My favorite thing about starting a new season is staring a new reading list.
Recently, our local Half Price Books held an event where you could stuff a bag with as much as it could handle, and the entire price would be $20.
So naturally, I came home with 17 books.
The place was a madhouse, so I didn’t have much time to decide on which books to buy, leaving me to go by covers, authors, etc.
After I came home and examined my loot, I picked out 10 books to promise myself to read by the end of summer.
So now I am inviting you to join me on my summer reading list. I also plan a do a book review for each book I read.
The following list contains synopsis’ from Good Reads.
The Girls By Emma Cline
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.
Purchase here.
A Way Through The Wood By Nigel Balchin
When a young man is knocked off his bicycle and subsequently dies, James is sure that the culprit is Bule – after all, he saw a scratch on his car the day of the accident and the car matches the description to a T. But events take an unexpected turn when James discovers that it was really Jill driving the car that day, and he is torn between obligations of class, loyalty and justice.
Purchase here.
Room by Emma Donoghue
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Purchase here.
The Mountaintop School For Dogs by Ellen Cooney
The Sanctuary. High up on the mountain, the Sanctuary is a place of refuge. It is a place where humans save dogs, who, in turn, save the humans. It is a place where the past does not exist, where hopelessness is chased away, where the future hasn’t been written, where orphans and strays can begin to imagine a new meaning for “family.”
Purchase here.
Arts & Entertainment by Christopher Beha
Christopher Beha delivers a cutting send-up of our cultural obsession with celebrity—a deliciously witty, and ultimately tender, novel about the absurdity of fame and the complexity of love sure to appeal to fans of Maria Semple and Jess Walter.
Purchase here.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father’s closet.
Purchase here.
Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates
A riveting novel that explores the high price of success in the life of one woman—the first female president of a lauded ivy league institution—and her hold upon her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons, from Joyce Carol Oates, author of the New York Times bestseller A Widow’s Story
Purchase here.
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
In a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn’t it? Lenny’s from a different century—he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,” as they’re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.
Purchase here.
How To Start A Fire by Lisa Lutz Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
When UC Santa Cruz roommates Anna and Kate find passed-out Georgiana Leoni on a lawn one night, they wheel her to their dorm in a shopping cart. Twenty years later, they gather around a campfire on the lawn of a New England mansion. What happens in between-the web of wild adventures, unspoken jealousies, and sudden tragedies that alter the course of their lives-is charted with sharp wit and aching sadness in this meticulously constructed novel.
Purchase here.
THE JOURNEY SO FAR
I am almost done with The Girls, and I am loving it so far. I will be updating everyone on Twitter, and I will by attempting some blog posts about the process.
What are you reading?
