Top books to read this summer, according to Ann Patchett and Maureen Corrigan

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: With summer in full swing, you might be wondering what books to take along on vacation or enjoy right at home.

Amna Nawaz: Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown talks with two “News Hour” regulars who have answers to that question.

It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: And for ideas for your summer reading, we have two of our favorite readers and recommenders, Maureen Corrigan, a professor at Georgia University and book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air,” and Ann Patchett, acclaimed author, most recently of the novel “Tom Lake,” and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she joins us.

Maureen and Ann, it’s really nice to talk to you both again.

Ann, you want to start with maybe two or three novels, fiction?

Ann Patchett, Owner, Parnassus Books: Yes, absolutely.

All right, I’m starting off with a book called “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans. This is an epistolary novel. Epistolary novels usually don’t work, but this one does. It’s about a grouchy, older woman who lives alone, who in the course of the book makes more and more connections to neighbors, to friends. It’s a really beautiful, beautiful book, a debut.

Way to go, Virginia. And then..

Jeffrey Brown: And it says a cause for celebration by Ann Patchett on the cover.

Ann Patchett: Yes, right? Exactly. Everything — that’s the thing about owning a bookstore and being an author. My name winds up on a lot of books.

Kathy Wang’s “The Satisfaction Cafe” just came out. And, again, it’s a very quiet, funny, smart book in which you don’t think a whole lot is going on. And then more and more and more happens. It follows one woman over the course of her life in the Bay Area. Think Anne Tyler, just beautifully written, quiet, simple, and very, very smart, very entertaining.

Jeffrey Brown: Maureen, what do you have?

Maureen Corrigan, NPR Book Critic: Oh, gosh.

Summer to me is mystery and suspense fiction. So, S.A. Cosby, who is one of the greatest crime writers alive today, his latest book is called “King of Ashes.” And it’s about a young man, a successful financier who returns to his hometown in Virginia, where his father has been the victim of a mysterious hit-and-run.

This young man has to figure out how to save the family business, which is a crematory. His father is the king of ashes. He’s the owner of the crematory. How to save it from the clutches of a mob that now controls the town. Cosby is tough, he’s rough, and that crematory gets a lot of action. So I warn readers who don’t like the grisly stuff, that’s there, but he is fantastic.

Jeffrey Brown: They do go for it, right?

Maureen Corrigan: He goes for it, and it feels very authentic.

Another book that I would recommend is “El Dorado Drive” by Megan Abbott. Megan Abbott is an amazing suspense writer who seems to specialize in closed communities of women that turn very weird very quickly. And this book is set in Detroit, which is Abbott’s hometown, early 2000s. Detroit is down on its luck. A bunch of women get together and join a finance club and they spout all these slogans about female empowerment.

And yet this club also turns out to be a Ponzi scheme. So there’s that.

Jeffrey Brown: OK, how about nonfiction, Ann? Give us two, OK?

Ann Patchett: All right, two.

“Who Is Government?” Michael Lewis, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. One, it is a pure pleasure to read. He has a great group of authors that he’s working with, Geraldine Brooks, Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, whole group, each one writing about a specific person in a particular branch of government, the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the Department of Justice, and talks about the work that they are doing and the enormous impact it makes on all of our lives.

And we never knew that these people were doing these amazing things. This is absolutely the book for right now. And it pairs beautifully with another book I love, John Green’s “Everything is Tuberculosis.” John Green, our most famous young adult author, is obsessed with tuberculosis, tuberculosis in history, but also tuberculosis here and now.

Why is it that this completely curable disease is still killing so many people, and what will happen when we no longer are giving money to the World Health Organization to save those people’s lives?

Jeffrey Brown: OK, Maureen?

Maureen Corrigan: OK, summer sea stories. So one of my recommendations is “A Marriage at Sea” by Sophie Elmhirst, which is a fantastic true story about a young couple in the 1970s in England who decide that they want to build a boat.

They’re not wealthy, lower middle class. They want to build a boat, chuck everything, and live at sea. Everything is wonderful.

Jeffrey Brown: Not at the beach, but really at sea, right?

Maureen Corrigan: No, out there. Out there. Everything is terrific until about a year into the voyage. They’re in the middle of the Pacific, and they encounter a whale who breaches the boat. The boat sinks within minutes, and they are left for four months out on a rubber raft in the middle of the Pacific. So it tests the marriage. It also tests endurance, right?

So that’s one. And then a land story…

Jeffrey Brown: It’s like, you think you got troubles in your marriage, right?

(Laughter)

Maureen Corrigan: Well, it does make you wonder, would I really eat raw birds to survive?

(Laughter)

Maureen Corrigan: The other story is definitely on firm ground, “The Salt Stones” by Helen Whybrow.

And Whybrow was an editor earlier in her life, worked in publishing. And then — but for the last 20 years, she and her husband have been on a farm in Vermont, and she has been raising Icelandic sheep. This is not my fantasy. This is not my world. But, boy, does she take me as a reader out there into the meadow with her and make me feel how everything is interconnected in that meadow.

So I strongly recommend that one.

Jeffrey Brown: OK, now I asked you both for either a children’s book or something that you go back to reread, an old classic. And I understand you have been talking on the side here and come up with a surprise.

Maureen Corrigan: I know we both love it.

“Mister Dog” lives by my desk at home. It’s by Helen (sic) Wise Brown, who gave us “Goodnight Moon,” which is a weird story.

Jeffrey Brown: Sure.

Maureen Corrigan: This is an even weirder story, I think. It’s the last book she wrote before her untimely death. And it’s about a dog named Crispin’s Crispian. And he’s named that because he owns himself, he belongs to himself.

And it does what great children’s books, what great books, period, do. It takes you into a world you would never have imagined. And you just want to stay there.

Jeffrey Brown: All right, I wasn’t expecting that.

Well, Ann, give us one last children’s book or young adult. What have you think you got?

Ann Patchett: Yes, OK.

“In the Wild” by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird, right? Zadie Smith, our greatest writer, has written about a weird little guinea pig in a judo suit. This is the sequel to her book “The Surprise.” And in this one, the guinea pig’s owner, Maud, is going camping. Guinea pig gets into the backpack, the way they do, and goes off into the wilderness.

It is such a strange, terrific book. Love it. Love it.

Jeffrey Brown: All right, I know this could go on a long time, but we have to stop somewhere.

Ann Patchett and Maureen Corrigan, thank you both very much.