Reading is one of my favorite pastimes. I recently completed Walter Mosley’s Six Easy Pieces (2003). Now I’m spending time with poet, novelist, and playwright Pearl Cleage’s Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do; no, not her latest book, this too is from 2003. It’s hard keeping up with my favorite authors; magazines and newspapers are competing for my attention too. Waiting in the wings in my personal library are Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, Terry McMillan’s Interruption of Everything, Jill Nelson’s Sexual Healing, J. California Cooper’s Some People, Some Other Place, Bebe Moore Campbell’s 72 Hour Hold, Bernice McFadden’s Nowhere Is a Place, Andrew Weil’s Healthy Aging, E. Lynne Harris’s I Say a Little Prayer, and many more, to be read chronologically. It’s only fair. These will take me well into the summer of 2007. No street lit here, but it doesn’t matter what your preference is, just pick up a book. What’s on your list for the summer? Happy reading! Ann Burns
What are some of the books that librarians are offering on “Summer Reading” tables or shelves now? I myself am still trolling for my first summer read, and would love to here some further recommendations from others! MH
For my summer reading I’m casting the net back a ways. Many years ago, I fell in love with Helene Hanff’s book “Q’s Legacy.” Recently re-inspired by this book, I have purchased a copy of “On the Art of Reading” and “On the Art of Writing” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and plan to work my way through them. After reading the inaugural essay in On the Art of Reading, I can see how Miss Hanff was so inspired to dig deeper … although I have it MUCH easier with access to the internet, online databases, etc.
I just received a collection of short stories,essays, and creative fiction by Christopher Buckley. No this is not the Mr. Buckley of Thank you for Not Smoking fame, but another excellent writer who teaches creative writing as Cal-Riverside. He is a prolific author and poet and has won four Pushcart Prizes. (He did a series of programs here at the library when he taught at nearby West Chester University.)His earlier collection was CRUISING STATE and the new one is SLEEPWALK: CALIFORNIA DREAMING AND A LAST DANCE WITH THE SIXTIES. Both are great summer reads for nostalgia hounds who want to return to the sixties, where a lot of us have been, or to return to the California coast, where a lot of us think we have been. Surfs up!
I just finished “The Family Fortune” a first novel by Laurie Horowitz, and although I didn’t love the last half, the first half was so enjoyable I can recommend it. It’s very quick reading. Good as a “new release, summer vacation read” for a single gal.