Summer Reading List:

I usually try to keep a summer reading list.  I work year-round these days, so I’m not sure why a summer reading list is different than any other season.  For some reason it seems appropriate, though.  It’s fun to look back and see what you thought, what you liked and didn’t.  I was a little bit of a slacker this summer.  I didn’t read nearly as much as I usually do, due to afghans, no lunch breaks, summer school, and Hulu, among other things.  Still, I think it’s a pretty respectable list.  I started keeping track the week I graduated.  Chapman starts school next week (in which I’ll finish Archer’s Goon), so summer is officially over. 

1. Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery (Read a thousand times before, and love)
2. Anne of Avonlea – L. M. Montgomery (Ditto for all Anne novels…)
3. Anne of the Island – L. M. Montgomery
4. Anne’s House of Dreams – L. M. Montgomery
5. The Blue Castle – L. M. Montgomery (Okay, maybe ditto for all LM Montgomery novels)
6. Beauty Queens – Libba Bray (Hilarious mash up of the Miss America pageant and Lord of the Flies)
7. Don Quixote – Miguel De Cervantes (Not at all like I thought it would be.  Much funnier, in a winky ‘you get the joke’ sort of way)
8. The Thirteenth Child – Patricia C. Wrede (Alternative history, magic, and the frontier? Yes!!)
9. Beyond the Great Barrier – Patricia C. Wrede (Continuation of the above.  Not as good, really, and ends on a cliffhanger.  Boo.  Still debating on whether I’ll read 3)
10. The Enchanted Chocolate Pot – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (I’m now convinced I need to find someone to do this with me.  The letter game becomes a magical novel set in Regency England)
11. The Grand Tour – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (And now they’re both married!!!  I admit this is smut, but I like it anyway)
12. Spindle’s End – Robin McKinley (Sleeping Beauty kicks ass in typical fairy tale setting)
13. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (Another re-read.  Eleanor’s silent heartbreak is why I keep returning, I think)
14. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman (Neil Gaiman!!! Need I say more?  It was better than any of his other things, and this is saying a LOT)
15. Make Good Art – Neil Gaiman (Art book that oddly reads like he spoke it.  Brilliant.)
16. A Matter of Magic (really two novels put into one) – Patricia C. Wrede (Oh, why do I love these things so much?  It’s smut, but it’s such FUN smut… This one has a coming out party!)
17. On Being Ill – Virginia Woolf (Wow.  Short read, and highly recommended)
18. A Safeway in Arizona – Tom Zoellner (Also another wow.  It’s so much less political and much more human than I thought it would be, and I loved every bit of it.  Heartbreaking in spots, and a lot to think about)
19. Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor (I realized that I just don’t like her.  A lot of it is about southern racism in the 1950s and I just don’t understand and can’t empathize.)
20. The Mislaid Magician, or Ten Years Later – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (The letters continue.  They all have children now!!!)
21. Arthur – by some lady from Scripps College (I can’t decide if I find her argument that Arthur was real compelling because it is, or because I so want Arthur to be real)
22. Four Queens – Nancy Goldstone  (Makes me very glad I wasn’t a woman in the middle ages, and yet I can’t put it down.  It’s gripping)
23. Archer’s Goon – Diana Wynne Jones (Reminds me much of The Game, but more satisfying.  Not as well-written a book as Dogsbody or Fire and Hemlock, but infinitely fun and funny like most of her work.) 

I had hoped to get to these, but didn’t.  On the to-read list (and checked out of the library, so it will be soon):

1. The Hero and the Crown – Robin McKinley
2. Kung Fu High School – Ryan Gattis (a former teacher of mine with such an amazing command of craft)
3. The Big Drop: Homecoming – Ryan Gattis
4. Chalice – Robin McKinley
5. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss (because it was recommended as a must read)