The Housekeeper's Diary by Wendy Barry

Wendy Berry served as the housekeeper for Prince Charles' mansion,

Highgrove, from the mid '80s until the early '90s. That's the time span before Britain's Prince of Wales was separated from Lady Diana Spencer, the woman more universally known as "Princess Di." As a result, Berry was an observer to the behavior of both of those famous people, as well as their sons, Prince William and Harry, during good times and, more often, bad.

The cover says the book was "Banned in Britain", and while I'm not sure that is true, this diary is certainly contains information to which the Palace might object. It's a no-holds-barred look at the underside of British royalty. Berry shows Diana's many flaws, something rarely seen in other books on this time period in her life. Berry talks about how the Princess was moody and manipulative, trying to keep her sons away from Charles at every opportunity when the relationship between the couple started to fail. Berry also shows Charles to be a good father, a seldom seen viewpoint in much of the literature about the couple, but acknowledges the genesis of his affair with the woman who is now his wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

In short, this book dwells very little on the mundane aspects of keeping house for such rich and famous people, and wallows instead in their dirty secrets, making it a terribly juicy read. Berry doesn't hold back even when discussing the tricks the little princes played on the staff, or the behavior of other royals and servants. All of which makes this book a much better read than the average politically-correct versions of royal British life, and that makes it a perfect read for steamy summer days and nights. 

Submitted by Gerti 

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain is an interesting and maybe even thrilling look at the very real and dangerous threat of space-viruses. In the book, the strain is brought back by a secret military test probe and ends up decimating an entire town. The military tries to handle it in the ways they've been trained, but the disease is like none known on earth. It kills by coagulation, and is highly contagious. That's where the Wildfire Team comes in. They were created in case an infection from space was brought back and their mission is to contain and control it. No one took them seriously until now.

In the meantime, an exploration unit Is sent to the infected town to look for survivors. They find only two: an old man and an infant. This only adds to the complexity of the puzzle. Back at the Wildfire facility, which has seven levels, a nuclear device, and tedious sterilization procedures that last for hours, the scientists have isolated the virus. They figure out that it survives without any amino acids, which are essential to all life on earth, and that it spreads as an airborne infection. Then the unthinkable happens- the space virus escapes and contaminates one of the labs. With a scientist trapped inside, all seems lost ... but he doesn't die. It has mutated to a non-harmful state in which it only destroys rubber. With the nuclear device deactivated and the virus contained, all seems well. Three years later, a space mission to Mars in a craft with rubber sealants returns from the atmosphere with 3 dead astronauts.  

When N.A.S.A. is asked about it, the official response is, "it was beyond our control."Not the best book in the world, but it kept me reading. It was one of those books where you wish you
could find more time to read it. An overall classic, a good read, and an interesting look at a very real threat not too far from reality. 

 Submitted by Max 

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

It has taken me more than 30 years to pick up this classic novel of feminist liberation from the '70s, but I'm very glad I did. I was entranced by the skills of author Erica Jong from the very opening lines, "There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh." The rest of the book is just as clever, and intriguing, as that opening salvo. Jong's storytelling abilities and use of poetic language are amazing. There is no such thing as being bored by this book or this author, whose narrative barrels along like a salacious express train across Europe.

The narrator Jong creates here - Isadora Wing - is captivatingly brilliant. She throws out phrases about obscure art movies ("Last Year at Marienbad") in one breath, and classic Greek sculpture (Oiscobolus) in the next. I dog-eared several pages (which had been dog-eared by some other reader decades before, so thankfully for me I was doing no new damage) just so I could look up other books, movies, sculptures and locations mentioned by this highly educated author. For me, more fascinating even than the story line here is the narrator herself, a mythic creature-whose-life has been rich in knowledge, both classical and physical

, and yet a person set adrift in Europe, troubled by self-doubt and unfulfillable longing. The time Isadora spends both being treated by

-psychoanalysts an dating/marrying them seems to nave left her more confused,

about life and her role in it rather than less. But Isadora's family, while Jewish, has not given her a strong sense of her religion, so she has no touchstone there either.

At its heart this is the story of a woman who leaves her predictable husband Bennett and runs off with a miserable married man named Adrian who has no intention of marrying her, a story which might have been shocking 40 years ago but which is quite pedestrian to us now. And yes, there are still terms in here which some people might think obscene in literature, but life has become a lot more liberal than it was in 1973, and some of Jong's phrases have now become iconic. (Witness the two-word phrase that starts with "zipless.") Still, at its heart, the book, while sexy, is much more than the story of a sexual adventurer. The book is a vignette of the '70s Zeitgeist, a window into the time that set the stage for the moral conventions we have today, thanks to the Pill which more than anything else allowed for the sexual liberation of women. And yet, this book which supposedly celebrates sexual freedom is really a condemnation of Isadora's moral bankruptcy, as she does not gain happiness from her sexual misadventures, but in the end returns to her boring husband and their predictable lives. 

Submitted by Gerti