Is it me, or didn’t we just kick off the 2014 Summer Reading program at Extravaganza like, five minutes ago?
(Insert your favorite cliché here about summer going faster every year.)
I was one of those kids who lived for my library’s Summer Reading Program back in the day. As a full-fledged grown-up (on most days), I love that CLP has a Summer Reading program for adults.
You know that I signed up the second the link went live on the CLP website. (If you haven’t signed up, you still have time … but not much. Summer Reading ends on August 9. There are pretty good prizes to be had, too.)
As of today, I’ve read 16 books for Summer Reading and am in the middle of my 17th and 18th books (the Man Booker Prize nominated History of the Rain by Niall Williams and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver on audio, respectively). I’d like to get to 20 by the weekend, but if this is as good as it gets, I’m perfectly fine with that too.
I thought it would be fun to do a Best Of list, Hollywood award show style, for my Summer Reading books of 2014:
Summer Reading Book That Made Me Cry: Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, by Paul Monette
Genre That I Couldn’t Get Enough Of This Summer: Memoir, with poetry and fiction coming in second and third.
Summer Reading Book That I Can’t Believe I Didn’t Read Before Now: The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Book That I Am Most Likely to Re-Read: Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, by Beth Kephart
Shortest Book Read This Summer: Woolgathering, by Patti Smith
Favorite Book Read From the CLP-Main Bestseller Table: Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, by Chris Bohjalian
New Author Who I Read For the First Time and Who I Love: A tie between Paul Monette and Sylvia Plath
Best Nonfiction Book That Taught Me Something This Summer: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
Summer Reading Book That Made Me Wish I Was On Vacation When I Wasn’t: French Lessons, by Ellen Sussman
Did you participate in Summer Reading? What were your favorite books that you read? Feel free to play along with these categories at home, at work, or on your own blog. (And share it with us, because if there’s anything we love here at Eleventh Stack, it’s lists of books and seeing other people’s lists.)
~ Melissa F.
Eleventh Stack 