Summer Reading

As I have professed in a previous blog, I am a person who loves to read, and summer is one of my favorite times of the year to engage in reading. What I most enjoy about summer reading, isn’t the typical sitting on the beach reading a romance novel, because, unfortunately I don’t have the blessing of living on the lake like so many of our readers in Oakland County. I enjoy reading time in the evening at my home on a chair on my front porch. Summer officially starts on Tuesday, so I thought I would post my list of books I would like to read this summer and take you suggestions for any other books of interest.

Djibouti: A Novel
By: Elmore Leonard
Leonard is one of my favorite authors, and he is one of Detroit’s most famous and prolific writers. He writes mostly crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have become movies such as Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, and 3:10 to Yuma. I had the opportunity to meet him and photograph him this past fall as he was putting the finishing touches on this book. Leonard showed me a mock-up of the cover.

Bossy Pants
By: Tina Fey
This is by comedian Tina Fey, a Saturday Night Live writer and 30 Rock star. It is bound to be pure comedy, with stories taken from her life. My sister recently read this book and raved about how funny and easy to read it was. I am always game for a good laugh.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
By: Stephen J. Dubner
Last year I read the preceding book to this, Freakanomics and found it very interesting to read. I wish I had had someone to read it with, because I found many of the topics so interesting that I wanted to discuss them after. This second book has just come out in paperback. Freakanomics is an exploration of economics and cultural phenomenon, and how seemingly completely unrelated trends, may in fact have bearing on one another. It’s not a typical college ECON-like textbook, more like an interesting and sometimes eye opening slice of trivia.

Role Models
By: John Waters
John Waters is a filmmaker of such cult movies as Crybaby, the original Hairspray movie starring Riki Lake, and Cecil B. Demented. I am a fan or his movies, and find him to be an interesting creative person. In this book he talks about those who influences him.

American Gods
By: Neil Gaiman.
This is the only book I have not read by this fiction author who writes short stories, novels, and graphic novels of a science fiction and urban fantasy mix. His book Neverwhere is one of my favorite books. The tenth anniversary edition of this book comes out on Tuesday.