Pretty much every summer for the past several years, I have selected a summer reading theme to provide some organization to my summer reading. Even in retirement, summer reading feels somehow different than reading during the rest of the year – more festive, maybe.
Last year, my reading theme was “The Summer of Noir,” and I spent the summer mostly in 1950’s L.A. reading Raymond Chandler. In 2024, I undertook the “Great American Road Trip,” reading through 10 of the 50 states before running out of metaphorical gas (gas prices were lower then, luckily). I’ve also had the Summer of Spies – I enjoyed this one so much, I did it twice.
This year, I had several ideas, all of which I discarded yesterday, in favor of what I came up with:
I’ve already started thinking about books. For the time travel side of the theme, I’m definitely going to read some Connie Willis – I’m vacillating between her WWII duology in the Oxford Time Travel series: Blackout and All Clear, or The Road to Roswell, which sounds like a lot of fun (and fits more in the “space travel” side of the theme). I also just bought the first book in Jodi Taylor’s Time Police series, Doing Time. I’ve only read the first of her Chronicles of St. Mary’s, and I could definitely see myself picking up the second one in that series, A Symphony of Echoes. I’m also considering Frozen People by Elly Griffiths – time travelling detectives!
On the space travel side, I have space opera, space opera and more space opera. I’ve almost finished Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series of five books (I just have book 5 left to go), and I’ll probably read the two books in the Vatta’s Peace duology to complete that series. I’ve also got Valor’s Choice, the first book in Tanya Huff’s long-running Confederation of Valor series in my sights, something in the Liaden Universe, possibly Agent of Change or Local Custom, but I haven’t settled on a specific book yet, and Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is the first in her Vorkosigan Saga. I’ve also been holding off on the new Murderbot, Platform Decay, but I’ll be reading that soon. And, I’m also thinking some John Scalzi, either Old Man’s War or his Collapsing Empire series. Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse by Jim Hines looks fun. And, I still have 4 books in the Finder Chronicles by Suzanne Palmer.
This Sunday is Memorial Day, so summer reading is just around the corner!