summer reading | Kimberly Sears

There is something so decadent about summer reading. For all the years I was a student, summer was the only time I could read whatever I wanted without the guilt of homework and textbook reading hanging over me. (I still devoured books all during the school year, just in stolen hours in the middle of the night and with a lot more guilt.)

Here is some of the fun stuff I’ve read this summer:

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. Thank you, Samantha, for this excellent recommendation. The Mediterranean world in Roman times really comes alive in this book. It made me see the lives of the early Christians in ways I had never considered.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Who hasn’t read TFiOS this summer? If you haven’t, you really should. It’s a quick read; I finished it in about two hours from the time I cracked open the cover. Not at all sappy or sentimental, the voice is sarcastic and canny and spot-on. I can promise that you will laugh out loud (like a hyena) and you will cry (violently, like a crazy person).

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I gave this Pulitzer Prize winner my endorsement here.

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman and Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska. Somehow I missed these two Newbery Medal-winners growing up. The whole time I was reading The Whipping Boy I kept thinking about how it would be the perfect entertaining read-aloud for my younger siblings (I think I’ll do that soon). And Shadow of a Bull reminded me of the summer I was working in Spain and got to see a bullfight in the Plaza de Toros in Madrid.

The Last Olympian, The Lost Hero, and The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. My little brother, who just turned ten, introduced me to Rick Riordan’s books, including the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, The Heroes of Olympus Series, and the Kane Chronicles. He and I have been having so much fun reading all of them and getting geeked out on them together. The adventures are epic and the writing style is casual, conversational, and funny. Most of all I love how they’re getting kids excited about Greek and Egyptian mythology. (When I was a kid I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and any other mythology book I could get my hands on over and over again, so that is a cause I can get on board with!)

The Green Smoothies Diet by Robyn Openshaw. I read six or seven books on green smoothies while I was doing research for an eBook I wrote for a client, and this one stands out as the best. I learned lots of cool stuff about the nutritional contents of greens.

Isabel the Queen: Life and Times by Peggy K. Liss and A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson and Best-Loved Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. More research for my secret project! The more Isabel biographies I read, the more I am impressed with her strength. She commanded a nation, generaled a war, and founded an empire. She endured the infidelity of her husband, the stillbirths of two of her seven children, and the deaths of her heirs and children Juan and Isabella, and still retained her dignity and a sincere, devout faith in God.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. This book (along with The Poisonwood Bible) should be required reading for everyone who lives, eats food, and breathes air on planet Earth. One of these times I’ll have to dedicate an entire post to it; she articulates so engagingly and passionately the beliefs I share about food and the way it should be grown, harvested, distributed, eaten, and loved.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel has been on my reading list for a decade and I’m finally getting around to it! I’ll let you know what my verdict is when I finish.

…

Have you guys read any of these books? Did you like them? Dislike them?

What books are on your summer reading list? What books have you read and enjoyed lately?

Does anyone beside me keep a “to-read” list to keep track of book recommendations and books you’re meaning to read? What books are on your to-read list? And does anyone have any recommendations for me?

“There came a day when summer was ended and the sky in the early morning was clear and cold and blue as sea water and a clean autumn wind blew hard over the land, and Wang Lung woke as from a sleep. He went to the door of his house and he looked over his field. And he saw that the waters had receded and the land lay shining under the dry cold wind and under the ardent sun.

“Then a voice cried out in him, a voice deeper than love cried out in him for his land. And he heard it above every other voice in his life and he tore off the long robe he wore and stripped off his velvet shoes and his white stockings and he rolled his trousers to his knees and he stood forth robust and eager and he shouted,

“‘Where is he hoe and where the plow? And where is the seed for the wheat planting? Come, Ching, my friend–come–call the men–I go out to the land!'”

…
I can’t believe I lived twenty-five years on this planet without reading this gorgeous (and heartbreaking) book. Pearl Buck’s prose reads like poetry, and the story of one humble Chinese farmer and his self-sacrificing wife is as compulsively readable as it is unforgettable. Like Cry, the Beloved Country and The Grapes of Wrath, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth is at once the saga of an individual family and an astute portrait of an entire people.

If you haven’t read it, be sure to put it on your summer reading list! And be sure to tell me your recommendations for mine.