Skip to main content
Friday, October 30, 2026Oct 30

This story is free to read.

Cooper: Looking for summer reading suggestions? We have a few.

Associated Press File Photo / A smiling, chatty President Jimmy Carter wasn't so smiling and chatty on the campaign trail while running against Sen. Ted Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, according to the book "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party."
Associated Press File Photo / A smiling, chatty President Jimmy Carter wasn't so smiling and chatty on the campaign trail while running against Sen. Ted Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, according to the book "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party." Associated Press File Photo / A smiling, chatty President Jimmy Carter wasn't so smiling and chatty on the campaign trail while running against Sen. Ted Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, according to the book "Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party."

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” – Mason Cooley

For many people, the thankfully receding global pandemic may have given them the opportunity they may have long sought – the pleasure of being able to read more.

With that in mind, and with the first week of summer beckoning people to beaches, mountains and screened-in-porches for relaxation, we offer the top 10 books we have enjoyed since mid-March 2020, when the COVID-19 virus sent many people home from work – or to work from home.

* “Camelot’s End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party,” by Jon Ward: Eminently readable saga of the 1980 Democratic nomination fight when a sitting president was challenged for his party’s nomination. Though both men are now held up as saints by party faithful, neither President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Ted Kennedy come across as happy warriors in this run-up to the November election that would make Ronald Reagan the nation’s 40th president.

* “Redhead by the Side of the Road,” by Anne Tyler: Our favorite author of fiction’s latest release, it tells the story of 40-something Micah, who is going nowhere fast but, at times, believes himself all he needs. Tyler is a master of stories of individuals alone in their own world, and sometimes alone in the world around them.