Summer Reading List Update

Yes, I know, you were probably expecting a gardening update by this point, but I've yet to take pictures of my garden this weekend, so that will have to wait until tomorrow, I'm afraid. Until then, here's an update on my summer reading plans.

Before summer had technically even begun, I'd started my summer reading list. I jumped in with a novella by American author Nathanael West called Miss Lonelyhearts. Lonelyhearts chronicles the life of a man employed at a local paper writing the titular advice column. The book is a satire of 1920s mores and values and offers some interesting thoughts on religion and Man's need for a Savior. This book was recommended to me by my fellow teacher David Trujillo and was definitely a book that made me want to find other books to read!

After Miss Lonelyhearts, I found myself wandering into the world of The Stranger by French author Albert Camus (pronounced al-BEAR ca-MOO) on recommendation by another fellow teacher, Kyle Hopkins. In The Stranger, Camus plays an existential game with his reader as he tells the story of a man who finds himself, amid his mother's funeral and a decision to marry, in the middle of a murder trial. Camus places his reader directly in the place of the man and asks that we place ourselves squarely in his shoes. A very compelling read.

Currently, I am reading (on recommendation from my good friend and literary goddess, Mandie Gossage, who has promised to read it alongside me) Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Granted, this was an Oprah Book Club pick, but rest assured, that is NOT the reason I'm reading it! I enjoyed the film based on McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, so I decided picking up this book might be a good move. So far, getting into McCarthy's prose is taking some getting used to - the man uses no quotation marks to delineate characters speaking and uses apostraphes sparingly, if at all. Still, there is a poetry in his prose that I find both compelling and beautiful. I look forward to finishing this one up!

Now, you might notice that none of the above books appeared on the summer reading list I posted here back in April. Well, presuming that I finish The Road in timely fashion, I'll be picking up three other books that did appear on my list. They are:

• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (on recommendation from fellow teachers David Trujillo and Nanci Slagle)
• And, if I have time, Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor (on recommendation from David Trujillo and Mandie Gossage)

If I can get through all of those in the next two months, maybe I'll look at picking up something else... but I'll have to get through all of those first!

Stay tuned! Garden update tomorrow!