Summer Reading List

I was never assigned a summer reading list when I was in school, and I never really thought about what books I would read, or when. For a while, I read something epic over the whole summer - one year, it was Gone With the Wind, another year it was Anna Karenina...

But this year I decided to create a summer reading list, based on my summer plans.

BOSTON
I was in Boston over Memorial Day weekend (the unofficial start of summer), walking through the North End, past Paul Revere's house and the church where he hung his signal lanterns, and my friend asked "Which was it - one if by land or two if by sea?". And I realized...

I don't know.

So, I'm currently reading Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, by Esther Forbes. Originally published in 1942, it won the Pulitzer Prize, and is really good so far!

LAKE GEORGE, NY
The Lake George Area is located in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and is about 3 1/2 hours from New York City. The village of Lake George has many restaurants and shops, and you can walk to the beach, go kayaking, or have a cocktail overlooking the lake.

In 1756, Paul Revere volunteered to fight the French at Lake George. And, Cooper's Cave in Glens Falls (in the Lake George area) is also the setting of the James Fenimore Cooper novel, The Last of the Mohicans (which is also a movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, who is really cute).

IOWA
I'll be going home for my high school reunion this year (not telling which year). So, maybe I'll read A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. It's set on a farm in Iowa, and is focused on the dissolution of a family through a retelling of the King Lear story. I guess I should probably read King Lear too...

CAPE COD
I have no idea if I'll actually make it to Cape Cod this year. I've wanted to go there for the last 3 summers. At least I can read The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt, based on his family's summer home, which was built in 1903 on Wings Neck, a undeveloped strip of Cape Cod overlooking Buzzard's Bay.

It's not just the story of a summer house, though... It's the story of the Colt family, who owned the house for it's first hundred years, and, despite being determined to keep their home, made the difficult decision to put it on the market after losing all their money.

And finally...

KANSAS CITY
My friend Winnie will be moving from Kansas City to San Francisco soon, so I'm planning a trip to see her before she leaves. I lived in Kansas City for many years, and still have a lot of friends there, but it won't be the same without her.

Next year, my summer reading list will have a book about San Francisco, but this year, it'll have to be An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, which is based on an actual criminal case, and inspired the movie A Place in the Sun, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

It's also 850 pages, so I think that's enough for one summer!

So, there it is - my first official summer reading list:
- Paul Revere and the World He Lived In
- The Last of the Mohicans
- A Thousand Acres
- The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
- An American Tragedy

Wish me luck!