In my previous post I wrote about extending the summer through summer/beach reading lists. Another intriguing one is Michael P. Maslanka’s Summer 2009 Beach Reads for GCs, from law.com/Texas Lawyer. Maslanka is a Dallas-based attorney and writer, and though this is aimed at corporate attorneys, it is thoughtful and broad-based enough to appeal to a wider readership. He includes recent business books, such as Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self, though the list gets particularly interesting when Maslanka goes beyond business. “Books that help us do not need to be self-help books,” he observes. He includes two related to the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, then moves to Charlotte Higgins’ book on Latin poetry, Latin Love Lessons: Put a Little Ovid in Your Life. To honor the value of brevity, there is Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart.
The list has many more choices in a variety of categories, including mysteries and thrillers. There is even a brief reminder of why all this is important in the first place: “Books enlighten us. They free us. They uplift us,” he writes. Another angle on summer reading can be found in Some Thoughts on Infinite Jest During the Infinite Summer, Mike Miley’s Huffington Post about an online reading group dedicated to reading David Foster Wallace’s huge novel Infinite Jest by September 22. Wallace, who taught creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont, California, committed suicide last year. I haven’t read his books, but when I heard of his death I wondered if I had ever unknowingly seen him during the times I was in Claremont researching my book. It’s not a big city, and I often walked through the lovely Pomona College campus, which is not far from the Drucker School. Finally, a bestseller this summer is a book reprinting Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.
