August is a month for fun in the sun, but cloudy, drippy skies are squelching all that.

It is August, and my wife, Sally, and I are at our camp on Long Pond in the Belgrades. All is well but for one thing: It is raining and raining.

August at camp is not about rain. It is about sunny, breezy days and cool evenings. However, we have found the silver lining to soggy weather, incredible native blueberries.

This is truly the year of the blueberry along the shores of Long Pond. Almost everywhere we paddle with our canoe we find fully laden bushes, many so full they look like bunches of grapes.

The rhythms of Belgrade Lakes village have shifted to reflect rainy realities. The Lazy Lab Café is doing a land-office business for coffee and Internet access. Down at Day’s Store, umbrella sales are up and fresh corn is harder to get, but the same sunny dispositions prevail.

Sally and I also have had to adjust to the weather. Instead of two Rummy 500 games a day, we have added a third. Since we play for a dollar a game, the practical impact of this shift is that my running IOU to Sally has now reached five dollars.

The good news is that we have more uninterrupted time for reading. We are putting this to good use. I am already about halfway through "The Candy Bombers," by Andrei Cherny.

This is the story of the Berlin Airlift on its 60th anniversary. Cherny does a masterful job of capturing the schizophrenic nature of the years immediately following World War II. In the immediate glow of triumph over Nazi Germany, Americans and Russians embraced in the streets of Berlin and pledged to work together to ensure that Germany would never again threaten the peace of Europe.

By 1948 it was clear that the Russians’ view of how to do this was not only much harsher than ours, but also posed a direct threat to us and our Allies in Western Europe. The Cold War was born, and "The Candy Bomber" recounts its finest hour until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In a normal August one serious "big book" is the norm. This August I believe I may get through two others that have been languishing on my bedside table at home: "In Spite of the Gods," by Edward Luce, and "Einstein," by Walter Isaacson. Both books have been highly recommended.

"Einstein" is the first biography of America’s finest and most unusual physicist since the publication of his personal papers. "In Spite of the Gods" is about the "strange rise of modern India," by the Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, who himself married into an Indian family.

Lest you think all my reading time is devoted to such weighty topics, let me add that I have just finished Alan Furst’s new espionage novel, "The Spies of Warsaw." I am a fan of Furst, whose specialty is Central Europe before and during World War II.

There is plenty of intrigue, and a sophisticated sense of how people dealt with the dual threats of the SS and the NKVD, the Soviet precursor of the KGB.

Furst captures the feel of Europe in those years in a way I have not witnessed except for, perhaps, in very early Le Carre. If you haven’t read any of his work, "The Spies of Warsaw" is a good place to start.

Moreover, Sally and I recently finished listening to "Anne of Green Gables." This heart-warming tale of orphan Anne Shirley of Prince Edward Island is celebrating the centennial of its first publication. Both of our now-grown-up girls had loved Anne.

Sally and I had heard much of the book from them and thought it might be a nice accompaniment to our recent road trip to Nova Scotia. It exceeded our expectations.

I also mean to finish "The Thunderbolt Kid," by Bill Bryson. This memoir of growing up in Des Moines in the 1950s will warm your heart.

And if you actually grew up in the '50s, as I did, it will move you to "laugh out loud" bursts of recognition of how quaint things were in the land of Lincoln Logs, Erector sets and Slinkys.

So, well-set with good books and a warm fire, we are prepared to weather out this wet August. See you in September.