Summer Reading

As many blogs were reporting today (bookslut, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, and so on), the newspapers around the globe are atwitter with Summer Reading Lists. And it's not that the beautiful warm weather and long, quiet nights at the cottage don't inspire one to pick up a book that they've been meaning to read, but more that there's a certain connotation that goes along with the whole Summer Reading idea.

So when I landed up a Salon list today that was out of the ordinary, I thought to myself what does Summer Reading really mean? How is it different than Winter, Fall or Spring Reading? To me, it isn't really, but it is a time to catch up and read more, for some reason, most of which being that the television truly sucks ass this time of year.

Now I've decided I'm going to try to read as many books on this list from The Guardian as I possibly can. And watch as my 50 Book Challenge kite sways, flutters and then eventually takes a nose dive for the Earth.

What I've already read? Ahem, not as much as I should have being the one with the MA in English from U of T. Snippets of Pilgrim's Progress, all of Robinson Crusoe, Emma, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, half of Moby-Dick, Madame Bovary (yawn), Little Women, Jude the Obscure (one of my all-time favourite books), The Rainbow (I heart DH Lawrence), half of The Good Soldier, Mrs. Dalloway, A Passage to India, The Great Gatsby, As I Lay Dying, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Catcher in the Rye, half of Wise Blood, Charlotte's Web (when I was like, five), Lord of the Flies, On the Road (oh, how I love thee, Kerouac), Lolita, Things Fall Apart, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Song of Solomon, Waiting for the Barbarians, Oscar and Lucinda, and Atonement. How many is that? Maybe 20? Man, I'm in for a busy summer.