I have a bad habit of saving all of my heavy reading for the summer. Don’t get me wrong — I love my summer reading list, but my brain’s happier when I keep reading throughout the year. Starting around Thanksgiving and continuing through to early March, I aimed to do exactly that. I put together a short (well, short for me) reading list.
Summer is long over, and the end of the year is looming large. Fortunately I can look back on a summer and know — despite all the long work days — that I read a hell of a lot of books.
I ended up reading all but one of the novels on my summer reading list, while adding several additional tomes. I planned to read 12 books and five graphic novels. I succeeded in reading 15 books and nine graphic novels.
It’s been largely a comic-book-free summer in Easton, Pa. thanks to Marvel’s Secret Wars. The publisher canceled all of their existing comic book titles in favor of new crossover Secret Wars books that revisited classic storylines (Civil War, Inferno, etc.) while creating a “battle world” for superhero smackdowns. I read none of it. Instead I … Read more
Begun, this summer reading list has.
The core of my summer reading list should look pretty familiar. There are new Lost Fleet and The Expanse novels, earlier volumes of which have been on my list for years. There are also new novels by some of my favorite authors — Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds, Ernest Cline — that I’m eager to read.
The comic book pile has grown large over the last few weeks, partly because I was busy with family and work, partly because I knew I’d have time to catch up during Christmas week. Topping it is Marvel’s crossover event Axis, in which the Red Skull (augmented by Charles Xavier’s brain … I kid you not) tries to take over the world.
Consider Phlebas is a sometimes thrilling, often meandering, always morally gray novel about people caught up in a galactic war. It’s antihero is Horza, a human shape changer working for the Iridans, an alien civilization of religious zealots hell bent on breaking the galactic strength of The Culture, humanity’s own star-faring civilization.
Christmas is only a few short weeks away, and although there is much and more to do with gift buying, Christmas party planning, and family visits, and The Battle of the Five armies, I have started squirreling away books for my Winter Reading List.
It’s November. Summer is long gone, and so is my summer reading list.
There were 15 books and four graphic novels on my official Summer 2014 reading list. I read 13 of the novels and five graphic novels, beating last year’s total of 11 novels and an equal number of graphic novels.
My annual vacation to Lake Champlain is still a ways off, but I’ve begun attacking my summer reading list with a vengeance. I’ve completed one book — Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold — have have launched into two more: Fractions by Ken MacLeod and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve also found one of the books on my list is caught in the Amazon/Hachette crossfire.
Summer is coming. It’s bringing with it alien worlds, starship battles, ancient mysteries, and sequels. Lots of sequels. No, I’m not talking about movies — I’m talking books, specifically my Summer Reading List for 2014.