Summer Reading: No more pencils, way more books.

Is it too early to start thinking about summer reading? While I'm not sure I ever loved the concept back in high school, when I was sentenced to books like ANIMAL DREAMS and DELIVERANCE (those both in one "magical" year), the well-defined season between Memorial Day and Labor Day seems to call for further commemoration now that I'm an adult and don't have three months off to mark it otherwise.

Specifically, I'm thinking about starting a Summer Reading Club here in New York. We won't have an assigned book, but we'll meet at a park on Saturdays and read out there regularly, blankets and lawn chairs at the ready. (Unless it's bad weather, in which case we'll be in a local cafe.) I spent too many weekends inside last summer, and this would get me out of the house and enjoying the pleasures of diving into a book.

Here's my tentative, wishful-thinking reading list for '08. I don't have a 13-volume list yet like Of Books and Bicycles, but I'd love to dig into these:

1. Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton
2. Vikram Chandra, SACRED GAMES -- paperback edition, recently purchased. (Yup, I caved.)
3. Herman Wouk, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR
4. Nobel Prize Winner Doris Lessing's THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK
5. Cynthia Ozick, TRUST

On Thursday I'll write a little more about the experiences of summer reading, so stay tuned.