Summer Reading List

Not taking any summer classes this year has resulted in a happy phenomenon over here at MM: leisure time to read books! Usually I get a few weeks off between semesters to cram in one or two novels, but we're talking 3 and a half solid months of bookish enjoyment--oh, boy! Reading for fun means no dry library science tomes, no stodgy essays on the "librarian stereotype/archetype backlash" (yes, there's a backlash--an extremely self-conscious, overly done, "look at me: I'm a librarian and I have a tattoo and blue hair!" kind of backlash), and no ponderous journal articles extolling the scandalous hypocrisy of centralized collection development. Nope, just me and my friends Mary Todd Lincoln, Raymond Chandler, William Shatner and whomever else grabs my fickle literary attentions.

I have about another month of summer reading frivolity in which to indulge...what will I read next? Try and guess from the following list of my most recent book selections (May, 2009-current):

• Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf
  
• Post Office by Charles Bukowski
  
• The Madness of Mary Lincoln by Jason Emerson
  
• Star Trek Academy: Collision Course by William Shatner
• Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Graham-Smith
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
• Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler
• Mr. Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei

I can confidently recomend any of the above selections for anyone who is wondering (although anyone who has read my post about P&P&Zs will know that one comes with an asterisk). I'm thinking something non-fiction for my next book, but I could probably go read some fluffy novel just the same. Just don't suggest anything by Stephenie Meyer--seriously, I got my silly teeny-bopper toes wet in the shallow end of the goth swimming pool with Anne Rice back in the 90's, and I don't need to revisit that unfortunate little experiment again. All my coworkers have been trying to get me to read the Twilight series, and I am resisting that one rather obstinately (I dropped a young adult lit class last semester because I saw on the syllubus that we would have to read Eclipse. No thank you). Zombie parodies are way more sophisticated than vampire romances, readers.