Summer Reading
Can’t think of summer when the sleet and snow are falling outside? What better time.
Summer is often a time when we give ourselves permission to read stuff for fun and we wonder what to read. It’s a time to catch up on professional reading or bring a book to the dock or the patio to just escape and enjoy.
Here are some fun ideas:
Mystery Lovers: The Swedes are taking over the mystery genre. Most of you have probably heard or read about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Stieg Larson is an interesting writer who manages to keep the reading guessing with the plot twists and turns. Plus, the Swedes know how to develop characters, not just present a plot.
Stieg also wrote The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
Another Swedish author is Henning Mankell. Mankell is a Swede who combines stories that combine his Swedish heritage and his love of Africa where he lives much of the time. He writes mysteries such as
Return of the Dancing Master
Kennedy’s Brain
And many more
He has written a series with Kurt Wallender, a morose Swedish police officer who faces a changing society with the perceived failure of the Swedish system to protect all of its citizens as it once did and the changes that come when Sweden is no longer a mono-cultural country. PBS even has a series names Wallender with several of the books made into beautiful movies starring Ken Branagh. One can stream them from Youtube.
Not to forget the women but another Swedish mystery writer is Camilla Lackberg who wrote The Preacher and The Ice Princess, just to name a couple. Entertainment Weekly says that “…this Swedish crime writer shouldn’t be overshadowed by her countrymen, Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.” I agree. Again, the Swedes develop plot and character to make a captivating read.
TheTween Set
Just to keep up with what our personal children and students are reading, you should read Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The movie comes out this summer along with the t-shirts, jewelry, etc as it did for Harry Potter. The Tween set are reading—which is good—and the books provide opportunity to talk about the morals and ethics of power when food is used as a leverage to control a country that has gone through destruction.
What do you recommend for summer? Please share. I’ll update this post as the weather warms up and we all reach for some sun screen, a cool drink, and some peace and quiet.
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