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20 Books of Summer – 20 Books Around the Corner
Cathy at 746 Books launches her yearly challenge of 20 Books of Summer. The title is self-explanatory: Read 20 books in June, July and August.
Twenty books in three months is a lot for me. I usually manage to read a book per week but I’m willing to try this year since I’m working remotely until the end of August and will save the time and fatigue of commuting to work. I might make it. Now to the fun part: book picking!
I’m already committed to reading with my Book Club and to a Read The West readalong with my sister-in-law. That’s five books. How to choose the fifteen others?
Thanks to a pesky virus, my trip to Montana and Wyoming is cancelled and I’m still grieving this missed opportunity. (Rich white girl problem, I know) So I decided that 20 Books of Summer would be a celebration of the ghosts of trips past, the ghost of the missed trip and the ghost of the upcoming trip to France. I’ll read books related to these summers. If I know where I bought the book, I’ll mention it, as a friendly hello to independent bookstores who have to survive the tempest of this worldwide lockdown.
*Drum roll*
Here are my twenty choices
Book Club choices.
- Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski
- Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Read-the-West-With-Sister-In-Law choices
- Montana: The Lost Get-Back Boogie by James Lee Burke
- Cathedral by Raymond Carver
- Montana: Death and the Good Life by Richard Hugo
Ghost of Trips Past
- Québec: Therese, Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel by Michel Tremblay (Québec City)
- Sicily: Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
- Spain: Nada by Carmen Laforêt
- Australia: Blood by Tony Birch (Readings, Melbourne)
- Portugal: Lisbon’s Poets (Bertrand, Lisbon)
- UK: Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (London)
- Denmark: The Elephant Keepers’ Children by Peter Høeg (Copenhagen)
- Hungary: The Charmed Life of Kázmér Rezeda by Gyula Krúdy (Budapest)
- USA: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (City Light Bookstore, San Francisco)
Ghost of the Missed Trip
- Wyoming: An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Wyoming: The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson
- Montana: A Job You Mostly Won’t Know How To Do by Pete Fromm
Ghost of Upcoming Trip to France
- Who You Think I Am by Camille Laurens
And, last but not least, a bridge between the three Ghost Trips, between France and the USA
- Letter to Jimmy by Alain Mabanckou, a letter to James Baldwin.
I’m happy with my list: a mix of lit fiction, short-stories, poetry, non-fiction and crime. Some in English, some in French.
I’m not sure I’ll have time to read all these books but I had a lot of fun making up the list. It’s also a good way to push myself to read more from my TBR. I know I’ll buy new books anyway, we need to support our independent bookstores, and I’ve decided to reallocate to book buying all the toll money saved up with homeworking. A perfectly good excuse to indulge in a book buying spree.
Will you participate to Cathy’s challenge too?
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