Super, smart, sad, sumptuous summer reads

The market is down, oil prices are up, the Arab world is imploding and I have this annoying pain in my shoulder. What to do but pick up a good book?

With summer upon us, I am compiling my final list of books for the 2011-12 book groups I lead, and I’m happy to share. There’s something for everyone. Well, not everyone, but my choices are intentionally eclectic, from historical fiction to memoirs to best sellers, from funny to tragic, from family stories to travel fiction.

If you’re looking to laugh and you have a highly developed taste for satire, as many of us do, try Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story.” Contemporary and funny as hell, “It’s as if Vladimir Nabokov rewrote ‘1984,’” according to People magazine.

Then there’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan. Won the Pulitzer Prize. Won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A postmodern work that engages both the head and the heart, the story features a PowerPoint presentation, among other wildly imaginative conceits. This novel is not for traditionalists. But it is a trip, without the mushrooms.

Don’t miss “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” by David Mitchell, which was listed for the Man Booker Prize. A kind of “Shogun” infused with Portuguese flavors, the story is a great saga of lost love and ancient empires fighting over the treasures of the East.

“The Imperfectionists,” by Tom Rachman, is a contemporary tale of a struggling English-language newspaper based in Rome. The editors, reporters and publishers display all the wit, eccentricity and competitiveness familiar to anyone (like me) who has worked at a newspaper. I won’t mention the back-stabbing and the love affairs.

If you want a “big” read, try “To the End of the Land” by David Grossman, an evocative story of the Middle East conflict set in modern times. By big, I mean more than 500 pages, which seems to scare off some readers, but this eloquent novel (made more poignant by the fact that Grossman’s son died in the fighting) is a powerful piece of writing.