Summer reading

I recently finished my latest Ambitious Book Project - Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on The Shore" - and now there will not be any more ABPs for some time to come. Not that I didn't enjoy the book. It had a lot going for it. There were several engaging characters, such as Nakata, the sweet old man who can talk to cats, Hoshino, the down-to-earth lorry driver who helps him, and Oshima, the friendly librarian who seems to have a bit of a crush on the troubled hero. It also has passages of understated humour where the characters accept surrealist situations as given. "I wouldn't want Mickey Mouse to be my pimp", Hoshino says at one point, in a context where this comment makes perfect sense. A lot of the philosophical musings are way too deep for me, and the hero "Kafka" Tamura is rather too serious for my taste, but it is a quietly gripping book with occasional references to Western culture which make one feel at home (though I may never view Johnnie Walker or Colonel Sanders in quite the same way again).

So why no more ABPs for a while? Because it is summer, and my vacation. Each year, I get irritated by the recommendations for summer reading in the newspapers' culture/review sections. Critics and authors invariably come up with the most intellectually demanding or downright tedious stuff they can find and feel no shame in foisting their unhelpful recommendations on readers who just want a good read for the beach.

Lets get this straight once and for all. When you sit in the sun with an overheated brain, your concentration is not likely not be on top form. What you long for is an easy read, a page-turner preferably, or something funny in the Wodehouse vein. This is not the time to get to grips with modernist poetry, or with Proust (yes, believe it or not, two Swedish critics recommended him: one the whole "In Search Of Lost Time", one only what I have been given to understand is the most boring volume in it).

Here are my recommendations for the beach/hammock/anywhere comfortable in the sun or out of it:

Just about anything by Agatha Christie: Although she's a best-seller, Christie is very much underrated as an author. I have reread many Christie novels more than once, even though I knew perfectly well who the murderer was. The first time you read a Christie, you want to know who did it. The second time you want to pick up all the clues you missed. The third, fourth time etc. you just enjoy the succint prose and the human drama. You may not always agree with Christie's psychological statements - she is a bit too cynical for me at times - but the characters are no stereotypes either. A problem with Christie is that she doesn't film very well, which makes people who have only seen a creaky adaptation believe she is boring, which she definitely is not. (There are other dangers with adaptations: the latest miss Marple films are reasonably pacy, but approximately every second mystery has nothing whatsoever to do with the book it is supposedly based on. "The Secret of Chimneys", for instance, was pure invention from start to finish, including the identity of the murderer.) If you truly have little time for whodunnits, try her adventure yarns like "The Secret Adversary", "Destination Unknown", "They Came To Baghdad", "The Man In The Brown Suit" and "Why Didn't They As Evans?". Avoid her very last books where her prose starts to wander a bit and get repetitive and you'll be fine.

The Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse: Yes, the Blandings novels are good too, but I prefer the Jeeves/Wooster novels because of Bertie Wooster's endearing narrative (and because efficient secretaries aren't pillorised). Invest in an omnibus, but alternate with a crime story or two so you don't get overfed on Wodehouse. What ho!

And if you have to read something ambitious: a really good 19th-century yarn: I once read "Crime And Punishment" in the sun and enjoyed it immensely. Fun cop. Colourful characters. Villains a-plenty and high drama. Or just settle for one of Dickens's best, like "Great Expectations" or "David Copperfield".

Ah, well back to my Georgette Heyer: another good holiday read, though her heroes are supremely irritating. I would like to shove their quizzing-glasses and snuff-boxes down their conceited throats. If I come across a novel where the hero does not get on my nerves, I will recommend it unreservedly.