Summer When?

I'm going to post my summer reading list here now for Maryposa's sake even though it's quite some time until I get my summer vacation. And even then, summer doesn't come to Seattle until July 4th--or so they say. I'm going to miss Utah. So the goal this summer is to read as many books as there are weeks. I'm not sure how many weeks I get for summer break--math is hard! actually I just don't really care that much--but I think it's sixteen. So here are the sixteen books I plan to read this summer.

First up is The Iliad by Homer. I bought this book six years ago after I saw Troy which I personally didn't think was all that bad--even if there were no gods--but I never actually read the book. I have the translation by Robert Fagles along with his translations of The Odyssey and The Aeneid. Anyway, I think it's time to finally read this war epic.

Next we have Moby-Dick by Herman Melville which I bought in Portland. Harold Bloom says we don't have an American Adam, but Captain Ahab is the American Prometheus. Bloom says it's also the most negative of all American visions and that it explicitly cites The Books of Jonah and Job--perhaps I should read those first.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is next. I don't know much about it except that it's highly recommended. But I love me some fantasy every now and then. And something less heady than epics.

I heard about Low Country Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank at PLA, and it sounds like a perfect summer book. If I remember right it's about a family coming back to their Southern home after their father dies. I already have my copy reserved at the library.

The Corrections is a big fat book by Jonathan Franzen. I hope it's as good as everyone says.

My sixth book is Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. I've only read Beloved so far.

I decided to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley after reading Empire of Illusion. Chris Hedges, following Neil Postman, says Huxley's vision is much closer to our world today than Orwell's 1984.

I bought Death in Venice (and Other Stories) by Thomas Mann when the UW book store was having its sale. Sadly I've never heard of the translator. Still Venice is a very short novella which will make a nice change.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon's magnum opus, has sat plaintively on my desk for many, many weeks. My goal is to push through it this summer. Sometimes it's just so damn Dickensian.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a slim book of short stories where Marco Polo is the tale-teller and Kublai Khan is his audience.

Many people have told me that I need to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, so why not this summer?

I started reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia last summer, and intermittently over the school year, maybe I can finish it this summer. It's fascinating but very long.

I will also be reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. This will go nicely with Brave New World. and harshly critique my TV habits.

I have three more non-fiction books, but only two more slots. They are Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm, Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal, and American Fascists by Chris Hedges. I guess it will depend on what I feel like.

I also have a library hold on Judith Jones's cookbook The Pleasures of Cooking for One. I don't know if it will come this summer or after school starts again, but I look forward to cooking through it (it's not that long).