Summer Reading Report: Only 16 books

I always have this fantasy that summer is a relaxed time with space for reading.  I am hilariously wrong.  I read only 16 books over the summer, and ten of them were for my blog.  I won’t list the blog books because I’ve already talked about them on my fitness blog.

The disproportionate amount of nonfiction for blogging apparently sent me running to lighter fare in the remaining time.  I read two children’s/YA books, both the next in a series.  Terry Pratchett’s I Shall Wear Midnight was as funny and wonderful as the rest of the Wee Free Men series.  I am not sure how it is that I got as old as I did without finding Terry Pratchett, but at least now I have a lot of good books to look forward to reading.

I have said before that Rick Riordan writes more sentences that I wish I had written than most writers.  The Dark Prophesy is another great entry in his body of work.  Riordan always makes me laugh out loud and I feel nourished by the way he tells good stories about how we find authenticity and do right things.

I read three more of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher mysteries, Raisins and Almonds, Death Before Wicket, and Murder in Montparnasse.  Nothing is more soothing to the soul than a murder mystery.

Finally, I read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.  I was nervous about it because it is one of Brent’s favorite books and my previous Heinlein experience was not entirely positive.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it an interesting story with some compelling characters.  I deeply dislike the way Heinlein writes women (but at least there were no swimming pools in this book…); some of this can be attributed to being a man of his time.  In that vein, I am often amused when reading older science fiction about what the writers get right about the future and what they don’t; we can colonize the moon, but phones are still landlines with cords.  Without providing spoilers, I will say I did not like one component of the end of the story.  Overall, worth reading.

In hope that fall brings more time to read!