Do you abide by any summer reading policies or subscribe to any book list-type things? If you are headed to the beach, do you search for a book that has been labelled a good “beach read”? Lots of people do, and in the months leading up to summer, there are loads of these types of lists around. I almost always check them out, and once in awhile a few titles catch my eye, but having said that, I don’t usually go in for sticking with a list, and I certainly don’t have a specific genre or type of book that I read during summer holidays.
I have friends with a strict “chick lit only” summer reading policy – the light and frothy type, that you can devour in an afternoon, lounging in a lawn chair, sipping a cocktail and wearing a big floppy hat. Then I know other people who use the lazy days of summer to read up on things that interest them, the sorts of books they maybe don’t have time for during the regular year, but once vacation arrives, they can spend days reading about golf or gardening or what have you. I’m always interested by what people like to read or what they think is appropriate or inappropriate for certain seasons or times of year, so to kick things off I’m going to start by giving you the details of my latest reads.
I just finished: Drood by Dan Simmons and The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer. Both of them in hardcover, both of them GIGANTIC. Drood tops the scales at a whopping 784 pages and The Invisible Bridge a mere 624. So “light” reading? Hardly. And, even the story lines of both were both pretty heavy. (see what I did there?) Of the two though? Hands down I recommend The Invisible Bridge. With Drood I felt ripped off, that I’d slogged through all those pages (and it really was a slog for a lot of it – wow) for pretty much a meh kind of ending. The Invisible Bridge just kept getting better and better, right through to an appropriately satisfying ending, and with a whole lot of beautiful writing in between. Loved that book.
Currently I am reading Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar and really enjoying it. If you can, you know, enjoy the story of an extremely awkward, middle-aged woman with odd delusions and quite possibly a descent into madness (although I haven’t read very far yet). Then, on the back burner I have Libba Bray’s Going Bovine which intrigued me. And also, the cover shows a cow, standing upright, holding a garden gnome under it’s arm (leg?). Who says you can’t judge a book by its cover?
So what are you planning to read this summer?
The Urban Info Girl 