What I read, summer 2016

Time for another book post.  I had an efficient summer of reading, finishing 38 books.  I blogged about a bunch of them already on my fitness blog, so you can peek over at recessphysicalfitness.blogspot.com if you want to know about these books:

The Boys in the Boat

Rolfing

Dirt

The End of Overeating

How Learning Works

The Art of Racing in the Rain

Our Pristine Mind

Capture

Play

Resilience

The Martian

Looking Deep

Becoming A Supple Leopard

The Emotional Life of Your Brain

(I am lazy, so I am not linking to all the books.  Y'all can go plug them into Amazon or seek them out at your local store yourselves...)

I read twelve books intended for kids.  Eight of those were the original seven Harry Potter books, plus Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  I also re-read Little Women and Little Men and a book of mostly-new-to-me short stories by Louisa May Alcott.  The amazing Rick Riordan continues his streak of books I wish I had written with his latest entry into the Percy Jackson-related universe, The Trials of Apollo.

In the sci-fi/fantasy category, I read Philip K. Dick’s Radio Free Albemuth, which I enjoyed maybe mostly because of its portrait of Berkeley.  R. Scott Bakker came out with a new book, The Great Ordeal, which made me realize I had missed the second book in the series, The White-Luck Warrior.  It had been so long since I read any of his books that I started that particular series over, by reading The Judging Eye first.  While the books are well-written, I did not ultimately enjoy them.  They felt like a series of horrible violent scenes that added up to a bleak and unhappy universe.  After visiting the House on the Rock, I felt the need to re-read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which was equally awesome the second time.  Morgan Llewellyn’s Druids was perfectly entertaining, but not a book I need to keep or read again.

I read a few mysteries.  I continue to enjoy Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher books, finishing Away with the Fairies this time around.  In my used-book buying in Wisconsin, I selected Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews, which was worth significantly more than the 99 cents I paid for it.  It was smart and hilarious, as well as clever.  Rex Stout’s Three Doors to Death came from the same batch of used books and kept me well-entertained on my flight home.

Which brings me to the regular fiction.  The Prague Cemetary was the only one of Umberto Eco’s novels I had not yet read.  It makes me sad that there will not be more of them.  It runs along the lines of Foucault’s Pendulum in that texts are created and interpreted in ways that Borges would appreciate.  No one makes a conspiracy theory like Umberto Eco.  Also, he knows pretty much everything.  I was happy to see that Don DeLillo had a new book out, Zero K.  His way with language blows my mind.  I don’t care what he is writing about; I want to read it.  This means that I enjoyed reading the book, even though it is, again, about death, this time through the lens of cryogenics.  Finally, I read Sue Monk Kidd’s historical novel The Invention of Wings about the Grimké sisters and their work in abolition and women’s rights.  It was beautifully written and inspiring.

On to fall reading!!!