The summer months are known for their opportunities for curling up under a shady tree and spending a quiet hour with a good book. But how do you find that 'good book'? What are the best 'summer reads'? McMaster librarians, one of the campus' most voracious groups of readers, often act as reader advisory groups for family and friends. Vivian Lewis, an associate university librarian in Mills Memorial Library, says, “People will call you up to see what's worth reading. I sometimes feel like we have a responsibility to read all the new things that are coming out and let people know what's good.” Below, Lewis and other McMaster librarians share their picks for good summer reads.

Peggy Findlay, reference librarian at Mills Memorial Library, sticks close to home when making her reading choices. Books by Canadian and McMaster authors top her summer reading list. Says Findlay, “The McMaster authors display in the bookstore often provides great titles.” Case in point, The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia by McMaster professor of English Daniel Coleman. Also in Findlay's book bag is Progress of Love, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro. “A dear colleague is compiling an Alice Munro bibliography, so I thought it would be helpful to read some of her fiction,” says Findlay adding, “Canadian authors need our support.”

As a member of a campus/community interdisciplinary science and religion discussion group, Findlay says, “I have the opportunity to read some challenging (and fun) material during term. The monthly meetings are exhilarating and humour abounds…I would encourage anyone interested some lively conversations on the topic of science and religion to contact one of the co-chairs [John Robertson or David Chettle].”

Honorable mentions: Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan (“recommended by Debbie Barrett”); Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (“paperback for the cottage dock”).

Elise Hayton, circulation services manager for Mills Memorial Library, feels that there is an implication that reading in the summer is light reading, but she says, “I don't think my summer reading varies that much from my regular reading.” An eclectic reader, Hayton's list includes Dressing Up for the Carnival, a collection of short stories by Carol Shields, and Passage to Juneau, in which author Jonathan Raban intersperses stories of his own solo sailing voyage from Seattle to Juneau with large excerpts from the journals of the early explorers.

Usually a mystery reader, the closest Hayton has come this summer is The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Set in Botswana, the story follows Precious Ramotswe as she sell off her late father's cattle and sets up a Ladies' Detective Agency, and, in the process, becomes her country's first female detective. “It's not really a mystery,” says Hayton. “It's just a really sweet book. It's a fun read and it's light.”

Honorable mentions: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (“a beautiful book, very touching”); The New Yorker (“I have a pile of back issues to catch up on”).

University librarian Graham Hill says that when it comes to reading he'll give anything a try “except romance, mystery and fantasy,” but his summer reading choices aren't different from his reading the rest of the year. First on the list is A Brief Jolly Change: The Diaries of Henry Peerless edited by Edward Fenton, which chronicles the rise of mass tourism following the coming of the railway. “The Peerless Diaries span the 19th and 20th centuries, and I can relate to most of the places he visited in the U.K.,” says Hill. Familiarity is important to Hill, who has read most of the novels written by Irish writer Roddy Doyle. Doyle's A Star Called Henry is included on Hill's reading list for its grittiness and dark humour. Rounding out the top three is Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. “I started the Woodward book after seeing Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and I really appreciate the quality of his research and writing,” he says.

A reader who usually has two or three books on the go, Hill admits that he reads very different books. “I'm quite catholic when it comes to reading.” And how does he choose? “Serendipity - walking around Titles, Indigo, or the Library, of course.” He finds it hard to answer what draws him to a particular book. “I tend to know what I don't like, rather than what I do like,” he says. “Fortunately, I'm able to set a book aside after ten pages, if it's not to my liking.”

For her summer reading, Vivian Lewis, the associate university librarian in Mills Memorial Library, gravitates towards lighter texts. “I'm reading all the time at work, but much of it is pretty dry library literature,” she says, citing Database-Driven Websites by Kristin Antelman and Academic Libraries as High-Tech Gateways by Richard Bazillion as some of the titles on the desk in her office. “I tend towards fiction or literary biography for my personal reading.”

Even in the summer, though, Lewis sticks close to what she knows: books about books. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is the hot item around librarian circles this summer, and no wonder. It features a librarian who has “Chrono Displacement Disorder,” a condition which causes him to disappear without warning and find himself at some critical point in his own past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. While the story sounds like science fiction, says Lewis, “it actually focuses more on the character's poor wife who has to put up with a husband who keeps disappearing.” Continuing on the “book” theme, Lewis is currently reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Set in 1950s Barcelona, this story features a young boy who is taken by his father, a rare book dealer, to the “Cemetary of Lost Books,” a secret library of forgotten works. He chooses a book from the collection. However, the book comes with a mystery, since someone seems to be systematically destroying every copy of every book the author has written.

Honorable mentions: The Last Honest Man by Michael Posner (“an oral biography of Mordecai Richler”); The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (“quite bleak, but ultimately uplifting”); The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (“very poignant, very funny book”); Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding (“I think I read it in a day”).

Finding a children's book on Carl Spadoni's summer reading list may come as a surprise. But, when you consider that this archivist, who works in the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, collects all editions of this 1866 “timeless classic,” his choice doesn't seem so incongruous. Says Spadoni of Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge, “It's a rambling, sappy story of the Brinker family with interesting chapters on Dutch life in the nineteenth century.”

History characterizes most of Spadoni's choices, which range from fiction to non-fiction to academic. On the fiction side is The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. “This is a best seller similar to the Da Vinci Code [by Dan Brown] but with an academic setting and intrigue,” he says. “It's a fascinating work of fiction in which students at Princeton University try to unscramble the meaning of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a strange and mysterious work published by Aldus Manutius in 1499.”

Honorable mentions: Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (“a sterling piece of history”); Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization by Eva Hemmungs Wirtin (“rather academic in tone”); The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery by Simon Worrall (“pretty good stuff, although a bit over-written”).

But how do you choose? Titles bookstore on campus is a favourite spot. Says Lewis, “I hit the summer book table on a Friday afternoon and pick up something for the weekend, or I go to the new release section on my lunch hour. The new layout in Titles is really great.” Or, just ask one of McMaster's librarians to point you in the right direction. After all, they are the campus' resident reader advisory group.

(Photo credit: Chantall Van Raay)