Summer is right around the corner — unless you're the kind of person who lives the season from Memorial Day to Labor Day, then you're already behind in your summer reading!
Honestly, I've been otherwise occupied to think much about a summer reading list. The whole "finally getting a new house, then having to set it up and move in" definitely puts a crimp in that reading schedule. After moving into Alicia's house in March, I was nearly too exhausted to read. Only a new Dan Simmons book pulled me out of my exhausted funk.
However, this move is different: it will reunite me with all of the books that have been, as my friend Judy put it, in "book purgatory." I tend to think of it as "storage hell," but either way, they're in a different spot than I am. Now, I don't want to be in either purgatory or hell, so I'm grateful for that small blessing, but separation, even under these circumstances, is trying.
Back to the matter at hand: summer reading.
Currently, I have a couple of books set aside for my reading enjoyment.
My most recent purchase is the newest tome by Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing. I can't wait to see how she brings history to life again. Go ahead, try to not care about the plague when reading Year of Wonders. Try to be nonchalant about, well, everything when reading People of the Book. Surrender to Geraldine Brooks, and you'll be a better person for it.
I have at least one Fluff 'n Trash™book in my lineup: Penny Vincenzi's An Outrageous Affair. There may be value to it, but I don't care. I am reading it for the sheer love of the bosom-heaving story. (They're British bosoms, so they sport a stiff upper lip. Or decorum, at the very least.)
Stephen King is in my future: most likely Full Dark, No Stars. I'm itching to read Under the Dome, too, but as both books are hefty tomes, I will be forced to choose one if I plan to read anything of his before he appears at Fall for the Book this autumn.
Jasper Fforde published a new Thursday Next novel this year I haven't even picked up yet. (Did I mention that Alicia will throw me out onto the mean streets of the city if I dare bring in another book?) (Okay, I mean besides the ones I've sneaked in already.) (Wait, I've said too much already!) There is a reason for the delay in reading this book, which I will reveal when I discuss this book with you, my Intrepid Reader.
I want to re-read a book, but I haven't decided which one yet. I nearly did that with Geek Love this week, but the opening sentences made me queasy. (I must have been a braver reader in my earlier years.) All of my books will have a new-to-me feeling, so I will approach my library cautiously.
I want to try to actually consume a Jonathan Franzen book, rather than just gaze at them longingly on the shelf.
After seeing a single, very titilating scene from the HBO series of the same name, I am intrigued to read George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. I read the first two chapters the other day and enjoyed it, but the weight of the paperback is too hefty for me right now.
Lev Grossman's second novel in the Magicians series, The Magician King, is coming out in August. I wasn't keen on the gritty realism and killjoy spirit of the first novel, The Magicians, when I read it last year, but I might have to re-visit it. (Heck, I'm reading Awakening, the most recent S.J. Bolton novel in the library, so Grossman gets a second chance.)
So, what's on your reading list? What do you recommend I pick up this summer?
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