By Diane Evans
If you go to Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York, you learn pretty quickly that you need to show up early at the bookstore on the square if you want to be sure to get a New York Times before they’re sold out. It’s that kind of place during the summer season of programs. It’s where you might take a yoga class, go sailing, hear a lecture by someone famous from Harvard, and maybe go to church – all in the same day. And amid all this, the bookstore buzzes all day.
So, since Chautauquans view themselves as a literary bunch, you might be interested in what they’re reading. Here are a few of the titles that have been on the central display table this summer:

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert:
Some people hibernate when dealing with the emotional trauma of a difficult divorce. But not Gilbert, who self-prescribed a year of exotic travel and convinced a publishing house to pay for it with a book advance. The result is her adventure story, of self-discovery in Rome (the eating leg of the trip), of an ashram in India (the praying portion) and love (in Bali, where she reconnected with joy).

Marley & Me, by John Grogan:

This is Grogan’s love letter to his incorrigible Labrador retriever, Marley.
In telling of his own experience with the ill-mannered, psychologically challenged Marley, Grogan examines the mysterious bond between dogs and their owners. And through stories about his needy pet, Grogan also shares observations of life, marriage and fatherhood.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini:
In his first novel, The Kite Runner, and then in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini writes about the Afghans caught in the middle of a seemingly endless string of wars and battles for power. Both novels paint a grim and moving picture of life in a war-torn country, and of lives lived in the face of hunger, death and a bleak future. Hosseini makes you realize that, even while bombs rain down and people are dying of hunger, people still fall in love, seek friends and, mostly, try to remain human.

The Dangerous Book For Boys, by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden:
The Dangerous Book for Boys is not just about growing up, nor is it geared only for boys. It’s about the lessons from boyhood that come in handy later on. It’s part Boy Scout manual, part history lesson, part old-fashioned schoolbook. Some of this stuff might leave you scratching your head over its selections, such as must-read books for boys, or the five knots that every boy should know. Some stuff, such as how to build a bow and arrows, will probably appall many of today’s superprotective “helicopter” parents. But then that’s the point of the book: It’s OK to put a little danger in your life.