Chilling post surf or between ocean dips, we all love a great book to keep us company while soaking up the summer sunshine. With your perfect towel, beach bag, bikini, board shorts, sunglasses, hat and tasty refreshment, the only thing left to complete that perfect STYLE OF SPORT day at the beach is the perfect read. There are many ways to go…. fiction or non-fiction….e-reader or good old-fashioned paper… new bestseller or literary classic… but if you want to keep it sporty, here are some of our favorite beach-tested reads:
UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand (2010). Read the book before the Angelina Jolie directed movie comes out! This is the unforgettable story of Louie Zamperini, a teen-age hooligan who went on to become one of America’s greatest runners and compete at the 1936 Olympics as a teenager. Zamperini later joined the Army Air Corps, survived a plane crash and 47 days adrift at sea in a tiny raft, and then endured years in a notorious Japanese prisoner of war camp. Hillenbrand, who wrote Seabiscuit as well, also describes the hardships Zamperini faced when he returned to civilian life. Sadly Zamperini passed away just last week at age 97.
WILD: FROM LOST TO FOUND ON THE PACIFIC TRAIL by Cheryl Strayed (2013). This is the first person account of Cheryl Strayed, who at age 22 thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death and crumbling marriage, with nothing to lose she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her. Coming this holiday season is the movie starring Reese Witherspoon.
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway (1952). Okay, we’ve all read this one (or maybe not), but we all should probably read it again. It’s the only work of fiction on our list, but it somehow fits. Here’s the first line: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Lest we forget, this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as a major contribution to Hemingway receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Read More
