Summer Reading Challenge 2016: An Introduction

Is summer my favorite season for reading? No. But it is one of four of my favorite seasons for reading; like the fall is for school, summer is for books. It calls for cleaning out To Be Read (TBR) lists, looking for what’s new on the shelves of bookstores (and in publishers’ calendars), and seeking out new and old favorite spots to spend time [reading]. There’s just something about the summer that makes me want to do all of these things, more so than in other seasons.

Last year, I tried tackling the Penguin 80 Years of Bestsellers Reading Challenge, and came up quite short, even though I had already read some of the titles. There are still a handful of books from that list that I want to read, so Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, Dubliners by James Joyce, and the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness are the first to go on my Summer Reading List (SRL).

For contemporary reads – more specifically, those published this year – I’m choosing The Fireman by Joe Hill (which I heard about via a recent episode of the NYPublic Library Podcast), a collection of short stories by Mark Haddon: The Pier Falls, Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman, and Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld.

I will also continue to follow along with Our Shared Shelf, also known as Emma Watson’s book club. For June, Emma has chosen Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I cannot tell you what the reads for July and August will be, as the titles will not be disclosed until the end of June and July, respectively. I have already read Persepolis, but it has been a couple of years so I may revisit it, if not re-read it this month.

What a surprise, hardly any/no non-fiction on my SRL. I’ll add M Train by Patti Smith, The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates, and It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort.

Okay, so fifteen books sounds wonderful to me. I’ll be honest, my reading pace has severely declined in the past year or so because I had little time for books outside “reality.” But my May accomplishments showed me that I still have it in me to read  more than two books a month – thank goodness. And, like I said before, there’s just something about summer that exponentially increases my reading desires.

What are you reading this summer? Do you make a list, choose books at random, or select a few definite reads and choose others along the way? Share your plans in the comments, or let me know if you have a list elsewhere I can check out! It’s going to be a great summer.