Unless you already know all the biographical details of Renoir's life, however, you read on if only to discover which woman, if any of them, will be next in his life and how the money will be found to complete the work within the deadline. You have to know whether Augustine will enable him to keep up his spirits, whether he will make the models all appear on time and frequently enough to finish each section at all, if the weather will hold, if he will be able to persuade his supplier to trust him for more paint…and other problems that arise like plot points in a thriller. more »

Oh, and one more thing: a true beach read must be one that you can pass along, which is why ours are almost always paperbacks. When you’ve found a satisfying beach read, others will request your copy as soon as you’re through with it, probably because you’ve been recounting your delight at the dinner table (an obnoxious habit, that, but I’ve had some good reads out of it). If you’ve been emphatic enough with your praise, the book will travel from hand to hand, and probably wind up going home with someone else. more »

A work in progress, Big Bambú will continue to grow over the next several months until it resembles a 50-foot-tall cresting wave. Hand-assembled by the artists themselves and a team of 20-odd rock climbers from New Paltz, New York, using fresh-cut bamboo poles from Georgia and South Carolina, this urban grove is supposed to be "a microcosm of life itself in which everything is interdependent and changing." more »

But he was nearly a ghost, almost made of nothing, and so the wood and metal and sheaves of brightly printed cardboard and paper (MOVE FORWARD SIX SPACES TO EASY STREET! Great-Grammy Noddin, shawled and stiff and frowning at the camera, absurd with her hat that looked like a sailor's funeral mound, heaped with flowers and netting), which otherwise would have crushed his bones, dropped on him and fell away like movie props, he or they facsimiles of former, actual things. more »