A Summer Reading Sunday Six

School is out for summer – at least here in Florida.

Summer reading lists are posted. I’m lucky. Both of my step-kids like to read. Mikaela more than Jake (the younger), but both enjoy a good book.

My “now a 6th grader” has to read 3 books this summer and write a 3 to 5 paragraph summary (synopsis) of each. One must be from a “classics” list. He chose 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – one of my personal favorites, but a difficult book, nonetheless. He also had to pick one book from a list of pre-approved authors. He chose Lemony Snicket. The last book was completely his choice. He says he’s going to read the second Artemis Fowl book. Good choices. By the end of the summer, he’s counted that he’ll have read more than 1000 pages. (Can anyone say future accountant? He’s a numbers sort of kid.)

My “now a sophomore” (yikes) has to read 2 books. Her high school has changed how they approach summer reading. No classics in the summer. The classics will all be taught during the school year. The purpose of this year’s summer reading is to excite kids to read. Therefore, all students and teachers at her school in grades 10-12 will be reading The Hot Zone. This is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m so excited they chose it. She has already read one of Richard Preston’s other books – The Demon in the Freezer – as her non-fiction choice for English as a freshman. She loved it, so I have hope that she’ll like this one, too. The other required book is Ender’s Game. This has been a book required of sophomores at her school for awhile now. I’m not sure she’ll like it as well. It’s science fiction and she doesn’t have a science fiction mind. She’s more of a “relationship” book reader. However, I have every reason to believe that Ender’s Game will one day be considered a classic. It’s that good.

It is strongly recommended that the high school students choose one other book from the following list to read over the summer. I perused the list this morning and found a delightful selection of books – something for everyone from non-fiction to fiction to spiritual to fantasy to mystery. Some of my favorites are on there – Libba Bray, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Orson Scott Card.

Of course, there were no romances on the list. I won’t go there.

However, I decided to make my Sunday Six this Sunday a list of 6 books that I think they left off. These books should have been on the list, as well, making the list 256+ great reads instead of 250+.

Oh, yeah, here's the list and a link: Teenreads.com

#1 – I’m glad the school where my kids go selected a Richard Preston book. Neither the Hot Zone nor The Demon in the Freezer made the Teenreads.com list. They should have. He has a new book out called The Wild Trees. It’s at the top of my summer reading list. I love his books. Back to the Hot Zone. Here’s a bit about it from http://www.richardpreston.net/books/hz.html .

The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and in the winter of 1989, it seemed about to burn through the suburbs of Washington D.C.
At Fort Detrick's USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation's capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic "hot" virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.
The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race.

#2 – I think Watership Down by Richard Adams should have made the list. I remember being mesmerized by the book. This sums up nicely what the books is all about:

Watership Down is not a sweet fable about bunnies; it's a gritty, often frightening tale, in which characters die or become injured and these facts of life are not disguised. Hunt quoted an interview with Adams, in which Adams said of his writing style, "I derived early the idea that one must at all costs tell the truth to children, not so much about mere physical pain and fear, but about the really unanswerable things—what [writer] Thomas Hardy called 'the essential grimness of the human situation." Paradoxically, Adams chose a tale about rabbits to do just that.

#3 – Let’s also add Elizabeth Gilbert’s soul-touching memoir to the list. Eat, Pray, Love may be a novel that only adult women can really “get”, but I don’t think so. I think it has something in it that can speak to everyone.

#4 – Last summer, the book on the top of my summer reading list was Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. I loved the book because I truly felt transported to another time and place. Salon.com sums up the book better than I could. It is about “a band of intrepid historians hunt for the real-life Dracula -- and visit plenty of far-flung European locales -- in this hypnotic multigenerational mystery.”
Here’s a bit more:

Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" is a hypnotic yarn, saturated in authentic history and eerie intrigue. Kostova has a genius for evoking places without making you wade through paragraphs of description. The "fluttering hush" of the Carpathian forests, the chaotic streets of Istanbul, a cryptic ritual dance in a Bulgarian village unchanged in hundreds of years -- all impress themselves on the reader almost as vividly as actual memories. "The Historian" also imparts a sense of how real historians work (sifting through archives of ancient ledgers to find that crucial and revealing letter, etc.) and of a sizable chunk of Central Europe's ravaged past as a borderland between Christendom and the encroaching Ottoman Empire.

#5 – Um, how did Gone with the Wind not make the list?

#5 ½ -- Can we all question how none of J.K. Rowling’s books made the teenreads list? Perhaps one just assumes that they will be read. This must be the list for what to read when you’ve exhausted J.K.’s list.

#6 – Finally, I’m surprised Go Ask Alice didn’t make the list. Yes, the book is controversial, but this anonymously written book is a powerful testament to the dangers of drugs and addiction.

Check out Teenreads.com. It’s a great list for teens and adults alike.

Of course, my summer reading list contains a lot of romance, too. I’ve got some Alyssa Day, Cherry Adair, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips waiting to be read.

Happy summer reading.
Macy