From One Book Lover

Summer is officially over in the Northern Hemisphere, and I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it means more time indoors curled up with books. On the other hand, winter is coming. But let's not focus on that just yet. Let's talk books. I did not gobble them up like a glutton, as I have in years past. Instead, I read in fits and starts, trying out (and rejecting) title after title until I found one that fit. More often than not, I found YA novels helped smooth out the snags, and I was able to read steadily for a while before I floundered around for another book. I am a firm believer in jettisoning books that don't work for the reader. Nothing against the book: my friend Carole has read books I have been unable to get into — but I'll try again. (And thank heavens for that, or I would have missed The Dinner and Less .) So, without further ado, here is what I read during the 2018 summer reading program from May 25 to September 23: The Public L...

I'm taking some time to catch up on my reading. If you can't decide what to read next, I have a few suggestions: A Man Named Ove The Sun is Also a Star An American Marriage What are some books you recommend? List them in the suggestions below! See you in the autumn, and keep reading!

Not to brag, but my reading is poking along at a speed that would get it run off the road in any country. Just kidding.  About the bragging part, that is. Seriously, I am putting along at an embarrassingly slow pace. So far, in the nine weeks of summer reading, I've read a whopping 11 books. Eleven. Please note that last year, I read more than two dozen books. Granted, quite a few were graphic novels, but we established that such a fete is not "cheating" because the visual details in a graphic novel are intense and must be studied carefully. I am mixing it up this summer. I just finished the book for  Dear Evan Hansen , which required listening to the soundtrack as well as reading the story. It's more than dialogue. It's also stage direction. That &$%# ain't easy. I am cutting myself some slack because the book I read immediately before that was The Devil's Arithmetic . I have to thank The New Yorker article on Holocaust books for c...

I hope your summer reading is coming along swimmingly.  If you are in the areas on the globe experiencing record rains and/or record heat, hopefully you can spend extra time indoors and get more reading done. Intrepid Reader Karen has planned her summer reading carefully, and I see at least one or two books from her list that dovetail with titles I find interesting. Who among us has not salivated over adventure tales or time-travel stories? I rest my case. So, without further ado, here is Karen's reading list (also fondly referred to as TBR, or to be read, stack): Pope Francis’ Little Book of Compassion Troublemaker  Never Broken: Songs are Only Half the Story  Outlander series books 1-8 The Case of the Green-Dressed Ghost  Beyond the Fortune Teller’s Tent Legend of the Jade Dragon  The Pocket Watch Holy Bible  Morna’s Legacy  The Ruby Red Trilogy  Dragon Bones Lost City of Z The Source  The Secret Scroll Man ...

Summer is the perfect time to read.  Even though summer days remain 24 hours, they feel longer, which is a delicious situation for readers.   School is out, work very well could slow down, and summer vacations away from the distractions of life present ample opportunities to bury yourself in a book. We can create opportunities to increase the amount of time we read with a few tweaks to our habits. (By the way, feel free to apply these practices appropriately to other activities you'd like to spend more time doing.) Put down the social media. Take the summer off of your personal social media use. Trust me, it will still be there when you get back — and chances are, it will be easier to use, less intrusive, and maybe even a little more civil.  Can't step away from personal  social media use? First, see a professional about this issue, then  set limits for social media use : set a timer for only a few minutes, then stop when the timer goes off on...

Summer reading is fraught with peril. Choose the wrong books and you've wasted your summer reading bad books. Choose nothing at all, and you may read nothing. Choose too many books and you could be paralyzed with fear at the tide of books you face, and the possibility that you may not finish. Choose only a handful of books and so many are left unread. Choose books, then risk not reading those particular tomes because you stumbled across other books. Okay, "peril" is a strong word — but you get my drift. With choice comes limitation, or responsibility, or paralysis. Or, in my case, failure. Last year, I listed 45 books I wanted to read. Of the 26 books I read last summer , eight were on the original list. Some books have been on the list for years. Some books are pies in the sky. Some books will always be on my TBR shelf. However, this year, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of rustling up gobs of books from my bookshelves, scouring my library ...