Five Books We Enjoyed. And Five Waiting In The Wings.

By Erica and Karen

Like us, you probably don’t have much time to read, especially as the days are beautiful and any free time is spent outside. Exercising, to lengthen our telomeres. And also being lazy or having cocktails.

But night comes early, and then we do want to curl up somewhere and read. Here are some of the books we have enjoyed, or have learned something from, and some we look forward to enjoying as the days grow short.

1. The Last Flight. Fabulous page turner about women planning their own disappearances. Realistic? Not so much. But most engrossing!

2. N-4 Down: The Hunt For The Arctic Airship Italia. Another book involving air travel, but utterly different. And also true. Absorbing, if you are curious about exploring the Arctic, and the early days of flight, as one of us is. Way too long if you are not.

3. Anthro-VIsion. A truly fascinating book by Gillian Tett, the U.S. editor-at-large of the Financial Times and a woman of formidable brainpower. She started her professional life as an anthropologist, doing fieldwork in Tajikistan, studying marriage rituals. She brought that anthropological eye to her study of the business world—another set of cultural rituals. The vignettes—for example, about business decisions made without understanding the culture of the target market—often expose obvious truths that you can see only if you study what is going on.

4. All The Frequent Trouble Of Our Days. A gripping, non-fiction account of the days leading up to, and the beginning of, the Second World War. The story is literally breathtaking, told through the letters and writings of an American woman who travelled to Berlin, married a German, and with him and a young boy worked against the Nazis.

5. Songs of America. Patriotism, Protest and the Music That Made America. Historian Jon Meacham and singer Tim McGraw collaborated to write about the history of this country and the songs that animated that history. What a great idea.

Up Next. (You will see a theme here…)

1. Facing The Mountain. We loved The Boys In The Boat. Underdogs winning is always uplifting. This book is also a true story about heroes operating in a distinct context.

2. Bewilderment. We loved The Overstory. This sounds very dissimilar, but perhaps with an equal measure of science and fantasy.

3. The Guarded Gate. We loved Great Fortune, the amazing tale of Rockefeller Center. We’re sure this is another well researched, well written story.

4. Red Widow. We actually never heard of this author, but a good CIA book is a treat.

5. Harlem Shuffle. Yes, of course we love anything Colson Whitehead writes. And we like reading about our city’s neighborhoods.

Let us know what you are reading. Or looking forward to reading.