Summer Reading: Making a List!

Summer means reading — and summer reading club! 

Remember back in the day, when reading came with rewards? In my local library, readers would have their names posted with the number of titles read during the summer. One year, I read 4o books. My librarian was skeptical — then she remembered how I sat in the library for hours at a time, reading. Forty it was.

Getting a shout-out on Hedgehog Lover may not be as cool as having your name posted on the Norwalk Library children's section activity board, but it's still not bad. 

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 26 through Sunday, September 24.

First of all, please take a moment to think about Memorial Day, and understand what it really means, 149 years after it began as Decoration Day in an Illinois town. May we strive for peace, and love, and the things that bring us together.  

In that vein, we may want to add a book to our list that reflects Memorial Day, and an article published by the Los Angeles Times may be a good place to start. 

My list is more a "wish" than carved in stone, but here it is, in no particular order:

1. Hamilton: The Revolution
2. Evicted
3. Anna Karenina
4. Lady Cop Makes Trouble
5. The Burning Pages
6. Dark Money
7. Map of the Sky
8. The Intuitionist
9. Ready Player One
10. The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books
11. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
12. Me Before You
13. Yesternight
14. The Fall of the House of Cabal
15. The Descent
    
16. The Book of Harlan
17. At the Water's Edge
18. Thank You for Your Service
19. The Glass Sentence
20. The Keeper of Lost Things
21. The Lost City of Z
22. Wicked
23. Bone Season
24. The Gun Seller
25. Wolf Hall
26. The Lowland
27. And the Mountains Echoed
28. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter 
29. The Sixth Extinction
    
30. Revival
31. Bellman and Black
32. Just Mercy
33. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
34. Redeployment
35. The Handmaid's Tale
36. The Case Against Sugar
37. The Magicians
38. The Unbanking of America
39. The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
40. Welcome to Night Vale
41. Hidden Figures
42. Speaking from Among the Bones
    
43. Ruined
44. The Bear and the Nightingale
45. Uprooted

I suspect this list will change. As soon as something looks or sounds good, it will be on the list. I can't help it!

Join the Summer Reading Club and put yourself in the running for a new book. Read as much as you wish from Friday, May 26 through Sunday, September 24, and if you read the most books, 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 comment. 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!