It's summer and it's raining outside, which kind of sucks because I had a whole host of gardening plans and I kind of hate sticking my hands in soggy, cold earth. But I can entertain myself in other ways--for example, I can look something up for my Internet-challanged mother, or I can watch episode 6 of season 4 of Grey's Anatomy, or I can read my new book, Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter. That last option got me thinking about other bookish things--like what's my book to-do list this summer?
So, here it is. I think you'll find a healthy mix of novels and biographies, self-help books (yes, I love them...not because I have spectacularly low self-esteem, but because they're really fun to read and ignore) and memoirs, deliciously surreal science fiction and the occasional nonfiction piece. And, at the end of the summer (if I remember) I can tell you what I thought of them.
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- Beautiful Ruins. So far, it's a really great book. I highly recommend it. Here's an excerpt from the inside flap..."The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the...Ligurian Sea and spies an apparation: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot--searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel..." While I'm only about halfway through the book, I'm starting to think that this may be one of my all-time favorites. (Edit, 6/18/2012: Beautiful Ruins was a lovely book. I highly recommend it to all. It's the best kind of love story.)
- The Lifeboat, by Charlotte Rogan. It looks like a great read, and it's in a good font. (Yes, I'm weird about fonts--if the book's font is too ugly (which is, by the way, one of the first things I check for when picking out a book) I usually don't read it.) From what I gather, it's about a newlywed woman who is separated from her husband after the ocean liner on which she is traveling to America "suffers a mysterious explosion" and the overfilled, slowly sinking lifeboat that carries her to safety.
- Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling. Okay, the main reason I picked up this book is because I love The Office, and Kelly Kapoor, and, by default, Mindy Kaling. I sat down and read a chapter of her book at the bookstore. It's great--funny and superbly honest. Truthfully, though, my favorite part is the back cover, which features this picture.
- The Good Women of China, by Xue Xinran. The author, Xinran, was a radio journalist in the late 1980s. She hosted a radio show and listened to the stories of Chinese women, some of which are collected in The Good Women of China. I'm also looking forward to reading Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother, also written by Ms. Xinran, which I believe is a follow up to The Good Women. You can find her English blog here.
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A few other books I'm excited to read are Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris), The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (Karen Karbo), Very Classy (Derek Blasberg), Istanbul Passage (Joseph Kanon), Seating Arrangements (Maggie Shipstead), The Long Earth (Terry Pratchett, Steven Baxter), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Swamplandia! & St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Karen Russell), and Into the Garden With Charles (Clyde Philip Wachsberger.)
If you're interested in reading these books too, comment below and we can have a nice, friendly, and super intellectual discussion about our (in my case newly-acquired) braniac statuses and the books we're reading. If you've got any suggestions, by all means offer them up. For right now, though, I'm going to go read.
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(Edit, 6/19/2012: I was just at the library and unfortunately forgot all of the names of these books. I did pick up a few more, though, including Empress, House Rules, Cotton, and Driftless. Obviously, I'm adding these to my list :3)
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