So Many Books, So Little Time

    Reading is one of the high pleasures of my life.  I was a bookworm as a child, first  waiting for the bookmobile to arrive on our street, then  losing myself in one wild adventure after  another, traveling to foreign lands and time tripping across the centuries.

     Novels, mysteries, biographies, all were enthralling to me. I sped through an entire series of biographies of famous people, all the series books, like Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames.  When I had exhausted everything I could find, I moved on to young adult books.

   I recall one story still so vivid in my mind.  It was  a novel about a boy who walked across Europe during World War ll to escape from the Nazis.  I wish I knew the title of that book.  It taught me more about the horror of World War II than any history lesson ever did.

    By the time I was twelve or thirteen, I was reading  adult novels like Gone With the Wind , Diary of Anne Frank, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird and so many others.

    Later I discovered the pleasures of non-fiction and still later, poetry.

One of the saddest moments in my life was the day I realized that I would never be able to read ALL the books in the world!

  Summer presents the best excuse to find a cool spot and bury myself in a good yarn.  When it's too hot to weed the garden or go hiking or biking, it's a perfect  day for reading.  All I need is a tall glass of herbal iced tea and  a good book and I'm ready to be transported on a mini-vacation.

 My  current book list  for this summer includes :

            * The Marriage Plot  by Jeffrey  Eugenides

            * In The Garden of  Beasts: A Tale of Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Eric Larson(currently reading)

            * Wild Blood  by Flannery O'Connor

            * The Art Of Fielding by Chad Harbach
        
            * The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
     
            * The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
      
  I also have a list of non-fiction books I'm working my way through for fun and perhaps to learn a little something.  They include:

             * In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit

             * Pilgrim at Tinker Creek  by Annie Dilliard

             * Urgings of the Heart by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon

   I'm always looking for book recommendations.  What have you read recently that you enjoyed?  What are you planning to read this summer? Is the summer a time to read mindless fluff or to tackle something challenging?  I've heard arguments for both.  Leave suggestions in the comment section at the end of this post.

Take away -  I'm planning a trip around the world this summer through the portals of my book shelves.