We are officially one week into summer, even though in some
parts of the nation, here in Sacramento, California included, the season’s sizzling
weather had already begun weeks ago. And like those ancient societies that
centered their actions around the seasons and made festivals to please their
deities, summer, as with the other seasons, is a time to make plans and goals.
One of these for me is in the form of a reading list. Summer provides most of
us extra time to catch up on those books that we said we would read,
passionately wanted to read but didn’t because we didn’t get around to it. It’s
also a time of new book releases, which are equivalent to the flickers’ summer
movie releases. This is the time to plan a list of what we would like to read
on the pool deck, on a long trip or at the local AC’d café or library on those
dragon breath weather days when we just don’t want to go out yet don’t want to
pile up on the energy bill running the air conditioner in our houses. Here’s my
summer sci fi/fantasy reading list below (not necessarily in any particular
order)!
Across the Universe, Beth Revis (currently reading): a YA space
opera-mystery involving an unseen killer on board a generation ship.
The Ocean at the End
of the Lane, Neil Gaiman: This involves a pond in which one of the
characters imagines to be an ocean. Wherever there’s an ocean there’s a beach.
Therefore this book is perfect for summer reading!
Jack Glass, Adam
Roberts: another science fiction mystery tale involving a murderer but with a more
atom punk touch in that it uses elements of golden age sci fi.
The Handmaid’s Tale,
Margaret Atwood: The critically acclaimed novel about women in the near future whose
rights have been taken away.
The Manitou,
Graham Masterton: This novel about the evil spirit of a medicine man was made
into a movie only three years after its 1975 publication. I’ve seen the movie
which was made really good as underrated as it was. Now I would like to see how
much more is in the book bearing in mind that most movie adaptations of novels
don’t include all scenes or even all characters from the original stories.
Batman comics: This
includes both Batman and Detective Comics, particularly from the
‘70s. For me summer has always been Batman season because that’s when I got to
know Batman most when I was a kid around six or seven years old. This was
particularly through reruns of the campy ‘60s TV series, and even though today
I feel like it never did the Dark Knight Detective justice with its
rainbow/Technicolor sets and daylight dominant settings it’s what started me on
Batman. Today, I’m trying to catch up with the true Dark Knight by reading the
comics from just about every era except the ‘50s and ‘60s when Batman became
more of a cut and dry trusted hero of the people, like Superman, rather than
that questionable more-or-less anti-hero. Lately, I’ve been trying to collect
and read the ‘70s comics, since they’re more in my current budget and also
because that’s the decade Batman was returned to his true dark hero role.
1001 Arabian Nights
(Author anonymous): This is a thick book that’s pages can add up to almost the
number in the title. Being a slow reader, I know I couldn’t read it in one
summer but since it consists of several tales the ones I would like to read
before the summer’s out are “Aladdin” and
one or two of the Sinbad tales. “Aladdin”
has influenced Hollywood films since the 1940s at least, including a Disney
animated feature in the ‘90s, and Sinbad has been adapted to a series of movies
whose special effects were done by one of my long time sci fi/fantasy Hollywood
special effects heroes, the late Ray Harryhausen. Now it’s time to read the
original stories, and if I read Arabic I would read the story in its original
language but, unfortunately, I don’t.
Galactic Energies,Luca Rossi:
A
short story collection, and again not that I’ll read them all during the
summer, but I’d like to get started on a few.
A Princess of Mars,
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The first of Burroughs’s Mars series of novels. I read a
couple of his Tarzan books, one each
of the past two summers. Now this summer I’d like to give his Mars series a
chance.
That’s my summer reading list, at least for sci fi fantasy
reading. What’s your reading list for the summer? Need help getting started? Let
me suggest yours truly’s short story collection, The Fool’s Illusion. In fact, there’s a great story in there that may just be perfect for the pool
deck, or for reading at the beach or lake. It’s about the search for a
legendary sea monster (not the Loch Ness monster, this one’s in the Mediterranean ). If you like simulating your surroundings
to a great horror-sci fi story, then this is the one to read in one of the
above settings I just mentioned. Better yet, you may even want to read it on
the water! That is, if you’re not faint of heart or prone to fear-based
accidents.
You can purchase Fool’s
Illusion at Amazon, and if you do so between now and Tuesday
July 1st you can take advantage of the special Kindle Matchbox deal!
And you don’t even need a Kindle device to read the Kindle version! Just go to The Fool’s Illusion’s Amazon page and click the “free app” link underneath the Kindle price. What is the Kindle
Matchbox deal? It’s a special where if you buy a print copy of my book you can
have a Kindle copy of it for free! If you don’t like reading print or can’t
think of anybody who does who you can give the print version to as a gift, then
you can purchase the Kindle copy alone for only 99 cents! Again, you don’t need
a Kindle device to read the Kindle copy; you can read it on any Windows, Apple
or Android device. Just visit the Kindle free app store!
Until next time . . .
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