Back to school is breathing down our necks but I just finished updating my bibliography and I have books on the brain so I’m talking about summer reading.
Summer is my favorite time to read. As a kid, I would max out my library card (five books from our tiny storefront library with the kids’ section in the basement), return home, and promptly sit down to read. This was the nineties, so not only were there winners of our summer reading club, the librarians marked each kid’s total reads on a dragon’s back in the program room for all to see. Guess who was the tippy tip of the dragon’s tail? (Side note for later generations: next time you wonder what’s wrong with Millennials, it’s that. All of it.)
I still love going to the library the week after school lets out, piling up every title that catches my eye, and taking home a heavy stack of adventures.
Because that’s what I’m really here for. Adventure, misadventure, mystery, and magic. Family dramas, internal explorations…ma’am, I have my own internal monologue running 24/7, you can try to shoehorn yours in too, but good luck, and if at least one of the demons you’re slaying is not external, not going to lie, I’m not overly invested in the outcome.
Sea monsters possessed by power-mad sorcerers? Say less, I’m clearing my calendar.
Here’s what I’m reading this summer.
Fast-paced fantasy: Hafsah Faizal has ruined me with A Tempest of Tea, and ever since I have been jonesing on fast, fun fantasies with impeccably built worlds. Enter Killing Spell and Moss’d in Space.
The Catalog Incident: I was on the library website, looking for books about summer for my book club (yes, I also have a book club, no, it’s not the only one I’m in). Things escalated rather quickly and I ended up with twelve holds that all came in at the same time. Oops. There were several winners from that haul, notably The Monsters We Defy and Upright Women Wanted.
Books I own: I am very good at buying books that I am very excited to read and very bad about saving them until the “perfect” time. And then doing it all over again. Lucky me, I now have a shelf groaning under the weight of some really awesome reads. Pet and The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi were in there for years, and both were worth the wait.
School may be starting soon but the truly heinous heat is not leaving for months, so might as well sit inside with a good book.
Allison Ringness 