summer reading

Summer is for reading and running, but mostly for reading.

May 21

No Safe Place by Deborah Ellis - This was an impulse library book that looked good, and it delivered. Its main characters are teen migrants trying to escape their home countries. Powerful.

The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt by Stephanie Morrill - I've been meaning to read this trilogy since I discovered Stephanie's very congenial blog for young writers a while ago. It's fun yet tragic, very twisty, and a fabulous summer read.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - I first heard about this author when my brother brought home Blink from school last year. I like how he writes about stuff I always wondered about but really never understood.

A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle - Another impulse library book, I liked the cover. I'm 100 or so pages into it, and just discovered on GoodReads that it's the third book in a series. That would explain the heavy emphasis on the past that really drew me in - until now, I thought it was just slower and more ponderous than any other YA novel I've ever read! Literary blonde moment....

Not in the photo:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - This novel is intriguing and subtle. It also has a splendid cover! Erin Morgernstern is a smashing writer, and her plot here is shady and graceful.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Ahh! After three years, I finished it! That was last week, but I'm still partying. It was probably the most breathtaking thing I have ever read. Victor Hugo has some crazy-good things to say, and I barely noticed that the plot was absent for 100-page intervals while he sounded off on social problems of the day. I really recommend Julie Rose's translation. Ohh, and have you had that great moment of listening to a song while reading a book and having them go together perfectly? That was me on the last chapter with Christina Perri.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Seeing the movie trailer resparked my interest in this one. I forgot how much I like how this guy writes: "And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees ... I had the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." LOVE.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway - This feeds my Paris fetish.  

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Follow me on GoodReads to track my progress with these! What are you reading this summer?