Fifteen Books to Kick Off Your Summer:  As spring winds down and summer roars into being, here is a list of fifteen phenomenal books that would make for a great summer of reading:

1: Glenn Blake "Drowned Moon":  Blake's short stories, all set in Southeast Texas, are near perfect etchings of the struggles from down below.  His characters yearn and fight and claw their way around, all in the attempt to escape what is and what has been made for them.  He'll haunt you as much as he'll make you think.  A great, poetic collection.

2: Jack Green "Fire the Bastards": Green's slim volume is a Swiftian critique of the criticism that surrounded the publication of William Gaddis' landmark, "The Recognitions."  Green savages the critics for failing to catch Gaddis' genius, and in doing so sets himself up as one of our best critics.  "Fire the Bastards" names names, publications and cross references the major reviewers' plagarism; it's written in machine gun fireball prose backed by impeccable logic.  As funny as it is vicious, Green's book will open your eyes to how corrupt and inane the world of book reviewing is, and it will show just what can be done with the essay form.

3: Daniel Woodrell "Death of Sweet Mister":  His masterpiece.  One of the best books in recent memory and a fine remedy if you've been feeling like a good book is hard to find.  Deserving of a larger review than this blurb, but too important to not make you aware of its presence.  No one who has read this book has not had their guts and heart shaken to their core.

4: George Pelecanos "What it Is":  Think Dreiser and Steinbeck meet Crumley and Cain and you'll have a  good sense of Pelecanos here.  From one of our best, and too often ignored writers, Pelecanos brings back his detective Derek Strange to track down Red Jones.  As always with Pelecanos, a plot is merely a device to get the reader into some heavy from-the-ground-up social commentary; this time he sets his stage in 1972 D.C. as Watergate is about to break.  With an election looming, Pelecanos' book couldn't be timelier.

5: Masanobu Fukuoka "The One-Straw Revolution":  Fukuoka was a laboratory scientist who specialized in plant pathology.  Following a revelation he decided to pursue his thoughts by putting them into action on his family's citrus and rice farm.  Over the course of thirty-five years he developed his "do-nothing" technique of natural farming.  This book is as much a how-to of his theory of farming as it is his spiritual memoir.  It is a powerful book for these agri-business times and for the home gardener or farmer, nothing could be more important to read.

6: Charles Bukowski "Burning in Water Drowning in Flame":  Early Bukowski, a volume that collects his earliest chapbooks (two of which we published on the infamous Lujon Press), as well as a book of poems from 1972-1973.  This is Bukowski in all his glory, writing about the hard places of the heart and what being an outsider truly means.  Perfect fire for these cookie cutter times.

7: Lucien Febvre amd Henri-Jean Martin "The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800":  A history of the impact of printing in Europe from its outset to the start of the Industrial Revolution.  Written with an eye toward a Marxist interpretation of history, the book is as fresh and important now as it was when it was released.  As we see amazon monopolize its power and destroy the book industry, Febvre's history is an important reminder of how to fight and of what's at stake.  It is the book, after all, that has always been the greatest threat to the state.

8: Samir Kassir "Beirut":  A history of the world's greatest city by one of its own.  Kassir was arguably the finest journalist working in the Middle East, but he spoke the truth one too many times and was assassinated by a car bomb in 2005.  But Kassir was more than a journalist; he was a philosopher, a historian, an intellectual.  His history of Beirut is beautiful and tragic and full of the wonders and corners that make the city such a marvel.  A stunning book.

9:  Apicius "Cooking and Dining in Ancient Rome":  Take Apicius' recipes and adapt them for today, especially now that we're moving into the season of open fire cooking.  Surprises abound here.

10: William Gay "I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down":  Gay died recently and while "Provinces of Night" is his best book, this collection of stories is not to be missed.  Each story is a gem, each impeccably paced and written.  There are sentences in here that are so beautiful your heart will ache.  As a whole the collection reads like the best blues album you ever bought.

11: Steve Lopez "Third and Indiana":  Think "The Wire" before "The Wire."  Lopez was a journalist with The Philadelphia Inquirer and this novel, set in a section of the city called "The Badlands," grew out of his reporting on the drug epidemic sweeping the city.  He goes into the places we don't want to see and draws out of them characters in the best tradition of Steinbeck, London, Dostoevsky and Dickens.  Written in a tight, clipped style, this novel is an important work.

12: Walt Whitman "Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition":  Because this book changed the way America saw itself and it is as fresh now as it was in 1855.  It should be read every year as emetic and inspiration. 

13: Harry Crews "The Harry Crews Reader":  We lost Crews recently and for those who are unfamiliar with his work, this is the place to start.  You get a smattering of essays (including the masterpiece "Fathers, Sons, Blood" which should be read by every father and every son in this country), two full novels and Crews' lyrical masterpiece, his autobiography.  Not to be missed.

14: Laura Lippman "Every Secret Thing":  A former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Lippman is one of our best.  This novel might be her finest, though the last two she's released challenge that statement mightily.  A powerful book that is impossible to put down, Lippman will show you sides of the human heart you didn't know existed.

15: Margaret Killjoy "What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower":  Steampunk meets anarcho-socialism meets Choose Your Own Adventure.  With surprises at every turn and a primer in politics lurking cleverly beneath the surface, Killjoy's novel is the perfect book to give to your teen/high school student to get them thinking.  And it's a good one for you, too; a fine reminder that novels can engage on all levels.

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