What Are You Reading This Summer?

"The 'double reading' self-portrait" by dhammza. Cool!

Seattlest's childhood summers were for three things: camping, sleeping late, and reading. The latter was the most pervasive. We borrowed stacks of ambitiously thick books at a time from the Lake Hills library--a bike ride through the greenbelt away--and we'd burrow somewhere comfortable to read for long hours. We inhaled books, goldfish crackers, and pina colada-flavored slurpees from the corner store during those summers like there was no tomorrow, because back then, it was almost like there really wasn't. At least, there wasn't a tomorrow we needed to concern ourselves terribly with--as long as we had a good book waiting.

Now that Seattlest is a responsible (ish) adult, those marathon reading sessions don't happen nearly as often. We have meetings to attend, laundry to fold; we have a job or three, damnit, and making rent money takes time. Still, reading great books is an important part of our regimen for personal well-being, and without a book in our bag, we feel a little vulnerable and ill-prepared.

All of this is to set up one of our favorite and well-used questions, a question near and dear to our heart, and the answer to which we are sincerely hoping to receive: what are you reading this summer? Have any of you read the Seattle Reads pick for 2008, Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears? How's the public library treating you? Hit us with some great titles in the comments!

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Katelyn in Arts & Events on August 19, 2008 12:30 PM

Comments [rss]

Katelyn

Believe me, everyone, I'm writing all of these titles down for reference in the near, Half-Price Books-tinged future. Thanks for all the great suggestions-- I knew I could count on our erudite and hyper-literate readers!

jordancda

Michener and more Michener. A used book store had a stack of his all for a dollar each so I bought them all. Reading the short novel "Legacy" right now.

jseattle

Sci-fi near future -- River of Gods

http://www.amazon.com/River-Gods-Ian-McDonald/dp/1591024366

So far, so good. And no sheep.

snowy

I've been on a memoir kick lately and have read The Downhill Lie by Carl Hiaasen (a short fun read), The Cactus Eaters by Dan White (interesting but a tad too long), A Walk in the Woods and Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (entertaining), and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (not really recommended; I only read it to see what the hype was about). I also was a little late to the Jhumpa Lahiri bandwagon (I loved The Namesake) so recently read her two excellent short story collections Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, both of which I highly, highly recommend.

Jack

I just finished Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke. It follows a few very different characters muddling their way through psychological operations during the Vietnam war. It won the 2007 National Book Award for fiction and rightly so.

Juanito the Bandito

Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is always a good pick me up. He has a few more books that I haven't gotten to that will be on my list this summer.

Charles Redell

After watching that preview, I gotta say that I am not going to run out and wait in line to see it. It looks like the movie skips the major themes of the book and instead makes it into some kind of dystopic vision (unintended pun) of the future. May be mildly entertaining, but doesn't seem to have the power or the poetry of the book.

jinny

Watchmen and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Both are fantastic and are quickly climbing the ranks in my list of favorites. Oh yeah, David Sedaris' new book too...When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I love that he is able to remain flawless in executing his "formula" for writing.

MvB

@Katelyn: how much do love reading about sheep farming and brutal poverty? I have to say, I enjoyed it. (But then, I grew up on a farm, and raised sheep.) He did win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955. You might like the back-and-forth between Iceland as a Christian nation and its latent paganism.

Audrey

I wouldn't get too psyched for Blindness (the movie), since the response at Cannes was rather underwhelming.

Katelyn

PS MvB, Icelandic saga -- do you recommend it?

Katelyn

Julianne Moore! Blindness sounds great, Charles.

What is it about some books that make them so forgettable? I've read John Banville's The Sea three times and I still couldn't tell you what it's about. Complete blank. I keep it around for sheer wonder at how forgettable it is (and because it's a good book, as I recall thirty pages in).

MvB

Hey, Charles, they're making a movie of Blindness. Julianne Moore is the wife. Honestly, I did not read the book thinking, This has got to be filmed!, but who knows.

Katelyn

I should have said what I'm reading! I just finished Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, and it was as beautiful and insightful as I expected. Now I'm re-reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman (see: James' Say Anything post) and dipping my toes for the third (fourth?) time into White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Thanks for the responses! Keep 'em coming, readers.

Troy, I have the same issue with libraries these days, but I'm also poor. So my strategy is to read books from the library, but if I find one that I love particularly passionately, I go buy it so I can underline and hoard to my heart's content.

Charles Redell

I'm reading Bottomfeeder by Tarvas(?) Grescoe. It's all about how to eat seafood ethically in a world where entire fisheries are collapsing and the number of fish left out there is decidedly small. It's actually a very good read and very informing as well.

I also read Immortality by Milan Kundera a few weeks ago and while I liked it while I read it, I now can't remember it all.

Just before that, I read Blindness by Jose Saramango. It's a cool story about an unnammed city in an unnammed country the entire population of which suddenly goes blind. It's very spooky, quite interesting and sets up nicely for the sort-of sequel (which I read first) called Seeing.

good question!

Kim Ruehl

i'm reading animal, vegetable, miracle by barbara kingsolver, and it has convinced me to only buy my produce from farmers markets. hurray! she's an exquisite wordsmith at whose feet i would happily bow. i'm also eager to try some of the recipes they recommend.

MvB

I just finished Independent People by Halldor Laxness. It's a sort of modern Icelandic saga. Lot of sheep farming and poverty.

Troy Morris

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I don't go to libraries because I love books too much. I never sell them either.

I lend them and people never give them back, but I cannot part with my books.

snailcabbage

David Sedarises (Sedaris'?) latest, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames." Hilarious as always, with a little dark streak. A good, quick, summer read.