BOSTON — We fled Texas on a Sunday morning in late July. The temperature the day before had reached 105 in Dallas. Just walking out to the car to deposit the items not making the trip was akin to opening a pizza oven and staring at that large pepperoni pie from six inches out. It was a dry heat, as they say, akin to holding a blow dryer to one’s face. And that was at 9 a.m. It was time to make our annual escape to New England.
We booked this trip just two weeks ago, after waffling over whether we would go somewhere new this summer, or nowhere at all. Then the first miserably hot, humid day of summer...
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Summertime, and the reading is easy. As we head to cooler climes for holiday, as the Brits say, here are a dozen books to fill those leisurely afternoons by the pool or wherever you choose to get some down time.
My daughter Meredith, editorial director for the Birth.Movies.Death website (birthmoviesdeath.com) and for Alamo Drafthouse, sent my Beautiful Mystery Companion for Mother’s Day the first two novels in the Dublin Murder Squad series, by Tana French. I beat my BMC to the books and started with In The Woods. I was hooked. Each book has a different protagonist, but they all share a connection....
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And this old porch is like a weathered, gray-haired
Seventy Years of Texas
— Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen
We sat on the front porch in early July. A steady western breeze and low humidity sliced the edge off the 90-degree afternoon. We sipped beer. I listened and took notes as the three men and two women swapped stories, out in the blacklands of Central Texas. I balanced my laptop on my knees, taking a tighter grip when Miles the collie came by to nuzzle my hand. Miles and I became fast friends, after I spent much of a previous visit kicking his soccer ball and waiting...
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“Hey baby, it’s the Fourth of July.”
— Dave Alvin
I began Independence Day as any other day, walking Sam through the neighborhood while listening to NPR. As they have for the past 29 years, the announcers were reading the Declaration of Independence, familiar voices taking turns reading Thomas Jefferson’s literary shot across the bow toward the British. I later learned NPR also tweeted the Declaration in 140-character bursts, which alarmed a number of people who did not recognize what it was. It took 113 tweets, and by the end a number of people — who apparently skipped the Declaration...
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