Academic

Too Early for a Summer Reading List?

By Jacqueline Lipton

In the hopes that it's not too early (or too optimistic of me) to start thinking about summer reading - for fun, not work - I'll make a few suggestions below that people may be interested in picking up on a beach somewhere.  I'd love to hear what books others would suggest for summer reading.

I've blogged previously about Supreme Courtship and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and would definitely recommend both of them.

I've also enjoyed discovering Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl and Skinny Dip, amongst others.

Then, there's the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series.  The first two books have been released in the U.S. and are great.  I'm still awaiting release of the third book and haven't yet seen the movie which is also meant to be pretty good.

For those who like Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series (the genesis of HBO's True Blood TV series), there's apparently a new one of those coming out next month.  I've also started reading one of Harris' other series - the Harper Connelly mysteries.  Not as good as Sookie Stackhouse, but I've only read the first book so far so it may not be a fair comparison.  (And, speaking of vampires, I finally did see "Let the Right One In" which I enjoyed in its own low-key gruesome way.)

Also speaking of vampires, I was once a fan of Anne Rice, but really found her newest book, Angel Time, to be pretty tedious.

For the girls amongst us (stop reading here, guys), pretty much anything written by Sophie Kinsella is a good holiday read.  In a similar vein to the Bridget Jones books and very English.  Kinsella writes the "Confessions of a Shopaholic" series along with a bunch of other similar books.

Back to murder mysteries, a "not bad" debut novel by Georgina Donovan set in Hawaii is "Reads Like Murder - in Honolulu".

I guess my spring reading list comprised a lot of vampire books and murder mysteries - so perhaps people can suggest other directions in which I could develop my pop culture pursuits over the summer...

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).