This fall, I’m scheduled to teach “Hemingway in Michigan,” a one-credit honors seminar at Hillsdale College. Our text will be The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The author spent much of his boyhood in what Michiganders call “Up North,” and we’re going to read all of the stories inspired by this period as well as a few other classics (such as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”). So Hemingway will be on my desk through the summer and beyond.
The best mystery novel I’ve read in a while is also a Michigan book: Misery Bay, by Steve Hamilton, who recently podcasted with me. It stars Alex McKnight, an ex-Detroit cop who rents out cabins in the Upper Peninsula and occasionally takes on P.I. work in one of the most remote areas of the country — not far, as it happens, from the setting of “Big Two-Hearted River,” which may be my favorite short story by Hemingway.
— John J. Miller is national correspondent for National Review and author of The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.
Read more summer book recommendations here.