Summer Reading by Megan Crane

I have a week left until I head off for my summer vacation and I can't wait.  

Partly, this is because I'm going to Australia and New Zealand for a few weeks.

I know, I know.  Poor me. 

But aside from how much fun I plan to have and how pretty it's all going to be, what I'm really excited about is all the reading I'm going to do--and not just on the very long plane ride!  

Some of my favorite summer memories involve sitting around with this or that group of people--family, friends, neighbors--and reading away a lazy afternoon, or well on into a long, bright evening.  I like to read all the time, but there's something about reading in the summer that's different.  People call it "beach reading" or other derogatory things, but the books I happened into over the summer are what taught me how to imagine.  How to dream.  

I read fat, swollen paperbacks and musty hardcovers.  Whatever I could find in our extended family's rambling old house in Cape Cod.  Leftover and left behind books.  Old favorites and discarded books.  Moomintrolls and moonstones.  Thrilling love stories and lovely little mysteries with cats and jams.  Princesses and goblins, houses hewn from logs in the great big woods, odd old poetry collections, strange biographies of people I'd never heard of then or since.  As much a part of summer as fireflies and marshmallows, salt on my face and sun in my hair.

This summer is shaping up to be no different.  

On the way back from a conference in July I fell into Proof Of Their Sin by Dani Collins. 

I don't think I took a full breath for the length of my flight!  Big, deep, dark, and fantastic.  Everything I want in a book!  I can't recommend it enough.

I also read My Darkest Passion by Carolyn Jewel.  This is the latest in her My Immortal paranormal series, which I've been completely in love with for years.  I can never seem to get enough of the rich world she's created, filled with mages and demons, witches and spells.  This book was harsher than some of the previous ones (no pun intended--that's actually funny if you've read the books, I promise), but all the better for it.  As usual, I loved the characters and wanted more the moment I finished!

Highly recommended!

But then there's all the books I haven't read yet.  

I've been saving the new Sylvia Day Crossfire book for a long afternoon with no interruptions, which I see in my near future.  

And I'm in a frenzy of anticipation for the final book in Meljean Brook's Guardians series.  

One of my well-read cousins recommended Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. 

I picked up Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller after seeing it (and reading the first few pages) while I was staying at my uncle's place in Montana.  

A cool woman at a great dinner party recommended Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell.  

Then there are all the books in the Corretti Dynasty series--I wrote one of them, but I want to read everyone else's!  

And who knows what other books I'll discover out there?  Stuck on a hotel shelf, recommended by a new friend somewhere, or sent to me by an old friend who thinks I'll like it.  And best of all, I'll have the lazy days and long evenings to enjoy them all.

Happy Summer Reading!

Megan Crane is sometimes known as Caitlin Crews.

They would both rather be reading.

(Pictured: summer adventures a while back as a precursor to a really good book by a campfire.  If memory serves, one by Shannon McKenna.)