In the halcyon days of my youth, my local library provided a summer reading program (I think it still does). I read somewhere that 95% of libraries now provide a summer reading program.
I’m not sure how they track the books the kids read nowadays, but back in my day you would go to the library in June to pick up a sheet of paper and then check out some books. When you finished reading the books, you listed the books you read on the sheet and then you took the sheet with you to the library so the librarian could place a stamp marking the books as being accomplished. I seem to remember that if you read so many books then you got some kind of prize, and the more books you read the prizes got better.
Personally, I didn’t care about the crappy prizes. It was the chance to read the books that I wanted to read, not what teachers dictated must be read, that motivated me. Let me tell you, I read a lot during the summer. My favorite genres included histories, mysteries, ghost stories, sports, animals, pirates, science fiction and space. While the children’s section of my little library wasn’t huge, it wasn’t tiny either. I suspect I made a pretty good dent in their inventory.
So why did I bother to keep track if I didn’t care about earning rewards? I’ll explain, but let me do some personal exposition first.
I don’t want to leave you, dear reader, with the impression that I was a young bookworm who spent his summers with his nose stuck deep in the pages of books. Oh no, me and the rest of the Lima Street Gang (that’s what we called our little group of youthful miscreants) and its affiliates practically lived outside during the summer months. When we weren’t doing chores, we spent our days at the swimming pool, going on long bicycle rides, playing games of streetball, climbing trees, trying to kill each other with lawn darts (remember those?), waging dirt clod wars, playing hide and go seek and so forth.
I used to return home in the evening and I would be so filthy that my mother would make me take a bath right after dinner, even if it wasn’t bath night. I am proud to admit that often I often turned the bathwater a grayish-brown color from all the dirt and grime.
Throw in a two or three week cross-country camping trip in August with my folks, and you can see I had a very active summer life. Yet I was still able to find the time to read numerous books every summer. I would review my reading list when summer vacation was nearing its end, and be amazed at how many books I was able to finish. That is why I kept track.
Like my younger self, I am still not much into reading lists. My selection of reading material is still determined on where my interests lead me. This summer is a little bit unusual, however. There are several new releases coming out this summer that are making me positively giddy with anticipation. I also have a couple of books that I have been meaning to read for some time now, and I figure I’ll read them while I wait for the new releases to hit the shelves. It promises to be an interesting summer of reading.
So, in no particular order, I present to you my 2020 Summer Reading Program :
The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell: I am a big fan of Henry Mitchell, the late garden columnist for the Washington Post. If fact, his One Man’s Garden is listed on my Book page as one of the 30 books I would want with me on a deserted island. When Mr. Mitchell delves into the human foibles of gardeners, his writing positively sparkles.
When he starts going into great detail on specific plants, his writing can become tedious. That’s the problem with putting newspaper columns in a book format: such details can be helpful when reading a column in a weekly format, but it can be eye glazing when reading chapters of it in one sitting. This is the book I am currently reading.
Pilgrim Spokes by Neil M. Hanson: part two of Mr. Hanson’s ride across America by bicycle (to see my review of his first book, Pilgrim Wheels, click here: https://www.mrvintageman.com/book-review-pilgrim-wheels/). Pilgrim Spokes picks up where Mr. Hanson left off in his last book and takes him from the middle of Kansas to the East coast.
Dread Empire’s Fall: The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams: the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy was released waayy back in the very early 2000s. An enjoyable and fun space opera. It was by pure chance that I recently discovered that Mr. Williams has started a new trilogy set in the Dread Empire universe, and that the first book had already been released in 2018. The second book is set for release later this year. I have spent the last couple of weeks re-reading the original trilogy to reacquainted with the characters and story lines.
Peace Talks by Jim Butcher: it has been six years since the release Skin Game, the 15th book in the Harry Dresden urban fantasy series. Talk about literary blue balls! Jim Butcher appears to be trying to make it up to his fans for the long delay; Peace Talks (book 16) is due out in mid-July and Battle Ground (book 17) is slated for release in late September (guess I’ll put that one on my autumn reading program list). Peace Talks is THE big reading event for me this summer.
Home Ground: A Gardener’s Miscellany by Allen Lacy: my favorite garden book is The Garden in Autumn by Allen Lacy. Outstanding book in my humble opinion. Interestingly, I have never read any of Mr. Lacy’s other books, and I’ve decided it’s high time I did so. I recently purchased a used copy of Home Ground from Amazon. It should be here in a few days. This book was published in 1981, and I think it will be interesting to see how well it has aged.
Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 by Ian W. Toll: this is another big event on my reading calendar. Ian Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy has done for the Pacific War what Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy did for the North African/Italian/Western Europe theaters. The Pacific War Trilogy is a meticulous and engrossing look at the people and events of the WW2 Pacific theater of operations. Twilight of the Gods is scheduled to be published on Sept 1. Ian Toll’s books are very weighty tomes, and I have suspicion that reading Twilight is going to bleed over into fall.
***Destroyer of Worlds (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #3 by Larry Correia: the Sage of the Forgotten Warrior is a entertaining sword and sorcery epic. The series tells the story of Ashok Vadal, who as a child was twisted by magic into becoming an nearly unstoppable warrior, driven by honor and duty but incapable of feeling fear or remorse. Destroyer of Worlds is also scheduled to come out in early September.
So, that is what I have planned for my summer reading program. I suppose that if I finish them all I should reward myself some sort of crappy prize. But what?
How about you? What books are going to be on your summer reading program?
