Book 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.

1. Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski
2. Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Read-the-West-With-Sister-In-Law choices

3. Montana: The Lost Get-Back Boogie by James Lee Burke
4. Cathedral by Raymond Carver
5. Montana: Death and the Good Life by Richard Hugo

Ghost of Trips Past

6. Québec: Therese, Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel by Michel Tremblay (Québec City)
7. Sicily: Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
8. Spain: Nada by Carmen Laforêt
9. Australia: Blood by Tony Birch (Readings, Melbourne)
10. Portugal: Lisbon’s Poets (Bertrand, Lisbon)
11. UK: Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (London)
12. Denmark: The Elephant Keepers’ Children by Peter Høeg (Copenhagen)
13. Hungary: The Charmed Life of Kázmér Rezeda by Gyula Krúdy (Budapest)
14. USA: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (City Light Bookstore, San Francisco)

Ghost of the Missed Trip

15. Wyoming: An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg
16. The Overstory by Richard Powers
17. Wyoming: The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson
18. Montana: A Job You Mostly Won’t Know How To Do by Pete Fromm

Ghost of Upcoming Trip to France

19. 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

20. 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?