Chris' Summer Reading List

Okay, so it's halfway through summer and I've just issued my reading list. Can you blame me? Everyone crowded around Memorial Day as though Summer Reading Started Then.

We all know Summer Reading Begins After School Lets Out.

However, I was knee-deep in planning a wedding at that time. So, I give myself a pass.

Now that I am healing from a broken foot, Carole has given me a suggestion that has saved me from the brink of insanity: read. Don't worry about what needs to be done around the house. First of all, that's what David is for. (Okay, she didn't say that last part.) Second of all, exactly when will there be another excuse like this one?

"I'm sorry I can't vacuum, but I can't hop on one leg for that long." (Though David did jokingly suggest it, even pantomiming the Chris-hopping-action. We laughed.)

"I can't change the sheets. I just can't stand it."

"Mop? On one foot? On a wet floor? Honey, do you have a life insurance policy on me I don't know about?"

Long story short, it's time to read.

Here is what I plan to read this summer (and not exactly in this order):

• 20th Century Ghosts. Little by little I finish this very good collection of scary short stories.
• Ahab's Wife, or the Star-gazer. Carole loves the first line. Can you blame her?
• Dark Angels. I borrowed it from Karen. She needs it back at some point in the future. Why not now? Anyway, I had picked it up at the library this past winter and never got to it, so now is as good a time as ever.
• The Garden of Last Days. I still haven't recovered from The House of Sand and Fog, and yet I reach for Dubus' latest novel. What am I thinking?
• The Golems of Gotham. I loved the title, so I bought it at a library sale a couple of years ago. Re-animating the dead as golems? In New York? As if I could resist.
• A Great and Terrible Beauty. Carole will soon review the Gemma Doyle trilogy, which she and Corinne loved. I read the first chapter and liked it — but was lured away by Neil Gaiman.
• Mistress of the Art of Death. I purchased this book a year or so ago and never got to it. Now it has a sequel. Maybe I'd better start the first one....
• Sheer Abandon. Penny Vincenzi is a Must-Summer-Read.
  
• There Will Never Be Another You. Kathy loved this one. I hope to, too. I want to read her autobiography as well. (Carolyn See, not Kathy's — though I'd read that one, too.)
• Unaccustomed Earth. I started this book as soon as I fished it out of the Amazon box. I set it aside, however, because I wanted her stories to linger. I have enjoyed both of her other tomes, and I will pepper my reading with these wonderful stories.
• The Year of Pleasures. Another Kathy pick. She hasn't steered me wrong yet!

Does this seem ambitious? Probably. However, I have time on my hands now that I'm not on my feet. Plus, if I get David to row out to the middle of the lake, I get to see him and read. I promise to make the best of this situation.

Wish me luck, and let me know if you can think of any other not-to-be-missed novels!