Summer Reading recommended list:

2003
The Big House by George Howe Colt
It would be difficult for a Mishaum person to read this book and not find many deep
similarities between life at the Big House and life on Mishaum.  WASPy traits across the
bay are not that different than ours.   Armed with a depleted trust fund, George Colt describes in
fantastic detail a world like our own.  His descriptions are comforting yet the outcome of the Big
House presents a sobering and sad ending.  This book should certainly be read by all Mishaum.

2002
For Men:
The Race by Tim Zimmerman
Experienced sailor and distant Mishaum cousin Tim Zimmermann brings readers to a maritime marathon that circumnavigates the globe in Maxi Cat sailboats that travel up to 50 mph. Armed with GPS systems and crews of 20, six such ships embarked from Barcelona on New Year's Eve 2000, racing past the equator and through the treacherous Southern Ocean to round Cape Horn and onward to port in Marseilles. Zimmermann keeps up the pace with a rapid play-by-play of the race as its contenders fight doldrums, stomach bland diets and dodge gigantic icebergs and flying fish; he describes how the delicately balanced twin hulls of the maxi-catamarans faced easy damage in severe waves and poor weather. This is one of the best accounts of modern sailboat racing. A sure bet for Mishaum’s maritime racing fans.

For Ladies (and maybe Jon Flint):
Three Junes by Julia Glass
The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut. This narrative of the McLeod family during three vital summers is rich with implications about the bonds and stresses of kin and friendship, the ache of loneliness and the cautious tendrils of renewal blossoming in unexpected ways. Glass depicts the mysterious twists of fate and cosmic (but unobtrusive) coincidences that bring people together, and the self-doubts and lack of communication that can keep them apart, in three fluidly connected sections in which characters interact over a decade. These people are entirely at home in their beautifully detailed settings Greece, rural Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons and are fully dimensional in their moments of both frailty and grace. Paul McLeod, the reticent Scots widower introduced in the first section, is the father of Fenno, the central character of the middle section, who is a reserved, self-protective gay bookstore owner in Manhattan; both have dealings with the third section's searching young artist, Fern Olitsky, whose guilt in the wake of her husband's death leaves her longing for and fearful of beginning anew. Other characters are memorably individualistic: an acerbic music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's emotionally elusive mother, his sibling twins and their wives, and his insouciant lover among them. In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache and has the Mishaum reader in mind..

For Children:
Whaler Round The Horn by Stephen Meader
This book is out of print but can be found in many libraries.  Any book by Stephen Meader is well worth reading.