Summer Reading!

From time to time I’ll be writing about books instead of just reading them – and I could use your feedback: What’s on your summer reading list this year?  

To me, there is something special and different about what one chooses to read in the summer.  Whether the book is chosen to go along on a trip to add to the vacation experience, or is chosen to take me to another place from my own backyard; books become experiences and are as necessary to me as food and water…

Okay, maybe not that necessary. Maybe as necessary as a good cup or coffee or glass of wine to go along with the book.  I remember sitting in my sister’s living room in Michigan, waiting to head to the beach reading Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” stealing moments until I stayed up late by myself on the porch because I just couldn’t go to bed without finishing it.  Just me, my book and the crickets, heaven.  I dog-eared page after page of du Maurier’s “Rebecca” while sitting among the fruit trees at my father’s home in Florida, Crichton’s “Rising Sun” will always remind me of Maui, greeting the day out on the Lanai, quiet not to wake anyone so I could get a few pages read in peace.  Certain books are memorable not only for what they have to say, but when we read them. 

 Many a book list is released listing beach read recommendations this time of year.  Check out the New York Times link here If you don’t see anything that interests you there, much like shopping your own closet, shopping your own bookshelves can be a fun way to discover that unread biography or to pick up a book that you read long ago and want to revisit the place that it took you.  Now that time has passed maybe the journey will be different.

Whether on the back patio or on the beach, summer books are special to me because summer itself is special in its own way, the warm weather, trips to the pool or lake, traveling with the family.  A summer book is especially chosen to go along with the journey, where ever the destination. 

This summer, maybe you are reading a tour book to research an upcoming trip, autobiographies that will take extra time or maybe your book club is on hiatus and this is your chance for “fluff,” for which the definition is different for each person.  

Here’s my list: “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, “What I Talk About When I talk About Running by Haruki Murakami and “Another City, Not My Own” by Dominick Dunne. 

I can’t wait to hear what you’re reading and why.