You're Heading Out on Vacation

Or wish you were

Hi friends,

Hope you’re doing well. I’m visiting family so instead of writing a new edition this week, I’ve decided to spotlight three gems from the archives that feature classic vacation settings.

Are you traveling anywhere fun this summer (either in real life or through books)? Let me know.

And, now, what to read if…

You’re Hamptons Bound — Or Wish You Were

Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer by John Glynn

In Out East, John Glynn writes about a summer rental house he shared with a group of friends on Long Island’s Montauk Point, describing their days at the beach and nights spent barhopping. 

That premise makes it sound like a Bravo TV show, but Out East is actually a moving memoir of Glynn’s struggles with intense loneliness. With the help of his group house family, he acknowledges his depression and works to address its root causes.

I read Out East in a single sitting while in a vacation rental home with friends, so I can say it captures that feeling perfectly. Moments in the book felt like an extension of the long weekend my friends and I were having. If you’re longing for days spent in the sun, with friends and family, and a cocktail or two, Out East is the book for you. 

You’re Thinking About Taking a Digital Detox Trip

The Quiet Zone by Stephen Kurczy

I am an email addict. I check it constantly to make sure I don’t miss anything important — such as my Google alert for Old Navy Dollar Flip Flop Day. The constant notifications are sometimes too much, and I need to turn my phone to airplane mode. If you dream of disconnecting, The Quiet Zone, journalist Stephen Kurczy’s examination of a town in West Virginia where Wi-Fi is banned, is for you.

Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, West Virginia, a small town that is simultaneously technologically advanced and stuck in the past. It’s home to one of the world’s most innovative telescopes, which astronomers use to seek life on other planets. Any interference from nearby devices — Wi-Fi routers, smartphones, even microwaves — could affect their research, so their use is outlawed. While in the Appalachian town, Kurczy meets with the scientists at the observatory, visits the site of the hospital Patch Adams has been promising to build for years and spends time with the Neo-Nazis planning a comeback, the librarian who works against them, as well as a group of “electrosensitives,” people who believe they are allergic to Wi-Fi and love the peace the Quiet Zone offers them.

Green Bank has been the subject of several profiles in recent years, as reporters parachute in and write reports depicting the town as a disconnected Twin Peaks, full of quirky oddball characters, stuck in the past. Kurzky shows that there’s much more to the town than that one-dimensional depiction. As author Mark Sundeen said, The Quiet Zone “reveals that simplicity is far more complicated, far weirder and wondrous, than the self-proclaimed #simplelife.” 

You’re Dreaming of Greece

Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

Emma Straub describes Honestly, We Meant Well perfectly in her blurb: “This rollicking book has it all: sex, lies, and scenery. Grant Ginder weaves a wonderful, engrossing multi-generational family story, with the Greek isles as a backdrop so beautiful that the reader will want to dive in.” This is all to say, it’s the perfect summer book. 

Honestly, We Meant Well follows the Wright family: Sue Ellen, a renowned classics professor, her husband Dean, a philandering best-selling novelist, and their son, Will, a recent graduate from Berkeley. The trio flees California to Greece for the summer, where Sue Ellen is giving lectures to senior citizens on an educational cruise as part of an effort to move past Dean’s adultery. While there, long-kept secrets rise to the surface and the Wrights are forced to reckon with their plans for the future.

Honestly, We Meant Well is a juicy, propulsive read with a gorgeous setting that jumps off the page. It’s filled with beautiful descriptions of ancient ruins, clear water and sandy beaches. 

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