Reading Lists for July (Book Post)

There are so many "must read for summer!" book lists out. Give me another week or two, and I'll give you my own, complete with book reviews. But in the meantime, I found some good suggestions just this morning (and a number of books that I've read this summer already) here:

Flipboard's 2014 Beach Reads


Oh! What's on my Summer Reading List, you ask? Well, it changes all the time, and there are really two lists: a school related list, and a just for fun list. But right now, the lists look something like this:


Just for Fun Reading:
(top ten)

  1. The Fever by Megan Abbott (reading now)
  2. What is Visible by Kimberly Elkins  (reading now)
  3. The Expedition to the Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenstrom 
  4. The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert BLECH
  5. The Noble Hustle by Colson Whitehead
  6. Shining Through by Susan Isaacs
  7. The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil
  8. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
  9. A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
  10. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
    AND...The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness (at the end of the list because it won't be released until 7/24 but I'll be dropping everything and reading that one the moment it arrives on my Kindle!)



School Reading:
(top ten)

  1. Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton (reading now)
  2. Syria's Uprising and the Fracturing of the Levant by Emile Hokayem (reading now)
  3. Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War, and Hope in a Shattered State by Mary Jane Harper (reading now)
  4. Toppling Qaddafi: Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention by Christopher Chivvis (reading now)
  5. My Accidental Jihad by Krista Bremer
  6. We Meant Well by Peter Van Buren
  7. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
  8. The Weight of a Mustard Seed by Wendell Steavenson
  9. The Wrong Enemy by Carlotta Gall 
  10. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
So there you have it. A little peek inside my reading brain. What are you reading right now?

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 2, 2014 at 9:48 AM

    What did you think of Yellow Birds? I read it after a CU student, a veteran who served in Afghanistan and spoke to my War and Society classes last semester, recommended it to me. I liked it but I didn't love it. Psychologically brilliant, but not great literature in my mind. I think my student thought it captured the plight of the modern soldier, especially regarding PTSD.

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  2. drjJuly 2, 2014 at 10:01 AM

    I haven't read it yet. This is a list of books I'll be reading this month. But honestly, I started reading it a couple of times and just couldn't get into it. I need to read it, though, because I'm going to be teaching a seminar on the US and Iraq in the spring.
    If you're looking for a good book about returning vets, I just read and loved We Are Called to Rise by Laura Mcbride. Here's my review of it:
    https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/967391635?book_show_action=false

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