Today is the kick-off day for my friend Sue Jackson’s Big Book Summer Challenge 2022!
This is a low-key challenge where participants read a book or multiple books that are 400+ pages between Memorial Day (May 27th) and Labor Day (September 5th). All are welcome to join. You don’t have to have a blog, you can simply leave a comment on Sue’s post to be officially entered (she has prizes and other goodies). Visit Sue’s blog, Book by Book, to learn more and join the challenge.
Here is my stack of hopefuls:
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (622 pages). I’ve wanted to read this book ever since it first came out twelve years ago. This is one I will definitely read this summer. I’ve announced on the Book Cougars podcast that this will be my Buddy Read book for the Big Book Summer Challenge. If you’re interested in reading with me, I’m starting it on July 1sth and have created a reading schedule over on Goodreads.
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (450 pages). Last year I enjoyed reading Bleak House by Dickens and thought I’d try another one of his this year. I have fond memories of reading Great Expectations my first year of high school, but have very little memory of the actual novel. I thought it would be fun to revisit it this summer.
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (676 pages). I read this one when it first came out in 2005. It was a hugely anticipated book because the author received one of the largest advances ever ($2 million), so there was tons of hype. I recall enjoying it but also having a snarky or jaded attitude about it due to the drama surrounding its publication. However, it has been on my mind A LOT the last few months so I’m taking it as a sign to reread.
- Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War by Maya Jasanoff (460 pages). This book came to my attention in 2017 when it won a Windham Cambell Prize for nonfiction. It had never crossed my mind to think about what loyalists did after the Revolutionary War. This book is about the 60,000 people who were displaced by that war.
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck (602 pages). This is my “in real life” book club’s pick for July, so I’ll be reading this one for sure. The Willa Cather Book Club has finished reading Cather’s novels, so we’ve morphed into The Vintage Book Club. Instead of taking on an author’s complete list or bouncing around from author to author, we generated a list of authors we were interested in and voted on who to read next. Steinbeck was the winner. We’ll be reading four of his books over the next twelve months (we meet quarterly). If you’re in Connecticut and would like to join us, let me know. We meet in South Windsor.
- Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry (716 pages). This is book two in McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove tetralogy that I plan to read this year. Dead Man’s Walk is the first book, which I read in the winter and wrote about here.
- Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum (433 pages). The Book Cougars interviewed Barenbaum about her first book, A Bend in the Stars, a couple years ago. I’m looking forward to reading this one, which just came out. It involves Chernobyl, time travel, and a mother-daughter who team up to prevent some catastrophes.
- The Past is a Foreign Country, Revisted by David Lowenthal (660 pages). Lowenthal’s work was referenced in an article I read during my first archive class and it has stuck with me. It sounds dense and has a handful of footnotes on literally each page, but I’m interested in nostalgia, heritage, and how the past is used in the present, so I’m up for tackling it. It will also help me prepare for an archive course I’m taking in the fall called, “Archives, History, and Collective Memory.”
Alrighty. So I’ve showed you my books for the Big Book Summer Challenge 2022, will you show me yours? I’d love to hear what big books you’re considering diving into this summer (or winter, if you’re on the other side of the world).