My annotated 'to read before the end of summer' list goes like this:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
I read the first chapter in June and got distracted. It is 'good' in that it won the Booker Prize for (books in the middle of the books, booker, bookest spectrum) and also in that it is historical fiction that will let me feel that I know a lot about a certain time period (Tudor England) without knowing anything, but not good in that it kept me reading. I do want to finish it though because I think it will get more exciting once Cromwell stops being a snotty little kid and starts being Cromwell.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell.
This will for sure get read because Mitchell is one of my favorite (I really want to write favoritest) authors), and the cover is red and green and yellow in a horrid way that makes me not want to have it sitting next to my bed anymore, and the only way to deal with it is to read it.
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.
Will also get read. Probably first. I have nothing bad to say about it.
A Narrative History Of the Civil War Vol. 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote.
I read the first 200 pages of this, and am nowhere near Perryville yet, but kind of want to finish it. I seem to remember deciding that even though I was a history minor I don't know anything about American History, or really anything but like, postcolonial theory, so I should read this. I instantly forget everything I read as soon as I read it, but it makes me feel kind of like a good American to read it, and especially like a good American when I don't get caught in in questioning the lack of footnotes.
To be honest, the last book I finished (yesterday) was the Time Traveller's Wife, which I hadn't intended to read, but picked up while waiting for a friend, and then happened to find lying around my house later. I couldn't put it down, which doesn't mean it is great literature, but means probably you will enjoy it if you read it if you are a woman or embrace the feminine.
Luckily I am going on a weeklong vacation to La Jolla, CA next week, famous for their beach, and their beach, and their beach. A normal person would be excited about reading on the beach, but I get second degree burns just thinking about sitting on the sand, so I use my beach time for swimming, and my sitting in bourgie coffee shops time for reading.
