Good Morning Lowcountry

Summer reading

GMLc's list of beach books will be out next week just before GMLc hops across the pond for a holiday. It will consist of books we and our friends, relatives and colleagues are reading and recommend.

GMLc, for example, is finally reading "The Places in Between," Scotsman Rory Stewart's masterful account of his walk from Herat to Kabul across Afghanistan's central mountains in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur in the winter of 2002, only a few months after the Taliban was unseated.

When we say "beach books," we don't necessarily mean mindless drek, not that there's anything wrong with that. But we've noticed that media folk, and our friends and relatives, also like to read serious books, like "The Life of Daniel Boone," and they take books like that to the beach.

Those who have required summer reading to do won't be picking up any fluffy novels, either.

This summer's required book for incoming freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions" by Sister Helen Prejean.

The University of California at Berkeley doesn't require freshmen to read any books, but it provides a summer reading list "for their enlightenment and enjoyment."

On it are "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster" by Mike Davis; "Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival" by Bernd Heinrich; "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America" by Garry Wills; "Island" by Aldous Huxley; "The Epic of Gilgamesh," translated by Andrew George; "Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity" by Primo Levi; and "Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Trade" by Saidiya Hartman ... among others.

Clemson University's required book for incoming freshmen is "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World" by Steve Johnson.

The College of Charleston asks this year's incoming freshmen to read Bret Lott's "Jewel."

The Citadel's knobs-to-be always read Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels," a Civil War-era novel about the principles of leadership.

Speaking of The Citadel, the Wachovia Reading Program there begins June 11 and runs through June 21. Started 30 years ago by Citadel education professor Col. Dan Ouzts, it is a summer tutoring program to improve the reading skills of Lowcountry children.

Graduate students in literacy or school psychology are paired, as mentor-educators, with students who read two or more years below grade level.

This summer, 30 students will participate. It's free, funded in part by a grant from the Wachovia Foundation. More than 1,000 Lowcountry children have gone through the program.

For more info about The Citadel's literacy efforts, see citadel.edu/education.

Check your public library for summer reading programs for children.

The Charleston County Library's summer reading program (June and July) for children ages 11 and younger, for example, is called Get A Club @ Your Library. Sign up at any branch and get a free summer reading bag with a reading log, pencil and bookmark. Keep track of the time you read and earn rewards. See tinyurl.com/2sc56t for details. Students entering grades 6 through 12 can enter the library's iRead Teen Summer Reading Contest and win prizes. See tinyurl.com/348a4l for the rules.

The Berkeley County Library has a Summer Reading Club 2007. See berkeley.lib.sc.us.

So does the Dorchester County Library. See dcl.lib.sc.us.

GMLc

Call 937-5564. Write gmlc@postandcourier.com. Find the blog at gmlc.typepad.com.