Monday, July 13, 2009

Summer reading racket

I keep perusing all these summer reading lists, scouring for my next favorite story...for recommendations for my Chicago Public Library hold list.

These lists are letting me down.

If a list tells me one more time that the Twilight series, My Sister's Keeper or The Time Traveler's Wife are 'must reads' I am going to punch someone in the face.

I mean, am I asking too much from contemporary literature?

Internet, what are you reading right now? And if you say Lauren Conrad's 'book', I might start to cry.

...

I just finished an hilariously light novel, Schooled, about a first-year teacher who gets sucked into shenanigans at a highfalutin private school in Manhattan. It was a very enjoyable, one sit read. That was the first half of the weekend. Now, I am devouring The Thirteenth Tale, a mysterious and meandering tale about truth, past secrets, family and the craft of writing.

I thought perhaps this would be my next esoteric story find until I told my mom I was reading it and she was all: Oh yeah, I read that a while ago. I am old news.

In my reading pipeline is a mix of for-fun and for-future-teaching selections:
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Groves of Academe - Mary McCarthy
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

What's next? Should I delve back into classics? Steinbeck or Dickens perhaps? Or is there something amazing and new I have overlooked? Pray tell!


"Don't you think one can tell the truth much better with a story?"
Diane Setterfield

3 comments:

  1. Yes, yes! Lord of Flies! I want to take your class now.:)

    I was crippled with pains the moment my eyes rested on the Lauren Conrad sentence. Publishing is dead.

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  2. Inv G - Publishing IS dead. I think another post is due. Because think of the life changing books you have read. Were any of them published in the last 10 years? 20?

    I'm not even sure if LITERATURE is published anymore.

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  3. UGH. To dig the blade further into our backs, I just read that LC's "novel" landed on the NY Times Best Seller's List. FOR 2 WEEKS IN A ROW. Who the hell runs the NY Times now? Reality TV watching junkies with a penchant for Facebook groups and Hello Kitty key chains to accessorize their cell phones??

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