Summer Reading Begins...

Today is the first day of my kids’ summer vacation, so I have summer reading on the brain.

My daughter is lucky to have a fantastic list of titles to choose from for her high school’s summer reading.  Here is the full list. She only has to read 1, but she chose at least two-- Ready Player One and Between the World and Me. Thankfully, I have read both [you can click on the titles for my reviews], and for Ready Player One, I even got to interview the author [although the link is no longer public per Cline’s request]. We are both excited to talk about them together.

Either would make a great summer read for anyone out there. Between the World and Me because it is timely, lyrical, and poignant [and short] and Ready Player One because it is exciting, thought provoking, and will be a huge blockbuster movie very soon.

My son is 11 and a voracious reader of anything and everything-- fiction, nonfiction, kids, teen, adult. The problem with him, is keeping enough books in his hands. Right now he is reading every Mike Lupica football book he can get his hands on, and after a visit from the public library to his school, he was excited about The Big Dark. His copy came through ILL this week.

Me, I have a stack of horror titles to review for the August Spotlight on Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror issue for Booklist. But I also have a stack of books I am very excited to read for fun. I have a 2 week vacation in July that I am saving them for.  That list is:

• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
• The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics
• Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This post is only the start of my summer reading conversation with all of you. Over the summer, most Fridays I will continue to have “summer reading” posts here on the blog. Rather than simply link you to the millionth list of good summer reads (you can get those over on Early Word), I will have posts about what what we are reading in my house and what books I am suggested to others as good summer reads. I will especially focus on great backlist titles for different reading situations.

You can use the tag “summer reading” to pull up all of these posts, and posts from previous years-- because older good summer reads are still good summer reads.

But also, feel free to leave your current summer reading suggestions in the comments for others to see and use with patrons.