Summer Reading Club: The Reading List (Most Likely Too Ambitious, But What's New?)

Summer means reading — and summer book club! 

As a child, I loved joining the local library's summer reading club the first day of summer break, reading the requisite number of books and more, and visiting the library as often as I could get there (I lived within walking distance, ands it was the 1970s, so it was often).

Well, let this be your annual summer book club for those of us who do not have one anymore. Read for the sheer joy of it — and perhaps win a free book!

Visit your library (public or private), your local bookstores and thrift shops, yard sales and online book suppliers, friends and family, and choose what books look like they need to be read this summer.

So here's what I hope to consume this summer between the Memorial Day weekend and the first weekend in autumn. This year, that date is Friday, May 27 through Sunday, September 25.

If past years serve as guides, I shall carefully create a list, pondering my own library and my published library wish list, check out what is scheduled for publication — then eschew most of these titles for whatever strikes my fancy as the summer progresses. I'll express surprise, as will you, and we'll laugh at my foibles. Good times.

Now, the summer has unofficially begun with Memorial Day, a solemn occasion to remember why we have the freedom and opportunity to exercise our rights and privileges as Americans. Please, take a moment to remember the true reason for the day.

Review your bookshelves or nightstand to decide what to put on your summer reading list. Here is mine, in no particular order:

1. Hamilton: The Revolution
2. In the Heights: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
3. Evicted
4. Crenshaw
5. Dark Money
6. Between the World and Me
7. The Portable Dorothy Parker
8. Farewell, Dorothy Parker
9. Fates and Furies
10. Map of the Sky
11. The Map of Chaos
12. Ready Player One
13. The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books
14. Me Before You
15. The Descent
16. The Bookseller
17. At the Water's Edge
18. When Breath Becomes Air
    
19. The Glass Sentence
20. Wicked
21. Son of a Witch
22. A Lion Among Men
23. Out of Oz 
24. Bone Season
25. The Gun Seller
26. Wolf Hall
27. The Lowland
28. And the Mountains Echoed
29. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter 
30. The Sixth Extinction
    
    
31. Revival
32. Bellman and Black
33. Just Mercy
34. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
35. Redeployment

This is a working list, so I suspect it will change. I shall come across another delectable morsel, possibly this afternoon, and I shall have to include it.

Join the Summer Reading Club and put yourself in the running for a new book. Read as much as you wish from May 22 through September 27, and if you read the most book, you will win a book of your own. 

To join the club, just send me an e-mail or leave a message below. Then, at the end of the summer reading period, send me a message or include your reading list in a blog message. If you read the most, congratulations! If not, you still are a winner because you spent your summer reading.

I've already had a few e-mails from eager readers, and I can't wait to read your list!

I make sure summer reading is beneficial to my community. As I have done in years past, I will  donate $5 per book I read to Main Street Child Development Center (minimum $150) (I know, no sweat, right?), and I will buy three new books for the Fairfax County Public Library from its Amazon Wish List. 

Hopefully, reading club members also will find a way to help their communities through their reading, or to help share the love of reading with their communities. It's not a requirement, of course, but it certainly is a worthy effort. It doesn't have to be financial support, either — think of what the community wants and needs. Every reader can determine what is within her or his power to bestow.

Even if you don't join the reading club, I still would love to know: what's on your summer reading list? Tell me!