What's on YOUR summer reading list?

by Roger Sutton
Jul 12, 2012 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
Lolly has designed a beautiful PDF of our annual summer reading list--please download and distribute as you will. I hasten to add that this is the good kind of s.r.l., one designed for pleasure reading, not to Improve you.

I'm currently shuttling between (among?) Anna Karenina, William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea, and Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (on audio). They're all great and each a relief from the others. Gone Girl is driving me slightly crazy because it involves a fictional children's book series that was allegedly wildly popular, but descriptions of and quotes from the "Amazing Amy" series make it sound like it would have been out of touch forty years ago, much less today. Maybe this will be explained in the end, because Flynn is an awfully cunning writer and otherwise sharply observant. What are YOU reading?
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Jeanette Larson

I'm also reading Gone Girl and thought the same about Amazing Amy. Also finished reading Kill You Twice by Chelsea Cain. I tend to read a lot of murder mysteries during the summer.

Posted : Jul 17, 2012 08:29

Elissa

I'm most of the way through the somewhat trashy and entirely entertaining The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin ("If you like Downton Abbey..."). Said heiress is named Cora, and so far she's run into a Lady Sybil and a footman named Thomas (no relation to the Crawleys :) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/books/the-american-heiress-by-daisy-goodwin-review.html

Posted : Jul 17, 2012 01:22

Lynn Van Auken

For my MCBA reading so far, I listened to and thoroughly enjoyed Frances O'Roark Dowell's Falling In, but couldn't get past the first two recorded chapters of The Sixty-Eight Rooms. I joined a book club after a 25 year hiatus and reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (was Johnny Nolan gay?) and am now about half way through The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. So far, so good, but I could do without the "If we'd only known . . . " reflective bits that end so many chapters.

Posted : Jul 16, 2012 09:42

Heather Villa

I have an admission. I'm reading Esperanza Rising, beautifully written by Pam Munoz. Even though the book belongs to my child, I'm savoring my "summer" book...along with others.

Posted : Jul 16, 2012 03:50

LaurieA-B

It's been my experience that people who are otherwise intelligent and sharply observant can be extremely clueless about the current state of children's literature. Summer reading! Traveling right now in Tokyo: reading a battered 1980s copy of Shogun I bought in a used bookstore at home in the U.S. and a brand new copy of Heart of a Samurai that I bought at Kinokuniya here in in Japan. (The salesclerks wrap paperbacks in a brown paper dust cover!) When I get home, I plan to read the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I read Cordelia's Honor earlier this year, and decided that it was a series MADE for summer reading. I am super excited to read Liar & Spy in August. Oh, and I highly recommend reading all four of Megan Whalen Turner's Thief books, in a row; that was my summer reading last year and it was GREAT.

Posted : Jul 14, 2012 08:52

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