Summer Reading!

I came home from another stressful day at the law office and found this post on caribousmom. Hooray for summer! The following are my (and my family members') recommended summer reads. For when you're out on the porch breathing in the fresh-cut grass. Inside as the thunderstorm rages. Lazying at the beach. On the lake in a pontoon boat with a swim ladder and plenty of space to lay in the sun.

To me, a summer read should be like summer: light (in feeling, if not content) and lyrical; or, pure fantasy and entertainment.

Katherine Applegate, Tan Lines - This one is from my 13-year-old sister. It's a fluffy YA book, full of teen romance and fun on the beach.

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron - A classic from the fourteenth century as ribald as any dopey Adam Sandler flick. A large collection of short stories celebrating the earthiness, irreverance, and slapstick comedy of life.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening - Yes, it has a tragic ending, but before then, it's a beautiful depiction of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, especially the opening chapters set on the Louisiana shore.

Caroline Cooney, Both Sides of Time - Time-traveling YA romance set among the 1990s teen beach scene and the restrained but decadant Victorian upper class in their ostentatious summer homes. (The sequel Out of Time is set in the urban winter.)

Marguerite Duras, The Sailor from Gibraltar - I've been all over the place recommending this one. At story of love, a glamorous yacht on the Mediterranean, and mysterious woman drifting port to port, forever searching for her sailor from Gibraltar.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, Babylon Revisited (short stories) - The master of lyricism and scene-setting himself.

Jan Karon, The Mitford Years series - This one is from my mother. Personally, I could never get into this series (too "Thomas Kinkade" for me) but if you're looking for gentle, peaceful stories of small-town life, these are the books for you.

Esther Tusquets, The Same Sea as Every Summer - A powerfully erotic tale set in post-Franco Spain that reads like poetry set to prose.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando - An upbeat metaphysical jaunt through four hundred years of English history, as seen through the eyes of one undying character.

And last but not least. . .

Star Trek books! (Specifically, David Mack's Destiny trilogy, about the mother of all Borg invasions. Hell yes.)

Also check out this meme I did awhile ago.