The best books to take to the beach.

It’s August. There’s probably a beach or a pool or a hammock somewhere in your near future, and the delights of lounging can be magnified by the charms of an engrossing book. But take heed! Don’t bring anything too serious, nor anything so frothy as, say, that copy of Twilight you “borrowed” from your teenage niece. Here Double X contributors offer their suggestions on books that hit that perfect beach-read spot between pleasing and nourishing. (For more suggestions on what to read, check out Slate’s roundup of the best books of 2008.)

Trouble, Kate Christensen

I am definitely the target audience for Trouble, Kate Christensen’s new novel. Like the protagonist, Josie, I am almost 40, married over a decade, and have kids. Unlike her, I did not have an epiphany one day that I can’t live with my husband anymore and then give a stranger I met in a bar a blowjob. This book irritated me, from beginning to end. But I want everyone to read it. Why? Because we are entering a new age of the female mid-life crisis novel, and it’s depressing me, and I need to discuss. The male midlife crisis novel has existed for a long time, with its promise of escape from domestic drudgery, and “belated entry into the dazzling, new country of self fulfillment,” as Will Blythe recently summarized the genre (and Jess discussed here). In the usual beach-reading-for-girls formula, girl stumbles through life and then falls in love. Now, in an age of discontentment with marriage, the girl needs to escape before she can be happy. I should be thrilled by the new parity, right? Run, Janice, Run! But instead I find it all boring, and self indulgent, and unconvincing. Anyone with me?

—Hanna Rosin

The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot

Rabbit series, John Updike

I’m So Happy For You, Lucinda Rosenfeld

At the risk of sounding like I wish I was still in college, I confess that I burrow into classics over the summer. It's the only time that I have the chance to lose myself in a book, and that intense pleasure is best spent on great books, I think, even if I do end up with a door-stopper in my beach bag. (Save the Kindle speech. My 94-year-old grandmother just gave it to me.)

Last summer, I picked up George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and put it down as little as possible until I was done. Maggie Tulliver's troubles of the heart aren't modern, and they pulled me in precisely because they took me back to a different era. Her relationship with her brother Tom is one of the all-time sibling sorrows. This summer, I'm halfway through John Updike's four-volume Rabbit series. I'm struggling with these books because so far, all of the female characters are wholly unlikable. In fact, they're dreadful. Am I crazy to think that Updike is a bit of a misogynist? Still, in many passages the writing is shot through with energy and truth, and Rabbit as a character is growing on me, like a sad and crusty old uncle.

Tags: beach reads, chick lit, summer

DoubleX Staff

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