It's that time of year again. The time of year when I publicly declare what I am going to read this summer. For the purposes of my list, summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Even so, as in past years, it will be about a thousand miles longer than I can possibly accomplish. And if the past is any indication, I will veer off list at least a few times because I just can not confine myself to the list, no matter how much I adore lists (and I do adore lists). I am going up north sooner than I have been able to in the past decade or so so perhaps I'll be closer to finishing the list than usual. Or maybe not. In any case, here's what I'd like to accomplish this summer:
The books that I've started and not yet finished (with any luck one of these will be finished today so I can strike it off my summer reads list):
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
The book I didn't read on time because I missed the book club meeting:
Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau
The books for my summer book club:
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Books for review:
The Beach at Painter’s Cove by Shelley Noble
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
My Glory Was I Had Such Friends by Amy Silverstein
Kiss Carlo by Adriana Trigiani
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson
The Dress in the Window by Sofia Grant
Whispering in French by Sophia Nash
The Sworn Virgin by Kristopher Dukes
The Daughters of Ireland by Santa Montefiore
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes by David Handler
Life and Separate by Marilyn Simon Rothstein
Just because:
A Fugitive in Walden Woods by Norman Lock
The Strays by Emily Bitto
The Temporary Bride by Jennifer Klinec
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Little Exile by Jeanette S. Arakawa
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Good Karma by Christina Kelly
The Tower of Antilles by Achy Obejas
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorrell
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Meantime by Katharine Noel
June by Miranda Beverly-Whittmore
We Were Witches by Ariel Gore
Queen of Spades by Michael Shou-Yung Shum
No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Chasing the King of Heart by Hanna Krall
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein
The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Boat Runner by Devin Murphy
So Much Blue by Percival Everett
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
Hola and Goodbye by Donna Miscolta
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
The Farm in the Green Mountains by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer
Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon
The Crows of Beara by Julie Christine Johnson
You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis
The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy by David Ebenbach
Ars Botanica by Tim Taranto
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
The Skin Above My Knee by Marcia Butler
The Portrait by Antoine Laurent
Songs from the Violet Café by Violet Kidman
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
Bloodlines by Marcello Fois
A Bloom of Bones by Allen Morris Jones
Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon
If you scrolled through the entire obnoxiously long list, here's where I've been traveling in books this past week: I was in China with an ethnic minority woman who gave up her baby and in the US with that baby after her adoption; I was in Afghanistan with a woman awaiting trial for the murder of her husband; I time traveled into the past to meet Jane Austen in her England; I was in California as a wife and mother coped with her husband's ALS diagnosis, his subsequent personality change, and eventual death all while trying to raise their young sons and maintain her career; I came from an alternate reality Toronto with the man who went back in time and changed the future (our present) by accident. I did also do some actual travel to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and that was wonderful. Where have your reading and actual travels taken you this past week?
I always love reading your ambitious lists as it makes me feel so much better about mine! I just finished Smoke yesterday and I'm about to start The Essex Serpent. Never enough time. Have fun this summer at your northern retreat!
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