What I Did on My Summer Vacation

There is nothing I love more than to curl up with a good book and so when summer arrived I was ready to read. As the school year was drawing to a close in May I began stockpiling books and magazines for summer reading. It's just pure luxury to crack open a new book, the pages still stiff, and smelling of fresh ink.

So as you can see, my reading taste ranges far and wide. I started the summer with John Adams because I had just watched the fabulous mini-series and was ashamed that I didn't know more about our second president. While reading about John, I got all curious about Thomas Jefferson and so I picked up the recent Twilight at Monticello. So I spent the first part of the summer deep into historical literature; it was about that time that I picked up McCullough's Truman, but I set it aside for later and in fact am still plodding through that one. I don't like it as much as his Adams book, but am determined to finish it.

One book I totally loved was Eugene Sledge's With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. I learned about Sledge when I watched the Ken Burns documentary The War. Sledge had a natural prose style that made you feel as if he was sitting in the room having a beer with you and telling you old war stories. It's on my re-read list!

Probably my favorite discovery this summer was the two Lalita Tademy books. She writes historical fiction about regional places like Crowley and Natchitoches. That woman is quite a storyteller and had me spellbound for a couple of weeks.

Taking a break from all the heavy stuff I got into some Dorothea Benton Frank and some Anne Rivers Siddons - two very similar authors, but I think Siddons has the edge. Her prose is magical. So descriptive and beautiful sort of like Pat Conroy. Frank is more humorous than Siddons, I think.

I tried to get caught up on my mountain of New Yorker magazines that I can never stay current with. I have stacks of them and of Tin House. I'll get to them!

Right now I'm mid-way through Grisham's The Appeal (it's not summer unless you read at least one John Grisham, right?) and working through the last third of my Truman book. Determined...

My reading tastes run all over the place and I just don't GET people that hate to read. I'm all DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING?! I just don't understand it. I guess they don't get me either and to be honest, that's okay too! Even if you just read the back of the toothpaste tube, read SOMETHING every once in a while.