Start Your Books: It's Summer Reading Time!

Without further ado, here's what my Reading Wish List for the summer, in no particular order:

1. All Souls trilogy
2. Tobacco Road
3. Wild
4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
5. The Sixth Extinction
6. Divergent trilogy
7. Map of the Sky
8. Peyton Place
9. The Gods of Manhattan
10. Golem and the Jinni
11. Bellman and Black
12. True Grit
13. The Hangman's Daughter
14. NOS4A2
15. And the Mountain Echoed
16. Shadowfever
17. The Goldfinch
18. The Lowland
19. 11/22/63
20. I am Malala
21. Everything Changes
22. Far From the Tree
23. Dangerous Women
24. 168 Hours in a Day
25. The Decameron
26. The Heptameron
27. The Gun Seller
28. The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag
29. The Eye of Zoltar
    
30. Lost Cat
31. Bellman and Black
32. The Fault in Our Stars
33. Cloud Atlas
34. The Mysterious Benedict Society
35. A Penny Vincenzi novel
36. The Family Fang
37. Arcadia
38. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
39. Poisoner's Handbook
40. Winter's Tale

Oh, good heavens, that's an ambitious list of 44 books, and it doesn't include most of what has collected on my nightstand recently. I may not get to all of them between Memorial Day and the autumnal equinox, but I'm willing to try!

And here's how I'm going to handle order: a book jar. Yes, you heard me right: I'm resorting to the book jar. I think. Well, I also will give myself permission to walk into my library and ask myself: what sounds good right now? If it's not on the list, so be it.

As I have done in years past, I will again donate $5 per book I read to Main Street Child Development Center, and I will buy three new books for the Fairfax County Public Library from its Amazon Wish List.

Last year I read 27 books. Do you think I can beat that record? How about you: what's on your list?

If you want to get in on this "big kids'" Summer Book Club, send me your reading list as soon as you can (or post it in the comments below), then share your "consumed list" with me at summer's end. The reader who consumes the most books will win a new book of her or his choice, courtesy From One Book Lover. (And when we count our books, we'll be fair: I suspect most readers will balance their list between both modest and substantial volumes)

Are you in? What are you going to read? Do you have suggestions for my reading list?  Tell me!