Nothing says summer like record-setting heat and drought—nothing, that is, except possibly the Beach Boys.

As this apparently endless summer drags on (and on, and on), I thought it might be fun to do a top-ten list of all-time favorite summer songs.

This post, our 104th, means that we’ve been churning out a new blog every Friday morning for two full years. Two years! We’re proud of that consistency. Some weeks, however, the pressure to produce a profound, thoughtful, beautifully crafted essay is just too much, especially when my brain feels like it might actually be boiling inside my skull. Those are the weeks we publish one of our top-ten lists, and this week was definitely one of those weeks. So, rather than trying to fight it, I decided instead to just go with that summer vibe.

Some of the ten songs listed in chronological order below are sort of mindless-bopping-around fun and others are sort of wistful-awareness-of-time-passing fun. Most of them are from the Sixties, when I was growing up; all of them, at least to me, are intensely evocative, summoning memories of the tinny sound of transistor radios and the unctuous smell of suntan lotion. Of course, nothing is as subjective as personal taste, and I’m sure you have your own personal sonic Proustian madeleines. I’d love to hear about them.

Martha and the Vandellas, “Dancing in the Street” (1964). This churning Motown classic gained unwanted (and unwarranted) notoriety in the wake of the riots of the mid- and late 1960s, when some interpreted it as a call to violent action.

The Beach Boys, “Caroline No” (1966). As I said above, you just can’t do a top-ten summer songs list without the Beach Boys. I can’t stand their early stuff, but I’ve always been a sucker for this sad and dreamy number, from Pet Sounds.

The Rascals, “Groovin’” (1967). Blue-eyed Afro-Cuban soul, a near-perfect car radio song. I feel so relaxed!

The Rolling Stones, “Street Fighting Man” (1968). Anyone wondering why the Stones were seen as a threat to civilized society should just listen to this. Even if you can’t understand the cynical lyrics, the music fairly hums with menace.

Stevie Wonder, “My Cherie Amour” (1969). In my childhood memories, this exuberant love song is always playing on someone’s car radio. It came out when Stevie was still a teenager!

Crosby Stills and Nash, “Marrakesh Express” (1969). Duuuuuude. The hippified first single from CS&N’s debut album. Do I smell patchouli?

Malo, “Suavecito” (1972). A flawless confection (sort of “Groovin,’” part two) of Latin percussion, brass, and rock.

War, “Low Rider” (1975). A sly and irresistible blast of harmonica-fueled fun from East L.A. that blends funk and Latin influences into a paean to slow cruising—remember, this came out shortly after the 1973 gas crisis.

Don Henley, “The Boys of Summer” (1984). Classic over-the-top Eighties pop, with lots of electronics and huge drums. God help me, I still love it.

Kat Edmonson, “Summertime” (2009). You didn’t really think you’d get out of here without a version of this Gershwin classic, did you?

What we’re reading
Heather: Amanda Eyre Ward, Close Your Eyes
Martin: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Fleeing the oppressive heat and drought of Texas for a few days, Heather and I spent last night at gorgeous Temple Farm, in Dutchess County, New York, with our dear friends Nigel and Julia Widdowson, proprietors of the Red Devon Market Bar and Restaurant (where, incidentally, I had one of the best burgers of my life for dinner last night). Julia is the daughter of the late Ed Harte, the longtime publisher of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and an old family friend, who passed away on May 18. Though he was born in Missouri and lived much of his later life in New York, I will always think of him as an exemplary Texan.

Ed was a delightful man: sharp as a whip, altruistic, and funny as hell. (I will always remember his delighted cackle when something amused him.) He and his brother built the family company (Harte-Hanks Communications) into a Texas media giant in the 1960s and 1970s, but his interests ranged far beyond the business world: he was an early and ardent conservationist, and for many years he wrote a column for the Caller-Times on Mexican politics.

After I posted a link to his obituary on my Facebook page with the comment, “We lost a good one yesterday,” a couple of people asked who else I would put on my all-time list of Texas greats. Since we haven’t run one of these lists for a while, I thought this might be an appropriate time to revive that great (?) tradition. And what better time to commemorate some of the coolest Texans than the beginning of what promises to be a long, hot, dry summer?

A few observations: I tried to strike a balance between living and dead Texans, and male and female. I really wanted to include my late mother-in-law, Jessica Hobby Catto, but ultimately decided that doing so would leave me open to charges of subjectivism, even though I truly believe she belongs on there. Finally, my list is overwhelmingly Caucasian, for which I can only plead ignorance, not prejudice, and perhaps the lingering effects of societal racism.

The late Doug Sahm sang that “You just can’t live in Texas if you don’t have a lot of soul,” and each of these folks, in his or her own way, was blessed with an extra helping of soul. Every one of them epitomizes grace, thoughtfulness, and quiet (well, maybe characterizing Molly Ivins and Ann Richards as “quiet” is a bit of a stretch) intelligence. These are not, I fear, qualities commonly associated with Texans, at least by non-Texans, who tend to see all Texans as loud-mouthed, ignorant, and crass vulgarians. (Such Texans are still thick on the ground, of course, as anyone who follows the political scene can attest.) Here, then, are ten Texans whose lives and actions prove that civilized life is indeed possible in the Lone Star State.

John Graves: Author and rancher, gentle godfather of Texas environmentalism.
Ed Harte: Newspaper publisher, ardent conservationist, and civic-minded philanthropist.
Molly Ivins: Hilariously sharp-tongued liberal gadfly and journalist.
Lady Bird Johnson: Poised and gracious First Lady, and an early and extremely influential environmentalist.
Barbara Jordan: Mesmerizing and unforgettable speaker, pioneering legislator and civil rights leader.
Tom Mason: Longtime head of the Lower Colorado River Authority, a conscientious man of rare integrity and a true and dedicated public servant.
Bill Moyers: A veteran of the LBJ administration, later a thoughtful presence on radio and television.
Willie Nelson: Legendary singer and pothead.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Talented and thoughtful poet, dedicated to advancing the causes of literature and education, devoted to the cause of peace.
Ann Richards: Irresistibly salty governor and feminist icon.

Not a bad list, if I say so myself, but I’m sure I’ve overlooked some obvious choices. Any other nominations?

What we’re reading
Heather: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (almost done!)
Martin: Gary Snyder, A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds

Like Rob Fleming, the protagonist of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, I seem to have a strong taxonomic impulse. Longtime readers of this blog have already seen several manifestations of my obsession with list making, but Heather and the kids will tell you that one of my more annoying habits is my annual end-of-the-year insistence that we all update the Kohout family top ten lists.

Every New Year’s, I insist that the whole family, and whatever friends and innocent bystanders happen to be around, sit down and list their ten all-time favorite novels, movies, and albums. This always occasions a good deal of grumbling, at least from the family, but they usually do it.

Here are the basic rules:

• Each list must include ten items, no more and no less, though I’ll cut you some slack when it comes to works in multiple parts (for example, we customarily count The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter series as one entry).
• Unlike so many end-of-the-year lists, these aren’t your favorites from the last twelve months; they’re supposed to be your all-time favorites, which is why you’ll always find at least a couple of children’s books on my list.
• The items don’t have to be in order of preference; just your ten favorites, in whatever order they occur to you.
• Plays count as fiction, as does epic poetry (The Odyssey, Paradise Lost); lyrical poetry does not.
• All this is done with the understanding that if you were to do it again tomorrow, you might come up with a very different list.

Since we’re approaching the end of another year, and I’m preparing to crack the whip on the family again, I thought it might be interesting to share my own most recent top-ten lists, even at the risk of exposing myself to the ridicule of our readership. (More so than usual, I mean.)

Without further ado, then, here they are:

Fiction (in alphabetical order by author)
Richard Bradford, Red Sky at Morning
Margaret Wise Brown, The Sailor Dog
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Richard Price, Lush Life
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Movies (in alphabetical order by title)
Casablanca
Funny Bones
The Godfather/The Godfather Part II
Groundhog Day
Local Hero
A Night at the Opera
Sense and Sensibility
The Third Man
Wings of Desire
Young Frankenstein

Albums (in alphabetical order by artist)
Dave Alvin, Ashgrove
The Cambridge Singers/La Nuova Musica, directed by John Rutter, The Sacred Flame: European Sacred Music of the Renaissance and Baroque Era
Rosanne Cash, Black Cadillac
Manu Chao, Clandestino: Esperando la Ultima Ola
Derek and the Dominoes, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Howlin’ Wolf, The Definitive Collection
Iron and Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog
Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, All the Roadrunning
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jordi Savall, El Nuevo Mundo: Folías Criollas

Bonus List: Nonfiction (in alphabetical order by author)
Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War< Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Tracy Kidder, Home Town
Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions
Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods
David Winner, Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football

To me, one of the pleasures of this exercise, besides the inherently enjoyable experience of summoning up cherished treasures from one’s past, is seeing what’s on other people’s lists, which can be quite revealing. (I, for example, clearly have a thing for lightweight movie comedies and for books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.) They can also bring some worthy books or movies or music to your attention, or inspire you finally to read or watch or listen to that classic you’ve been meaning to read or watch or listen to for years.

So what about you, Faithful Reader? What works have mattered most to you over the course of your life?

What we’re reading
Heather: Gail Caldwell, A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
Martin: Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket

Yep, another one of those crazy lists. This one, of my ten favorite restaurants in Austin, was a real toughie. The one clear choice was Texas French Bread (pictured above), our absolute number-one favorite dinner spot. After that, however, things got a little murky.

A few disclaimers: Austin is a pretty good eaters’ town, but I tried to restrict myself (for the most part) to restaurants that feature local and seasonal ingredients, which narrowed the field somewhat. Virtually all of the places I’ve listed are in central or north Austin, because that’s where we live and spend most of our time. Heather’s list might look somewhat different than mine, though I trust there’d be a healthy amount of overlap. I’ve included only one barbecue place, which may strike some Austinites as sacrilegious. And there are a number of other places I’ve tried and enjoyed immensely, but haven’t managed to return to often enough for them to make my top ten just yet.

But enough stalling; here’s a first attempt at a top ten, in alphabetical order.

Café Pacha, 4618 Burnet Road: a great spot to feel that inimitable Austin groove, with fair trade coffee, smoothies, empanadas, sandwiches, omelets, etc., most of which are organic, and a vaguely South American vibe.
Changos Taqueria, 3023 Guadalupe: wonderful tacos (and enormous burritos), made to order with fresh ingredients. We’re partial to the aguas frescas, too, especially the horchata.
Eastside Café, 2113 Manor Road: a longtime Austin favorite, with a beautiful organic garden perfect for strolling before or after dinner.
Fino Restaurant Patio and Bar, 2905 San Gabriel: a pan-Mediterranean place with a great bar, and the sister of Emmett Fox’s Asti Trattoria in Hyde Park. We really go for the small plates and tapas.
Julio’s Café, 4230 Duval: a funky little Hyde Park neighborhood favorite serving wonderful Mexican food. The chicken enchilada plate with green tomatillo sauce is one of my very favorite dishes in Austin.
Ruby’s BBQ, 512 West 29th Street: genuine pit-smoked barbecue (the all-natural brisket is my favorite), terrific sides, excellent tacos and Cajun dishes, and signed memorabilia from a variety of blues, R&B, and rock and roll legends who played at the now-relocated Antone’s when it used to be next door.
Salvation Pizza, 624 West 34th Street: great thin-crust pizza. The #5 (white pie with chicken, prosciutto, dried sage, and fresh garlic) is our family’s favorite.
Somnio’s Café, 1807 South First Street: the dining room feels like your grandma’s house, with mismatched furniture and an informal feel, but grandma never cooked like this: fresh, locally sourced, organic, even some vegan options. BYOB.
Texas French Bread, 2900 Rio Grande: fresh, locally sourced bistro food; reasonable prices; casual ambience; BYOB—what’s not to like? If you live in or near Austin and haven’t had dinner there yet, you need to do so as soon as possible.
Vino Vino, 4119 Guadalupe: this wine bar-cum-restaurant is not the place to come for a quiet, intimate dinner, but we love everything about it—the food, the incredible wine selection, the wonderful and helpful staff—except the decibel level.

So there you have it. Now we’d love to hear about some of your local favorites, in Austin or elsewhere!

What we’re reading
Heather: Robert McAfee Brown (ed.), The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses
Martin: Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students

It’s the end of July (or, as we call it in Texas, “late spring”), so I’ve been thinking a lot about summer reading, which has almost become a sort of cliché. There’s a lot to be said for curling up with a good book on a cold, wet winter day, of course, but nobody talks about “great winter reading.” No, it’s summer reading that gets all the press.

For some, summer’s a time to dip into a book we would only read on the beach or in the vacation cabin, the literary equivalent of comfort food—meatloaf, say, with a big pile of mashed potatoes on the side. Thrillers and mysteries tend to fall into this category.

For others, summer’s slower pace is the perfect time to tackle the classics, those monumental books we’ve always felt we ought to read but have never quite gotten around to. Reading these books can feel a little bit like eating several helpings of healthy vegetables, instead of doubling down on the meatloaf and mashers; but that, of course, can make you feel very virtuous indeed. Proust? Sure! Tolstoy? Bring it, baby!

As for me, certain books will forever conjure summer in my mind, and I can’t even tell you why. Here’s my (very) personal top ten, with brief annotations, in alphabetical order by author:

Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. What could possibly be more evocative of an American summer (if you’re Of a Certain Age, that is) than a book of color photos of baseball cards from the 1950s and 1960s, accompanied by wise-ass commentary? Samples: “Earl Torgeson’s two favorite activities were fist-fighting and breaking his shoulder, both of which he did whenever he got the chance.” “Albie Pearson would have been, had he been only six inches taller, almost 5’11”.” And so on.

Richard Bradford, Red Sky at Morning. In this coming-of-age novel, teenager Josh Arnold and his high-strung Southern belle mother move from Mobile, Alabama, to the mountains of New Mexico during World War II and try, with mixed success, to adjust to a new culture and climate. Perhaps the funniest book I’ve ever read, and also one of the sweetest and most moving.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. A brilliant examination of how Lincoln shrewdly and gently won over some of his bitterest political enemies. In particular, I found the depiction of William Seward’s change of heart—by the time of Lincoln’s assassination, Seward worshipped him—profoundly moving. Goodwin is a wonderful writer, capable of making the familiar feel new: while I was reading this book for the first time, Heather came home one day to find me sitting in a chair, the book in my lap and tears running down my cheeks. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously. “They just shot Lincoln!” I sobbed.

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. Probably my favorite book when I was a boy; I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but it must be several dozen by now. The adventures of Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad, Badger, and all their friends turned me into a lifelong Anglophile, and the drawings by Ernest Shepard (who also illustrated that other English classic, A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh) are masterpieces. Nothing evokes the gentle pleasures of an English summer like this book. Oh bliss! Oh poop-poop!

Tracy Kidder, Home Town. I love just about everything I’ve ever read by Tracy Kidder, who I think is perhaps the finest nonfiction writer in the nation, but this is probably my favorite: a close-up of Northampton, Massachusetts, through the eyes of native son Tommy O’Connor, a cop who loves his hometown and touches a diverse (to say the least) cross-section of its citizenry. Highly recommended for anyone who’s ever felt a deep connection to a place, or anyone who’s ever wanted to.

Dennis Lehane, The Given Day. This historical novel interweaves the stories of Danny Coughlin, a young Irish-American cop, and Luther Laurence, a young African-American fleeing criminal violence, in Boston at the end of World War I. Actual events (the flu epidemic, the Boston police strike, the Red Scare) and characters (J. Edgar Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, and, most notably, Babe Ruth) lend the book the texture of reality, while Danny and Luther and the women they love attempt to survive against long odds.

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove. I confess I can no longer read this without thinking of the miniseries—Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Lane, et al.—but the book itself is wonderfully suited for reading aloud on summer road trips, as we’ve proven repeatedly over the years while driving to or from Colorado and New Mexico.

J. K. Rowling, the Harry Potter series. Well. What can I say? We all loved all these books. Some of my favorite summer reading memories with the kids involve rushing out (to our neighborhood Randall’s, of all places) to buy multiple copies of the latest Harry Potter book on the day it came out, and then the hush—not quite absolute, but punctuated by occasional snorts and gasps and “How far are you?”s—that fell over the house as each of us burrowed immediately into his or her copy.

Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Not really mysteries, despite the title, but the wise and gentle adventures of the sweet but determined and “traditionally built” Precious Ramotswe, the first woman private investigator in Botswana; Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, her suitor and the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors; Grace Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe’s hyperconscientious assistant; and various others as they confront a succession of quiet moral and ethical challenges.

Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. A heartbreaking novel about the American West and the people who struggle to live in it, and the most harrowing and realistic fictional portrayal of a marriage I’ve ever read. Framed by the narration of a retired and embittered history professor, the novel is really the story of his grandmother, a refined nineteenth-century Easterner who marries an ambitious young mining engineer and embarks on a peripatetic life of frustration and accommodation.

So there you have it: ten of my seasonal favorites, right up there with fresh peaches and gin and tonics. Won’t you tell us yours, Dear Reader?

What we’re reading
Heather: Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (again)
Martin: A. J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

Yup, another one of those crazy lists. This time we thought we’d offer our ten favorite movies about (or set in, or somehow related to) Texas. Pass the popcorn, and turn off that damn cell phone!

Dancer, Texas Pop. 81
Giant
The Last Picture Show
Lone Star
Lonesome Dove (yes, we know it was originally a TV miniseries, but give us a break!)
No Country for Old Men
The Searchers
Tender Mercies
Terms of Endearment
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Bonus movie trivia: The iconic silent Western star Tom Mix, who claimed in his autobiography that he was born and raised on a ranch on the Rio Grande, was actually a native of Pennsylvania who never lived in Texas, though governor James Allred named him an honorary Texas Ranger in 1935.

What we’re reading
Heather: Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Martin: David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

And now for the next installment in our internationally celebrated series of lists… and what could be more appropriate from the proprietors of a place called Madroño Ranch: A Center for Writing and the Environment than a list (in alphabetical order by author) of our ten favorite books about the environment?

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
John Graves, Goodbye to a River: A Narrative
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
Mary Oliver, What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

Of course, we’re struck by the many wonderful and influential books we had to leave out to get down to ten, and we’d love to know your favorites. Let the arguments begin!

What we’re reading
Heather: Kate Braestrup, Here If You Need Me: A True Story
Martin: Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey&#8212and Even Iraq&#8212Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport

Hi, buckaroos. We’ve got something different for you today.

Every so often, when we’ve either run out of original things to say or are just feeling too damn lazy to write a “real” post, we plan to use this space to put forth a “top five” or “top ten” list. (This was Martin’s idea; Heather says he has obviously taken Nick Hornby’s brilliant High Fidelity, in which the narrator is an inveterate list-maker, way too seriously.)

These lists are, obviously, completely subjective and by no means intended to be definitive; they merely reflect our personal tastes and thus will probably reveal more than we really want you to know about us. They’re just supposed to be fun. (Remember fun?) At the very least, we hope they’ll serve as a jumping-off point for conversation.

So, without further ado, here’s the first list, of our ten favorite songs about Texas, in alphabetical order by artist. We certainly don’t claim that these are the best songs about Texas, or the most evocative; they’re simply our favorites. Given the richness of the state’s musical heritage, it was extremely difficult to narrow the list to only ten, and you’ll note the absence of such legendary performers as Willie Nelson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lydia Mendoza, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, ZZ Top, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rodney Crowell, Alejandro Escovedo, Johnny Winter, Guy Clark, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many, many others who are arguably at least as deserving of mention as those listed below. To which we respond, with all due sincerity and humility, “So sue us!”

The Austin Lounge Lizards, “The Golden Triangle”
The Flatlanders, “Dallas”
Waylon Jennings, “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”
Robert Earl Keen, “The Front Porch Song”
Lyle Lovett, “Walk Through the Bottomland”
James McMurtry, “Levelland”
The Sir Douglas Quintet, “At the Crossroads”
Ernest Tubb, “Waltz Across Texas”
Jerry Jeff Walker, “London Homesick Blues”
Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, “New San Antonio Rose”

What we’re reading
Heather: Woody Tasch, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered
Martin: Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews