What I Read This Summer

Since the end of the school term in May, I've been able to read a bit more for pleasure than I usually can during the school year when I'm reading so much to do research, write lectures, and lead discussions that I tend to slack off in reading for pleasure. I also had several plane trips, and I tend to read to pass the time when I'm flying. (I wish I could read more in the car, but it often gives me a bit of a headache.)

This summer I read:

Jane Slayre by Charlotte Bronte and Sherri Browning Erwin. This was a fun read to start as soon as I submitted final grades for the spring semester. It struck a nice balance between Bronte and slayage. I enjoyed it almost as much as I did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I read a few years ago during a winter break. Much of the dialogue of the original was retained and, for the most part, the personalities of the characters developed along similar lines to the classic novel. Those of you who are purists should avoid this, as it will be hard for you to get past the zombies of Lowood.
Recommend if you're into zombies and werewolves or into bad ass spoofs on bad ass 19th century feminist characters.

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.J. Wodehouse. I had seen some of the fine Jeeves and Wooster series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and this was a free download on my Kindle. I was not disappointed, as it was hysterically funny. Bertie and Jeeves (who is seemingly off his game when the tale begins) must find a way to patch up broken relationships and appease a highly emotional French cook during a visit to the country. I don't want to reveal too much, but I think I might have laughed so hard that I snorted during the awards ceremony at the grammar school.
Recommend.

Personal Record: A Love Affair With Running by Rachel Toor. This book was a beautifully-written, very inspiring, and often funny memoir about Toor's running journey. While I had trouble relating to someone who hates avocados and who could so easily BQ or run 40 miles after eating a ginormous burrito, I did thoroughly enjoy this book, and reading it made me reflect on some of the reasons that I love running, even if I'm nowhere near the athlete that Toor is.
Recommend if you like running .

Cupcake by Miranda Jones. This was possibly the worst novel that I've ever read. If I hadn't been in Spain with limited, unread material on my Kindle and no internet in my apartment, I can honestly say that I wouldn't have finished it. I probably rolled my eyes about ten times a chapter. The premise is that an obese bakery owner gets held up at gunpoint and shot and then decides to change her life. Hijinks and romance ensue, as the main character joins a gym, attempts to diet, and meets a handsome man, who also appeals to one of her middle aged and trashy regular customers. This could have been a fun, easy read - if a bit cheesy - but the characters were undeveloped and wooden, there were big plot holes, and the narrative voice was incredibly weak.
Can only recommend as toilet paper.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I have to admit that I was initially disappointed. A lot of people had really raved about this book to me, but I was a bit underwhelmed. I was expecting this book to be as good as the first Harry Potter, but for me it fell short. The prose wasn't bad, although I'm not the biggest fan of first-person present as a narrative style. It may have been that I vaguely remembered hearing things or reading them on the internets, but the plot seemed pretty predictable to me. That said, this book somehow got under my skin and I decided to finish the trilogy. Also Katniss Everdeen was a far more compelling and interesting character than, say, Bella Swan.
Recommend if you like more thoughtful YA fiction.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. I blazed my way through this on my first plane ride to New York in spite of the fact that I still found the first person present narrative extremely grating at times. I found it more compelling and less predictable than The Hunger Games. Although I found myself wishing that Collins hadn't used the love triangle trope, I also found myself on "Team Peeta" as I became increasingly intrigued by his character.
Recommend if you like more thoughtful YA fiction.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. This wasn't quite what I expected. The love triangle trope that Collins was using was also something of a foil, as this novel was really about what can endure the brutality and trauma of war. However, I found elements of the book really hard to swallow and didn't think Collins created the most believable of distopian universes. I mean, come on, hover crafts and showers with panels full of buttons and muttations but no nuclear weapons....? Also the quickness with which the rebellion seemed to spread didn't seem very plausible to me. However, as a means of thinking about the impact of the gruesomeness of war on humankind this novel was interesting and provocative.
Recommend if you like more thoughtful YA fiction.

La isla bajo el mar (The Island Beneath the Sea) by Isabel Allende. Allende tells the story of the family of Toulouse Valmourain, an educated and Enlightened scion of a French family, who comes to Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to take over the family plantation from his syphilitic father and his family, friends, and associates, in particular a slave that he purchases for his wife. This slave, Zarite, is the main protagonist and the sometimes narrator. The novel is set in the years of the Haitian Revolution and takes the characters to Cuba and New Orleans. It deals with some heavy topics: rape, violence, debasement, and incest. While this novel is not my favorite of Allende's works, she is a tremendously gifted writer and managed to inspire fear, revulsion, heart break, hope, and frustration.
Highly recommend.

Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. This was the first of Christie's Tommy and Tuppence novels, and I really enjoyed it. Perhaps because I have been so recently obsessed with Downton Abbey, I loved this mystery written in and set in the immediate aftermath of World War I. While you have to suspend a bit  of belief in order to take it in as the plot unfolds, the characters are quirky and relatable. I'll probably read the other Tommy and Tuppence novels at some point before too long.
Recommend.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The premise of this book is that a special circus is created as a platform for a magical dual of sorts fought between the protégés of two master magicians. It's largely set in Victorian/Edwardian London. However, the circus travels to around Europe and America and picks up threads of new characters along the way. The prose itself is magical in its ability to transport the reader to the circus that is in itself an important character in the book. It seems from reading a few reviews on the internets that people either love or hate this book. If you are looking for torrid romance, look elsewhere. If you are looking for an elegantly written debut novel, look no further.
Highly recommend.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. This was her first Poirot mystery novel, and I loved watching the Poirot series on PBS when I was a kid. However, I found this book to be slower paced than I expected. I found myself disliking all of the characters, especially the narrator of the tale and even Hercule Poirot at times. Whereas Tommy and Tuppence were endearing, the Styles crew just made me wish that it had been a mass murder mystery.
Don't really recommend.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. This novels follows a young man whose veterinary training is cut short when his parents are suddenly killed by a car crash and who randomly jumps on a train car to find himself traveling with a circus. He falls in love with the liberty horse girl, who is married to a violent and abusive man, and with the innocent animals he is hired to take care of by the circus. Set partly in present day and partly in the Depression Era, it is gritty and raw in its descriptions of poverty, desperation, violence, and desire, as well as the frustrations of an elderly man who still has all his cognitive abilities but has been shut up in a nursing home and feels that he has been made irrelevant.
Recommend - but possibly because I really love elephants.

So what have you been reading this summer? Out of the books that you've read so far in 2012, what have been your favorites?