Well, summer is here and it’s hello to long afternoons watching my kids frolic in the sun while I attempt to make a dent in my Amazon wish list. I try not to make all my summer reading fluffy, though a cotton-candy quality book or five somehow mysteriously make it into my bag. So here are a few I have recently read or am in the process of reading. Hope you can find a place in the sun and enjoy.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: I don’t actually enjoy gruesome books and I can’t remember exactly what compelled me to pick up this one. Perhaps I made the mistake of perusing one of those “classics you should read if you want to be evenly nominally acknowledged as a reader” lists. I can’t tell you how many books I have abandoned in despair after guilting myself into beginning them. Not so with this one, however. Dracula is great book about the struggle between good and evil. Twilight may have it beat in the love story category, but Dracula wins hands down in every other category.
Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges: This is the book chosen by the women I lounge about with at the lake. While I haven’t gotten far, it comes highly recommended and promises to be convicting and edifying.
The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald: I got this one to read to the kids but have selfishly read them to myself instead. They are perfect summer reading—substantive, touching, and easy to get into. Any fan of MacDonald’s novels will enjoy this collection of short stories.
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: This is my current read and I must confess I am mostly reading it because I saw the movie a long time ago and hate myself for not taking the high road and reading the book first. Another bending of the knees to the intellectuals, I suppose, but even if they don’t know it all they do seem to know a good book when they read one, and this is no exception.
The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan: Our oldest son has recently discovered a passion for the Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian series. I nearly fell to the floor dead when I came to his room one morning to muscle him out of bed and found him reading—voluntarily! In an attempt to keep it going and stay connected with my kid, I am reading the first book in Riordan’s new series. Perhaps my son is just supplying a handy excuse for reading Juvenile literature, but it’s an enjoyable book and who doesn’t need a refresher course in their Egyptology?
Steve Cowan
I couldn’t agree more with you about Dracula. It’s a great book, and it’s also downright scary (especially when I read it as a 13-year old–way too young, I know!). I wouldn’t open my bedroom window at night for months, even through the hot summer!