Vacation reading?

I don't consult best-seller lists, and rarely read book reviews, whether they be in the Boston Globe or Entertainment Weekly, the only two publications I read regularly that offer such things. And when the hot weather descends and it's time to hit Cape Cod for a week, I don't confer with summer reading suggestions either.

What did I read last week while hanging out on the Cape with Beth, the kids and Beth's family? A light mystery or upbeat biography? A collection of humorous short stories or a memoir about how swimming with dolphins can change your life? Not quite.

I took on Stewart O'Nan's The Circus Fire. An easy, breezy read this ain't.

The book, which came out in 2000, is an achingly complete reconstruction of the events leading up to, during and after the 1944 circus fire in Hartford, CT, that killed 167 people.

I forgot we had the book, and I don't remember who gave it to either Beth or me. I found it in the attic a while ago and put it in my pile of "to read" books. I'd cruised through August Kleinzahler's memoir, Cutty, One Rock, recently, and wanted to take on something a little weightier.

I could've chosen Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, but I knew I'd never finish it in a week. That will be my next book, after Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, which is a collection of essays that are funny, insightful and easy on the brain.

O'Nan (author of, among many other books, Faithful, a chronicle of the Red Sox' historic 2004 season, which he co-wrote with Stephen King) obviously did a lot of research for The Circus Fire, his first major nonfiction work.

At times, I got lost in the minute details he provides about various victims, both before, during and after the fire. But for the most part, I was engrossed by the history of fires in the circus industry, the details of circus life, the individual stories of courage and heartbreak, and the amazing work investigators did to try and identify victims and solve the case.

I was born in Hartford's St. Francis Hospital in 1965, and grew up 10 miles north of the city. I recall hearing about the fire during the course of my life, but I never knew just how awful it was. Here's a video that will give you just a very basic idea of the horror:

This book is obviously not for everyone. It's a tough read a lot of the time. O'Nan gives in-depth descriptions of the horrendous scenes of struggle and escape from inside the tent; the condition of the survivors and the dead; the agonizing attempt by family members to identify the charred and mangled bodies at the makeshift morgue.

But as a history lesson, it's fascinating. O'Nan details how negligence on the circus operators' parts -- ranging from narrow entrances/exits to animal chutes that blocked easy egress -- led to so many people dying. He also spends time analyzing how people react to unexpected, traumatic situations such as fires, and how they may see flames but since it's so out of the ordinary, their brains don't register the situation right away. O'Nan also talks about how in mob scenes too many people act only in their own interest, and how they too often blindly follow what everyone else is doing, instead of considering other options of escape.

Unfortunately not enough people have learned the lessons that the circus fire offered, as evidenced by events such as the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Kentucky in 1977, and The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003.