Friday, June 15, 2007

Required reading

So, I guess I must have blinked or something back in March, because all of a sudden, my first semester of grad school is over. This is astonishing. Astonishing, I tell you!

Despite a few small hiccups during the transitional period (ie: I needed to search deep inside of myself to find motivation to change out of my pajamas in the morning), I can honestly say that I love my new lifestyle. As much as editing used to be wonderful gratification, these days I am truly relishing the opportunity to save my creative energies for my own work. Pretty selfish, huh? But what can you do?

Another semi-unexpected byproduct of the Vermont program is how much I'm reading again! This past semester, I read about 50 books for my coursework, which means I finally got around to folks like Carolyn Mackler, Sarah Dessen, Blake Nelson, and others that I'd managed to avoid until now. Of the bajillion titles that I've "discovered" since January, here's my top five:


1. Rachel Cohn, "Gingerbread"
2. Julia Bell, "Massive"
3. Gene Luen Yang, "American Born Chinese"
4. Natasha Friend, "Perfect"
5. Marilyn Sachs, "The Fat Girl"

My caveat, of course, is that 5/50ths of a reading list is really just the tip of the iceberg. There is a staggering amount of fabulous work out there. Now that I've got a month off from school, I'm diving into the extracurricular stacks. First will be "Tips on Having a Gay (Ex)Boyfriend, by Vermont College's own Carrie Jones, followed closely by Niki's "Goddess Games," which looks, as Nicole Ritchie would say, "a-MAH-zing."

What's on your summer reading list?

3 comments:

Aimee Friedman said...

The amount of books to be read in the world never ceases to overwhelm me. In the best possible way.

I gotta break my list into two, teen and adult.

Top 5 Teen Books I Plan to Devour This Summer:
Eclipse (third book in the TWILIGHT trilogy)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (duh)
Goddess Games (Niki is so popular!)
Pants on Fire (Meg Cabot is my hero)
Naomi and Ely's No-Kiss List (go David Levithan and Rachel Cohn!)

Top 5 "Grown-up" Books:
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Mergers and Acquisitions by Dana Vachon
The new Armistead Maupin
The new Ian McEwan

Whew. Better get started now! :)

ghulam ali said...

summer vacations have started so i have a plan to read these following books
1:digital fortress by dan brown
2:the sky is falling by sidney sheldon
3:deception point by dan brown
4:the vanished child by sara smith
5:daughters of arabia by jean sassons
6:a matter of honour by jeffry archer
and i have plenty of time magzine online which have been always source of pleasure and knowledge for me.so hope for better and enjoyable reading

Jennifer Echols said...

Aimee--I'm reading Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the moment. Let me know how The Yiddish Policemen's Union turns out!