Great Summer Books
 

Schools almost out and I'm ready to start my summer reading. Anyone have any great suggestions for books you can't put down? Someone told me that The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls got good reviews.

Some of my past summer reading favorites...

Cane River
Poisonwood Bible
The Good Earth
Cry the Beloved Country

The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.

Midnight in Peking
The Girls of Atomic City

Both are historical non-fiction.

I just finished Dan Brown's latest, Inferno. I liked his other ones better but this was still pretty good!

The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher

The Slap- Christos Tsiolkas

Faithful Place - Tana French

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles - Dominick Dunne - one of my favorites

Blood and Orchids - Norman Katkov - May be hard to find, but a great story.

Just read it, loved it!



The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada comes out the 4th of June, definitely reading that

Mine, too!

I recommend:

"The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
"New Miss India" by Bharati Mukherjee
"The Pilot's Wife" by Anita Shreve
"My Enemy's Cradle" by Sara Young
"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn

I love all of Dan Brown's books; I can't wait to read Inferno. Killarney Rose, I love all of Bharati Mukherjee's books, too. They are both great authors, but very different in content and style.

Written in My Own Heart's Blood (the next in the series) is coming out in December...I so can't wait....


Caution for those picking this up....these books are thick and dense....but a great story!

Thanks everyone--now I have my summer reading list!

I'm working on The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series, and it's probably going to take me all summer! I'm about a quarter if the way through Clash of Kings, and it's thick, heavy (but good!) reading.

Speaking of Indian authors, I love books by Anjali Banerjee and Chitra Banerjee Divarakuni. And from the Americans--Karen White's Tradd Street series!

I just finished The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. Was compared to Hunger Games and I liked it. People just published their summer picks in the most recent issue. There were a couple on there that looked good.

Yes!

shameless self promotion...:)

I liked this, too.

A really unique and imaginative book...loved it!

I'm so glad I didn't start reading the Outlander series until last year...so I didn't have to wait for any in the interim years. If you haven't read The Scottish Prisoner, she has a "preview" of Written in My Own Heart's Blood at the end. It graciously addresses some of the cliffhangers...I was especially interested in seeing what happened to Jemmy in the tunnel.

This is my top suggestion from the past couple years:

The All Souls Trilogy --
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness (loved, loved, loved this!!!)
A Shadow of Night
I thought the 3rd one would be coming out this summer, but she's still working on it. Professors. :rolleyes: She needs to give up her day job, like Diana Gabaldon did.

I love being a professor, but these two women have made my dream transition. Being a best-selling author would be my ultimate dream job.

^I to liked Discovery of Witches and was sooo mad when I got to the end and found out there was another book. BOO! I have yet to pick up the next one.

It is also very good. I'm disappointed that the next one is delayed...the last two came out in July '11 and '12, so I was really looking forward to #3 this summer.

Carnation, Check out Indu Sundaresan, too -- especially her first two, The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses. She was the first Indian author whose books I read.

ADPIEE,

I noticed you had Barbara Kingsolver on your summer reads. Two of her books that are my favorites are Prodigal Summer and The Bean Tree.
Also, another magical book is Little Bee by Chris Cleave. A very moving tale of survival.

Oooh! I will!

I like Shobwal Banti, Amulya Mulladi, and Anne Cherian too.

I just picked up the July issue of Oprah's magazine and she has an entire section devoted to summer book recommendations. I must've circled a dozen of them and am headed to my county library's website to reserve them. Some really great looking books in there!

Glad to know Killarneyrose!

Just Interested--I'll have to check out those books. The Poisonwood Bible is one of my all time favorites!

Well I read the Yonalosse Riding Camp for girls and I have mixed reviews. Interesting read since it's set in the South in during the Depression (I love historical fiction) but it had a little too many intimate details for my taste--maybe I've gotten too old *lol*


I'm in the middle of Southern Ladies and Gentleman and love it--having married into a Southern family, I can really appreciate the humor. I grew up in the south but my parents are transplants so I didn't get a true Southern upbringing. Anyway, I have to say this book is really helping me understand my inlaws :)

My husband is a huge Game of Thrones fan so we got him the whole Fire and Ice series for father's day and he's loving it.

I just bought a new one called "Striving while Black" written by Kwame.

Okay so I just read a book that may become my new all-time favorite. It's called Farthing by Jo Walton, and it's a murder mystery set in an alternate postwar England that made peace with Hitler and is slowly marching in fascism. It is so, so fascinating, both as a mystery and also as an alternate history book (which may be my favorite genre, aside from post-apocalyptic dystopias). Farthing is the first of three novels, which are currently being reprinted. The first two are out, and the third will be reprinted in September (but you should still be able to get the original at the library). Can't recommend enough!

The author mentions Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers as influences, and both also make great summer reading, if you like British mysteries!

For those of you who like lighthearted biographies, check out Jerremy Fine's "Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wanabee Princess". It's a frothy, fun read plus the author is a Delta Gamma!

I just finished reading "Astronaut Wives" and it was absolutely fascinating! Not a dry, musty biography but extremely readable.

Oh, and it turns out Neil Armstrong's mom was a Delta Zeta so our Badge actually IS on the moon!



;) Just kidding about that last part

I'm usually reading two books at a time (depending on where I am). Right now, they are Passing Strange by Martha A. Sandweiss ("A gilded age tale of love and deception across the color line") and Echoes by Maeve Binchy. This is the first summer without a new Maeve Binchy book to read and it's rather disquieting for me!

As an aside, I wish that the NPC & NIC would send one of EVERY sorority and fraternity pin to the moon, so this nonsense would stop! :p Of course, then it would be "the only platinum opal and diamond encrusted ABC pin is on the moon..."!

I just read Danielle Trussoni's Angelology (2010). It was really good; kind of like a Dan Brown book only with angels as the subject. She just came out with its sequel, Angelopolis, which is getting good reviews so I have to read it, too.