Joys of Reading Outside

Yesterday was the perfect day to take a stack–OK, stacks, of advance reading copies outside to peruse while enjoying the warm weather. Unfortunately, the neighbor’s lawn maintenance staff had other ideas and I had to wait for their leaf blowers to cease before heading outside (by the way I absolutely hate those frickin’ things). So here’s the stack that I got about halfway through before the end of the afternoon.  

The ones I’m most looking forward to reading are Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance (July), Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success (September–a friend said this is amazing), Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her (August), Gilly Macmillan’s I Know You Know (September–I loved her earlier book, What She Knew), and The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash (December, –I always love a good novel about family dysfunction). I also hear Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey is quite good but I didn’t get that one previewed.

Recent Reading

Last week I read Our House by Louise Candlish, an August release that kept me interested until it bogged down about halfway through the book. You can read my thorough review here. A newly released thriller that did keep me interested was The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy. It wasn’t perfect (the characters weren’t quite as developed as I would have liked) but it kept me engrossed the entire time I read it.

Fans of cozy mysteries set in Oregon will enjoy Ellie Alexander’s clever Bakeshop Mysteries set in Ashland but be prepared to throw your diet out the window. Ellie (also known as Kate E. Dyer-Seeley, author of two other series set in Portland) incorporates not only the day-to-day business of running the pastry shop, Torte, but also has fun with the Shakespearean atmosphere of Ashland. Till Death Do Us Tart is the 8th in the series and as is my usual advice, start at the beginning with the first in the series, Meet Your Baker. Yummy recipes are included.

I’m a huge fan of travel guides and read just about any I can find if it pertains to where I plan on traveling. A new guide for the Southwest has just been released titled RoadTrip America’s Arizona and New Mexico: 25 Scenic Side Trips. If you plan on vacationing down south, do yourself a favor and buy this guide to take along.

My Reading Life

My next blog post will be my reading life story. I thought it would be fun to chronicle the development of my love of books.

So what have you been reading?