Summer Reading Challenge results

It doesn't seem possible, but it's September already. In June, I started the summer reading challenge hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer Reads. This was the list of what I had planned to read:

1. Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
2. Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (to be released July 24th)
3. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
4. A Darker Domain by Val McDermid
5. Life Sentences by Laura Lippman
6. Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells
7. Wormwood by Susan Albert Wittig
8. Reading Lolita in Tehran


This is what I managed to read:
1. Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
2. Rain Gods by James Lee Burke
3. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
4. A Darker Domain by Val McDermid
5. Life Sentences by Laura Lippman
6. Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells
7. Junior's Leg by Ken Wells
8. All the Colors of Darkness by Peter Robinson

I didn't get to Wormwood or Reading Lolita in Tehran. They are still on my to be read shelf.

I really enjoyed reading all of these, and finding a new voice that I really like. When I finished Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells, I got in the car, drove into Austin to my favorite used bookstore, and picked up the sequel "Junior's Leg". These books are set in the swamps of South Louisiana, and Ken Wells' ability to conjure the landscape and people of this area is amazing.

Three Cups of Tea was a truly mind opening book. This book should be required reading for every American. The story of a young mountain climber whose life is forever changed by the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, this book made me understand for the first time how fanatic fundamentalists have been able to come into power in this region. Reading about the deprivation of the people in this area, and the simple desire to learn among the children was truly eye opening.

Two of the books on my list are by my favorite author, James Lee Burke. His writing is absolutely lyrical at times, even when writing about dark and disturbing subjects. Here is my favorite passage from Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (published 2009 by Simon & Schuster)

"If someone were to ask Hackberry Holland what his childhood had been like, he would answer the question with an image rather than an explanation. He would describe a Saturday afternoon trip to town to watch a minor-league baseball game with his father the history professor. The courthouse square was bordered by elevated sidewalks inset with tethering rings that bled rust like a ship's scuppers. A khaki painted World War I howitzer stood in the shadows of a giant oak on the courthouse lawn. The dime store, a two-story brick building fronted with a wood colonnade, featured a popcorn machine that overflowed onto the concrete like puffed white grain swelling out of a silo. The adjacent residential neighborhood was lined with shade trees and bungalows and nineteenth-century white frame houses whose galleries were sunken in the middle and hung with porch swings, and each afternoon at 5 pm the paperboy whizzed down the sidewalk on a bicycle and smacked the newspaper against each set of steps with the eye of a marksman.
But more important in the memory of that long-ago American moment was the texture of light after a sun shower. It was gold and soft and stained with the contagious deep green of the trees and lawns. The rainbow that seemed to dip out of the sky into the ball diamond somehow confirmed one's foolish faith that both the season and one's youth were eternal."

When I read this passage, I felt that the author had looked directly into my soul and saw what I feel whenever I walk through this place we call home. And it just doesn't get better than that!

I hope everyone had a good time with this challenge. I certainly did, and want to thank Susan again for hosting such a fun event. Stop by http://asoutherndaydreamerreads.blogspot.com/
to check out everyone's list of summer reading!