5 posts tagged “summer reading”
Good morning! I just wanted to post a reminder that you have until 8pm ET tomorrow to enter my Summer Book Giveaway!
Here are the books you could win:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Peony in Love by Lisa See
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Read more details and enter here!
Please feel free to spread the word to anyone who would be interested - thanks!
One of the main reasons I'm posting my summer reading recap so late, is that I've tried to post it several times and gave up because I realized how boring it is. At the beginning of the summer I set a goal of seven specific books to read this summer, and I ended up reading all of them. The books were:
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Night by Elie Wiesel
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
I think the reason I find this so boring to post about is that I already talked about all of these books in my monthly Polysyllabic Spree posts.
Anyway, I'm happy that I met my goal. I definitely learned my lesson from the summer of 2007, when I picked out 15 books and only read 6 of them. I've learned I'm not good about sticking to pre-set lists, especially over a long time frame.
Overall this summer, I read 32 books. Nice improvement from Summer 2007 (18 books). The books I read were:
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
- Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
- The Penderwicks of Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Dancing Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
- The Solitary Vice Against Reading by Mikita Brottman
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- American Bloomsbury Susan Cheever
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
- The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
- Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
- The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
- Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
- New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
- Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by P. G. Wodehouse
- Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
- Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas Foster
One of the things I anticipate most about summer, besides the start of Summer Fridays at work where we get out at 1, is making a Summer Reading List. I usually try to come up with a list of books I've been meaning to read for a long time, and make it a goal to read them over the summer.
Last year I learned my lesson about making too long of a list. I don't like to stick to lists very well, so the list should be short enough to allow plenty of spontaneous reads over the summer.
This year I decided to go with a list of 7 books, half of what last year's goal was. Last year I read only 6 books from that list, so even going with 7 might be too much. However, I think I picked books I'll actually read this summer. We'll see how this goes:
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Night by Elie Wiesel
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
Some of these books will also help me with my 2008 reading goals (The Austens and the Vonnegut). I have until the end of Labor Day weekend in September, which is September 1st.
As with most of my books to be read during a certain time period lists, I strayed well off the list most of the summer. I think next time I make a list (and perhaps I'll make a Fall Reading List soon) I will keep it much shorter. I've realized that making a longer list leaves no room for impulse reads, which are inevitable for me.
The official dates of my summer reading list were from May 25 (start of Memorial day weekend) to September 3 (end of Labor day weekend).
Here's how I did, completed books are crossed off:
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (started, but have not finished yet)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut (finished on September 7)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Issacson
42% finished.
Here are the other books I read this summer that were not on my list:
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little by Peggy Gifford
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe
Books: Show us your summer reading list.
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.
This list is definitely not all inclusive - I wanted lots of room for wild card reads of whatever I find and am in the mood for. But here are my goal books for the summer. Most are books that have been on my TBR list for a long time. This summer I want to make them a priority. Also included is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as well as re-reading 5 and 6 to finish my complete re-read of the series before July 21.
So, nerd that I am, I'm going to take this very seriously, and set some start and end dates. Let's go with May 25 (start of Memorial day weekend) as a beginning and September 3 (end of Labor day weekend) as the end. I'll update with my progress, and do a recap at the end. :)
