The Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer And Some Books for Them

You could always go to the beach with Karl Rove's thoughts on Theodore Roosevelt in this short piece. I'd give it a B- if I was teaching writing to pre-teens.

You could do a lot better by taking with you The Abortionist's Daughter, by Elisabeth Hyde. It's a thriller and it also has interesting things to say about the pro-choice and pro-life camps, about sex and the teenage girls and so on. Hyde makes the little town she writes about come alive and the people in it read like real ones.

A writer with progressive/liberal blogosphere links is Bob Hoffman. His new novel Challenge starts with a professor committing suicide in front of his freshman class. Or is it suicide? And what does all this have to do with who controls the media and the topics it covers? It's a fun read.

Those were fiction. If you are not into fiction you could always read F.U.B.A.R. : America's Right-Wing Nightmare by Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill. It's the topic of discussion today on Firedoglake.