's novel about Emilie Floge, the alleged lover of the artist Gustav Klimt, Bermont's light-hearted examination delights with such truisms as "Psychoanalysis helps you accept the world as it is" and "Psychoanalysis enables you to come to terms with your family" rendered in a format reminiscent of Charles M. Schulz's "Happiness is a warm puppy" series but smuttier.
2. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
"Rich…lavish…a stirring, exotic novel that is a treat for the senses and intellect alike." -- Los Angeles Times
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Bonsai by Norio Kobayahsi (Japan Travel Bureau, 1957)
Like Min, Kobayashi pulls aside the veil on a world rarely glimpsed by Western outsiders, beckoning to the uninitiated with the assurance of a seasoned sensualist. "Do-it-yourself! Learn how to raise those wonderful miniature potted plants yourself! Secrets guarded jealously by the gardeners of Old Japan now revealed here for your easy comprehension!"
3. Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift Of Wealth And Power To The East by Clyde Prestowitz
"Pronounces the globalization of today more than just another "gale of creative destruction" to which our economy will eventually adapt" -- The New York Times
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Truly Tasteless Jokes by Blanche Knott (Ballantine, 1982)
The president of the Economic Strategy Institute's investigation into globalization, while never less than thorough, suffers from a surfeit of the dead baby jokes that merit an entire chapter in Knott's exhaustive survey.
4. Pretty Birds by Scott Simon
"A portrait of resilience, punctuated by mortar blasts and Clash songs" -- The New York Times
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
I Wanna Go Home! An Offbeat Travelogue by Hank Ketcham (McGraw Hill, 1965)
The 'pretty bird' of NPR host Simon's indelibly moving novel is an Afghani sniper who also happens to be a teenaged girl. Beloved cartoonist Ketcham's illustrated travel memoir contains an indelibly disturbing image of Dennis the Menace's father fleeing a Finnish sauna au naturel mais sans genitalia.
5. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
"If Camus had written a grown-up version of The Breakfast Club, the result might have had more than a little in common with Nick Hornby's grimly comic, oddly moving fourth novel." -- Tom Perrotta
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Cricket: The Magazine For Children, Volume 5, Number 6, February 1978
If Camus had submitted a recipe for Valentine cookies that look like stained glass to a children's magazine published five years or so before the release of The Breakfast Club, he might have selected Cricket, or possibly Jack And Jill.
6. Wings of Friendship: Selected Letters 1944-2003 by Ned Rorem
"Rorem's prose is as fresh and unfailingly interesting as his music." -- Joyce Carol Oates
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
The Ann Landers Encyclopedia A to Z (Ballantine, 1978)
The late columnist delved into the human condition with characteristic frankness, covering a host of intimate topics (Bedwetting, Constipation, Tubal Litigation) that Rorem barely touches on in a half century's personal correspondence.
7. Adored by Tilly Bagshawe
"Bagshawe keeps the pages flying with steamy sex and keen behind-the-scenes takes on the fashion, movie and television businesses" -- Publishers Weekly
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Official Rules Of Card Games, 58th Edition (The United Playing Card Company, 1968)
As surely as yesterday's catch is today's chowder, blowjobs and brand-name references are by their very nature ephemeral pleasures. Readers who seek a more substantial literary refuge will take heart in the scrupulous attention the 58th Edition lavishes on such time-honored classics as Coon-Can, Crapette and Klondike.
8. French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mirielle Guillano
"The perfect book for the more literate dieter" -- San Francisco Chronicle
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Martinis And Whipped Cream: The New Carbo-Cal Way To Lose Weight And Stay Slim by Sidney Petrie in association with Robert Stone (Parker, 1966)
Written nearly forty years apart, both books seek to remedy America's yo-yo dieting problem with a highly seductive blend of irrefutable logic and charming anecdote, but only one offers the caloric content for a 3 1/2 ounce portion of canned Boston Butt.
9. Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History Of Disco by Peter Shapiro"Shapiro's no-rhinestone-unturned approach makes for highly entertaining reading" -- The New York Times
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
Teacher's Pet: Easy Piano Arrangements, Book 2 (Robbins, 1968)
Shapiro's dizzying prose may have inspired SPIN magazine's Dave Itzkoff to declare disco "the Fiorucci-clad bastard child of any number of 20th century cultural movements, from Nazi Germany's Swing Jugend to …the post-Stonewall gay movement of downtown Manhattan," but Teacher's Pet will appeal to the serious scholar by focusing on the seminal period from whence the sequin-testicled motorized fruit bat that is disco directly sprang. Plus, it's got guitar chords for "(Theme From) Valley Of The Dolls."
10. The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
"This is a story you will turn to again and again, because it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew. This book is a gift to the soul." -- Amy Tan
Short-Term Renters Alternative Selection:
The Golden Guide To Lawns, Trees And Shrubs edited by John Strohm (Golden Press, 1961)
This is a story you will turn to again and again, because it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew. This book is a gift to the soul.
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