On Campus : Bunn Library : Summer Reading

Fun in the Sun!

Enjoy reading for fun and relaxation! Bring a book with you wherever you go or just leave one by your bed for nighttime reading. The titles on this list have been recommended by librarians, faculty, and students and included are some NYT Bestsellers. You can also find other recommendations from the links provided below or you can join the NextReads service available on the main page of the Bunn Library website. We would love to hear about what you are reading this summer, so please email Paula Clancy with your thoughts on any books you have read.You can look for these titles at the Bunn Library, your local public library or bookstore. Titles in Bunn Library are marked with a (B).

The Host: a Novel by Stephenie Meyer (B)
Science Fiction. If you’ve enjoyed the Twilight Saga Series and are waiting for the 4th book, Breaking Dawn (comes out Aug. 2), then try Meyer’s first adult novel about an alien possession. Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love. Book description from Amazon.

The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1) by Patrick Roth fuss (B) – Alex Award winner
Fantasy.Library Journal, starred review. From his childhood as a member of a close-knit family of the nomadic Edema Ruh to his first heady days as a student of magic at a prestigious university, humble bartender Kvothe relates the tale of how a boy beset by fate became a hero, a bard, a magician, and a legend. Rothfuss's first novel launches a trilogy relating not only the history of humankind but also the tale of a world threatened by an evil whose existence it desperately denies. If you're looking for a good fantasy read this summer, this book is for you. Also try George Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson (B)
If you’re looking for something more serious, try Jackson’s book which reminds me of The Lovely Bones. Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty, whether she's helping her mother make sure the literal family skeleton stays in the closet or turning scraps of fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her estranged sister Thalia, an impoverished Actress with a capital A, is her polar opposite, priding herself on exposing the lurid truth lurking behind middle class niceties. While Laurel's life seems neatly on track--a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in suburban Victorianna--everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 13-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne. The ghost leads Laurel to the real Molly floating lifelessly in the Hawthorne's backyard pool. Molly's death is inexplicable--an unseemly mystery Laurel knows no one in her whitewashed neighborhood is up to solving. Book description from Amazon.

The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman (B)- Alex Award winner
This was perhaps my favorite book this year. Set in the 1860s and '70s, Maltman's superb debut evokes a Midwest lacerated by clashes between European and Native American, slaveowner and abolitionist, killer and healer, nature and culture. In 1862, led by Chief Little Crow and incited by the government's failure to provide their annuity, the Dakota Sioux staged an uprising in Minnesota, slaughtering hundreds of settlers. As a result, 38 Dakota men were hanged, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Maltman's promising first novel bounces between the years leading up to this atrocity-laden conflict and 1876, when the James-Younger gang would stir up its own brand of bloody mayhem in Minnesota. Following the struggles of the Senger family, Maltman keeps the telling personal and local, tacked to the Senger's farm and the Dakota tribe situated a stone's throw across the river. His account of the lives, toils, and customs of the wary neighbors is nearly innate, and the tenuous relationship formed and then warped between the two is as fascinating as it is tragic.- Ian Chipman. From Amazon.com.

I also would recommend Stewart O’Nan’s, A Prayer for the Dying (B) if you are looking for more books set on the western frontier. The sleepy agricultural community of Friendship, WI, provides an ideal refuge for Jacob Hansen, a Civil War veteran recovering from the trauma of battle. As if to atone for past sins, Hansen dedicates his life to public service, working as town sheriff, minister, and undertaker. But the quiet life Hansen cherishes is shattered forever when he embalms the corpse of a nameless drifter and inadvertently exposes himself and his neighbors to diphtheria. As sheriff, Hansen quarantines the town and begins burning the homes of those who have died from the disease. The more he tries to help, the worse things become. O'Nan named one of the best young American novelists by Granta, is a literary chameleon who seems to change his identity with each book. This is a beautifully written, heartbreaking work, modeled on Albert Camus's classic La peste (1947). -Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles. From Amazon.com.

The Luxe and Rumors: a Luxe novel by Anna Godbersen
For some fun poolside reading, The Luxe series by Anna Godbersen won't disappoint. With a quote from The Age of Innocence as an epigraph and an enthusiastic blurb from the creator of Gossip Girl on its back cover, this lavishly produced debut makes no secret of its twin influences. The story opens in 1899 with the funeral of Elizabeth Holland, a well-bred beauty said to have plunged to her death in the Hudson River. The narrative then travels back several weeks, tracing the relationships and events that have led to the somber assembly. This tangled web includes not one but two sets of star-crossed lovers; an upstairs/downstairs romance; a scheming social climber; a bitter servant girl; and oodles of money, all set in a Edith Wharton via Hollywood vision of Old New York. From Publisher’s Weekly.

The Rising Tide: a novel of World War II by Jeff Shaara
Historical Fiction. Starred Review. If you loved his Civil War series, try Shaara’s WW2 series which begins with The Rising Tide and then The Steel Wave. Shaara (To the Last Man; Gone for Soldiers), who has written bestselling and critically acclaimed historical novels covering the American Revolution through World War I, takes on World War II in the wonderful first volume of a planned trilogy. As the book begins, Hitler's forces control western Europe, and U.S. troops face off against the Germans in North Africa. From fall 1942 through spring 1943, the Allies battle Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. Shaara evokes the agony of desert warfare and the utter chaos of an airborne assault through the experiences of Pvt. Jack Logan, a tank gunner, and Sgt. Jesse Adams, a paratrooper. The challenges—and frequent frustrations—of command are seen through the eyes of such luminaries as generals Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Rommel. From Publisher’s Weekly.

Wake by Lisa McMann
Fantasy. High-school senior Janie Hannagan has the strange, unwelcome, and uncontrollable ability to enter other people's dreams. Since she was eight, she's been drawn into the dreams of anyone sleeping near her (on a train, in study hall, wherever) and has been witness to people's subconscious fears and fantasies. It's frustrating and, at times, frightening. Normally, Janie is just an observer in others' dreams, but when she gets pulled into bad-boy classmate Cabel Sturmheller's nightmares, she learns that she can actually influence the dreams she enters...and that Cabel has feelings for her. If you like suspenseful stories of the supernatural that have a healthy dose of romance (like, oh, say, Twilight), you'll stay up late reading Wake. From NextReads newsletter.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (B)
Starred Review. The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen's reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals. From Publisher’s Weekly.

Infected: A Novel by Scott Sigler (on order)
Starred Review. In Sigler's riveting horror thriller, alien seeds from outer space infect a number of unlucky humans, who develop some unusual symptoms—itchy, blue triangular growths on their skin—that eventually result in the carriers becoming screaming, homicidal maniacs. CIA agent Dew Phillips must find out why these formerly docile citizens are running amok, aided by Margaret Montoya, a Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist, who reported the first of the strange cases. One of the infected, former football player Perry Dawsey, doesn't take any crap from anybody, not even the aliens residing in his body. Sigler (Ancestor) leads the reader from one startling detail to the next—the creatures learn to speak (feed us we hungry); they grow little black eyes—until even hardened genre fans will find themselves whimpering at each new revelation. From Publisher’s Weekly.

The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner (on order)
This young British author has been compared to J.K. Rowling, though you be the judge. She was 14 years old when she began the novel and there are plans for a trilogy. Ten years have passed in war-torn Malonia since the king and queen were murdered and the throne usurped by Lucien and his rebel troops. The people believe the prince has been exiled to a far-away land, saved by a prophecy that threatened those who would harm him. But they ask themselves, Is the prince still alive? Has he actually been murdered along with his parents? A country on the brink of revolution awaits his return in silence. Leo is a rebellious soldier-in-training with secret powers. When wandering home one night, he stumbles upon a mysterious black book lying in the snow. Its strange aura and empty pages both frighten and fascinate him. Soon the pages begin to fill with the stories of Anna and Ryan in England – a country that is only a fairy tale in Malonia. When tragedy strikes, Leo tries to rid himself of the book but its stories haunt even his dreams. In The Eyes Of A King, a fast-paced novel with a unique style, these three fifteen-year-old characters, and the parallel worlds of contemporary England and the dictatorship of Malonia, become increasingly entangled. From the Publisher.

The 2008 Alex Awards winners are:
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China, by Matthew Polly, published by Penguin/Gotham Books (ISBN13:978-1592402625) (B)

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, published by HarperCollins (ISBN13: 978-0061240416)
In this clever SF thriller from Ruff (Fool on the Hill), almost everyone is a bad monkey of some kind, but only Jane Charlotte is a self-confessed member of The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons. Or is she? In a series of sessions with a psychotherapist in the Las Vegas County Jail nut wing, Jane tells the story of her early life in San Francisco and her assimilation into the Bad Monkeys, an organization devoted to fighting evil. Crazy or sane, Jane is still a murderer, whether she used a weapon like the NC gun, which kills someone using Natural Causes, or more prosaic weaponry. Still, nothing is quite what it seems as Jane's initial story of tracking a serial killer janitor comes under scrutiny and the initial facts about her brother, Phil, get turned on their head. At times the twists are enough to give the reader whiplash. Ruff's expert characterization of Jane and agile manipulation of layers of reality ground the novel and make it more than just a Philip K. Dick rip-off. From Publisher’s Weekly.

Essex County Volume 1: Tales from the Farm, by Jeff Lemire, published by Top Shelf Publications (ISBN13: 978-1891830884) (B)

Genghis: Birth of an Empireby Conn Iggulden, published by Delacorte (ISBN13: 978-0385339513) (on order)
Starred Review. Author of the bestselling Emperor series on the life of Julius Caesar, Iggulden turns to another of history's great conquerors, Genghis Khan, for a new series of brilliantly imagined and addictive historical fiction. Future conqueror Temujin—"a man of iron"—is born to the khan (ruler) of a fierce Mongol tribe that roams central Asia's steppes in the 12th century. When his father is killed by Tartar raiders before Temujin reaches manhood, a rival claims the tribe and banishes Temujin's family. Left behind without resources when the tribe migrates, the family struggles to survive the harsh environment, and Temujin dreams of gathering similar outcasts—wanderers and herdsmen—into a new tribe. After assembling a core of these "men scorned by all the others," Temujin begins raiding Tartar camps. As his fame spreads, Temujin launches an ambitious campaign to unite the Mongol tribes "after a thousand years of warfare" into a single people, defeat the Tartars and invade China. Building on the fragments of Genghis's life, Iggulden weaves a spellbinding story of an exotic and "unforgiving land" and the enigmatic young man—charismatic, a brilliant tactician and capable "of utter ruthlessness"—who sets out to tame it. This is historical fiction of the first order. From Publisher’s Weekly.

The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, published by Scribner (ISBN13: 978-1416533245) (B)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Sarah Crichton Books (ISBN13: 978-0374105235) (B)

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones, published by Random/Dial Press (ISBN13: 978-0385341066) (B)

The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz, published by Simon & Schuster (ISBN13: 978-1416532392 (B)

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