Monday, April 19, 2010

Weekend Assignment: Summer Reading

The Weekend Assignment has a new home, a blog of its very own. This week's assignment has to do with our summer reading plans...
Okay, yes, I know, it's still spring, but this is when I begin thinking about what kind of summer reading I might like to have on hand for those too-hot-to-clean days of summer. So, for this week's assignment, I want you to share with us the kind of summer reading you look forward to the most. Sci-fi? Horror? Political Thrillers? Romance? It's all good. Now, tell me more!

I've written before about my strange reading habits. I used to be a voracious reader until the Internet came along and gobbled up all of my free time. Now, it takes me much longer to get through a book, but I'll read from almost genre except romance.

My only hard and fast rule is that my next book is always completely different from what I'm reading now. To illustrate: I've been slowly (very slowly) working my way through the bibliography of Charles Dickens, and at this moment I'm about 120 pages into Great Expectations. Before that, there was (working backwards) a quick read about the history of NASCAR; The Black Ice by Michael Connelly, a police procedural thriller/mystery; Mila 18 by Leon Uris, a great piece of historical fiction; The Colorado Kid by Stephen King, an atypical King work -- more unsolved mystery than horror; and The Barrens and Others by F. Paul Wilson, a book of mostly horror short stories.

I've never really noticed any perceptible changes in my reading habits from one season to the next.  Summer, winter, spring or fall, my reading doesn't fit any sort of pattern or genre.  In the coming months, possibly during the summer, I'll try to find another Dickens book, another King book (I'm waiting for the local library to cough up a copy of Under the Dome), and anything else that strikes my fancy.  The point is that I don't know what I'm going to be reading this summer, but the weather outside probably won't play much of a factor.

5 comments:

Karen Funk Blocher said...

So you sort of rotate through a varied palette of genres and authors? Interesting approach! Is this something you've always done?

Carly said...

Hi Duane :)

I was, at one time, an avid fan of both Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but I found Koontz to be too formulated and ended up not picking up a book by either of them for a long time. I guess it was the hazard of alternating between the two! LOL. Anyway, I have wanted to read Under The Dome for a while now, so I think I will just jump right in a get it! Thanks for joining us this week!

-Carly

fdtate said...

Yeah, that's been my reading plan for quite some time now. When I finish a book I just cast around randomly for something completely different.

I've been a Stephen King since I the first book I picked up by him, Salem's Lot. Some of his stuff misses the mark, but he usually makes it up with the next one.

I was very disappointed in The Colorado Kid. He presented us with this unsolvable mystery, then refused to solve it. I thought it might have made a good jumping off point for a longer, much better book.

I was reading Dean Koontz pretty avidly for a while, but lost interest a few years back.

Mike said...

Under the Dome was very good, in my opinion. I was a bit disappointed in the ending, but I think he did a great job with the characters and the story, much like The Stand.

I read a lot of Koontz books, too. However, his last book pissed me off. It was not good at all and made no sense.

That is all for my literary review of the day. :)

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